Andrew Busey: My Musings

I can’t tell you how much I want to buy an Alienware. Their cases look amazing, they have acoustic dampening (which may or may not be a scam like undercoating, but I want quiet), and they are usually on the cutting edge.

I’ve been planning to buy a really high-end desktop for quite some time now. I cannot figure out why Alienware doesn’t have a reasoanble configuration. So I asked them about adding another video card (for SLI) to an Alienware ALX (which supports SLI, but they don’t offer the new nVidia 9800gt2 or 9800gtx cards in an SLI configuration). I figured I’d just buy a second card (but it needs to match) and pop it in. This would also require an SLI bridge which normally comes with the motherboard, but I don’t know if they ship it. So this is the answer I got:

John L.: Hi, my name is John L.. How may I help you?
andrew busey: i want to buy a new alienware, but i want 9800gtx or 9800gt2 in SLI - can I add my own to the new A-51?
andrew busey: and if so will the SLI bridge ship with the computer and which 9800gt2 card do you guys use so I can get another one
andrew busey: or will you be offering it soon
John L.: As to whether we will offer it soon, I am unable to say as that information is not given ahead of time. Also adding it yourself would void the warranty.
andrew busey: adding a video card voids my warranty?
andrew busey: does that mean upgrading my video card voids my warranty?
John L.: Yes adding it on by yourself would. If you wish to upgrade it you would need to contact our tech support department for them to do it.

These guys are selling to the high-end, enthusiast market. This audience upgrades stuff in their PCs frequently. I’m pretty sure most of them don’t know it voids their warranty. If they did they probably wouldn’t buy Alienwares. Personally I’m guessing the CSR was just clueless, but I’m going to call and find out.

In the meantime, Alienware:

• Please add an 9800gtx or 9800gt2 SLI option!
• Please add an SSD option on the ALX. You have it on the ALX Crossfire - but frankly I’m not fond of ATI.

They also couldn’t answer questions about overclocking either. Very disappointing. Oh well.

Anyone that wants to recommend high-end PC makers that make quiet, very fast computers please post in the comments. Some of the guys I’ve looked at use these really obnoxious or cheesy cases, which sucks… but I’m running out of choices and I don’t really want to build it myself.

One last plea to Alienware: I want to give you guys my money. A lot of it. Please offer cutting edge configurations.

/rant

UPDATE: Please also read Alienware Redux.

Democrats	Republicans	Me
Socialist Leaning	Free Market Capitalism	R
Big Government	Small Govermnent	R
Big Spending	Fiscal Conservatism	R
Socially Liberal	Socially Conservative	D
Secular	Religious messages	D

The high-level positions are broad and represent the traditional positions. They are changing - for example the Republicans aren’t doing a particularly good job on the small goverment and fiscal conservatism fronts right now. And the democrats are starting to pander to the religious crowd.

Where-oh-where is a good party:

• Understands and supports capitalism and free markets.
• Keeps a leash on government spending.
• Keeps the government small - bureaucracies are never effective.
• Let’s people basically do what they want as long as it doesn’t hurt anyone else.
• Doesn’t push a religious agenda down people’s throats. (Yeah, like an abstinence policy is ever going to accomplish anything.)
• Never mentions religion.

The biggest thing for me is:

PERSONAL RESONSIBILITY

If someone messes it up - it’s their fault. Don’t bail them out, let them take their lumps and grow and move on. And for the love of god get rid of the tons of lawyers out there suing our soceity into oblivion. If someone spills hot coffee on themselves - it’s not McDonald’s fault, it’s the persons fault. This type of crap is just getting out of hand.

That’s probably the biggest reason why I lean toward Obama. He at least acknowledges the personal responsibility issue. And he did it at the one rally I attended. Anyway, I think this is possibly the single biggest issue facing the future of our country. If people don’t take responsibility for their actions then we’re screwed. We will become a soceity afraid to take risks, afraid to go outside, and afraid to interact - all while looking over our shoulders waiting to see if we are about to get sued.

/rant

Let me be upfront: I’m not particularly excited about any of our choices this year. Although I think they might be less appalling than the last one… but I’m not entirely sold on that yet.

Anyway this is a quote from Hillary (Clinton looks to stop Obama in aftermath of 10 losses):

“We need to make a choice between speeches and solutions, because while words matter greatly, the best words in the world aren’t enough unless you match them with action.”

