Well, I won’t make that mistake again. Last year I used Skype’s $30-per-year unlimited outbound calling feature (to call regular phones), and didn’t have any problems with it. This year I added a “SkypeIn” number so people could call me. Since I actually tried to start using it, I began to notice some weird problems, including local callers being told they had to dial +1-[areacode]-[my number] instead of just [my number], and other callers automatically getting voicemail even though the client and account are configured to permit all calls.

I sent a support request to Skype on August 10, 2008. Today, September 1, 2008, I finally got a response (and it didn’t help, either — it amounted to “we don’t control any of that” for the long distance thing and “change your settings to something else then change them back” for the voicemail thing — it didn’t help ).

I’ll stick with my new VoIP system, methinks, and let that Skype service lapse instead of renewing. 22 days to respond to a five-minute inquiry is a pretty bad sign. I guess they’re just eager to make sure nobody thinks they’re trying to be a phone company. Even pre-breakup AT&T’s support infrastructure never sucked so bad

I’m undoubtedly tempting the fates by complaining about the very service that’s hosting this site (heh — especially if any tech or other employee reads this, I’m boned), but it needs to be said anyway.

Well dammit, I guess my laptop felt left out of the Dead Hardware Parade. I’m posting this via that very laptop, tethered to my cellular phone for internet access, as its built-in wireless card has given up the ghost. According to Hewlett-Packard and Compaq, this laptop apparently has a bit of a “design issue” whereby it damn near melts itself down. The bulletin I linked there offers up a BIOS update that makes the system fan far more aggressive, but apparently it was too little, too late for this crazy little machine.

Wireless works occasionally, but mostly it’s dead. The Wi-Fi card doesn’t even show up in the device list in Vista, and in Linux, lspci -v doesn’t list it either. I actually had to go through the ritual of hard-resetting my cell phone to make its damned “wired tether” mode work again just to get this thing online at all. To their credit, HP are doubling the warranty period (just for this issue) and are sending a box along with a prepaid shipping label so I can send the monster back to them for repair. Given that they know about this specific issue and had trained the phone monkey in India (he had an obvious accent; sorry guys) how to deal with this directly, I suspect they’re just going to ship me a refurbished unit instead of mine back.

But we’ll see; it goes out the door to them Wednesday afternoon. This move coming up (to Tallahassee) is going to make the return shipment rather interesting

Get ready for a new generation of ijits, courtesy of a redesigned, more efficient, and cheaper milk bottle. It is apparently superior in every respect, from its stackable design to its cheaper manufacturing costs. Apparently, though, some people can’t figure out how to pour milk from the new design.

How fucking stupid do you actually have to be to have trouble with this? Sure, if it’s different and pours differently, you might get hung up the first time. But how can it continue to be an inconvenience after that? What’s your excuse when you’re still spilling this stuff once you get to gallon #10?

With my friend safely home from her trip to Atlanta, Georgia to participate in the 2008 International Science & Engineering Fair (congratulations to her for winning her seat there, btw! More on that in a subsequent post this weekend ), I am free to rant about the bat-shit insane idiots working for the Transportation Security Administration. Like the “You can’t take pictures here!” crowd demonstrating that sanity has left the security industry behind in public spaces, I am more convinced than ever before that the entire concept of the TSA is fundamentally broken, flawed, and unworkable.

My friend’s luggage, you see, was flagged by the TSA on her flight to Atlanta, and her luggage was detained, screened, and thoroughly searched. She made it to Atlanta. Her luggage didn’t meet her there. It went on to New York (the plane’s next stop) for a thorough examination, then came back to Atlanta where it was eventually delivered to her late that night. So while some unnamed yokels at the TSA in Atlanta and/or New York rummaged through her bags, flipped through her clothes and underwear and all her other possessions that came along on the trip, she spent her first day in Atlanta wearing stuff that didn’t fit her (donated to her by the airline, her friends, and by ISEF sponsors), worrying about whether she’d actually get her bag back (which contained a contact lens case, prescription medication, and other “important” stuff).

What caused them to flag it as “suspicious” you ask? A plastic carrying case designed for, and carrying, eight rechargeable AA batteries. They looked “suspicious” on an X-ray scan, and this was enough for some TSA dickwad to flag the luggage as suspicious, requiring additional screening. How did they accomplish this screening? They put it on the fucking airplane anyway to fly to Atlanta, then put it back in the air again to fly to New York to be examined. Then, having ruled it “safe,” they flew it back to Georgia.

I’m officially sick of people lording artificial power just because they can. I’m tired of people who aren’t causing harm or even inconvenience being harassed for taking pictures of a public place. Lest a language lawyer pounce on me by pointing out “but, but, but Union Station isn’t a public place, it’s privately owned and operated!” I will explain that when I use the term “public place” in this rant, I refer to the concept of a place wherein random persons can freely enter, mill about, and exit unmolested under most circumstances. This includes places like bus stations, train stations, airport lobbies (the bits where you don’t have to go through security to reach), even 24-hour Wal-Marts. I refer to it as any place where you can walk in without paying an admission fee, goof around harmlessly for awhile, then leave.

