Tag Computer

Spring cleaning

Michael 2 Comments

I did some electronic spring cleaning tis morning. I fear this is a battle I’m doomed to lose. Of course by electronic spring cleaning I don’t mean deep cleaning my living space with robotic assistance. A robot vacuum might be fun to have around, but until they come up with one who can wash down the cabinets, keep the appliances sparkly, daily clean the bathroom, and tidy the bedroom – like Rosey on the Jetsons! – I’ll do the physical cleaning on my own for as long as I can. No, the spring cleaning was going through apps on the phone and tablets, reviewing bookmarks on the browsers, moving image and document files to cards or cloud storage or deleting them outright, and getting rid of those nasty cookies (which unfortunately eliminates the helpful ones also which is why I so rarely take that on).

2 + 2 5 (8)

It went relatively smoothly except for one tablet which makes me wonder if I take things too literally.  The tablet in question is an older Samsung that I’ve threatened to put out to pasture at least once a month for the last several years. But I’m used to its quirks, it fits me and my expectations, and I guess I like it enough to poo-poo my attempts to use the newer but still not completely set up tab sitting on my desk (which is now certainly itself hopelessly outdated).

The odd thing about this particular, older unit is the help that it wants to provide, particularly at clean-up time. It knows its storage limits and can clue me in on where I can reclaim valuable storage space. What it has a hard time with is knowing what’s stored where. Let me explain. As an older tablet it has limited storage, only 16 GB, so each little chunk of that is valuable. It wants to be a helpful little thing so this morning it told me that 970 MB was holding onto pictures and videos. No need to have them there but also no need to use up space on the cloud account with them when I have plenty of room and can move them to the SD card. Except when I tap the icon to show me the detail of what makes up those 970 MB of treasured photos, it gets confused and shows me all the files the tablet can access – internal, card, and cloud storage. It very graciously tells me how much each destination holds but not which files are at which destinations. So I go through file by file to find what goes where Sigh.

Another thing the poor old piece wants to help with is shedding itself of unused or rarely used apps. Every handheld device has a means of displaying all its resident applications by frequency of access. Except this one hasn’t learned the English definitions for always, sometimes, rarely, and never. I’m just certain that it would get so confused trying to complete a survey it would give up after the first few questions. Anyway, it listed all my apps by often used, sometimes used, and rarely used. Except that they aren’t. My crossword app that I use daily was in the sometimes used pile while Facebook that I haven’t accessed in the last several months was among those often used.

After hours more than I wanted to devote to the project I feel good that all my electronic, connected devices are as trim as can be and for a short while I should be able to enjoy efficient downloads, speedy uploads, and generally smooth, glitch free surfing on the Internet on my own little intranet.

I just really hope I didn’t delete my WordPress account.  Well, here goes nothing! (Hmm, let me know if you didn’t get this.) (Thanks!)

I’ll Have What He’s Having

Michael 3 Comments
The Academy Awards are behind us and the Oscar hoopla has pretty much faded away. I have a few more old Oscar nominees to watch. I’m still used to the awards being presented in March and February being the time to relish in the performances. Is it just me or do actors tend to speak better when reading somebody else’s lines as scripted than when they try to go their own way on the award stage? Anyway, I prefer the movie actor to the award show actor and often the movie world to real realty. Ironic, no?
 
Something that hit me this year watching my usual overdose level of film history is how much out there in movie land we can really use in real people land. Television land also has some pretty nifty gadgetry that we mere mortals could benefit from. Take for instance in 1966 just asking “Yo computer, how much longer till we get to the Romulan border?” and sure enough some snarky female voice speaks back “the. border. is. one. hundred. forty. light. years. away. and. will. be. reached. in. twenty. eight. and. one. half. minutes. if. you. don’t. stop. for. take. out. on. the. way.” Did Gene Roddenberry know Siri and Alexa were coming? If we’ve been able to harness computer power to become our personal assistants, why not some other seemingly outlandish inventions.
 
