Tag Archives: helping

Shuffle thy mortal coil

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Everything is done, for the Apple Digital Lifestyle project for our soon-to-retire management person. Getting to this point was a challenge only in terms of getting the data off of the old computer. The old machine was a Dell Dimension desktop loaded with Windows XP. I got the machine running and everything was fine, as far as Windows XP can be fine and I inserted my Knoppix DVD into the disk drive and rebooted. Then began the hurdles, the system was configured to boot first to the HD, not to the DVD, so I changed that and rebooted, the disk wouldn’t read and the system booted to the HD anyways, up comes Windows XP. Turns out, this computer is so old that it doesn’t have DVD, just a plain CD-ROM drive that I errantly mistook for a DVD drive. So I swapped out the Knoppix DVD and traded it for a Knoppix CD, rebooted and finally was up and running in Knoppix. I mounted the volume where the user files lived and used the tar utility to copy them over the network to my iMac on my desk. Once that was done I switched Knoppix out for DBAN, a popular hard drive erasing utility and booted into that, set it to chew away using DoD short wipe and proceeded to unpack the tar file I had copied over. I had unpacked the users data, trimmed out the meaningless Windows junk and ended up with about 800MB of user data in the end, mostly music and pictures and a few documents peppered in. I made a new ‘tar’ file and then copied that over to the new iMac using my handy-dandy USB file transmission cable. I had utterly blanked on the fact that both my iMac and the new iMac had fancy FireWire 800 capability, and only now that I reflect upon it do I feel rather silly in forgetting FireWire.

Once the data was over, I moved all the documents where they needed to be and then I thought about how I would manage the music and pictures. First was the pictures, I opened iPhoto ’09 (which came with the iMac!) and clicked on File, Import, pointed it to the directory that held the mishmash of user data and in about 45 seconds (I couldn’t help but time it) all the user pictures were now in iPhoto. I did the same thing with iTunes for the music and that took a whole 30 seconds. I then threw all the rescued remains in the trash (because they were now in iPhoto and iTunes) and then rescued bookmarks, that took a whole 10 seconds and into Safari it went. Cleaned everything up, installed the ‘Free’ HP All-in-one, and that took 2 minutes to unpack and 30 seconds to set up, I had a test print a minute later. Packed it all up, walked it to the manager’s office and he’s all set to enjoy.

What will he enjoy? His big thing is email and using iChat Video Chat. That’s the biggest selling point I think for this entire adventure. He can see his daughter and her budding family, full audio/video Mac goodness for as long as he likes to do so. I suggested that he could even set up a link in the morning and have a virtual “magic mirror” run all day long so they could spend time close to their loved ones without the expense or trouble of traveling.

After this entire adventure it struck me that I effectively ran an entire micro-sized Apple Store from inside my head. I had a Genius Bar (my office), I was the Genius (don’t have a fancy apple shirt, tho) and I got the user interested, sold, migrated, and trained – just like in an Apple Store. If Apple ever were to establish a store in Kalamazoo I would definitely moonlight there, without a doubt. The last time I did enter an Apple Store was with my Father in Syracuse a few months ago, the salespeople approached and I was busy pointing out a 21″ iMac to my Dad and as the sales guy approached he heard me actually running through his script. He chuckled and smiled and stood behind me. That’s why Apple succeeds, because they impress people like me and we become evangelists. Walking around, free Apple advertising and when someone comes up and asks, we show them all the wonderful fun they could have and then they go and buy into the dream as well, the cycle continues.

Helping, Coping, Chemotherapy, Microsoft.

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Tonight was like any other night. Scott wanted to use a gift certificate to one of our more preferred local restaurants and while we were headed there and while we were parked Scott tried to help his father, who is recovering from the side-effects of chemotherapy with a laptop problem.

It’s important to set the scene. Scott’s father, Dan, purchased a new laptop with Windows 7 and paid a batch of money to Best Buy to get it prepared properly so when he was down-and-out he could still do things online. That’s important because Best Buy is equally to blame here.

