Guilt Over Complications of the Heart

This morning I'm feeling a bit guilty about something from last night...

In the evening, Leena came to me in a panic thinking she might be having a heart attack.  She said her Apple Watch was telling her something about "heart rate complications," and she knows she's at some risk as both of her parents have had heart attacks...

I guess while I know the Apple Watch has heart beat monitoring stuff, I don't know how much to trust it.  I asked her if maybe she'd had the Watch on too loose.  She didn't really answer, and I asked if maybe it was too tight?  Or maybe not aligned on her wrist properly or what.

Leena's not one for answering questions, as she doesn't like feeling like she's being interrogated and rebels at the idea of just simply answering.  She prefers talking and still kept saying stuff about "heart rate (or beat) complications".

Eventually I got out of her that she hadn't even been wearing the Watch.  She was holding it, and it was in some mode for configuring what gets displayed on the screen.  And it was giving her "heart rate complications".

Ah, that clarified things...  "Complications" in watchmaking means features on a watch beyond merely time keeping.  I only learned that a few years ago, through work, with our associating to a grey market luxury watch dealer.  I asked Leena if she was familiar with the term, since her family all has luxury watches, but she hadn't heard of "complications" in the horological sense.

Leena's older Rolex with a date "complication".

Here are some random Heart Rate Complications screen shots I just grabbed via Google:

I thought it was all resolved last night when I went to bed.  But this morning, thinking about it, I feel guilty that when Leena first told me she might be having a heart attack, I didn't even think of it as a medical emergency, I didn't think to call 911, that she might really be having a heart attack.

We're lucky this was just a misunderstanding of an obscure watchmaking term.  What'll happen if we have a genuine medical emergency in the future?

CD-ROM Express from PC-Kwik

The final product released by my old employer, PC-Kwik in 1996.

So, I was browsing around a few weeks ago for the PC-Kwik logo for some reason, I don't quite recall now and saw someone on eBay selling an old copy of CD-ROM Express for just a couple of bucks, and a bit more shipping.  I thought it was worth it for the nostalgia...

I worked at PC-Kwik from September 1993 till we shut our doors on December 31, 1996 (though I'll admit that last day I jetted around 3pm rather than stick it out all the way till the end of the business day at 5pm).

While I wasn't one of the main developers of the CD-ROM Express utility, I did write the MS-DOS based install program for the DOS/Windows 3.1 version of it (but not the Windows 95 version).  And I was the main QA tester for both versions, and I was the editor of the user manual.  

I also helped with the design of the box.  Initially the designers made it so there was a complete image of a CD within the Mercury helmet, but I thought it looked bad, like someone took a car cigarette lighter to a plastic helmet, and suggested resizing it, cutting off the bottom so that the curve aligned with the curve of the helmet, the way it is above.  I think it looks much better this way.

Unfortunately CD-ROM Express failed as a product.  There were several reasons, including bad timing, we released it just as consumer level CD-ROM drives themselves got fast enough to obviate the usefulness of CD-ROM Express.  

While skillful, and maybe lucky, marketing could've gotten around that, this just wasn't the product our customers wanted to buy from us.  Doing technical support I talked to PC-Kwik customers every day, and they made it clear what they wanted us to make was Super PC-Kwik, our fast hard drive caching utility, and our PowerPak programs, for Windows 95.  If we could've converted those from DOS to Windows 95, they would've bought them.

But alas, we didn't listen to them...

More Shopping ... Some Success, Some Failure

Whew, a busy day today and I'm tired, physically...

After Leena called I got dressed and went out.  I took the subway up to 9th Street & 4th Avenue and walked up to the Brooklyn Industries store on 7th Avenue and bought the backpack I'd been eyeing online (the one I've been using since 1992 is getting worn out, especially the zippers, plus threads keep unraveling from the nylon inside and jamming the zippers, but it's served well and I've hauled it all around the world).  It was high up so I had to get a clerk to help get it down for me, then I tried it on and it felt comfortable so I bought it.  It's definitely not as big as my purple one, but well suited for a lot of the shopping I'm doing, where I don't need to the bigger capacity.  It feels a bit more comfortable on my back, as far as the material, so I don't sweat quite as much.  When I bought it, the clerk put it in a shopping bag that's pretty cool, too, a heavy plastic one with the Brooklyn Industries logo and handles.