For example:
Movie people must have dishes that dry and put themselves away. I’ve seen dozens of movies this month with people eating and drinking and even in some instances washing dishes. But nobody ever dries them or puts them away. The only Oscar nominated movie I recall seeing somebody with towel in hand, drying dishes was Carole Lombard in My Man Godfrey. She didn’t do a really great job of drying and didn’t put them away but she was a millionaire socialite so I guess just the attempt at drying part was something special. They all have self-cleaning carpets also.
 
TelephoneThis one we sort of had but then technology took it away and we need it back – a phone you can pick up the reciever and just say who you want and somebody gets them for you. You need to go back to the 1930s for this invention. Everybody from cops to robbers to femme fatales to innocent bystanders could go to any phone and say “Get me John Smith” and sure enough, an operator would find John Smith, and the right John Smith. Progress took this away quickly (The Front Page). By the 1940s people were dailing their own numbers (Going My Way), by the 50s were getting wrong numbers (Anatomy of a Murder), by the 60s they were tearing pages out of phone books (In the Heat of the Night), and eventually we’ve worked our way to a time when there are no phone books and if you ask your computer assistant for John Snith’s number, unless John Smith is among you personal contacts, the answer will be, “I’m sorry I don’t have enough information.”
 
Cars run on no gas. Imagine not just driving for days, week, even months without filling up, but driving hard, fast, and often in multiple countries and never visiting a fuel station. Racing movies aside, nobody ever stops to fill up. The French Connection wouldn’t have stood a chance for Best movie if Popeye Doyle ran out of gas on 86th Street. The only movies I recall seeing somebody at a gas pump are High Sierra and National Lampoon’s Vacation and neither were Oscar nominees in any category. (I should note that in Vacation, Chevy Chase is seen wiping and putting away dishes but I believe they hadn’t been washed yet, so…)
 
Since I brought up non-nominees there are some things in almost every movie I’d like to see happen. 
 
Airplanes with aisles wide enough to walk down two abreast (with a refreshment cart even) and seats with more legroom than in my living room. Sticking with the travel theme, cruise ships with cabins bigger than my living room. Entire blocks unoccupied in front of the building I want to enter so I can just pull up and park – and never having to parallel park (nobody parallel parks in the movies), and airport parking lots that never charge for parking. Formal wear for casinos. Subways never overcrowded and always on time unless being hijacked. And those telephones that when they are set to vibrate you still know a call is incoming even if you are 3 rooms away. 
 
And – a hot tub time machine. Hey Alexa, let’s kick some past!
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

Money for Nothing

Michael 1 Comment

This has been an odd week money wise and it’s only Thursday. I think it really came to mind this afternoon when I was trying to buy something on line and could not find an option to check out on the site. More on that later.

NoMoreMooneyOdd Week Exhibit A. If you were anywhere in the “48 states, Washington DC , and Puerto Rico” (more on that later too!) or even close by (and maybe even in one of those other two states) and you were seduced by “Black Friday in July” (oddly held on Monday and Tuesday) like I was, you might have purchased an all the rage, newest and hottest, must have, can’t live without item of the year, or an air fryer. In my case it was the air fryer. A week earlier I hadn’t even considered an air fryer but coincidentally Big Lots held its quarterly 20% off weekend immediately before Black Monday/Tuesday. If you don’t have a Big Lots in your state or country think of your favorite discount/buyout store. I saw an air fryer in the ad that came out in advance of the sale and thought “at that price I’ll try one” that price being almost half what it was in a department store plus an extra 20% off. Short story long, by the time I got there they were out. I’d not have given it a second thought except on Monday afternoon I was busy deleting emails when I came across a Macy’s ad featuring that very air fryer at exactly the same price I missed, extra 20% and all, at Big Lots. To make a shorter story longer, when the package came this week it included instructions to submit for a rebate for an additional $10. Just fill out the on line form and they’ll send me a VISA card with $10 loaded on it. The on line form included several fields, all required, including a space for “rebate code.” The instructions noted 6 or 7 countertop appliances each with its own rebate code. Except for my air fryer. Of course.

