2012-06-28:
And other adventures in Equestria.
I mean Pony Land.
I mean Rochester.
Let me begin by once again typing my hatred of PCs. Straight? Good.
Not too much work this week, but of course I've been slacking my writing duties for Ponies, so it's a double delight. There were two notable issues this week, the larger one today.
The lawyer I work for, the one I got the new machine for, was still not able to sync between his crappy, crappy Amicus program and outlook. It would complain about some dll file, then freeze up for about two minutes, and when you looked, hey presto, it actually worked. This was unacceptable.
Well, I looked online, but there wasn't much help. What I did notice was the file referenced had 64 on the end of it, but I could only find a file with that same name, but no 64 on the end.
"Hummmm," Brain said to me. "You installed the 64bit version of Office because he has a 64 bit operating system."
"More like 2 bit," I replied sourly.
"The point is, the crappy Amicus software may be 32 bit, and thus, has trouble talking to the 64 bit outlook program."
"By Jove, Brain, you might just have cracked it!"
So I tediously downloaded the 32 bit office installer over their pathetically crappy internet connection- no seriously. I downloaded 2 seasons of Pony Magic at a solid 1MB per second download for hours until it was finished. The best they could manage was… 200kb/sec peak, average 75kb/sec. You want to download a gigabyte at 75kb/sec? I thought not. Oh, it's not the router, or the cables, I checked. I got 12MB/sec copying locally, so no trouble there.
ANYWHO. Took out office and Amicus, just in case. Office of course takes forever to uninstall, as it should, it's not running on a quad-proccesor machine with unheard of I/O per second 10 years ago! Why shouldn't it take 10 minutes to unload a couple of files from the disk, and then make you REBOOT THE ENTIRE OS?
Then tediously put the 32 bit version on, and reload Amicus.
Remember that 12MB/sec I spoke of earlier? Well, the way Amicus works is it keeps a copy of the database locally, so you can work "offline" whatever that means, but pulls everything from the server. Did I type pull? I mean drag, like a donkey, through mud. And 6x gravity. Without legs. It was saturating my 100mb ethernet channel at a whopping 5% of capacity. It went "not responding" several times. It said "wait…" for at least fifteen minutes. Finally it opened.
So two and a half hours later, it finally synced. Thanks for the pinpoint error message, like "I see you are using the 64 bit version of Office. We do not support calendar syncing to this product. Either install the 32 bit version or purchase the 64 bit version of Amicus."
Would the lawyer have known what the heck that was all about? No. But I would have. And it would have been a lot more helpful then some mishmash of words about a file that turned out not to exist. Even "file does not exist" would have been more helpful. Thanks Amicus! You're the best- at sucking!
The other problem was with a tablet. I purchased an HDMI adapter so she could stream Netflix movies through the tablet to the TV. Kind of backwards if you ask me. I download stuff to play on my tablet, not try to use my tablet to stream to my projector. Whatevs. Of course it didn't work. The manual said "if it doesn't work, upgrade the software of your tablet."
Tally-Ho I shouted, and eagerly went to find a way to do so. According to the manufacturer, (who was not apple and shall remain nameless- *cough*samsung*cough*) the thing to do was to install the Kies software to connect to the tablet. I did so.
That is, I tried to do so. It got stuck in a loop… what was it, "installing hotfix" yes, that was it. Over. And Over. And Over. And Over. I googled it. Oh, you need to upgrade your Java, because that makes sense, that a native piece of software would need a java installation.
So I killed the installer and did that.
And it finally, tediously, slowly, ploddingly installed.
It loaded 6-8 "drivers" for various bits of the tablet or whatever.
Then finally it opened.
"Your device does not support upgrading with this software"
OH REALLY?
THEN WHY DID- Sorry- Then why did you have me install it, *manufacturer* website? Hhuummmmmmm?
As far as the adapter goes, she called them, and they were like, yeah, we've never gotten it to work.
Of course, there it is, still there as an "accessory" to this tablet, on the site for the tablet.
Honestly, people, Macs. Okay? Apple products. They work. I may not like Apple as a company, and I don't like the direction Apple is taking with the OS, but for you people it will work out.
I don't like the direction Microsoft is taking with their OS either, by the way. (UEFI Secure Boot I'm looking at you. Metro, you're next on the list) So really, you can't go… uh, right… with either one right now.
Wait that… never mind.
Got 40 minutes of lies from My Buddy yesterday, it was minutes and minutes of high comedy. Who needs Gaffigan when you've got comedy gold like this calling you every night?
Took care of mom's cats while she's away. She left her computer running? Uh, okay? Screamers was screaming, cats were meowing, it was business as usual there.
Game last week, both of them, went fine. Let's see, someone played the disaster strikes card in one game (not me) so people got blown up. It was mostly about Neil and his "passengers" so my guy didn't do much this time.
In the unicorn game we spent a lot of time… hum… well, then some time in the demon world, which wrapped up quick as Stan had to go to work, some computer or another was not behaving, surprise, surprise. Huh. Two again this week, the aftermath of the disaster strikes and perhaps everyone will be there at last Friday, and the perfect horizon game with a new player on Saturday. Yay, another person to be useless because he's not a hacker. I kid, I kid the hackers.
I thought I would get some good work in tomorrow/Saturday but I just left messages, no one was there answering the phone when I called. Sillies.
Oh, Oh, and of course it's Aged One day tomorrow, which will bring even more sunshine into my sun-shining day. I'll just be walking on sunshine. Sunshine will be on my shoulder. I'll see clearly then, the rain will be gone.
I can assure you, however, there shall be no moon-dance.
Moon Prism Power, Make Up? That would be acceptable.
Played some Lollipop Chainsaw, lent by Sean. That's two (kind of odd) games featuring sexy ladies with lollipops. What is it with sexy ladies and lollipops? Possibly some kind of metaphor, but I don't pay attention to that sort of thing. Playing it again on Hard, see if I can get the "normal" ending rather then the "bad" one before I have to give it back. It's pretty fun. If you like button smashing. And quicktime events.
Protip for game makers: Quicktime Events are not a substitute for gameplay.
Game makers, read that line again. Let it become your mantra. Say it often. As often as you can, until you remember it always, even in your dreams. PRESS X TO NOT DIE.
NO.
Going to have a heap of berries pretty soon!
I guess that's enough complaining for this week. I feel better. Thanks for reading.
Have a good weekend, get ready for the Forth Of July! (if you are in America, or even care)