A guy named Josh Hosler has a neat website where you can see what the Billboard #1 single was on any given date, so I surfed around. It all reminds me of how out-of-touch I am and even more how long I’ve been out of touch. I look at the day before my birthday and I can’t recall a single song listed from the 00’s. My hipness apparently began in about 1991 and ended after 1996. I can actually name about 7 of 10 from both the 80’s and 90’s… but only one after 1996 (and a “country” song at that).

Alas, I cannot remember the song of my birthday, though interestingly the song in a previous year is Harry Nilsson’s “Without You”, which I’ve always had a place in my heart for (there was a period where I loved piano ballads with powerful voices). That lead to me Rhapsody and listening to the many, many versions of that song. Nilsson made it famous, but Mariah Carey’s is probably better known. Anyway, that lead me to Wikipedia to get more background, which lead me to one of the funniest videos that I’ve seen in a long time. (A video which is probably further proof of how out-of-touch I am).

Apparently, a singer for the Bulgarian version of “American Idol” did a cover of that song. The video became quite the sensation, so you’ve all probably seen it. Further proof of how out of touch I am. Anyway, I’m not a big American Idol person and I’ve frankly never seen the alure of the segments where they show wannabee contestants butchering songs. This, though, is priceless. Perhaps because of the language barrier. The exasperation of the judges and the back-and-forth at the end provide amazing bookends.

Apparently Mariah Carey was asked about it. It’s hard to hear her full response over the interpreter, and I’m loath to say anything nice about Mariah Carey (except that her version of Without You could have been much worse), but on the whole I thought she gave a pretty classy response.

-{Intro: Last night I called my friend Kyle to try to figure out how to fix some computer problems that perplexed me all of yesterday. I won’t go into the precise nature of the problems, except to say that they defy all rational explanation}-

trumwill: My computer woes are the source of much laughter at the office today

quenkyle: Believe it or not, your computer woes are the source of my laughter at my office today, too. None of us have ever heard of the drive partition thing or the IDE Controller card thing.

trumwill: Maybe on my resume I should put that I am a Quality Assurance pioneer that has investigated malfunctions never hereforto heard of in the IT world.

quenkyle: That’ll work right up until you mention that all the {excrement} is happening on your own personal systems.

quenkyle: So I guess you didn’t get it working?

trumwill: Nope. Tonight I’m going to try putting the card into a different computer and see what happens. Switching PCI slots didn’t help. So now that I’ve tried multiple OSes, countless hardware configs, and a handful of boot drives… I’m running out of options. Man, I hate technology

quenkyle: Yet you have a metric asstonne of it

trumwill: Yes. So, apparently, I hate myself even more.

Last week I introduced y’all to Quicktime Alternative and Real Alternative, which are great substitutes for installing the Quicktime and RealPlayer software. I mentioned that they both come with Media Player Classic. I’m sure that some of you are familiar with MPC and that the rest of you are asking why you would want to install yet another movie viewer on your computer?

The answer lies not in what MPC has, but rather what it does have. It doesn’t have much of anything that you don’t need and because of that, it is one of the lightest and most efficient movie viewers out there.

Not all of my computers are new and not all of them have a whole lot in the way of resources. As such, playing movies in more complicated software such as Windows Media Player, DivX Player, or Quicktime can sometimes tax system resources to the point that playback is affected. You ever have to close an application because you’re watching a movie that’s skipping? I do with some applications, but almost never with MPC. Don’t ask me how I know this, but you can actually have several MPC windows running several videos simultaneously without incident.

MPC also doesn’t change or install any system files on your computer. It’s a standalone EXE. You just put it where you want it and click on it. As such, it doesn’t hijack any extensions. The downside to this is that if you want to associate video files with it you have to do it manually. Once you do that, though, double-clicking on a video within Windows Explorer will be just as quick and uneventful as double-clicking on an image or document (compare this to WinAmp, wherein by doing so you may accidentally clear your playlist or other applications where you have to wait for a large application to load).

There are downsides, though. In addition to having to set the extensions manually, you also have to handle shortcuts for yourself (though, if you install it with Quicktime Alternative or Real Alternative, it will take care of this for you). The biggest drawback is the interface, which is plain to the point of being inconvenient. They essentially lifted the skin from an old version of Media Player (mplayer2.exe) and haven’t deviated much from that. That makes things like playlists unintuitive. Also, while it can play DVDs, the lack of an intuitive DVD menu leaves me using Nero or PowerDVD to play DVDs.

