Latte Lectures - Tech

Fun with Computers

willowanne@gmail.com (Auntie Willow) — Sat, 18 Mar 2006 09:31:54 -0700

Ahh Dear Ones!
As promised I will share with you two tales of stupidity from the land of Computer Support.
First off, I must say that I have a very high threshold for the stupid computer question.
Over the years, I have had so many computer questions that are straight from the outer limits, normal ones like "what happens when the mouse gets to the edge of the pad" and "which one is the Any Key" don't even register anymore.
Besides, I have discovered over years of analysis that most of these questions are really training issues. If you put Ben Franklin or Thomas Edison in front of a computer, would they really know that there is no special magic about the mousepad? Actually, if someone is harassing a new computer user sometimes, I will point out that in the early days of mice, the very first optical mice DID have to have a special pad, and on occasion running off the edge of the pad COULD mess you up. I only haul that one out in case I need to make people who are too impressed with their own intelligence feel like stupid jackasses (it happens more than you might think).
So by and large I'm incredibly tolerant of questions, especially from new users.
Really, there are only two ways to make it onto my list of stupid computer questions. First, anything that I can solve using only my amazing powers of literacy isn't really a computer question, now is it ("It says press ANY key! Any key on your keyboard will do!" And yes, I have been asked that several times by different people).
Second, anything that makes me wonder how you made it from your house to wherever you are currently at without drowning from staring open-mouthed at the raining sky. And yes, I do get those questions, also (the all time champion in this is the woman who called me because her computer was on fire. TWICE. Once when she smelled smoke, and one hour later when she plugged it back in to TURN IT BACK ON!).
That said, these two stories are true, and they really happened. One is kind of a training issue, but it is so infinitely funny I have to include it.
The other is just plain REPUBLICAN in its stupidity.
So here goes.
A friend calls me. This person is still a friend, so I won't "Out" him by name. This makes the list because EVEN AFTER CORRECTION he continues to exhibit the behavior.
You see, he wanted to check something on the IRS website. For our Canadian and Kuwaiti readers, the IRS is the agency that the American Government sends to make poor people pay. They usually don't bother the rich people, who have better things to do.
This time of year people are filing taxes, and goodness knows, the Government needs the money. Digging buckshot out of 78 year old men shot by our Vice-President can't be cheap.
But they have a website. It is http://www.IRS.gov, and actually one of the most useful government websites in our country today. So useful, in fact, that I know the URL (that's techtalk for Uniform Resource Locator, or to put it another way, the Website Address. But I know that MY Dear Ones already know that!) by heart. So when my friend called and asked me where to get some tax info, I told him to go to IRS.gov and click the link on the left-hand side of the homepage. He asked if it was under some odd subpage. But how could he get there without going through the homepage? No, I said, on their homepage, www.IRS.gov. Again with the odd page name, only this time it is a different one. So I say "Are you on Google?" "Yes" he replies. "That's ok, but the quickest way is just go to the Address Field and type www.irs.gov" I say. Silence while the keyboard clicks. Then "What about this other bizarre page?" "What?" "There are only 40 pages listed here, but there were 100 pages on Google." "Where did you go?" I asked, afraid. "I'm at Yahoo now." "Did you just Google Yahoo?" "But they have less hits, which one is it." "Hey, how did you get from Google to Yahoo?" "Just tell me which link." "You just googled yahoo, didn't you!" Click. The phone goes dead.
And the best part is, I know his homepage is yahoo, so he had to Yahoo Google to get to google! Because if he was able to type in the ADDRESS BAR, then none of this would have happened!
Let me sum up: The Man SEARCHED Yahoo to find Google, then Searched Google to GET BACK TO YAHOO!
Normally, such fun times would make the list for the month, but he is lucky. The next day a different event happened that makes this pale in comparison: Our Nation's Energy Crisis was solved.
At our library are some little receipt printers. Like most printers, they are attached to a computer. In this case, one of them stopped working. These little buggers aren't cheap, and are pretty important, so we try to always fix them promptly.
The symptoms: Not printing, no lights, paper in the printer.
Ok, so we check the power switch (start with the stupid stuff first). Yes, it was on. It wouldn't be a dumb question if it was just off, that happens all the time.
Ok, check the cables to the computer, they're all connected. The power adapter (it's got one of those little AC adaptor thingies) is plugged in to the back of the printer.
The plug for the adaptor was checked. Good, it is plugged into a power strip. Odd, it's not the same strip that the computer was plugged into. Hey, the light on the strip is off. Let's flip the switch on the power strip. It's not coming on. What's this other cord plugged into the strip? Trace it back, a high graceful curve of power cord ending at: THE OTHER END OF THE POWER STRIP.
Let me sum it up: SOMEONE PLUGGED THE POWERSTRIP INTO ITSELF, and then CALLED BECAUSE THE PRINTER WASN'T GETTING POWER.
I can only assume that they took our president seriously when he was talking about Energy independence.
Too bad it didn't work.
That is why it is the dumbest computer question I've heard all month. It has nothing to do with computers, and you wonder how the person operated a motor vehicle well enough to get to work alive. Heck, this ranks right up there with the computer fire lady!
Hope you laughed as much as I did!

