Author Archive
Arrears
Wednesday, February 22nd, 2012The case of the never-closing support ticket
Tuesday, February 7th, 2012Usually, they are too quick to close issues that have not been solved.
This time, for fun, they will not close an issue that was successfully resolved in July last year.
Hilarity ensues.
I posted this not too long ago. Huh. I should probably find something else to whinge about.
In case you’re wondering, the attachment referred to in the entry for July 22 is here.
A baby’s consciousness
Sunday, October 30th, 2011Alison Gopnik, “What do babies know?”
What’s it like be have the consciousness of a baby?
It’s like being in love, I’m Paris, for the first time, after you’ve had three doubles espressos.
Which is a fantastic way to be, but it does tend to leave you crying at three o’clock in the morning.
Ducted Sunlight
Friday, October 14th, 2011I blogged about this a while ago, and while cleaning up broken links, came across their new website, and a video.
Research shows that natural light increases productivity by 16%.
If Parans type of technology replaced 10% of electric lights in every building in Europe, US and China, we could reduce CO2 emissions by up to 220 millions tonnes every year.
The Never Closing Support Ticket
Thursday, October 13th, 2011Usually, support tickets are closed before you’ve had a chance to tell them that the “fix” they’ve applied hasn’t worked.
Currently, I have ticket open that they wont close, or more accurately, don’t realise it is still open. Every once in a while I will add another comment to the ticket, to see if that will jiggle something loose. so far it hasn’t and it is six months and counting.
Smart Meters will eat your Children!
Thursday, September 22nd, 2011Some guy named Jerry Day, has posted a bunch of youtube vidoes about Smart Meters. They have been picked up such reputable sites such End of the American Dream and others.
The profess to teach everyone about the dangers of Smart Meters.
Here is some choice excertps:
“The meters are watching you.”
No, they are only monitoring the electricity consumption.
“They see how many watts your electric toothbrush uses”
No, they have no way of knowing what is consuming the power.
“They send information about [when you use your toothbrush] over wireless networks”
No, they send a continuous feed of the current amount of electricity consumed. They do not record when appliances are turned on or off.
“They send the information to the power company, where they keep record of all your power consumption, volumes and patterns, and store it forever on computers that you have no access to”
Utility companies already store this information, and have done for many years. It is how they bill you. Data cannot be stored forever, it will be archived, just like your credit card information and your driving record.
“The data shows when you were at home, when you were sleeping, when you’re on vacation, when you have visitors, when you turned on a lamp, a power tool, some extra computers, and if you look like you are running a business out of your home.”
Usage patterns can be used to infer alot of things. The meters will not record exactly when you go to bed or turn on a lamp, but the usage over time creates a pattern that can be recognised. Power companies already have illegal usage detection to prevent grow ops in your neighborhood.
“It even senses when you ‘bootleg’ energy off the grid”.
For shame! They should turn a blind eye to that!
“This is not electrical metering. This is personal surveillence. It is a search without a warrent every day.”
“The smart meters are radio transmitters which can easily be intercepted by a hacker to gain intimate personal knowledge of your life”.
No. The information is encrypted. Just like every time you use your debit card at the store, your banking information “shoots through the air to some institution somewhere.”
“Your power company can give or sell your personal information to whoever it wants.”
Then pick a better power company with a privacy policy you agree to.
“Any abnormal use is considered just cause … for a raid … to bust you for illegal activities in the privacy of your own home that they otherwise wouldn’t have known about.”
Getting away with a crime does not make it legal. It makes it hidden. If the power company used meter data to bust a grow-op in my neighbourhood that attracted dangerous criminals, I’m ok with that.
“Smart meters are no different than wire tapping devices.”
They are very different. Wire tapping devices intercept your communications and allow the attacker to know exactly what was said. Smart meters only watch electricity consumption.
Grandfather tech support
Wednesday, June 8th, 2011After a bit of a marathon effort, I have finally restored my Grandfather’s email system to a working state. What a mess!
First thing I battled with was a corrupted PST file. scanpst.exe is a little hidden gem that helped with that.
Then, after someone “helped” 1, and messed up the mail delivery, I had to fix his outlook profile. Trouble was, I could not find the “show profiles” tab in the mail control applet. This was maddening, because it was turning up nothing in my Googling.
Turns out that somehow, outlook had been switched into “Internet Mail Only” mode, and I suppose this somehow removes the profile editing stuff. However, the profile that was left was so broken that it had to be fixed. 10 GOTO 10.
Lukily, I found this link which informed me about IMO mode, and how to switch it back. So a lesson for everyone is that in order to use profiles in Outlook, which you need in order to have multiple PST datafiles, and to control how and where mail is delivered, your Outlook must be in Corporate Workgroup mode.
May I also add that TeamViewer is a very good remote control solution, which I used to great effect today for about 3 hours, including 2 reboots.
[1] By “helped” I mean completely screw everything up.
When 2 x 0 = 2
Thursday, May 5th, 2011
Excel Multiplication Weirdness
Um, what?
Update: Turns out that the cell with the value “0″ was a text string, and apparently, a text string is equivalent to 1.
The Race to the Bottom
Thursday, May 5th, 2011From: Monbiot’s The Lost World column:
Accommodation makes sense only if the economy is reaching a steady state. But the clearer the vision becomes, the further away it seems. A steady state economy will be politically possible only if we can be persuaded to stop grabbing. This in turn will be feasible only if we feel more secure. But the global race to the bottom and its destruction of pensions, welfare, public services and stable employment make people less secure, encouraging us to grasp as much for ourselves as we can.
Your place of encounter
Thursday, April 28th, 2011No mean intentions [1], but these are funny Spanglish artefacts seen around here….
Your place of encounter
My place of encounter? Great! Do I need my boots of escaping?
It wishes to send a modification?
It must specify return date!
And when it’s done, it rubs the lotion on it’s skin.
[1] I have high respect for anyone who can speak multiple languages. Having lived in multiple places where English was a second language, that respect only grows. But c’mon, we can still have a giggle at the funny things we see, right?