Tag Archives: Technology

Wunder Kinder at Work

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Why did the engineer wear black socks with his shorts to the beach?
He was saving his white socks for work.

Wunder Kinder, Greg from work, clued me into what became an elegantly simple solution, to what had been a quite vexing problem. He turned me into a miracle worker, when before, I had only been Miracle Whip. Thank you, Greg! Last Thursday, our desktop computer lost its internet connection. It does this on occasion. Usually, rebooting the DSL modem and/or the computer once or twice is enough to get things working again. This time, I even tried the mysterious and obscure (at least to me) netsh winsock reset command. This was all to no avail though. Using our laptop, I was able to diagnosis that the problem laid not at AT&T HQ, not in the intervening phone line, not in our DSL modem, not even in the Ethernet cable from the modem to the desktop, but in our desktop itself. I toyed with the idea of calling AT&T, because they had been quite helpful once before, but first, it didn’t seem to be their problem and second, I didn’t want to have to climb the tech support pyramid to get to someone who could actually help me: Yes, I am not stupid. Yes, I’m sure of that. Yes, the computer is turned on. Etc.

I consider myself to be a pretty tech savvy guy, especially with computers. After all, I’ve been operating these machines for over forty years, yes, forty years. I started back in the day of wooden mainframes and iron men. I even got my degree in computer science, but I have always had a blind spot for networks. More is the pity, because it is one of most lucrative of trades. As an analogy for my aptitude for computer networks, I’ll use my aptitude for plumbing. Back in the day, when I announced that I was going to fix the dripping faucet in the bathroom, Anne would gather up our young children and flee the house, all to avoid exposing our young sons to a complete four-letter word vocabulary.

Greg’s suggestion was simply to buy a new Ethernet card. On the way home today, I swung by Micro Center, play land for geeks and most of my co-workers. $25 and an hour later, we were back in business. I think that this qualifies in classical computer parlance, as a work-around. In the interest of full disclosure, I should note that the $25 bought a gigabit Ethernet card, which is more bandwidth then is currently required. If however, I upgraded our DSL to U-verse, it might come into its own then. I’ll have to ask the Wunder Kinder at work tomorrow.

Envisioneering Technology

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On Saturday, I attended an exhibit on Leonardo Da Vinci, entitled “The Da Vinci Machines Exhibition”. It was being held in the expansive lobby of the downtown Bank of America building. I don’t think that this bank lobby is in regular use anymore, because except for the exhibition, the lobby appeared rather empty and vacant. The exhibition comprised mainly wooden models of various Da Vinci inventions. Originally, I thought that it might be free, but I was mistaken. The regular ticket price was $15, but I got the senior price of only $11, being over 55 years old. I think that this is a first for me. I was less than impressed with this exhibit; it seemed to only cheapen Da Vinci’s reputation, instead of enhancing it. The tour didn’t help either, with its emphasis on extending attribution to Da Vinci, for a host of inventions whose veracity seemed somewhat doubtful. At times it seemed that the tour guide was acting like a patent attorney, trying to extend the reach of his client’s 16th century patent filings. I am pretty sure though that Archimedes invented the Archimedes Screw.

The pictures that I had taken at this exhibit were languishing, until yesterday. Yesterday, another great inventor died, Steven Paul Jobs. In the Apple/PC divide, I remain firmly rooted on the PC side, but I do appreciate the other side too. Last year, I purchased my first Apple product, an iPhone. Actually, I bought four iPhones, but that is another story. Shortly after this purchase, I found myself in Silicon Valley. I spoke with a member of a software company, who gleefully announced that they had just sold some voice recognition software to Apple for half a billion dollars. This program was unveiled earlier this this week as part of the iPhone 4S release, as Siri, the new personal digital assistant App. Although originally developed for the iPhone 3GS, the one I own, it will only be released on the iPhone 4S. You have got to recoup that purchase cost.

Like Da Vinci’s renaissance, our more modern computer revolution has brought sweeping changes and many improvements to the human condition. Like Da Vinci, Jobs is a hero of his time. The question still remains though, will gleam and shine of Jobs’ techno-baubles dim over time so that in 500 years they look like only wooden toys. The resale value on old personal electronics is not a good leading economic indicator. Maybe the Mona Lisa, with her enigmatic half smile knows the real answer?

George Armstrong Cluster

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I bought a laptop computer on Tuesday. This is to replace the rather anemic one that I bought three years ago. That one was light and cheap, but it was also too light-headed. I found it increasingly frustrating to use, hence this purchase. This time I have followed my sons’ lead and bought a Hewlett-Packard. We use Hewlett-Packard server class machines at work that we euphemistically refer to as PC clusters, or simply clusters. They are powerful machines and dwarf the capabilities of my new laptop in every respect save portability and of course, affordability. I’ve used a number of these machines over the years, for some, I have been their sole user. You could justifiably think of these machines as my own personal computers. Personalizing these computers, they are all given unique names. Their names are sometimes cute, geeky or just plain stupid, but once given a moniker it generally sticks with them for the rest of their days.