From there I found that Barnes & Noble I tried, and failed, to find yesterday after work.  Their computer programming section wasn't very big, but I found a one book that I was looking for in particular, about iPhone software development, so I got that.  And a few others, as well...

Then I wandered around that neighborhood, Park Slope a bit before taking the subway back to my apartment to drop things off.

Ah, one of the tastes of my
childhood...

A quick trip up to the grocery store netted some ice cream sandwiches I really miss (I like the cheap, generic, store brand ones, they're just more pleasing to me than the fancy ones), a jar of the chocolate milk mix that was my favorite when I was a kid in New Jersey years ago (Paul used it at Paul's Luncheonette, the diner right next door to the auto parts shop my father and grandfather ran), a small box of fresh chocolate eclairs and a raw steak, as well as a few other misc. items...

I brought all that back home, rushing along the crowded sidewalks to get the ice cream into the freezer before it melted..

Then I headed out on the subway to Manhattan intending to shop at the Apple store.  I figured I'd look for the neoprene laptop sleeve Leena wants as well as what I wanted, a set of speakers for the iPhone, iPad and MacBook that sound better than what's built into any of them.

I got off at 14th Street and Union Square, where I did last time, and it was super packed with people for a fair or market going on.  I got out of the subway on a different stair case than last time and was completely lost until I walked around the outside of the square almost all the way, and then recognized some of the buildings and got my bearings.

The walk to the Apple store was long, again...  On the way I stopped in at a liquor store and found a bottle of Viking Blod mead so I got that...  I haven't opened it yet so I don't know how it tastes, should be good, though.

At the Apple store I looked at a bunch of the speakers and just couldn't make up my mind.  No one offered to help me try them out.  I looked at the sleeves, but the only ones they had in stock were pink and black, the two colours she specifically said she didn't want.

After that I spent a while wandering around 14th Street and a few blocks up or down from there, just checking out that part of Manhattan...  I wasn't sure which trains to take to get to any of the other Apple stores.  One thing cool with the iPhone 4 is on 5th Avenue I happened to open up the notes I wrote earlier, including the 5th Avenue address of the other Apple store, but it highlighted 5th Avenue as a link to show me what was nearby, based on my location being on 5th Avenue (but many, many blocks from the Apple store).

I tried a couple of times to buy a pretzel from street vendors, but each one was so busy yacking on his cell phone that I couldn't get their attention to make a purchase.  I wonder if they realize they're losing business by not paying attention.  Actually, last weekend when I got one, the guy was so busy with his cell phone conversation that he served me a hot dog instead and I said "I said pretzel, aren't you listening?" but he didn't react, just kept on yacking on his phone and put the hot dog back and got a pretzel...

I went to a Best Buy store as well to look at electronics.  They had a nice sounding set of speakers, from Klipsch, a company that makes high end stereo speakers and I'm giving it some thought.  I may look up reviews online of all the ones I saw and see what people in general like, as far as sound quality, then go back tomorrow.  They didn't have any 17" sleeves...

Around 5:30pm or so I took the subway back to Brooklyn.  The train that goes under my apartment is the one I took to Manhattan, so getting back was easy enough and I got out right at my block.

I dropped off my backpack and picked up my dry cleaning ticket and went back out again to pick up the clothes I left for cleaning on Thursday, but they hadn't returned to the shop yet.  The guy there said they should have them on Monday.  Unfortunately, that means I have no clean pants for work on Monday, because I gave two of the three pairs for cleaning and I have the remaining pair, but I wore them all week and then walking around yesterday and today, so they're definitely not even remotely clean...

The first steak I've cooked
in at least ten years...

Back in the apartment I took a nice shower to wash off, then cooked up the steak for dinner...  Not bad, the first steak I've cooked in like ten years or so.  I enjoyed it immensely.  Of course, for plates all I have are the paper plates a previous occupant left in the apartment, and the juice from the steak soaked through that quickly and I had to clean the counter up...

Now I'm just relaxing...  It's 9:40pm.  I'll probably go to sleep pretty soon, or maybe I'll watch The Empire Strikes Back...  I'm exhausted and I still want to shop for some speakers for the computer tomorrow so I can have decent sounding music in here...

Shopping for Home Items

Well, today was a busy day, and not a whole lot got done...

I stopped by the apartment with a backpack load of stuff, just to make space in my suitcases for the dirty laundry that's no longer nicely folded and takes more space.  There was a paper from the landlords with a "welcome to the neighborhood," some instructions about the doors and basic information about garbage disposal and stuff, with a bottle of red wine to hold it down.  They'd opened the windows last night as well, so there was fresh air inside the place.

