stupid

Author’s note, I started drafting this several months back and never finished it. I share it now because what the heck else will I do with it? It’s like a story with no end. A burrito with no tortilla. A car with no gas. Enjoy.

So the other night I could scarcely sleep, and what I did instead is install a new video card in my own main home Windows machine. That machine runs Windows Server 2003 for reasons that continue to mystify me. Really I intend to convert to Ubuntu on this box, but that transition feels like it will be difficult and I don’t need that noise, jack.

I was prompted to install hardware because several months ago we ditched the last of our CRT (cathode ray tube) monitors and went flatscreen. This is better for the environment energy-consumption-wise and saves physical space. I in particular got a cheapo-widescreen Optiquest monitor ($200! less with a rebate!)—the model is Q20wb, an Optiquest.

I had used it on my aging Mac G4 computer and it looked great, but a few weeks ago I decided to switch the widescreen to the Windows box since, as the G4 ages, it gets more cumbersome to get real work done. The problem was I could not, with the video card and drivers I had set up in Windows, drive the widescreen. Instead it could do some random resolution, so that the screen, instead of looking nice at 1680×1050 pixels, was at something like 1280×1024. On a widescreen monitor, this meant that everything was scrunched vertically. This could not stand! So I switched back for a while and bided my time.

I asked my stepson Devon if he had any stray video cards, hoping I could buy one of his castoffs for $10 bucks. The young man always seems to have stray hardware from building game PCs. Sadly, no dice. However, he did provide me with this link on NewEgg to HIS Radeon 7000 64MB PCI Video Card. I hemmed and hawed for a few weeks, tried many different drivers, and never got a satisfactory result. Well, I splurged last week and bought it, and it arrived this week.

But when I installed it, I would boot and the screen was simply blank. No nothing. No dice. I could hear it booting.

I messed around with the net and eventually found this answer.

Of course, there are no permanent links on the ABSOLUTELY STUPID ATI SUPPORT SITE so whatever that link was is now lost to history.

I got it working but I was up all night and had to do some counterintuitive crap—I think I had to use Safe Mode then do some silliness. It was a big dumb nightmare and clearly I had the urge to write about it but perhaps it was too painful to revisit the steps I took. Thats’ my throry.

The lesson of this post, incomplete as it is, is this: HARDWARE SUCKS. HARDWARE SUPPORT WEBSITES SUCK. WINDOWS SUCKS.

I’m glad I could be of service.

Todays’ Email:

Dear Laurel,
Just wanted to ping you on a few great companies in the LA area looking for PHP talent. Let me describe the positions briefly, and I’ll include links to more detailed information on my website. If you’re interested, you can email your most current resume to [REDACTED] and we’ll see if we can get a match.

From March 5:

Hey Laurel,
I just stumbled across your resume in our database and was wondering if you were interested in this opportunity.

My reply:

Dear Recruiters:

I’ve gotten two of these now, and they both infuriate and entertain me. I am not named Laurel. My surname is not Springs. My first name is “Joe.” It matches the email address you have contacted me at: joe (at) artlung (dot) com. My last name is Crawford, not Springs. Perhaps you’re confused. In my resume, you can plainly see my name is Joe Crawford. Perhaps in another one I refer to myself as “Joseph Crawford.” Also, you can read that in 2006 I had a contract with Laurel Springs School in Ojai, California.

Sadly though, I did not become the owner of that august institution. Neither was I was inspired to change my name to match the school—that would be quite something!! I worked on web applications in ASP and SQL server there. I had quite a nice time working with very nice people. Also, Ojai is very pretty, though it does get warm in the summer.

I appreciate your email very much, but I hope you’ll understand that it’s very difficult to take you seriously when you and your database have failed so profoundly.

Sincerely,

Joe Crawford

Email from @ryze.com.

Subject line: Someone wants to network with you

Okay, fine, I’ve not been to Ryze, but I thought it was cool a long time ago, and I don’t mind linkedin, or facebook, or even myspace messages, so I take a look at the email.

Body:

Someone wants to network with you:
http://www.ryze.com/networkwithme.php

NOTE: You can change your Ryze notification preferences at http://www.ryze.com/preferences.php

I visit the site, log in and see the headline:

People who want to network with you…

And the actual message:

Upgrade your Ryze membership to see the list of 2 people who want to network with you

Uh, what? Really? I click the link and it’s $10 a year for Gold, and $20 a year for Platinum.

If the two people who want to network with me are legit, they’ll find me through some other channel, or heck, won’t they just email me?

Ryze was one of the earliest social/professional networking sites I joined. I remember seeing this visualization of the Ryze network and even being spotted on it. I even paid for a premium account at one time. I believe it was the same $10/month thing. But eventually it reached a limit in terms of what it could deliver, and I canceled it. Eventually it seemed that everyone who was talking to me was in MLM folks. Nothing wrong with that per se, but I started avoiding the site.

And now, just to view people who want to network with me, I have to pay? That’s the whole reason I think classmates.com sucks. To do anything useful, you have to pay, and yet, the site is trumpeted as this great tool to network with. I’m sorry, but exclusivity and dubious value do not go together. And Ryze definitely is only of dubious value.

Ryze, get your act together. Your value proposition stinks. Bad.