As you would expect from a group of geeky guys the list of PC cluster names have paraded through the Star Wars trilogy, the Lord of the Rings trilogy, video game and comic book characters. The current generation of machine names have evolved beyond my ken. I dare not ask, nor really care to know the explanation behind this latest crop of cluster names. I’ve had the privilege to name two of these clusters. Somewhat embarrassingly, I am credited, at work, as being the father of this PC cluster technology. I feel like Al Gore must feel, every time someone recounts his claim that he invented the internet. I did buy and build the first two PC clusters at work, but like any real success, it has a thousand fathers and I am only one of them. Still it does gladden my heart to be so attributed, especially in the context of the latest generation’s capabilities, which brings me back to the title of this post. One of the wags at work coined the name George Armstrong Cluster. While these three words wouldn’t work for a single machine, it would make for a great name for a triumvirate of computers. You could have the George cluster, Armstrong cluster and of course the Cluster cluster. Hey, it sounds better than the Mongolian cluster, the Cluster cluster, etc.

Watch Ya, Watch Ya, Watch Ya!

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On Wednesday, I got an email from my blog’s service provider. The email was entitled, “Security Incident”, and started off with the following description of what had occurred. It went on to say that they didn’t think that very much information was compromised, but they couldn’t really be certain. Protect your passwords, they warned, and stay tuned for any further details. Of course, this is in addition to the various credit card hack notices that we have all received.

Tough note to communicate today: Automattic, [The Company behind WordPress] had a low-level (root) break-in to several of our servers, and potentially anything on those servers could have been revealed.

We’ve been hacked, once, as many of you might remember. It was the day that we joined Facebook. I had uploaded our list of email addresses, so that Facebook could use it to send out friend requests. The virus or whatever it was started emailing out solicitations for Canadian Viagra, to all our friends. Worst still, it did so under our name. We eventually got it under control, but not before some damage was done. We got responses from some of our friends, asking us if they were infected now. I didn’t think so, but how should I know.

This week, I had to fill out an online form that asked a lot of personal questions. Instead of the usual password, this system had you construct a series of personal questions and then supply the answers to these questions. It seemed a little strange, but then it got even stranger. Part of the form asked me to supply a physical description. Just the basics, like what appears on your driver’s license, height, weight, hair color and eye color. I didn’t have any problem with the height. I didn’t even bother to lie about my weight. Eye color was no big deal either, but then there was hair color.

I’ve always answered black to this question, but on this online form, I noticed that in addition to black and the usual hair colors, “gray or graying” also appeared. This entry gave me pause for thought and in that pause, I noticed that the list included even more colors, including, green, blue, pink and purple. Those colorful distractions aside, I really wrestled with which hair color to enter, black or gray. I eventually went with black, for the following reason. If sometime down the road, I was ever called on this entry, I could always claim that it was black when I filled out the form, but that was a while ago.

All of this writing about internet security got me worried and then it got me thinking, and I did a little online research. Everyday, more of our personal data is entrusted to different websites that can’t seem to control of it. Parsing through all too many security firms, all intent on selling me their services, Eventually, I hit upon this blog-site that had what I thought was a rather insightful list of do’s and don’ts, click here. You can never be too careful.

A Gracious Hello, …

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A gracious hello, here at the Phone Company, we handle eighty-four billion calls a year, serving everyone from presidents and kings to the scum of the earth. So, we realize that, every so often, you can’t get an operator, or for no apparent reason your phone goes out-of-order, or perhaps you get charged for a call you didn’t make. We don’t care! – Lily Tomlin as Ernestine in the ‘80

I am a “dear customer” of AT&T. At least I am told so. I must say that being a “dear customer” comes pretty dear to me. Most months, AT&T is my biggest creditor. I purchase from them, wireless service for four iPhone, DSL internet service and our reliable old land line. By far the biggest piece of the pie is the wireless bill for the four phones. I knew it would be going in and so am not surprised or complaining about those costs. Actually, after years of Sprint service, where a turn of the roulette wheel would have been a more consistent indicator of the next month’s cell phone bill, AT&T’s bill has been rock solid. No, I am complaining about the DSL portion of my monthly debt to AT&T.

What is precipitating this rant towards AT&T is an email that they sent us this week. In this email they updated us on changes in our DSL terms of service. Here are a few of the dozen or so changes that rather teed me off:

  • We have added email as a separate service. This means that they can charge for this service separately, like after you angrily drop your DSL service or more likely as an additional add-on if you stay with AT&T.
  • We have added language that will allow us to convert customers from our DSL network to the AT&T U-verse High Speed network, where available. Apparently, the two years of solicitations that has gone unheeded, has not deterred AT&T in their goal to wring more money out of me.
  • We’ve added a link where customers can go to get information about AT&T’s data usage policy and managing their data usage. Reading the fine print here says they will start charging you extra if you exceed their limits on uploading and downloading.
  • We have added language that allows AT&T to terminate the service of customers who repeatedly harass or abuse our employees. and We have added language stating that AT&T may need to modify or discontinue your service, either temporarily or permanently. If you don’t like these new rules, too bad, we don’t care.

I am seething about some of these rules changes, especially about the forced conversion to U-verse. I haven’t decided what to do, but at least I have thirty-day to think about it, before any thing happens. Maybe it is time to break up the phone company again? Before when it was divided, it was both innovative and competitive, now it is just a dictatorial monopoly. Time to send in the drones?

The picture with this post is from Chris.