Category: geekery

Done With Downtime

May 13, 2008 / / 0 Comments

You might have noticed my site has been down a bit over the last few weeks–I’d been having problems with my server. After replacing the hard drives a while back, I noticed that the power supply fan had failed–so I had to replace that as well. Fedora (the operating system my server runs on) released a new version a few days after that, so I had to bring the server down for the upgrade.

Long story short: everything has been fixed, the operating system has that new car smell, and my petty ramblings will be 100% available for the foreseeable future.

ByteMarket.com – Swindled

April 30, 2008 / / 0 Comments

One of the hard drives in my system started throwing errors last week, so I needed to replace it ASAP. While I was at it, I figured I’d do a minor upgrade and add redundancy for all the file systems on the box.

I removed both of the old crappy hard drives from my system, only to replace them with two other crappy hard drives. That hadn’t been my intention–I’d actually gone out of my way to purchase new Seagate drives because they come with five year warranties. The site I purchased them from, ByteMarket.com, listed two refurbished 40GB drives for a good price, so I bought them.

Since I only needed 40GB drives, I was fine with getting refurbs–drives reworked by the factory but are essentially new. Most importantly, they’re covered by the manufacturer’s warranty. That’s not what I got. In fact, I didn’t really get anything I’d wanted in this deal: there was virtually nothing about this purchase that ByteMarket didn’t fuck up.

  • The drives I received were system pulls–drives pulled from old computers and resold. They both had Compaq stickers plastered on them and were covered in scratches and dents. One hadn’t even had the original mounting screws removed.
  • They were shipped in a box that was twice as big as it needed to be, giving them plenty of room to bash around into each other during the shipping process. They were, however, in bubble wrap.
  • I specified shipping to my work address (where my server lives), and they were sent to my apartment.
  • I paid for 2-4 day shipping, and it took more than a week for the drives to arrive.

Since I needed to replace the bad drive in my system without delay, I had no choice but to install the drives anyway. I’ve been testing them, and they’re both working fine–but that doesn’t change the fact that I’m pissed. I’m calling tomorrow to see what they’re willing to do for me, since both drives are in use and can’t be sent back. I’m hoping for a partial refund or new drives. If I don’t get some sort of compensation, I’m going to sic The Consumerist on them.

Windows XP Service Pack 3–WTF, Microsoft?

March 1, 2008 / / 0 Comments

Microsoft is putting the final finishing touches on what is expected to be XP’s final service pack, and it’s about goddamn time. Service pack 2 was released in August 2004–which is centuries ago in computer terms. Last time I did a fresh installation of XP SP2, the system needed more than 80 critical updates before I considered my system to be even remotely secure.

I’ve been beta testing SP3, and I’ve been fairly impressed with it. My workstation at the office is running an old beta build, and I’ve had absolutely no problems with it. However, I upgraded the system from an existing SP2 install, so there were a few things that I missed.

Today, I installed XP on my home workstation using a slipstreamed SP3 RC2 CD–and found a few things that absolutely baffle me.

  • Internet Explorer is still version 6. (6.0.2900.3311.xpsp.080212-0005) That’s right–a year after IE7’s introduction and a service pack later, and XP is still installing the bug-ridden misery that is IE6.
  • Windows Media Player is still version 9. (9.00.00.4503, to be exact.) The current version? 11. (11.0.5721.5145)

As strange as these two items are by themselves, I was even more confused when I ran Microsoft Update–neither appears as an update. While this may well be intentional due to SP3’s release candidate status, it still seems bizarre to me.

At this point, there’s no chance that either IE7 or WMP11 will be included in the final release. Therefore, I’m forced to ask–what the fuck, Microsoft? You’re releasing the first serious update to XP in almost four years–so why wouldn’t you actually go to the effort of seriously updating it?

Update, for anyone who cares: I was about to post this to digg tonight and asked myself, “Why are people going to call me an idiot for writing this?” (They will, trust me. It’s just a matter of what half-baked, specious arguments they’ll come up with.) That’s when it occurred to me: IE7 and WMP11 aren’t included in SP3 because they require WGA validation. It would be far too easy to just download the redistributable SP3 install and get both programs that way.

That said, it’s still very strange that they don’t appear in Microsoft Update.