And this choice (ah the irony) sound bite:

“It is time to get real,” Clinton said, “to get real about how we actually win this election… It is time to move from good words to good works — from sound bites to sound solutions.”

WTF. She was a First Lady and a junior senator. Full time, permanent politician. What has she ever done? (BTW, I’m not suggesting some of the other candidates have done anything more, but given the crap she is spouting is silly in that context.) I just want to puke everytime I read these speeches. They are so full of shit that it is unbelievable. I wonder if they actually believe the crap that comes out of their mouths.

Like “Hilary the Christian” and “Hilary the Woman of Action”…. I’ll add “Hilary the Plastic Doll”. Anyway, I just find all this stuff both very hypocritical and very fake.

Brief digression: it also pisses me off that these senators get to run around and IGNORE their real job - ie: miss votes - to run for president. If you want to run for president you should have to resign from Congress - make it mean something. If you cared about the people who elected you to that position you’d do that and let them get the representation they deserve.

I’m not sure about Obama and McCain is a bit of a wildcard, but at least they’re both passionate and mostly real (I’m not sure there is such a thing as a “real” presidential candidate). So I hope we get one of them. Or better yet maybe Bloomberg will run - he’s the only candidate I think I could really get excited about.

However, I think I might to go to an Obama function tomorrow - maybe even get a chance to meet him. It will be my first ever donation to a Democratic candidate, but I think it’s worth taking a look.

/rant

Sigh.  I wish stuff would just mostly work.  Is that too much to ask?

So in an ironic twist, which I’ll devote a post to later, I’m trying to activate my WWAN card in my new Dell XPS M1330 on the AT&T network.  The short version of the ironic twist is that Apple forced me onto the AT&T network - against my wishes.  I had previously sworn off given these asshats another dime.  But alas, the iphone forced me back.  I rationalized it by saying I was paying Apple, not AT&T.  And Apple did a reasonable job making AT&T not suck. 

Dell, however, failed at making AT&T note suck.  So after activating on Dell’s site - well at least I thought I did - my WWAN card didn’t work.  So I ended up at some new activation screen.  Which told me to enter exactly the same stuff as my other AT&T account…. after it refused to accept my AT&T login / password.  Great.  The whole point of getting AT&T was to not have yet another stupid account floating around.  But no, they can’t even make it easy for an existing customer.

And they charged me a $40 activation fee.  WHAT THE FUCK.  They are supposed to be given me a fucking rebate for crying out load.  But I’m to tired to argue.  Maybe I’ll take it out of them in a screaming customer service call later, god knows they deserve it and it might make me feel good although it is unlikely to accomplish anything.

So now my stupid WWAN card is polling the network telling me 2 days until activation.  What fucking planet do these guys live on?  I have an activate (never late, never missed a payment) AT&T account.  They know the IMEI and other crap for my card.  Why the hell can’t an automated system just turn it on? 

Well wow.  I feel a little better venting on this.  AT&T sucks and the second I can get the gadgets I want on any other network I’ll be gone.  They’ve consistently delivered the most unbelievably stupid activations and a horrible consumer experience.   It’s a good thing they are monopoly and can bribe Apple or I’d never use them.  Ever.  I kind of regret not setting up a seperate data plan with Verizon or ANYONE else.  Woops.  Don’t worry AT&T, it won’t happen again.

A company your size and scale has no excuse for craptacular service like this.  It’s sad and disappointing.  I’m so lucking forward to using your network in 1 day and 22 hours.  Those are some fast computers you got there.

/rant

This time it’s Verizon. 

Anyone after Novermber 2006 - either a new customer or someone who changed their contract - has “variable early termination” which means they get prorated.  If you’ve been a customer longer or haven’t modified your server since before that date you are screwed.

I love that.  Been a customer longer?  Screw you.  Brilliant.  These guys are even worse than AT&T.

If they had just given me a pro-rated early termination I probably wouldn’t have a) said anything b) done anything.  But now I’m pissed so I’m going to extract it from them one way or another.

The thing that really pisses me off is that for the last several months my Q phone has been dying on me.  Usually late in the afternoon or the early evening.  (After being charged up all night.)  I’m not sure whether this is caused by a faulty battery (I’ve had for maybe eight months - my previous one was stolen and I paid full price for this one.) or if it is bad service.  In my downtown Austin home I typically only got one bar so I suspect it might have been ratcheting up power for reception and thus draining the battery, but I don’t really know.  All I know is I got a lot of dropped calls and my phone just turned off on a regular basis.

