Category: Things that suck

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.

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.

Up the Wazoo

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 10 Comments
It’s always happy trails on the Blue Wazoo.

DeeCee being a rather long slog via Subaru, I decided I’d settle for a short mood-altering run on the neighborhood trails yesterday.

I won’t travel by air, as you know. And if I did, the airline probably wouldn’t let me take my torch and pitchfork, even as checked baggage.

Anyway, what do I know about taxidermy? Sure, I could collect a few souvenir heads in our nation’s capital with my handy-dandy Gomboy folding saw, but then what? The TSA says you can board a plane with fresh meat, but they may decide to add a cautionary note about “the severed heads of Supreme Court justices” after running your lumpy carry-on through the scanner twice because they didn’t believe what they saw on the first pass.

And if you do manage to make it home without incident, preserving and mounting your prizes for display in the den is not a chore you want to hand off to anyone who doesn’t owe you a really big favor.

Shucks, even a six-pack of ears pinned to a cork board in the garage can make for some pointed conversations you’d rather not have, even if you explain that the fuckers never used them for listening, only to keep their trifocals from falling into their black robes or onto the bench, and anyway, with the fat stacks of attaboys they get from their rich pals they can have a new pair grafted on before you can say, “Case dismissed.”

So, yeah. Herself and I went for a nice trail run in the sunshine, and afterward I decided I was still not in the mood to update myself on the latest news, so I changed costumes and took the Voodoo Wazoo for an enjoyable 90 minutes of light gnar-shredding in the Elena Gallegos Open Space.

Today I see the courtroom drama has shifted back to Manhattan. Time for another run. I can’t remember where I put that saw.

Will the defendant please … relax?

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 16 Comments
Here’s a pic of a cute lil’ kitty-cat to distract you from the other one.

Call me cynical (“You’re cynical!”), but I don’t think that other cat, the bedraggled, raggedy-ass orange tom that keeps slinking around the joint, yowling, spraying on the national furniture, and clawing the Stars & Stripes curtains into ribbons, is in danger of being put to sleep anytime soon.

Nossiree, he’s got himself a solid majority of black-robed laps in which to curl up while he awaits delivery of The Big Fish, the one that got away on Jan. 6, 2021.

Fuck me running.

Meanwhile, the playacting continues. Government shutdown: Will they or won’t they? Dueling VIP visits to The Border, that deadly, open-air, razor-wired waiting room where all the brown foreigners go to apply for the jobs nobody else wants. The Senate leadership following the House down the rabbit hole to Wonderland. Gaza. Ukraine. “Dynamic pricing” at Wendy’s.

And now, this: Is a president a king?

I thought we settled that question back in 1776. But as I recall, that king required a few years of rather aggressive convincing before he conceded the point.