Then I took the subway into Manhattan.  I wrote down the addresses of the four Apple stores in Manhattan (none in Brooklyn) and the one on West 14th Street was the easiest to locate on a map and match up with a subway stop, so I aimed for that first.  A mariachi band got on at one the stations and played some songs while moving up the car and the doors to the next one.  I got off the subway at 14th Street and Union Square, where there was a weekend fair sort of thing going on, people playing music, vendors selling lots of fresh made snacks and things.  Across the street I saw a Bank of America so I popped in to the ATM there to get some extra cash.

Then I headed up the street to look for the Apple store, and went the wrong way.  It took a bit to realize I was going east on East 14th Street, but once I noticed the shop address numbers and matched that with the direction of the sun (still morning, so the sun would be south with a bit of east) I realized it and turned around.  It looks like 5th Avenue divides east from west on the streets.

Unfortunately, west of 5th Avenue the blocks were gigantic, so even though I only had to go four of them, it was quite a long walk.  The Apple store's sign was sort artsy, and in the bright sunlight and a little dazzled and tired, I kind of missed it and walked an extra block too far.

Once I realized that I turned around and went in.  I asked at the entrance for iPhones and the workers sent me up to the second floor (first floor by Indian counting) where Gemma asked if I needed help.  I told her I wanted an iPhone and she went over the plans and all that.  She was quite helpful and fascinated that I'd just come back from India.

Towards the end, she had to call AT&T to activate the account, and they asked her to put me on the phone, which was something she'd never experienced in selling iPhones.  The AT&T woman said she would ask me a few multiple choice questions and I should give the best answer.  First was which mortgage lender held the mortgage to my property, and I said "I don't have a mortgage".  Then she asked something else about another financial loan and I said "I don't have a loan," and Gemma looked pretty puzzled about the half of the conversation she heard.  I thought for sure they'd looked up the wrong Kevin Rubin in some database.  Finally, the last question was "in what state was your social security number issued?" and I said "New Jersey" and the AT&T woman said "congratulations, you've answered all the questions correctly."  So, instead of mistaken about me, they were trick questions to verify I was me and not someone else pretending to be me.  Gemma speculated that having been out of the country the credit report AT&T had on me to activate it was probably too empty, since I wasn't paying bills or anything in the U.S. for longer than 7 years, so they wanted some extra verification.

So, I got the iPhone 4.  It seems pretty cool so far.  The screen is very, very sharp.

After leaving the Apple store I had a long walk back to the subway station at Union Square.  I stopped in at a Red Mango shop for a green tea frozen yogurt that was pretty tasty.  I stopped there for a while and wrote in my journal a bit.  While I was doing that I faced out the window to watch traffic go by.  At one point a black Lamborghini sports car stopped in traffic, and five or six people all whipped out their cameras to take photos of it, including a guy on a motorcycle who took one next to it, then backed his motorcycle up to get more shots from different angles.  Then the light turned green and they all left...

From there I went back to the apartment (the other night I was talking to the realtor about not having any recent rent payment receipts or check stubs because "we own our flat in India" and she said she liked how I called it a "flat" it sounded really fancy and foreign, and she said she had an English friend who told her not to refer to her flat in London as an apartment or people will think she's extremely posh).  I used the phone to call my parents.  I'm not clear if it's just a bad signal in the apartment from AT&T or if I had the iPhone antenna problem, but they could only hear me if I stood in one part of the apartment, and the call got dropped twice...  Not a good start...

It was also kind of loud...  Yesterday I'd noticed the signs posted on the street about no parking on Saturdays.  Today the street was blocked off at both ends with police barricades and a whole block party was in action.  Many, many families out, kids playing all kinds of games in the street, one family had their stereo outside, pumping out Mexican tunes, and a huge barbecue going on in front of that one.

Once I got off the phone with them I headed up to a nearby grocery store.  It was small, without a huge selection in most departments, but had many of the basics I wanted, like Cheerios, some yogurts and Silk chocolate soy milk.  I bought paper towels, soap, shampoo, 409 spray cleanser and dish soap.  Someone left paper plates and plastic knives and forks in the kitchen already, so they were less urgent.  I dropped those things back at the apartment and went out again.