Odd Week Exhibit B: You remember a couple years ago Equifax, one of the big three credit bureaus who continually tell us how important it is to protect our credit, suffered a security breach that exposed the personal information of nearly 150 million people. They announced a settlement this week. The $700 million settlement includes $100 million in fines and $425 million in money set aside to reimburse associated recovery and corrective action costs for the affected people. Right away you can see some things wrong with these numbers. The fines and restitution amounts total $525 million leaving $175 million unaccounted for. Or more correctly unspecified. Well I guess those lawyers deserve something. They worked out a pretty good deal. The settlement specifies reimbursements of up to $125 per person for money spent on credit monitoring or identity theft protection after the breach as well as the cost of freezing or unfreezing credit reports at any consumer reporting bureau. Payments of as much as $20,000 also will be made for time spent remedying fraud, identity theft or other misuse of personal information caused by the data breach. The payment also covers up to 20 hours spent purchasing credit monitoring services or freezing credit reports at a rate of $25 an hour. So far that comes to $20,625 per claimant but there’s more. The settlement also cover out-of-pocket losses caused by the breach and as much as 25% of the amount consumers paid to buy credit or identity monitoring services in the year prior to the breach. That could raise each persons allowable recovery to $21,000 or more. Except the total specified in the settlement ($425 million) divided by the number of people whose data was compromised (147 million) comes to only $2.89 per person. The article didn’t suggest where the extra $20,997 per claim might come from. (And you thought you’d never use algebra in the real world.) It’s a good thing those lawyers got their couple million up front.

Odd Week Exhibit B-2: It was in the article about the Equifax settlement that I read the following:

“The settlement was reached between Equifax and the U.S. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, the Federal Trade Commission. It covers all 48 states as well as the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico.”

What do you think – writer, editor, proofreader, or modern version of type setter? Or practical joke to see if anybody notices? Yes, I know it’s not exactly money related but it’s just too good to not mention!

Odd Week Exhibit C: That website way back in the opening paragraph. I even had my daughter check on her computer thinking the mobile site I had opened on my tablet was truncated. Indeed, no “cart” and no “check out” button or icon was on the desk top site either. We did find a “continue” button the opens a pop up window with a brief order summary that included “back” and “continue” options. Sure enough, “continue” was the choice to get the order finalized.

You wouldn’t think it should be that hard to give money away .

Technical Resistance

Michael 8 Comments

I try to take responsibility for myself as much as I can in all aspects that I can reach. As long as I can reach them comfortably. Including my health. So when the good folks that bring me my delightful dialysis sessions announced an opportunity to “take control of your kidney health and experience better outcomes” I jumped at the chance. Who couldn’t resist better outcomes in anything you take on? Then they started throwing around words like “empowered” and “easy” in the same paragraph even. And they got me with, “Start managing your kidney care with your Portal today and gain more time to do the things you love. Register today and Thrive On” (Emphasis not even added. They’re good.) How can I not want to take advantage of gaining more time to do the things I love? I was hooked.

You just know this is going to go wrong somewhere, don’t you? Hmm.

Looking forward to actively participating in my care, I carefully filled out the many screens of information that they requested, chose my password, and awaited the confirmation email which would contain the additional instructions for completing the registration process. In just a few seconds it came, and in just a few minutes I did what I was supposed to do. In seconds again I received another email congratulating me on successfully registering for the patient portal and was presented with a link to “log in and start actively participating in your care!” (OK, that time I added the exclamation point, but I wasn’t excited about this. Wouldn’t you be?)

I clicked, eagerly awaiting the chance to participate in my care, and attempted my first official login. In went my email address, then went in my password, then the email address and password went in to wherever they go and the little circle thing started spinning and then, low and behold (words you just don’t hear much anymore) across the screen I was presented with the message “username or password invalid.” Oh, poo! No problem. In my excitedness I probably hit a wrong key so I re-entered the username which is my email address so I know that was correct, and then, this time more carefully, my password. Almost always when denied access it’s because I incorrectly enter the password which makes sense since they never show you your password (unless it happens to be ******* and you just have to remember how many *s). But no, again that didn’t work so I gave one more try and one more time I got the same frustrating message.