The People's Laptop

willowanne@gmail.com (Auntie Willow) — Wed, 01 Mar 2006 20:00:48 -0700

Dear Ones,
I have been doing a search of my articles, and it appears that I have not posted in the Technology category in quite sometime (only the corrections and retractions section has fewer and older entries. Because, of course, I'm always right and I rarely retract).
As a point of fact, the latest entry I spotted was from September of 1885. That is part of the archives that haven't been moved into our little online world, but here is a quote from the posting "Evils of the Horseless Carriage":

As if that would not already lead to general unruliness, it now turns out that two Germans (of course!), Messrs. Daimler and Benz, have been working on a model powered by a fuel called "Gasoline". They claim that their cars could exceed 20 Miles per Hour on the open road! Obvious problems, even if we were to accept their preposterous claims, are that the human body is not capable of withstanding speeds in excess of 12 miles per hour, as is well known. Plus, it might be added, that the propriety of any woman foolish enough to ride in such a contraption would be in question. At the speeds described by the Huns, the wind might have sufficient force to push one's skirt above one's ankles. Knowing the Teutonic character as I do, I have no doubt that this is in fact their entire nefarious plan.
I say again, no self-respecting Lady would allow herself in such a fiendish device.

As you are no doubt saying to yourself, "Auntie Willow was right again!"
But this is a happier post about technology. I know that all of my dearies are exceedingly clever and well read, so you might have already heard of this, but I must mention it here anyway: The People's Laptop.
Continue reading "The People's Laptop"

Fun Free Databases

willowanne@gmail.com (Auntie Willow) — Thu, 02 Feb 2006 14:45:46 -0700

Dear Ones, please allow me to be a librarian for a moment.
Someone just sent me a wonderful link, and I'm playing with it. It is called the Internet Archive, and it appears to have a vast amount of information. Their web address is http://www.archive.org. They don't just have cached internet pages, but also video, books, songs, and other tidbits of info.
While we're on the subject of cool internet sites with lots of great info, you have of course heard of Project Gutenberg (http://www.gutenberg.org/), a site dedicated to housing public domain works on the internet. Almost every book on there has had its copyright period in the US expire, so it can be distributed, copied, given away, etc., for free. Check their FAQ for info.
Then there is also Librivox, http://www.librivox.org.. They are a website dedicated to making free audio books of public domain recordings. As they say, quality varies, but take a look. Err, a listen.
I'll be back later with more mean-spirited commentary on a group of politicians too dense to recognize sarcasm (I'm thinking of you, GOP), and some improbable (but hopefully entertaining) tales of the oddity that is human existence.
Enjoy!

Time for an overhaul

willowanne@gmail.com (Auntie Willow) — Fri, 04 Nov 2005 18:54:39 -0700

Well Dear Ones, I must do some website maintenance this weekend.
It seems the Party Poopers at PartyPoker.com have been hard at work "splogging" me with comments.
Auntie Willow will have to install some different software this weekend, and will have some more blogging on Monday!
I'm sorry about this dearies, but it must be done, or else we will be buried under Party Poker messages.
The main loser is poor Winston, the Audio-Visual Librian. I had spoken of him earlier, but it has been a long time since I invited the Poor Dear over. Actually, it has been so long, he has almost become unruly.
Next week Auntie Willow will have the comments fixed, and will have some new posts, and will have Winston's behaviour thouroughly corrected.

Pause for Comments with URLs

willowanne@gmail.com (Auntie Willow) — Thu, 03 Nov 2005 19:28:07 -0700

Dear ones,
we had a visitor to our happy little blog.
The nice folks at "Party Poker" came by and posted about 18000 comments (actually, it was 150) pointing out how good their site was.
Which is nice.
Except that didn't leave any space or time for my Dear Ones to post.
So I changed a setting, and if you post a comment with a link in it, I will have to approve it. Now this isn't for you. You know that I will approve all of your links, except the ones for Party Poker.com and that hateful, horrible "AuntieWillowTheLush.com".
I wish that I didn't have to do that, but the thought of you young impressionable dears thinking that Auntie Willow approved of poker that doesn't involve articles of clothing was too much to bear. I hope that you still love me.
Let me know if the restrictions are too odious. If they are, then I will just find another way to deal with the rulebreakers at Party Poker. I wonder if they realize that they have a copy of "My Penis Burns; Your STD and You!" that is HORRIBLY overdue at their local library.