This time I wanted to find several items:

• pot
• pan
• coffee mug
• pillow
• sheet
• blanket

And those things are hard to find there.  I checked in a lot of stores but none of them had any of those.  Up and down, no one had those.  Some people were selling stainless steel pots and water filters on the street and I asked one of them.  At first she said "they're stainless steel.  You do know what stainless steel is?" and I said "yeah, I know what they are, I'm more concerned with can I buy it now and take it home?"  She went on to explain that the water filter "holds 50,000 gallons of water" and I stopped her to clarify that it doesn't hold 50,000 but will filter 50,000 gallons before it needs replacement and she agreed to that change.  Unfortunately, they only had demo models, and would ship the real ones to people who buy them, so I told her that wasn't really the time frame I was looking for, thanked her and kept walking.

Eventually I decided to call it quits for the afternoon, stopped and got some pizza slices and went back to the apartment to pick up my backpack and head to the hotel again.

The R train to Atlantic-Pacific was easy, but this weekend the 3 train isn't running at all, and its routes are being serviced by the 4 train, but that meant the 4 train came on a different platform than usual, so I waited on the wrong one until I saw one, but didn't make it down the steps and under the tracks fast enough to catch it and had to wait for the next.  And it was hot down there, like an oven.

I got off the train one stop earlier and took some time to find my office so I'll be ready for Monday.  I know where it is now...

So, I'm back at the hotel.  I had a good shower after being so hot and sweaty and I don't think I'll be up late tonight.  I'm tired and I need an early start tomorrow.  For those missing items I think I know where there's a Target that'll have all of them, right near the Atlantic-Pacific subway station so I can check that out.  It's just one train from my apartment so I can do that after I check out of the hotel and get my suitcases into the apartment (that's going to be a bit of a challenge, they're heavy and it's a steep, narrow stair case, but I can take them one at a time into the building, then one at a time up the stairs).

iPad - What's in a name?

I recently read a friend's blog post in which he found the "shape" used in a number of hoardings around the city to be "offensive". And bearing that shape in mind, it got me to thinking about the early issue of the iPad's name.

I read a few things at the time of the iPad's announcement in which people compared the name to the simple short form "pad" for a something completely unrelated, and why the iPad was likened to that, while things such as notepads weren't.

What I think it comes down to is something like a notepad has a significant first part, note, and when we think of that, it's "note" that has more prominence in our minds than "pad" so it's a pad for taking notes. Similar with a legal pad. The "pad" part is less important what type of pad it is, and "pad" simply completes the name.

A launchpad is focused more on the launch than it is on the pad. It's a place to launch something, rather than a pad being launched.

But when it comes to the iPad, the "i" simply isn't significant enough, it's not a word or a concept in its own right. While there's "I" for ourselves, we know that's not what that "i" is, so it doesn't stand alone, basically leaving just a pad.

Total Recall of the Future

I recently watched the movie, Total Recall again for the first time in eight or nine years. I've enjoyed that movie since the first time I saw it at the theatre near the college campus. But this time I was struck most by some of the director, Paul Verhoeven's 1990 vision of the future.

What made me think to watch the movie with this in mind is the London Underground from my last few trips to the U.K. In Total Recall there's video advertisements all over the subway station, with monitors and video instead of the old paper advertisements. The same things were alongside the escalators in some of the London Underground stations. Many of the real ones were timed so that as you move up or down, each monitor you pass is just a little farther in the advertisement than the previous one.

Near the beginning Arnold Schwarzenegger as Doug, and Sharon Stone as Lori, have breakfast in front a wall that's a TV. Doug keeps turning it to a news channel to find out what's happening on Mars and Lori keeps changing it back to a pastoral scene of a lake in the mountains. While science-fiction back then is a reality now (though maybe not cheap).

Throughout the movie the characters all talk to each other via video phones. While most of our stand-alone telephone units don't have video yet, we're on our way there. At work we have video conference units that are kind of similar, and for my recent job search I used Skype with video sharing.

Then in the movie there's the scene with Lori practising her tennis swing, following along with the hologram. There isn't much detail there, but somehow that makes me think of the Nintendo Wii. I've seen photos and read descriptions of the Wii, but haven't actually seen one yet. But it looks like fun with its controller that you wave around to control the games.

At one point when Doug checks into the Hilton on Mars the clerk says there's something of his in the vault. Both of them put their thumbs on a small scanner and the drawer opens. I don't know if they had biometric stuff like that in the 80's, but now in 2010 I get into the office door using a thumb scanner.