The laptop refused to progress beyond a prompt from Norton Antivirus (from Symantec) to allow a login unless Dan renewed his subscription to the Symantec service. This is where the inherent bullshit of subscription software service really bites. Because he was unwilling to pay for the subscription service, it pretty much bricked his laptop.

Enter Scott, trying with my help to give him instructions on how to rip out Norton Antivirus, we got that accomplished and then upon a reboot the system demanded to know what Dan’s LiveID was. He doesn’t have one. He’s never had one. He’s not using the LiveID bullshit from Microsoft, but there is the prompt. Thanks a whole fucking lot Microsoft. Did it not occur to you that your customers may not want to eat from your shit-trough? Anyways, once we got past that, a new problem cropped up. The laptop, which from when I saw it last (when we went to visit) was connected properly to wireless internet (wifi in the house, plain-jane, no WEP or WPA or WPA2) but now the wireless network adapter was disabled. FUCKING DISABLED.

While trying to shepherd Dan through Windows 7′s Vista-Like “Task Oriented Control Panel” bullshit the phone I was using, Scott’s iPhone, which had a piddling charge anyways and was connected up to a battery-backup with it’s own piddling charge I was sitting in my car, in the parking lot of the restaurant, stuck in a mental environment I regard as hellish trying lamely to shepherd my client through Windows 7 bullshit when, thanks to the medication left him only partially well enough to scrabble at the rockface that is Windows 7′s bullshit settings.. Scott’s phone died, along with the battery backup.

After several stabs at Control Panel, which was fruitless, and a retarded trip through the Network Troubleshooter (“Windows can’t determine whats wrong…” ) eventually mired in Device Manager when the phone gave up the ghost and the call was lost. I grabbed my Blackberry, which of course was being a slug – I was stabbing at the profile button to silence it from beeping and vibrating and nothing for 3 minutes. I was trying to make a call, nothing, mash mash mash. The fucking useless browser on the piece of shit device is utterly worthless. I replaced it with another browser, called BOLT, which trades slow-as-slugs-fucking for “maybe it’ll work” which is a far cry better than the utterly borked native browser. Of course, when you run more than 3 things at once the Blackberry moves better if you throw it in the LaBrea Tar Pits and wait for some alien archaeologist to dig it up and observe it’s results. I lost my patience. I could not lose my marbles towards my client, Scott’s Dad, who was just trying to get online after I told him he could and after Best Buy sold him “Yes you can” but this cumulonimbus of rage just couldn’t evaporate on it’s own. Even savaging my Blackberry (on the “Sprint Now Network” no fuckers, don’t you dare call it Sprint. Call it what it is, slower-than-slugs-fucking) didn’t really take care of it – I pulled my seatbelt on and the accident-sensor tripped because I was too rough and it took me 5 minutes to pull-stop-pull-coax-stop-pull the fucking thing out so I wasn’t breaking the law and driving without a seatbelt. The rest of my rage was sent to my verbal cortex where my vocabulary shrank to 4 letter words and came out in a rush. Key phrases like “Fucking piece of shit Microsoft, assholes I hope you fucking burn in hell you cocksucking whores, filthy nasty pigfuckers, swallow your tounges after vomiting up your mothers brains you zombie shit-for-brains…. so on and so forth…

I got to my office, which was just up the hill about a mile away and started my Mac, then started VirtualBox, started a copy of Windows 7 in VirtualBox and got to where I had lead Dan before the phone went kaput. I looked on my Blackberry and all I had was Scott’s folks home number, which was busy. I had to plug Scott’s iPhone into my Mac and wait 7 minutes for the battery to soak up enough charge so that the device would even turn on, then started calling other numbers trying to reconnect. The whole time cursing Microsoft and being embarrassed that I had given that laptop a passing mark when it was batch-full-of-shit. Eventually they called me back on my Blackberry (at this point I had removed the battery for a second time, as an expression of my rage…) and they told me that one of Dan’s coworkers who was in his companies local IT department would tend to the problem in person. After this Scott and I felt good enough to try to pull off dinner again, and back we went.