Part of me wishes that they’d improve on these fronts, but that would lead the program away from its most lean, mean self. I may only want a DVD menu and better playlist function, but other people would want other features and before you know it we have a clone of Windows Media Player. The good news is that it has the capability to do most of what I want it to do, but it has a steeper learning curve than most applications when it comes to advanced functions. On the other hand, when it comes to just opening a video and playing it, it’s as simple as it gets.

Over at Dustbury, a discussion popped up about Apple’s bundling of the Safari web browser with the latest version of iTunes. As many of you know, it’s difficult to impossible to download Apple’s bundling of Quicktime with iTunes so that you can’t get the former without getting the latter. I never really objected to the latter bundling since iTunes is going to be a necessity when it comes to introducing my wife to our MP3 collection, but I have a suggestion for anyone that wants Quicktime but doesn’t want iTunes: don’t download Quicktime.

The Quicktime movie player is required to watch certain media types, which is really the only reason most non-Apple users download it to begin with. Fortunately, there is Quicktime Alternative. QTA allows you to view Quicktime files using most viewing software (including browsers).

Irony of ironies, it does come bundled with a viewer called Media Player Classic. However, MPC is so non-obtrusive as to even be a little inconvenient in a way. I wish it would hijack movie extensions (so that if you click on a movie in Windows Explorer MPC will come up instead of WMP or whatever software you have) because it would mean that I wouldn’t have to manually reassign them. It doesn’t take up any resources when you’re not running it and is extremely resource-conscious when it is (I have old computers that won’t run videos properly on anything except MPC). I think that there is an option to choose not to install MPC if that is your preference, though, and Quicktime files will run in most of the software you already have.

In addition to Quicktime Alternative is Real Alternative, which allows you to view RealPlayer files without needing RealPlayer. RealPlayer isn’t bundled with any software as far as I know, but they try to hook you into their pay service.

Quicktime Alternative, Real Alternative, and Media Player Classic are all completely free.

I am looking for software that can do something rather specific. I would like to be able to save the contents of Windows directories into a text or (preferably) Excel file. What would be most awesome is if there were something that could take the file, file’s directory, and file’s size into different columns on a spreadsheet. Absent that, I would be cool with being able to save the files with their directories into a text file.

What I primarily want to be able to do is save these file names so that if I were to lose a hard drive or directory that has a bunch of images on it, I’d be able to look and see what all images I lost.

I’m aware that you can direct DOS actions to text files and that you can view directory contents through DOS, but I’m looking for a simpler way of going about that for more complex directory structures.

Does anyone have any software that can do that? Does anyone understand what I’m wanting it to do?

Time-Warner is considering restructuring how it provides Internet service, focusing on use rather than a flat, monthly fee.

Company spokesman Alex Dudley said the trial was aimed at improving the network performance by making it more costly for heavy users of large downloads. Dudley said that a small group of super-heavy users of downloads, around 5 percent of the customer base, can account for up to 50 percent of network capacity.

I’m the king of that 5%. They do this and I’m hosed.

My feelings about it are somewhat mixed.

On one hand, I am likely costing the company more money than I am paying. At the very least I am paying considerably less for my use than are most users. As such, it hardly seems unfair that I should be expected to pay more.

This is also preferable to one of the alternatives currently in place. Advertise for “unlimited downloads” and then start placing limits on certain kinds of downloads. File-sharing services such as BitTorrent (which has legitimate uses in addition to illegitimate ones) are frequently targetted. Or advertise “unlimited downloads” and then dump users that are actually taking advantage of that offer. I know some people that have had their contracts terminated for that reason.

At least this way I can simply pay for what I use. I don’t have to live in fear that they will decide that I must be a business to be using what I am or simply to note that they are losing money on me and disconnect me. Having above-the-board policies for aggressive users in that sense allows users to choose to be aggressive and pay for it or scale back.

There are at least three hesitations, though. First is that I strongly doubt that light users will be paying much less than they are paying now. I’d imagine the lowest tier would be comparable to current rates. So this would be less an attempt to have a fairer price structure and more an attempt to raise prices on some users and make some extra dough while leaving the rest alone or giving them a relatively insignificant break.