I selected the link on the page for technical support and sent them an email detailing my inability to log into the patient portal (and thus my unfortunate delay in participating in my care!) and sat back to await their response. A few minutes later I saw the little envelope icon pop up at the top of the screen and I anxiously opened my email to just as anxiously read their reply, get back on track, and start participating in my care. Well imagine my disappointment when I scrolled the inbox items and saw, “Undeliverable.” Instead of the anxiously awaited reply I had a message wherein the little emailman politely explained to me that my desperate plea for help could not be sent because the addressee “wasn’t found or doesn’t exist at the destination server” and I should check to make sure I entered the address correctly, contact the intended recipient by phone, or several other options that involved things like checking licenses and permissions and other things that normal non-computer savvy people (and probably some of them, too) have no idea what any of that means. Disappointment does not begin to describe what I was feeling. “ARRRGH!” OF COURSE THE DAMN ADDRESS EXISTS. ALL I DID WAS PUSH THEIR DANM BUTTON ON THEIR DAMN WEBSITE! DAMN MORONS!” I said to myself. Calmly.

Maybe it’s just a password problem and I actually mistyped when I was selecting it. It’s possible. If I can incorrectly enter a password when trying to log onto a site I can certainly mistyped the letters, characters, numbers, and case control when first selecting the password. Of course that would mean that I would have had to make the same mistake twice since, once on the first selection entry and once on the confirmation entry, but hey, it could happen. Yeah, right.

So I attempted to log on again, knowing it would reject the login information but also knowing I would be presented with the inevitable “Forgot your password?” link. So I did. And I was. And I clicked. And in a few seconds I received another email with another link to reenter my password. So I clicked. And I reentered. Carefully. Both times. The screen blanked taking all my information again to wherever the little electrons go when they discuss these things and in less than a second I got another email! This is getting exciting. Again anxiously (though not quite as anxiously as I had been earlier), I opened the email and read the message congratulating me on successfully changing my password with a new link to log on and “start participating in my care.” (No emphasis added. By this time I was getting emphatically worn out.) Again I clicked. And again I entered username AKA email address and password AKA, uhh, password. And again I got…”username or password invalid.”

Oy.

(If you read Monday’s post and are wondering if this was what I couldn’t remember…..well, the answer to that is no. But this one is such a great story I couldn’t wait to share it. That and if I did wait I knew I would have forgotten about it. But don’t worry. I still have the sticky note stuck right there on the monitor (see?) and I’ll be writing all about it next time. Unless something else comes up between now and then. But it’s OK. There’s lots of sticky on that note. It’s not going anywhere.)

(Oh and, do you think I use too many parentheses?)

 

Voice Activated

Michael Leave a comment

Do you have voice recognition software? I don’t. Oh, I have the thingy on my cell phone that lets me search, dial, or text verbally. But not on the computer. I’m ok with that. Living alone I almost always have something going for background noise – TV, music, even a radio now and then. I know from using the phone thingy that voice recognition is pretty good at that. It recognizes voices. But not only yours.

I can just imagine if I was drafting one of these posts and the TV was on. The final product might look like this.

—–

Do you have…the name your price tool? …Oh, I have… no cost maintenance on all remaining 2015s… that lets me… Come On Down! …But not on the computer. I’m… finger licking good. …Living alone I almost always have… erectile dysfunction. …TV, music, even a… model year end close-out. …I know from using the… attorney with the experience to win the big ones …that …The People’s Court… is pretty good at that. It recognizes… breakfast all day. …But …this is Jeopardy.

—–

That’s what I think. Really. How ‘bout …zero percent financing?

When Did…

Michael Leave a comment

I seemed to have missed it again. In my youth, when we would cook dinner on the grill outside and eat at the old wood table off paper plates with the wind blowing napkins and cups, it was called a cook-out. Usually it was on a Sunday in the summer and something was put over charcoal but most of the food came from the kitchen like any other Sunday and it was still a cook-out.  I haven’t heard that phrase for years. Those under 30 years old or so may not even recognize it. We don’t have cook-outs today. Today we grill. One day we are having a cook-out, the next we are grilling. I completely missed that transition.