The whole time I’m struggling with providing Windows 7 support over the phone all I can think of is “This wouldn’t have even been possible, this fuckup, on a Macintosh Computer.” There wouldn’t have been any bullshit subscription software, there would have been a drop-dead simple way to get to the network stack and make sure that wireless was enabled – it would have been a cakewalk, even over the phone. That entire structure was MOCKING me while I was futilely trying to struggle away with Windows 7 and it’s impossible to access network stack. Hidden behind curtains and “helpful bullshit” put there by Microsoft to prevent curious end-users from making a mess of things by changing settings they don’t understand and FUCKING obfuscating it so hard that when someone who does understand is completely lost because you are trying to render technical support to someone who is partially disabled. On a Mac, this sort of disability WOULD NOT HAVE BEEN A PROBLEM. If it was a Mac, THERE WOULDN’T HAVE BEEN A PROBLEM TO FIX.

So of course, I had some residual rage floating around and I cannot contain it. I accessed twitter and ‘released the hounds’.

I don’t fucking care what you think of Microsoft, or Symantec, or Best Buy. If you apologize for them, if you try to cut slack and cut corners with human shit like that then I don’t want to hear it. These companies make FUCKING SHIT and everyone knows it. You are all fucking chained to this shit and in a retarded bid to avoid the appalling absurdity of it all, the minimally-acceptable level of rat feces in your Operating System, keep it to yourself. Keep your “I’m a PC” fuck-tardedness to yourself. I am not a PC. I am a HUMAN FUCKING BEING and I expect a tool to be LOGICAL and RATIONAL and SIMPLE. I know a computer can be this way. That’s what a Macintosh is ALL ABOUT. This fanboy’ness I have regarding Apple MEANS SOMETHING. They get praise heaped on them in metric tons because THEY DESERVE IT. They make computers that HUMAN BEINGS can use. They don’t make shit. Microsoft makes shit. Microsoft makes EPIC HEINOUS FLAMING SHIT. Giant bubbling loads of steaming feces, elephantine and flying through the air as if propelled by a hurricane. You filthy retarded assholes who get load after load of this Microsoft BULLSHIT and after horking down each steaming pile of dung YOU FUCKING ASK FOR MORE! This is HORRIBLE. This is a MISTAKE. Yes, Microsoft has market dominance, but that’s because the Kool-Aid Drinkers are all just chugging down massive quanities of Microsoft piss. They’ve sold their souls to something darker than Satan and now to not appear to be absolute morons and incapable of understanding the rank and unbelievable absurdity in their lives THEY FUCKING DEFEND MICROSOFT!!! I will not have it! Microsoft is ABOMINATION. Microsoft is a MISTAKE. It is the worst thing imaginable, Human Folly and Inexplicable Loyalty wrapped up together. Microsoft is a diseased whore fingering herself with shit-packed fingernails!

What to do? Don’t BUY THAT SHIT ANY MORE! Buy a Macintosh. Swallow your fucking whining about price and fucking buy it. You will never look back. You will never yearn for the way things were. You will never pine for what was lost. You will rejoice. You will pay and you will see the value of what you paid immediately and you will not regret doing so! When you’ve used it for a while, you’ll actually be willing to pay for upgrades and smile doing so. You’ll grab your Macintosh and hug it tight. You’ll see it in the morning and know that there is something that you can depend on, something built RIGHT, something that works RIGHT. Something worth you spending almost all your lives with. Anything else is self-deception hand-fastened to self-destruction. Anything else is a waste of your life time. How much longer before you die? Don’t you want something that doesn’t make you want to commit suicide? I know I do. I did. I’m not a PC. I’m a Mac. I’ll always be a Mac. I live in a NO EPIC FAIL zone. It’s nice here.