The second hesitation is that this provides a way to really screw some customers over. Presumably if someone buys X-megabytes of downloading, anything over X will come with some nasty charge per meg. The goal will be to get people to sign up for more than they need if only to avoid fear that they will go over. This is what cell phone companies do. They don’t charge by the minute, they get people to buy minutes that they won’t need and then when they have a burst of usage they take them to the cleaners. It’s not a pleasant thought. They could circumvent this problem simply by putting them in the tier of what they used, but they won’t.

The third hesitation is that I’m not sure how smart a decision it is from a business perspective. In the current model, most people don’t have to worry about how much they use it or don’t use it and that’s a good thing. Once they start feeling that they need to limit their usage it becomes less fun and they decide that since they’re doing less they don’t even need it to be that fast at all. I personally adjust pretty quickly when I’m in a situation where high speed Internet isn’t available. Part of the recent success of broadband is that they’ve convinced people that they need it. Attaching a charge to its use might undercut this success.

Many moons ago my roommate Karl and I moved from one apartment (a 3-person place we were sharing with Dennis) to another (a 2-person place). Our DSL high speed Internet apparently did not follow us. Our phone line did, but DSL didn’t. It took them six weeks to get it up and running for us. We were charged throughout. When I complained, they said that it’s in the contract that their only duty was to provide us with Internet access and that high speed was a perk available most of the time.

“But you haven’t been providing us with Internet.”

“Of course we have. We got your phone line up instantly and you are always free to call on our dial-up system.”

“First of all, we weren’t paying $55 for dial-up, and second whenever we tried the lines were busy.”

“We can’t do anything about that, sir.”

“You could get more lines.”

“You’re free to go with another dial-up provider, sir.”

“But you’re the only ones that can get me DSL.”

“Yes we are, is there anything else I can help you with today?”

—

Our Internet at home has been down for the better part of three weeks now. We’ve been experiencing problems for a good part of our stay in Estacado. Typically on weekends for some reason it would go down between 2 and 10 times a day. It would usually only last for fifteen minutes or so before going back up. That I could deal with. Then, about three weeks ago, it flipped where it would only go up 2-10 times a day in fifteen minute increments or shorter.

Rather than force us to start spending more time away from the computer and not let the Internet become such a dominant factor in our lives, we began to schedule our lives around the Internet. In the rare occasion that it would come up, we would stop whatever it is that we were doing and rush to our computers to take care of whatever we could while we could. With an unreliable connection, there’s a lot you don’t do even if you are up. Going Internet shopping is an exercise in futility because you never have a connection long enough to get it done and the way that the sites are set-up are not conducive to frequent disconnections. The fact that we didn’t know if we’d have a whole fifteen minutes or whether it’d crap out in two made it even more impossible.

Thus far the outage has cost us about $170. $30 of that is our monthly fee for a service we weren’t getting, which is technically a sunk cost because we’re paying it whether the Internet is there or not, but I count it anyway because it pisses me off. The $140 came from airline tickets that we almost bought on a Thursday night, got disconnected, and when we tried again Saturday morning the fare had increased from $400 to $540.

We’ve been in contact with our cable provider, naturally. They haven’t been remarkably helpful, naturally.

After it had been down solid for a couple of days and it was obviously not going to come back on our own, I called the tech support line. The guy on the other end of the line told me that their records confirmed that I was getting frequent outages but that it was up most of the time. What was peculiar was that he didn’t start talking about how he was going to help me. He just said “Yeah, it’s down.”

When I pushed, he said that fixing bad connections wasn’t his job and if I wanted to do that I would have to contact a phone technician.

“What are you?” I asked.

“A customer service agent. There’s a difference.”

“Oh, well okay. What number do I call to talk to a phone technician?”

“You can’t call them directly.”

“So how do I get ahold of one?”

“I have to forward you to one.”

“Okay… well could you do that for me?”

Surprised sounding, he said, “Yeah, okay, sure.” and he did.

The next guy I talked to was more helpful. He told me how to read the lights on the cable modem and re-confirmed that our connection has been spotty. He could send somebody over, he said, but not for a couple of days. We were headed for Colosse, though, so that was a no-go. We made an appointment for the day after we got back.

The original live technician was also not helpful. He was sure it was our cable modem, so he replaced it. That didn’t work, so he replaced the power cable. That seemed to work. He said he was going out for a minute to check the line outside, the connection would go dark, but then he would be back and the connection would come back up. The connection went down and stayed there. The guy didn’t come back.