Of course, some of the futuristic stuff is kind of corny. The cars in particular look silly and look like a cheap shell put on top of a real car. The guns the agency operatives use look silly, too.

War Game Potential on Microsoft Surface

In a Skype based interview the other night, the interviewer wanted a quick idea of how I'd go about solving a problem so he asked me to begin designing a Monopoly game, asking what entities I'd make, what functions on some of them, etc.

For the Player object I said we'd need a rollDice() method.

But then I got to thinking about dice games. I've played a lot in the past and was a keen war gamer in high school, and the physical act of rolling the dice was definitely part of the fun. Even knowing that it won't really affect the randomness, there's still an aspect of blowing on the dice, talking to them, "oh yeah, c'mon 6, 6, c'mon!" and trying to throw them with a different wrist movement because you know you want a different result than the previous roll...

But with war games on computers, it's not as much fun to simply click a "roll" button on the screen. Even if the program makes a noise like dice banging together and shows the roll results like a pair of dice, it's just not the same.

So, then I realized, computerizing dice games would be great on Microsoft Surface. The game, board, pieces, etc. could be in the software, but with its cameras under the surface, you could do the physical rolling of the dice on top and it could determine what you rolled. This would work because nearly all six sided dice are standard with opposite paired faces:

1 : 6

2 : 5

3 : 4

That way, the cameras in Surface could read the the side that faces down and as long as you're not using weird, hand-made or nonstandard dice, it would know what came up on top.

As for the cardboard counters, sometimes they're fun to move, but not as much as hand rolling the dice, that's where the real action is. With Surface able to detect where you're pointing, having the counters computerized would still be fun because you'd still be able to use your finger to move them around between hexes. The computer, too, would be able to validate the moves and make sure you're not moving them too far or into the wrong hexes (my friends and I were friendly players and didn't cheat that way, but that isn't to say we never made honest mistakes).

Of course, a quick Google search turns up I'm not the first person who thought of it, either... Most of those hits are for Dungeons & Dragons games, but the same applies. And so this would work pretty well, too for things like my father's favorite game, backgammon and what-not.

I Pad, You Pad, We All Pad for iPad?

All last year, Leena kept asking "what you want for your birthday?" and I kept saying "I don't know" or "no idea" even as my birthday flew past in August. She kept asking me, a few times a week, often prefacing it with "I won't ask again, you'll tell me when you know," as August flew past, September, October, November and December.

Finally in January Apple announced the iPad and I said "I know what I want!" and she thought it was totally cool, too, and the perfect thing to get me for my birthday.

In February some of her Canadian relatives visited and she gave them the cash to buy the iPad when it's released in Canada or they make a trip to the U.S. and can get it there. There's a a friend of Leena's family who travels regularly between India and Canada and said that since his luggage is rarely full he'd be happy to carry it.

March came and went, the iPad released. Then April... Finally in May Leena's aunt said they'd ordered it and expected it to arrive at their house by the end of the month. In the meantime my mother bought an iPad from Cory Comstock, the local Apple dealer in Waldport.

Last week, Leena's aunt apologized for not getting hold of the traveling friend, but they'd been busy in Toronto with other things going on. The traveling friend's phone number isn't reachable to ask what's up. The aunt said she'll try to track him down.

Now it's the middle of June, no iPad yet. I keep seeing my colleagues in Europe mention on Yammer they've got them. None of them are saying they don't like it... The latest comment is making me even more anxious to get it. The conversation goes a little like this:

New iPad owner: Internet on iPad IS different!

Sarcastic response: Different like this: http://bit.ly/aahsvW ;-)

New iPad owner: Nope, not in that sense (i have flash and ad blockers on all my browsers), internet on iPad becomes closer to you, even the same web based Yammer feels different

Future iPad customer: sound like a touchy-feely sort of thing, which is exactly the kind of "experience" Apple was aiming at. It changes everything when you actually "touch" the web with your fingers. Interesting.

Ooooh, I want one even more now that I'm reading things like this.

I'm not too worried about the missing Flash stuff, since I almost always leave pages if it looks like there's going to be Flash on them anyway, too much time for too little value (well, except for the Flash application I work on developing at work).

Maybe within a few weeks?

Just the Fax

As part of the job hunt I recently had to print, sign and scan a document to either fax or email back to the potential employer. The woman who owns Pica Type, a computer dealer we're friendly with said "no problem" that she would be happy to do it for me.