The Internet's Promise, fulfilled

willowanne@gmail.com (Auntie Willow) — Wed, 26 Oct 2005 14:04:58 -0700

Ah, the joys of the ?internets?.
As a librarian, the idea that I can within minutes search the entire sum of human knowledge excites me in a way that would be inappropriate to describe (in case we have any family readers).
Who knows what wondrous accomplishments can be made with such tools, for the first time in the existence of man, widely available to people all over the world?
Think about it! You can get in touch with friends and loved ones across the globe in seconds, you can find directions to wherever you want to go, you can see what is going on right now in many different parts of the world, you can research a paper or find the cure for an illness.
And of course, you can do this.
This is http://emailblender.com. It is an advertisement for Mrs. Fields Cookies. You see, they have some kind of blended drink called ?The Chiller?, and so they Blend your words!
Cool! Auntie Willow can now relax knowing that the pinnacle of Human Achievement has been reached!
Just how well does it work?
I typed in the following sentence:
I want to spank Dick Cheney
I really do, you know. I?ve e-mailed the special prosecutor, but all it got me was a night flirting with two very nice Secret Service Agents and one of my favorite rulers being confiscated. I don?t know if this is an indication of their affection for the Vice President, but I was told that I would get the ruler back when Mr. Cheney was no longer in office.
So what wisdom, what insight will be generated by the geniuses at Mrs. Fields cookies?
Wasp-like, inconstant walk-down. Cheyne.
Gosh, this is marginally less useful than a Magic 8 Ball!!
But imagine the hilarious possibilities! You could be e-mailing a friend the words, say, ?President Hillary Clinton? and decide to try your luck. Instead, after the ?Blending?, she receives ?Thrill innocently praised.? Which is totally funny! Except she would probably think you were having an episode. It?s not like you can take the blended phrase and get the same phrase back. No, running that through again would yield ?Icon enthralls intrepidly.?
Once you are done, just click the ?send? button, and it gets sent to your friend. They get an e-mail with a link to Mrs. Fields site, and can click ?unblend? to unblend the message! Wacky! You have just taken all the convenience of e-mail, and added two extra steps!
Now, in all fairness, I should say that I know there are people out there who love anagrams. To these people, this must be like free access to a porn site. I imagine that there are people who have to have the computer shut down for them to even pretend not to think about it all day.
I should just state, these people scare me. (Actually, not physically. I?m scared that they would find me and make them play Scrabble with them. A game that has got two strikes against it in my book. I hate it and I?m no good at it. Even if I were good at it, I would still hate it. I?m sorry to confess that, but it is true).

Yellow Dots by Yellow People

willowanne@gmail.com (Auntie Willow) — Thu, 20 Oct 2005 13:50:09 -0700

I am not amused.
This is not particularly funny to me.
You see, for possibly the last 10 years, everything your Auntie Willow has printed on a color laser printer pointed directly back to me.
Of course, there is nothing that I printed that I really cared came back to me. Everything I do has my name on it, so that people will know who did it.
But what if I DIDN'T want my name on it? It doesn't really matter, that is just one less choice I have to worry about making.
You see, it turns out that the United States Federal Government has some very clever people in it.
And they are worried about Counterfeiters using the latest digital technology to make fake dollar bills.
What could we do? Hey! Let's get all the printer companies to put dots on the printouts! Not dots to make it look crappy, mind you. Just dots that are invisible to the naked eye, and that uniquely identify your printer, your printer's serial number, and the date that you printed it! When I say "invisible", I don't mean that voices told me that they were really there.
No, some very smart people were doing some tests on printers. And they found something odd. Something that isn't random. Dots that spell out to anyone who knows to look what specific printer printed that image.
See? I told you it was not funny. Apparently, major printer manufacturers thought this was a good idea. And I mean most major printer manufacturers. And Xerox and the Secret Services have now admitted it.
Now, like most of you (I won't say all of you, I KNOW some of the people that read this blog), Auntie Willow doesn't do anything illegal. People tell me it is a crime for me to look this good, but only when they are begging me to spank them. Seriously, there isn't anything that I'm worried about.
And I'm all for National Security. If I knew that they were doing this to seriously stop terror, say, and that they would never try to legislate your Dear Auntie's rather complicated morality, then I would have no problem. If I trusted them.
But I don't. Real Americans don't trust their government. Something to do with a little mix-up from 1775 through 1783. They distrust their government so much, they decided to write up a document to remind the government that they are inherently big and scary, so just keep your nose out of people's business. Now the people that created this document are heralded as some of the greatest minds of all time. If they didn't trust a government that was run by George Washington, why should I, a humble librarian, trust a government run by George Bush?
I know, Dear Ones, you'll say that the Federal Government would never divert resources from the War on terror to bust a few hippies fighting glaucoma. And you would be right, except for all of the times that they have.
So call me paranoid if you want. But it will be a long time before Auntie Willow prints out a cartoon from The Nation on a color printer.
Auntie Willow would like to graciously thank the voracious intellects at BlondeSense for informing me of this story.