I don’t have much to add to this update on efforts to combat Microsoft’s modern-day attempts to spread FUD about Linux (that’s “Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt,” in case you were curious — it was an old trick IBM used to use when it commanded the computing market a few decades ago), except to encourage you very, very loudly to go read it.

Microsoft is running a silly “Get the Facts” campaign, designed to distract people from the realities (that Linux and similar platforms are far more reliable and scalable, are easier to use and work with, and are (much) cheaper than Microsoft’s own Windows-based offerings) by spinning so much bullshit it’ll make your head swim. The article I linked to above steps through the latest efforts by the company to continue its smear campaign.

<sarcasm>Of course, Microsoft is really just interested in telling the truth (that nobody but Microsoft can see) about Linux. We’re just all missing the glaring reality. Microsoft has absolutely no motivations beyond just “exposing the truth” in its efforts to convince people to buy its products instead of going with the cheaper/better alternatives.</sarcasm>

My thirtieth birthday is this Friday (April 18, in case anybody’s actually curious ). I’m not one to generally make a huge fuss over my own birthdays (though I’m also not a spoiled-sport about them — I always graciously accept “happy birthday!” notes from those courteous enough to offer them and I always appreciate it when friends decide it’s worth making a big deal out of it; I’ll never forget the whipped cream pie I got in the face last year at R.J. Gator’s ), but for some reason I actually find myself looking a bit oddly at this one coming up tomorrow.

Thirty seems like a bigger number than the other birthdays (duh, it’s larger than 29, or any other age I’ve reached; I mean it feels more significant). The whole week has definitely been on the weird side, but there were two moments in particular that have slapped me across the face a bit harder than usual.

Wednesday, as I bought a couple gallons of milk at Sam’s Club (along with some other junk), a woman walked by, and in a bit of a flirty tone, said “looks like you’ve got some teenagers!” It was the first time it’s ever occurred to me that I actually look old enough to be a father now. Heh. This afternoon, as I waited for the mechanic to finish helping my truck drain another $800 from my pocket, a woman waiting at the shop for an oil change turned to me and said “you look familiar — do I know you from somewhere?” Looking back, this is actually a pretty classic come-on line, but is also a fairly standard conversation starter, too. As I listed some of the stuff I do out in public where she might have seen me, none of them rang any bells, so she asked “wait, do you have kids who go to school here?” D’oh!

In my late twenties, I enjoyed not ever getting carded at a bar. Since I don’t actually have any kids yet, it feels seriously weird to have people now looking at me and assuming I’m old enough that I should have kids. Not strictly “bad” — just weird.

I assume this isn’t a “mid-life crisis” sort of thing; I understand that tends to crop up in a person’s forties, not the thirties, and it only seems to happen to about 10% of people anyway. That and I have no interest in burning bridges, buying a ridiculously overpriced sports car (I did that in my early twenties at the behest of my ex-wife), making drastic lifestyle changes, or anything else like that.

I’ve just never had a woman just “assume” I had kids, much less two in as many days. It’s a bit flattering that I’m judged to be suitable fatherhood material, but it was also the first time it’s really felt like I’m not a grown-up goofball kid anymore.

A short aside: I’m pleased to report that my truck now has working air conditioning again. It’s just such a shame they found random, seemingly-burned chunky goop in the transmission fluid. Sigh.

Ah, tax day. That most hair-pulling, gut-wrenching day of the year when you’re forcibly reminded just how much of your daily toiling at the grindstone goes to (supposedly) the “greater good” of society.

I’ve only ever had a sizable tax bill like this once before in my entire life, and that was back in 2000 when my ex-wife and I hatched a plan to buy ourselves a house in Colorado — the theory went something like this:

• Claim 6 exemptions instead of 2 on my W-2 form to reduce the total taxes taken out of each paycheck, so that when we actually buy the house, all the interest we pay will be deductible and it’ll all balance out.

While that idea actually does work (remembering though that the reduced withholding increases what you’ll owe at year’s end, and the interest only reduces the taxable income you get taxed on) if you follow through, it sets you up for hilarious failure when you don’t actually buy a house. Whoops.

Two nights ago I had an opportunity to explore the realm of Microsoft’s “Windows Genuine Advantage” bullshit — their soft and friendly name for their *fucking draconian anti-piracy authentication and validation suite*. It seems like almost every month (sometimes even more frequently) the company ships yet another update (in case you’re wondering, Windows only runs on bare metal now on one machine of mine full-time — an older Acer laptop that I used to run Linux on until I loaned it to a friend; it got re-imaged back to XP for her use, and since it came back I haven’t had time to put Linux back on it) to the veritable “prove you haven’t stolen from us, bastard!” toolkit.

Here’s the amusing part. A few weeks ago, some friends handed me an older laptop that was seemingly permanently broken, to see if I could resurrect it. It really *was* permanently broken, with no resurrection possible. Crud. Wasn’t a bad notebook, either I could have thrown it into the World Community Grid pile of machines I have.