Zombie Dinosaurs

It’s easy to poke fun at the naivety of our pre-Information Age perspective. That’s why folks love to trot out historical quotes like “I think there is a world market for maybe five computers” [IBM Chairman Thomas Watson, 1943] and “640K is more memory than anyone will ever need” [Microsoft founder Bill Gates in the […]

The saga continues. It has now been 5 months since I ordered a Dell XPS 720, and the system suffers frequent unexplained bluescreen crashes. I’ve talked to uncountable tech support techs. I still don’t have a working computer.
Since the last time I described my problems with my order, Dell told me they could not […]

Fans of this blog — and by "fans," I mean my mom and about 10,000 spambots — might recall that I bought a Dell XPS 720 back at the end of October, 2007. It didn’t work, so Dell swapped it for a replacement, which I finally got in January, 2008, after enough frustration to […]

I have wanted to get back to the voice recognition in Windows Vista for a while. I had messed with it a year ago, and was impressed with how well it worked. But I don’t like having a wired microphone hanging off my head–it limits my mobility–so I abandoned it. This morning, on a […]

Remember my $3000 paperweight with the cool Dell logo on it? The story isn’t over yet.
Indeed, I’ve never had such a highly concentrated collection of problems with a single purchase in my entire life. First of all, let me point out that after waiting for a replacement XPS 720 for a month, the new machine […]

I’ve owned a few Dells in the past, but my current purchase might just be the last. I’ve had an almost indescribably bad experience buying my current PC. Well, it’s not indescribable, I suppose. In fact, I’m going to describe the experience right now.
I placed an order for a Dell XPS 720 with the Q6600 […]

I’ve done it! I have finally transferred my collection of radio show tapes from cassette to MP3. Another pointless chore accomplished.
I’ve been trying to covert all my old 20th century media to something that, if my kids are so inclined, they can use in 25 years. I copied my old home movies of Evan and […]

Well, I never thought this would happen to me. Not in a million years. And I’m not talking about a risque encounter at a car wash–I’m referring to getting phished. How could I be so dumb?
It all started a few weeks ago when I tried selling some old home theater equipment on eBay. The first […]

A note from the management…
In the past few days, I’ve been innundated with spam posts. And I mean innundated — a dozen an hour, on average. Now, if people really liked my Smells like fresh paint post enough to post comments about it, that would be awesome. But since the comments I have been getting […]

This weekend was an object lesson in why computers are still such an unbelievable pain in the neck.
It all started when I installed Windows Vista on my very new Gateway computer. Now let me be clear right up front: I adore Vista. The Aero visuals are wonderful eye candy, and features like the built-in results-as-you-type […]