But she also gave Leena a brochure of HP printers and scanners and things with a recommendation that if we want one, a low-end Deskjet with printing, scanning, faxing and copying would suit our home needs. It probably will, although we'd have to jump through some nasty hoops to get ISD in order to send faxes out-of-station...

But it got me remembering my first job at Maynard Rigby and Associates, back in 1992-1993. As the junior member, I was given responsibility for all the faxing the company did. The boss, to save money, didn't buy a fax machine. It was a spare computer with a scanner, modem and fax software. And a pain in the arse...

In order to send a fax I had to:

1. Print the document the sender gave me.
2. Scan each page, one-by-one, plus a handwritten cover sheet.
3. Convert each page, one-by-one from the scan software's format to the fax software's format using some utility that only did one document at a time.
4. Rename each page's file to the fax software's naming convention.
5. Create a fax job in the fax program, specifying the base filename of the set of image files.
6. Get everyone to not use that phone line.
7. Hit a "fax" button in the fax software.
8. Repeat steps 6 & 7 until the blasted thing was successful.

Very inefficient. Then again, as the most junior, cheapest and most technically skilled person in the office, it was less inefficient for me to do it than anyone else.

At my second job we had a real fax machine, the first one I ever used and what a complete luxury that was!

Fire Alarms and Broken Teeth

Thursday around noon there was a fire drill. First the siren started blaring, then some guy got on the office loudspeaker and sounded like he was panicking, "there is an emergency, leave the building, this is not a drill, this is a real emergency, you must leave the building immediately.".

Then the members of the Emergency Response Team (ERT) started running all over in their fluorescent orange hats to get everyone out and to unlock the padlocks on the emergency exits (naturally, this is India, they're padlocked for security…). The exit for my part of the office is the central stairwell behind the elevators, so I went that way where around 500 people from both wings of the office had to merge through the door that's only barely wide enough for two people at once and eight floors down the stairs that are such polished smooth stone, covered in dust and having hardly more friction than ice, so no one can very fast and safe down them, all while people on other floors, uninvolved in our drill were working their way upwards…

Outside it was high noon without a cloud in the sky and they kept us at the assembly point for around 20 minutes. Whoever the guy was who was in charge of the drill he had a bullhorn and berated us for the whole time about how slow and how bad we were exiting the building. He said we took eight minutes, and in a real emergency anyone not out in two would be dead. Then he asked us to look for the person who sits to our right, and the person who sits to our left and if we didn't see both of them to let a member of the ERT know.

He said "I watched you come out, many of you were on your mobile phones coming down the stairs, if this was a real fire and you slowed down to talk on your phones the only thing you should've been telling your friends is good bye".

And he said "I don't see any coffee cups this year" followed by a number of people raising theirs, to which he said "how can you bring your coffee cups? If you slow down in a fire to bring your coffee cups you'll never need your coffee again, you'll be dead!"

He started yelling about ladies not taking off their high heeled shoes and slowing the whole group down on the steps, and then somehow segued into something about motorcycle helmets and car seatbelts, which I didn't quite understand.

When we were finally finished then we had to get all the people back up to the 8th floor… After twenty minutes in the hot sunshine, with no shade at all, I started getting a pounding migraine so I didn't think the stairs would be an option, or it would just much, much worse. A friend and I waited at the elevator bank till five or six elevators came and went before the one we stood next to finally opened and we got in.

Then being hot, tired and with a headache it took a while before I could get back on track with my work. I'd sort of begun a major refactoring Thursday before the fire drill with a lot of details to remember, only to come in Friday morning to realize all the details that slipped my mind due to the interruption.

For some reason it reminded me of an incident at at my last company, First Insight at our Hillsboro, Oregon office. In September 1999 there was a lot of tension as the then main network administrator was on his way out, with me the next in line for the responsibilities. The owners of the company said "there's been a security breach" so they were getting rid of the network admin. The network admin said they paid him a lot of money to leave and not say anything, but he hinted that if I knew what he knew about the owners I'd be able to blackmail them very well, too... I never found out what it was, of course and I have only speculation with no proof of anything.

That aside, on one of the admin's last days, shortly after I left the office around 3pm (6am to 3pm shift...) there was a fire alarm. A little while after I got home the boss called me and asked if he could bring the company's file server to my house because it's been damaged and he suspected the network admin, who wasn't fully out of the company then, had done it so he didn't trust him.