Well, as I started out, I seemed to have missed it again. When did emoticons become emoji? (I’m still not sure if that is a singular as in one emoji, the plural of more than a singular emojum, or both like fish or deer.) To be perfectly honest, I’m not certain that I can even point to when emoticons became emoticons and not just “those little smiley thingies.” And who came up with them? And how? Let’s face it, it’s not natural to be typing along and all of a sudden decide to turn your “page” 90 degrees and plop in a couple of symbols you can only tell what they are if your head is on sideways. Or if you’re that guy on Law and Order who is always checking out the evidence that nobody else has noticed with his head at that weird angle.

I thought it was perfectly clever when somebody decided that one could approximate a smiley face with a colon and a right parenthesis (parentheses?) (One of them is right, err correct, in that it’s only one of them but I don’t know which. If you do, feel free to fix it if it so needs fixed.) From there it was a quick step to frownie faces, kissing faces, grinning faces, hearts, flowers, and any number of things to personalize an otherwise impersonal e-mail or (shudder) instant message. There are even translators available so you can pick the perfect accompaniment to your formerly plain text.

Today, those cute little combinations of all those symbols we rarely use have morphed into miniature signage that rivals international travel iconography. Personally, I miss the old-fashion smiley face, but what would you expect from an old fogey like me.  If you’ll excuse me, I have a cook-out to plan for dinner. I know I have some hot dogs in the fridge somewhere.  🙂

That’s what I think. Really. How ‘bout you?

Day After Day

Michael Leave a comment

Who knows how it happened but recently He of We’s e-mail box has been under a new assault of junk.  It’s not even good junk.  It’s mundane buy this, buy that, enroll in this class, give to this cause, apply for this job, have you thought about a cemetery plot lately?  Fortunately, hidden at the bottom, in the world’s smallest font, usually in the world’s least contrasting color to the background (ivory on white should be illegal) is the “unsubscribe link.”

We suppose most of us would prefer not to be regimented by time, day or year but unfortunately most of us are.  Work schedules, meetings and appointments vie for our attention along with their and other imposed deadlines.  It is the deadline or action time that confuses us most.  Sometimes the measuring of time makes sense as we described in “Apology Accepted” (April 1, 2013).  Other times those times make no sense and we said so in “Past Their Prime” (October 13, 2014).  But now we found a new one that is so quite arbitrary it also should be illegal.  Or at least make somebody feel bad.

Let’s take a little detour to the early days of the home computer.  We’re not sure how many of you might have been around for those challenges but challenges they were.  Everything was written in DOS and written in some weird reverse logic notation where yes meant no and no meant uh oh.  Deleting entire files was a daily occurrence.  Deleting files, erasing directories, reformatting entire disks and drives.  There was no stopping the carnage!

So now, let’s come back to the present and that “unsubscribe link.”  You really don’t want any more e-mails from that sender so you click on it.  At least twice.  Eventually it opens a web page.  There you click on another “unsubscribe link” sometimes having to re-confirm your e-mail address.  At least twice.  Then you click on “Yes” when asked if you are sure you want to do this.  Again, at least twice.  And then you get a message.  “We’re sorry to see you go.  Please allow 21 days for your e-mail address to be removed from our files.”

Twenty-one days?  What are they doing for 3 full weeks?  We know from history that you can delete a record in record time.  In 21 days they can remove all records of all e-mail addresses ever used to send anything to anybody.  From the beginning of computer time.  To be fair, some sites can actually get the job done in ten days.  Usually these are the same sites that will gladly sell you just about anything and guarantee next day delivery.  But it takes a week and a half to delete an e-mail from a list.  Yeah, right.  Let’s all stand and applaud their efficiency.

Twenty one days.  Talk about arbitrary.  Next thing you know, banks will be calling anything that happens after 3pm tomorrow.

Now that’s what we think. Really. How ‘bout you.

 

Open Sesame

Michael Leave a comment

We’re not even certain how we got onto the discussion of passwords but sometime, somewhere over the past week we ended up asking ourselves did Ali Baba really say “Open Sesame?”