So I called the cable company again. To save time, I asked to speak to a technician rather than a customer service agent.

“You are speaking to a technician.”

“No, I mean someone that can help me with my problem. Not a customer service agent.”

“I am a customer service agent, but I am also a technician.”

“The guy I talked to yesterday said that they were two different things.”

“We are, but your account has been flagged to talk directly to a technician because of your problems.”

“Okay, so the problems haven’t been fixed.”

“What problems?”

“The problems we’ve been having that have me talking to you rather than a CSA.”

“Oh, well I don’t know what your problems are. Just that you have them.”

“There’s no notations about what I’ve been complaining about?”

“No, just that you’ve been complaining. You’re on our high complaint list.”

“Like the one that Sprint used to kick their customers to the curb?”

“Well we don’t kick people off for complaining, but the same basic idea, yes. So what’s the problem?”

I explained the problem to him and I swear he got more irate about it than I did. He railed against the live techs that leave before they’ve done their job, told me that he would stick the reddest of red flags on my account (he made that sound like a good thing) and that he could get somebody out there the next day. That didn’t work out because I needed to reserve a specific time period, so we were going to be without a connection for another week or so before they could stop by.

Then, naturally, it started mostly working again the day before the second tech arrived. It went back to its former behavior of going down regularly but coming back up quickly. It actually was going down more regularly (once or twice an hour) but coming back up almost immediately. So when the tech showed up this morning, naturally I had to tell him that it was mostly working.

I was expecting him to say that his job was done and leave, but to his credit he didn’t. He just lamented that that was going to make fixing the problem a little more difficult, but that if he didn’t fix it then they’d just have to send somebody else to try to fix it later.

It took him less than ten minutes to discover that our connections had gone bad in the guest room wall and the wall outside. He showed the connection to me. The wires were bare, several were cut and frayed. It was amazing that we’d been getting any service at all.

That all happened this morning. It worked great when he left. We’ll see how it works when I get home. I’m actually hopeful for once that the Internet will be there for me when I need it.

I got an email from my domain handlers, which has informed me:

One of our associates has attempted to contact you with exciting new offers by {domain handler} to help your website reach its potential, but the phone number you gave us has been disconnected. We at {domain handler} are constantly adding to the services that offer existing and new customers, so please update your account information so that we can share them with you!

Wouldn’t it be more accurate if they had said:

You may have wondered why we have stopped bugging you with calls to pressure you into getting new bells and whistles, but it’s hard to contact to you if you don’t give us your current information. We at {domain handler} are disappointed that you have made our telemarketing job more difficult.

webmaster: ok… ack

webmaster: this stupid nuvaprim fake-fench-accent-you-american-women-are-so-pretty ad… if I hear it one more time I swear I’m going to throw something at my radio

webmaster: which is unfortunate given that I’m listening to streaming online radio at the moment

trumwill: Not familiar with the ad. I suspect I should be thankful.

webmaster: you really, really should

webmaster: it’s an ad for a cream for women to rub on their legs with which to hide wrinkles and spider veins and stuff

webmaster: and it’s got a cheesy, cheesy guy doing a fake french accent talking about how he wants to send a free bottle because american women are “so beautiful” and he wants to make them even more so just like european women… yikes

trumwill: Whatever… as long as they continue to shave their armpits.

Considering that it’s Thanksgiving and I’m with the folks, posting will not resume until next week.

In the meantime, if you have to have a trumwill fix, I’ve been meaning to mention that I have been assisting Bob Vis over at his blog while he’s been doing thesis work. The posts over there consist of issues that are more divisive in tone than I like to keep things at Hit Coffee. I’ve written three thus far:

Who Tha Daddy? (11/19/07): An open-ended look at how the law should handle paternity when the husband of the mother and assumed father of the child or children is not actually the father.

Free Speech & Nuisance (11/6/07): When does free speech become nuisance? Does free speech guarantee the right to be heard (or seen, in the cases mentioned) by people that don’t consent to it?

More of Less Human: The Abortion Divide (10/11/07): A post about abortion. I don’t make the case for the pro-life or pro-choice point of view but rather look at what I perceive to be the differences between how each side says they approach the issue and how each side actually seems to.