He brought the computer to my apartment where I set it up on the pool table. I got an explanation of what happened...

Intel was preparing the office below us for one of their groups to move in, and the construction workers drilled, with the dust setting off the smoke detectors. With a potential fire, not a drill, the boss asked several of the guys in the office to take the file server out to his car to keep it safe. However, several of the guys, and the big dent on the server's case, say that they accidentally dropped it in the parking lot.

When it was determined that there was no fire, just dust, and the building was clear for everyone to go back in, they brought the server up, but it wouldn't boot anymore. That was when the boss called me up and brought the computer over. I did a quick check and it wasn't going to be a quick, instant fix, and I estimated it would take me hours to get it going again.

Later in the evening another coworker popped by to help. For a snack we brought out the bag of Laxminarayan chiwda that I'd picked up in India on a vacation earlier in the year. We worked on the computer, speculated on the "security breach" and munched on the snacks.

Until I was chewing and chewing and found a much harder piece of chiwda than all the others. I mentioned it to him and then spit out a small, black rock. To this day two molars on the left side of my mouth, an upper and a lower one, are chipped, with the chips in the two lined up from chewing the rock I didn't expect in my food...

Macintosh Hardware Problems

Over the past few years I've had not one, but two, Macintosh laptops lose their LCD displays here in the home office during the hot, summer months. I don't know why, I sort of suspect a combination of heat and dust (I mean, just look on the wall above the lights and fan regulators, there's scorch marks all over). Both of these two laptops have the same hinge type, whereas the oldest PowerBook, with a different type of hinge has been fine...

The very last day of the 1 year warranty on the almost-new MacBook I managed to buy an AppleCare extended warranty, with the intention of getting it fixed in the U.S. sometime later this year or next year.

However, in December Leena found out about a Apple dealer near her family's house, PT for short. I knew it was there for several years, in the small office building on the same side street as her family, in fact, one of my close friends from my previous job said he used to work at an office in the same building and take his smoke breaks on a park bench across the street from my in-laws' house (that was before we ever met).

When the first Mac screen broke a couple of years ago (I joke that it was caused by my playing Diablo II, roaming through a mountain top castle as a Druid and raining flaming meteors down on demons when one of them bounced out of the game) I suggested we take it for repair to PT, but Leena said no way. She said PT owed her family money for years and never paid it, so we couldn't go there. At the time we found another, new Apple dealer in a new shopping mall in Kalyani Nagar and the price of fixing the broken screen was way too high so we bought a 20" external monitor instead (that I'm looking at now, as I type this).

But then earlier this year Leena again noticed PT and said we should take the newest broken Mac there. I mentioned the story she told a couple of years ago and she checked with her brother. She says she was mistaken about the incident and her brother says PT is a perfectly respectable business... She remembers her brother was going to buy their family business a new computer, from PT, some years ago and she would get the old one for herself. Her mistake is she only remember not getting her own computer and always blamed it on PT, when actually it was her brother who decided they didn't really need a new one and canceled the purchase...

We took the 13" MacBook to PT and the woman who owns it, Rajan, had their technician do a quick check to make sure that it was obviously damaged, like throwing something at it, and they determined that the broken screen was fully covered by the AppleCare extended warranty I'd purchased. They said they needed a week to order the part and then we could bring it in for replacement.

That went smooth and we decided to have them look at the 17" PowerBook with the broken screen that was not under any warranty (I bought it in 2005). She said it would be Rs. 42,000 to replace the screen, but then a little more checking and she said there was some kind of replacement where they would purchase the old, damaged screen for Rs. 17,000 and we'd only pay Rs. 25,000 for the replacement.

At that price we agreed to get it fixed, so Leena could have the 17" PowerBook for her own usage. Rajan ordered the part and about two weeks later we brought it to them for replacement. And that went fine.

I spent a weekend moving Leena's data from the older 15" titanium PowerBook to the newly repaired 17" one and got it ready to synch with Leena's iPhone without losing any contacts or videos.

Then after she used it for a day or two she asked me to get the sound working. Sound working? I looked and neither of the speakers worked on it. I tried various songs and videos and they were all silent. I verified that headphones worked, but the speakers were broken.