Once again, the President is Right! err, I mean Correct!

willowanne@gmail.com (Auntie Willow) — Fri, 14 Oct 2005 08:29:55 -0700

For shame on some of you. Ok, well according to the Latest Polls, that last sentence should read most of you.
There has been talk ridiculing the President for calling this thing you are on "The Internets". Everyone chuckled at his gaffe, we all know it is a unified world-wide system that isn't plural, it's "The Internet".
How quickly you all forget. As an unnamed White House Aide pointed out to Ron Suskind, we're part of the "Reality Based Community". They (the White House) MAKE THEIR OWN REALITY!
Well, you doubted him then. You doubted him when he called it the Internets. But next week in Tunis, the President's Reality will once again become our Reality, and not the other way around.
Thanks to skillful negotiation on the part of the Bush Administration, we will soon be able to thank our Dear Leader for "The Internets", as the EU, China, Japan, Canada, Australia, New Zealand (those Kiwis have always had it in for us!) and a few other countries that Auntie Willow usually calls "The Rest of the World" will threaten to take their part of the internets and go home. At issue is a bunch of technical stuff, but it all basically boils down to the same old thing: they don't trust us anymore. Pull out of a few treaties, slap around (ok, electrocute, anal probe, sodomize, beat and near drown) a few dusky colored people, thumb your nose at the United Nations (oh, and Europe, Asia, Africa, the Middle East, South America, and the Pacific Nations. Believe it or not, Antartica doesn't really have a beef with us right now.) and they get all snippy with you. Now, just because the US won't guarantee that it will not arbitrarily change all the backbone servers on the internet to point Venezeula's web page to Pat Robertson's web page, they decide that they don't TRUST US!
So what would this mean? Probably nothing if you want to go to sites like Britain's MI6 alias Secret Intelligence Service websites, but it might mean that you have to start typing .US on the end of every American website that has decided that they want to be read by the other 5.75 billion people on the planet. Or maybe we just won't be able to get there at all? After all, they only try to sully us with their so-called "Reality".

Ahh, the new world of Technology

willowanne@gmail.com (Auntie Willow) — Sat, 01 Oct 2005 07:39:53 -0700

Kids, your Auntie Willow is a big fan of technology.
As a programmer and computer tech, I enjoy watching computers work. As a librarian, I am amazed at the vast store of actual, factual information (even full versions of public domain books) that I can retrieve within a few moments time.
My latest addiction has been TiVo. I am amazed at how little TV I actually watch now. No more scheduling around my favorite shows, my gear records them, and I watch them when I want. Now that I'm not "afraid" to miss something, I find myself getting out and doing more things in what you might call "the analog world". Then when I sit down to Tivo, at my leisure, I find that many of the shows that I couldn't miss, I actually lived without quite nicely!
Tivo is pulling from the digital satellite at Bryan Street, and there are over 100 channels of things for me to choose from.
But every advance has its disadvantages also. When I was a kid (no, I won't provide actual dates, except of course that since I'm [**cough**] 23, that must have only a couple of years ago [**cough**]), there were only 4 channels. You would switch between them by getting off of the sofa, and actually turning a knob. Part of the reasons that your Auntie is so tall is from all of that early childhood stretching to change the channel without having to get up! But for all of the crudeness of those early television shows (no, I mean did you ever really watch Charlies Angels?), I Never had to reboot my television set!
I was thinking about that the other day as I was, well, rebooting my television set. Since you are reading this blog, I assume that you know what rebooting is (restarting the computer so that it reinitializes in a pristine fashion. Ok, I guess I'm not assumming that you know!). Let's just leave it at "it takes a couple of minutes".
I switched channels on the Tivo, it talked to the satellite box, and voila! Blank Black Screen. Changed channels, nothing. Checked the online guide, nothing. Restarted the Tivo box. Nothing, but there is a really cute Tivo movie when it first turns on. Finally, dear roommate powered the satellite box off and on, then purged the memory and reloaded the channel guide by relocking the satellite location. Well! That was easy. Houseguest stated that when he was a child, the only rebooting of their aging television involved a sneaker.
Of course, I don't want to go back. The video beast at my house is quite satisfactory, thank you. However, every once in a while, when I'm rebooting my television, the old way of rebooting (involving a canvas Keds tennis shoe) does sound enticing.......