It would certainly be an easier phrase to remember than some of the strange concoctions we’ve concocted to satisfy our computer password requirements.  At He of We’s workplace, passwords must be at least 8 characters, no longer than 26 characters (really, 26) must contain at least two upper case characters, two lower case characters, one number and one symbol, must not contain any 4 letter portion of his user name or any 4 letter portion of his real name, must not have been used in the last 36 months, and must not spell out the company name.

Sometime last week somebody published some list somewhere about passwords.  Yes, we can be more specific but we don’t want to.  Partly because we aren’t sure who these people are.  They are so and so research, such and such consultants, or somebody or other institute.  They have to stay somewhat cloaked if not daggered because passwords are supposed to be secret.  How does one publish an opinion of others’ secret information? 

But we digress.  This list included the worst passwords you could use and the number one worst password of them all, Password.  Apologies to Allen Ludden.  Other bad choices include 12345 etc, iloveyou, and letmein.  Our favorite of the worst is letmein (let me in) because it sounds so plaintive and assumes computers have all the power.

Another point in favor of letmein is its historical significance.  Literarily speaking that is.  When Ali Baba followed the forty thieves to their lair he heard the leader say Open Sesame to open the door to their cave.  Open Sesame did not make it on to the list of bad passwords so either nobody is using it or it’s not such a bad password.  Maybe it’s ok because nobody understands it any better than He of We’s workplace password rules.  Why sesame?  Why not caraway? Or poppy seed?  What about basil or parsley?

One explanation is that Sesame dialectically translates with different pronunciations to differentiate friend from foe and etymologically grew up to become the Hebrew word sisma, meaning password. (Or so we’re told.  On a good day we can be confused with proper English used grammatically correct.)  And everybody knows from the mysterious institute that the last word you want to use for a password is password.

Soon you’ll be able to use a picture for your password.  Imagine those rules.  No smirking, left profile only, colors present in nature during spring in Scandinavia.  Come on now.  Are we really hiding secrets that important in our files anyway?  Open Oregano!

Now, that’s what we think. Really. How ‘bout you?

Quantities May Be Limited

Michael Leave a comment

You go to the store to get that great sweater on sale you saw in yesterday’s paper.  You go to the department, then to the aisle, then to the rack.  You see the sign.  “Great Sweaters.  Regular $49.99. Two Day Sale $1.78.”   You reach for it and find . . . a picture of the sweater with a banner across it that says “Sold Out.”

No, this never happens at the store.  Not a brick and mortar store, that is.  But it happens all the time on line.  You get an e-mail that says for tonight only, all housewares are 99% off.  You click on the link, the page opens, you see the counter in the corner, “Page 1 of 24; 20 of 480 Items.”  Page 1 has a couple things you like.  That Ice Crusher would be a real centerpiece for the counter but it’s “Sold Out.”  Page 2 has a few more things of interest, and a few more “Sold Out” banners. 

By the time you get to Page 5 you’re seeing more “Sold Out” masks than items of any real interest.  You brace yourself for the long ride and decide to hit all 24 pages.  The final count.  Two things actually worth considering, one of them actually at a good price, and 307 items with a banner across their pictures announcing them to be “Sold Out.”  Is that fair?

If they can put a banner on the picture why can’t they remove the picture?  Or are the on-line stores trying to tell us that if we had less of a life and could spend all day with our e-mail open and hop on the announcement as soon as it was posted we too could be proud owners of a solar powered ice crusher?

Yes, we know that sometimes things go fast on line.  Better to know they are sold out than to try to put a pair of chinchilla bowling gloves in your shopping cart only to find out later you aren’t getting them.  Still, a little site maintenance would probably end up in better sales.  We’d get less frustrated and actually go through all 24 pages – now reduced to 4.

Brick and mortar stores found out the hard way through consumer backlash that if they plan on advertising a fabulous deal but only put 2 or 3 copies in each store that they better say that in the ads.  Then we know that when we get to the $1.78 sweater rack and we see an empty space that we missed out.  We don’t need a picture to remind us of what we didn’t get.  Maybe the on-line shops should take heed. 

“All housewares on sale.  Seven to choose from.”

Now, that’s what we think.  Really.  How ‘bout you?