We called Rajan who asked her technician who said he didn't touch the speakers when he replaced the screen, they must've been broken before we brought it to them. I wasn't sure, but I hadn't used it in long enough to really be sure when the last time I heard sound from them was, maybe a year earlier? Rajan checked the price and it was only Rs. 1,000 to replace the speakers and we figured since we already spent a huge chunk of change on the screen, what was another Rs. 1,000 to get the sound fixed for Leena, so we agreed to that...

All went well again, the speakers got replace and we popped over to PT's shop to check it out. I played a QuickTime version of Apple's 1984 Superbowl advertisement for the Macintosh and Rajan liked it so much that she asked one of their techs to copy it to a USB thumb drive for them. They tried a couple of thumb drives but they were both bad and didn't work, so we said we'd bring it by another time for her to copy when they got a working drive, as we were late for lunch with Leena's family.

The next night we set the computer up for Leena to browse the web and she complained that she couldn't get the Bluetooth mouse to work, which had worked only two days earlier. I came and looked and there was no Bluetooth icon in the menu bar. I checked the System Preferences and Bluetooth wasn't listed there at all. I searched the System Preferences and it found Bluetooth items but choosing any of them and it warned me that there was no Bluetooth hardware attached. That's very odd, since Bluetooth is completely build in and is not removable.

Leena called Rajan who said she'd check with the technician who told her he didn't change any Bluetooth settings when he replaced the speakers so it had to be that way before we brought it. We knew it wasn't and Rajan said to bring it in the next day, then she left the office for home, since it was late in the evening.

In the meantime I figured I'd hook up a USB mouse for Leena, except when I did that, none of them worked. The red LED didn't light up in the mice and the computer didn't recognize them. I hooked up an iPhone and a USB thumb drive, and no luck, none of them worked.

Friday we took the computer back to PT for the technician to look at. By the end of the day Saturday he still didn't have it working. They got one of the two USB ports to work, but couldn't get the Bluetooth interface working unless the keyboard was lifted off the computer, or held down very hard. Sounds to me like he may have bent the motherboard while replacing the speakers and broken one of the contacts inside it or something...

We're not sure what they'll do now. It's long, long out of warranty, so we don't have any coverage there for it. I'm hoping they'll get a new logic board from somewhere and reuse the CPU that's in it. At their expense, of course, not ours...

We'll see...

Made for India?

One of the problems we have over and over is with a couple of CD players manufactured by big, reputable companies and sold here in India. Clearly they intended them for India since they came directly from the manufacturers, sealed in the boxes with Indian power cords.

But what we've found is that simply having an Indian power cord does not make the component actually made for India.

The first one we got was a Sony 3 disc CD changer system. Which is okay, but the big problem is that if the power ever goes out while it's in the process of switching discs then it jams and has to be taken to the repair shop to get unjammed. While this sort of thing might be fine in another country where the power goes out once or twice a year, usually in the middle of the night when it's less likely to be used, here in India where the power goes out multiple times a day, this is clearly not made for India.

The other one is a Bose tabletop CD player. Again, we bought it from the Bose dealer in Mumbai. It's big problem is that the slot loader jams with almost every Indian manufactured CD we put in it. Whether it jams when try to put it in, taking a little extra force, or we have to use a knife to try and pry them out when we're done, almost every CD manufactured in India gives us problems (of course, the general quality of goods manufactured in India is a topic for another rant). Sure, the problem is that the Indian CDs themselves feel slightly lighter, or often slightly off-center and often have somewhat ragged edges, but if a CD player can't handle them, it is clearly not made for India.

But if a product is made for India, it should be designed with these sorts of factors in mind. The manufacturers should test with Indian conditions and Indian products.

Wait. Wait. Wait... Did you see it? Did you blink?

My wife has a Plantronics Bluetooth headset and I just saw it charging on the floor and was reminded of how bad the UI for charging is.

The way it works is you plug it in, and while it's charging the red LED will flash on for a moment about once every 15-20 seconds. Not much longer than the blink of an eye. When it's done charging, it no longer flashes on.

What's really wrong with this is that in order to tell if it's charging or not, you can't just glance at it and see, you have to watch it. And even if you feel like you waited enough for the flashing light, maybe you blinked and missed it, so you have to wait longer.

A better UI would be to simply show the light while it's charging. Of course that has the downside that maybe if the light doesn't show it means it's not plugged in, or the switch is off.

Even better is it could flash more rapidly while it's charging and then stay on steady when it's finished. That way you can easily tell. Or two colours, one for charging and one for charged.

The way it is now stinks.