Category: Techno-travails

CenturyStink

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 16 Comments
When a modem becomes a no-dem.

Our Innertubes punctured at 11 a.m. Friday, a flat that that didn’t get fixed until 8 p.m. So that was … fun.

Actually, it was hardly an annoyance at all, barring the dealing with CenturyLink “customer service,” a maze of domestic bots and overseas humans whose basic American is much better than my Hindi but still something of a guessing game, tech-support-wise.

Herself wrangled the bots with her iPhone while I dealt with the Subcontinent on mine, and as per usual she brought home the bacon. So I got to tell my guy, “James,” that yes, there was an outage in our area and it would not be resolved until 11 p.m. Ever the newsman, even in retirement. I should’ve sent him a bill.

Anyway, even when it works, we have shit Innertubes in our little corner of The Duck! City (“Gateway to Los Lunas”).

We pay top dollar for bottom-of-the-barrel DSL, same price as in Bibleburg for half the speed, and it inches ever higher from month to month because of course it does.

Our Actiontec C1000A modem-router dates to 2012, making it two years older than the MacBook Pro I’m using to write this. It is of course “retired” — the Actiontec, not my Mac — and I don’t see any point in replacing either device because El Rancho Pendejo apparently isn’t wired for the zoom-zoom all you fiber-optic types take for granted.

When the place was built in 1970 the telephone pedestal box was installed at the east end of the property, as far from the house itself as it is possible to get without actually being in the arroyo. The wiring to said box may have been upgraded over the past five decades; the wiring to the house has not.

Thus we limp along with download speeds ranging from 6 to 12 mbps, and uploads under 1 mbps.

So, when we lose our DSL, well — ain’t no thang. Because our iPhones — with maybe two bars from Verizon down here at the bottom of the cul-de-sac — turn into personal hotspots that work just as well as our DSL router-modem. When it works.

So, winning? I guess. In a losing sort of way.

Housekeeping

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 14 Comments
Ow. Ow. Ow.

Nothing to see here, folks; move along, move along. I’m just fiddling with the controls to get a handle on how many changes to the posting process WordPress slipped past me whilst I was otherwise occupied.

More as I learn it.

Meanwhile, for any of you who have had comments drift off into the ether, fear not. I’ll begin checking the spam folder a couple-three times a day.

Lost in time, like tears in rain

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 14 Comments
We got 0.38 inch of rain in about 0.38 minute last night. Unlike Apple’s customer service, it was excellent.

Time to die. For my mid-2014 MacBook Pro, anyway.

I should’ve signed a DNR instead of the usual shit-happens waiver when I dropped the 15-inch MBP off to have its swollen battery replaced and overworked fans checked out, or just pulled the SSD and recycled the remains. At some point between handing it over to the “Genius” and paying $267.99 for the battery replacement the display managed to get itself FUBARed and now I have a laptop that can’t be used as … well, as a laptop.

Looks brand-new, dunnit?

One sees little need for a $267.99 battery in a 10-year-old MacBook that requires an external display to be useful. Mobile this is not. My lap isn’t that big.

Straight answers regarding just what occurred were not forthcoming. There were only the shrugs, the averted eyes, the mumbling about the advanced age of the MacBook. And the “give us your money” part, which — unlike the MacSurgery — proved successful.

But that shit’s on me. I knew replacing the battery was a real job of work — which was why I handed it off to the “Genius” instead of tackling it myself — and I wanted to keep the old MacDawg hunting. Should’ve saved my pennies for the new smaller-and-better-than-ever M4 Mini said to be coming down the pike later this year.

At one memorable point in my inquest, the local “Geniuses” were not answering their phone and Apple’s phone-answering droid punted me to global customer service, where a human lateraled me back to the ABQ Apple Store, where after 10 minutes on hold the person who finally picked up thought I was customer service.

“I can help them with that, go ahead and put them on.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“I can help them with that, put them on.”

“I am the customer.”

“Oh….”

I briefly considered going Full Mad Dog on these rotten Apples and their Samsung-level customer service. But what the hell? Even counting its two battery replacements that old Pro earned what I spent on it a hundred times over. Nothing lasts forever, though I have other MacBooks from 2014, 2012, and 2006, plus a G4 PowerBook from 2005, whose displays —¡que milagro! — still display. I can still use this one as a desktop until when — or if — I decide to modernize.

Tell you what, though. I’ll be shipping any future repair jobs to Apple’s main fix-’em-up plant, and buying any new product directly from Cupertino. I remain a firm believer in supporting local businesses, but our local “Geniuses” have seen the last of Your Humble Narrator.

Sometimes a hero is just a sandwich

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 31 Comments
Well, maybe not so much.

One of those weeks, I guess.

We watched Joe Biden’s presser and I felt as though I should weigh in, but Charlie Pierce beat me to it with his remembrance of how Laughin’ Joe knuckle-chuckled Lyin’ Paul Ryan right off the stage during their 2012 veep debate, in which “he effectively demolished Ryan as a political figure simply through good old Irish barroom bonhomie.”

Like Charlie, I always had a soft spot in my heart for José after he gave that empty suit the old one-two, the hee and the haw.

Next, my APC Back-UPS NS 1080 went loudly sideways, presenting various error messages overlaid by a soundtrack from the Nostromo on self-destruct in “Alien.” This caused me to spend the better part of quite some time online with tech support, trying to diagnose what I suspected — and the tech eventually confirmed — was a terminal case of old age, the unit being 7 years old, the short end of this battery backup’s lifespan.

Speaking of old age, in the course of unplugging and inplugging laptop, monitor, dock, speakers, backup drives, backup battery, and what have you during the diagnostic process I was reminded that the fans in my 2014 MacBook Pro 15-incher seemed to be running all the time, no matter how light the workload. Also, its trackpad was largely inoperable again.

The first time the trackpad issue cropped up, the cause was a swelling battery. I had Apple replace that and give the innards a wash and brushup. But this time I didn’t see any telltale bulge in the case, and some casual nosing around the Innertubes led to the usual potential suspects — old, dried-up thermal paste, other failing critical bits, filth and clutter, demonic possession, Cthulhu awakening, and why not just buy a nice new MacBook and shitcan that 10-year-old relic, you penny-pinching eejit, etc.

Well, we’re not quite there yet. I unplugged all my gear again, set the 15-incher aside, and swapped in its little brother, the 2014 13-incher, which has gone mostly unused since I sidelined my Radio Free Dogpatch podcast and seems as quiet as a mouse.

Naturally, there’s a downside to that maneuver. When I bought the 13-incher I went for 8GB of memory and the 128GB SSD for reasons that elude me now (possibly penury; more likely stupidity). And that drive is pretty close to full. Happily, I had a 480GB OWC Mercury Elite Pro Mini external drive lying around doing not much, so, yay, problem solved. Or at least avoided. For now.

I know, I know. I should sack up, crack the Big Mac’s clamshell, get in there with my little toolkit and root around like I know what the hell I’m doing.

But I’m gonna take my cue from Joe here. Pass the torch to the Vice-MacBook Pro. It’s not so much the big fella’s age; it’s the hours it’s been on and running hot.

There may be a better candidate out there somewhere, but so what? I got shit to do, man.