 I have 5 bars on AT&T in the same place where I have never had more than 2 on Verizon.

I’ve now requested a copy of my contract, this will be interesting.

I knew this going into it.  I wish Apple had picked T-Mobile or someone who actually gives a shit about their customers. 

Great experience:

• Wait in line for six hours.
• Get iPhone.
• Woot.
• Go home.
• “Activate” on iTunes.  (Which presumably was done to take people out of the equation and make it faster.)
• Get through activation.
• Get e-mail - “it will take 24 hours to transfer your number”
• Get another e-mail cannot activate.
• Call AT&T - “WTF?”
• “It takes time to transfer a number.”
• “No it doesn’t, last time I did this it took less than 15 minutes.”
• “Oh, it’s the high volume of transfers.”
• (Thought bubble): Bullshit, it’s fucking computers.
• “Oh really?  Well why can’t I just activate my phone while I wait?”
• “You can’t activate it until the tranfer.”
• “Really? That’s not what the FAQ/website say.”
• “Oh, uhm, it can take up to 24 hours.”
• “What if I want a new number?”
• “That takes up to 6 hours.”
• (Thought bubble): WTF?  If I just went into any wireless store on the planet and bought a phone service would be on with a new number INSTANTLY.  Does iPhone somehow make provisioning harder?
• Click.

WHAT THE FUCK WERE YOU PEOPLE THINKING!  If people are waiting in line to buy your product, you shouldn’t shaft them at the end. 

Really disappointing.

Oh and you can’t use the phone in this state so I can’t even start configuring it or doing anyhting.  VERY NICE.

I swore I would never use AT&T again.  iPhone came out.  Apple forces me to use AT&T.  I get the shaft I knew would come.

 

Windows / MSN / Live (Whatever the branding is today) Messenger is something I use a lot.  Right now I can’t login.  I upgraded to a new version because it implied that might be the issue.  It wasn’t.  The message I am currently getting:

Signing in to Windows Live Messenger failed because the service is temporarily unavailable.   Please try again later.

Error code: 81000314

I got a similar message on the Windows Messenger I had before I upgraded to the Live one.  Anyway, so there is a “Service status” option which takes me to http://status.messenger.msn.com/Status.aspx and it says:

All systems are stable and running.

It even has a nice little check box.

So my quesiton is:  What is the point of having a stauts page if it lies?  Clearly the service is down, how could the status page not now?

BTW, Microsoft isn’t the only one that is at fault for this.  Blizzard’s World of Warcraft Realm Status pages routinely say things are up when they are down.

My plea:

If you are going to have a status page for your service:  TELL THE TRUTH - I mean, we are already using your service and we care enough about it to check the status page.  At least tell us the truth about what is going on.  K THX.

/rant

 Article from News.com:   Net taxes could arrive by this fall

Yikes.  It’s here again - net tax debates.  The U.S. operates under a federalist system and has a long history of protecting states rights on all sorts of fronts.  However, this model is clearly showing signs of wear and if anything is going to break it, my bet (I wish I could bet) is on the Internet being the cause.  

The guy who thinks the Internet is made of pipes, Alaskan Senator Ted Stevens said he would like:

“to see an impregnable ban on taxes on the Internet.”

Wow!  Well Ted and I finally agree on something relating to the Intarweb… I mean Internet.   I say:  DON’T TAX THE PIPES… or anything flowing through them.

Here is why Internet taxes are bad:

1. They are a huge burden on entrepreneurs.  Some states (like California) are pretty obnoxious about “nexus” which determines if you owe taxes to them or not.  It’s hard to keep track of and easily activated (like a sales person in California…. or possibly even one that visits a lot).  Anyway, collecting sales taxes is an incredible burden and just creates jobs for accountants and a requirement that entrepreneurs buy crap tax accounting software that makes developing cool and interesting applications very difficult.  This whole issue will be more critical as more entrepreneurs develop cool and interesting web businesses.   Whether it’s selling stuff on eBay - a big generator of new small businesses, but when does this qualify for sales taxes? - or a Web 2.0 innovator that has a cool new service that costs a few bucks a month or year for a premium service?  The burden on these business is quite significant.  Amazon and Dell can probably afford the accounting overhead, but not a small business. 
2. If you think state governments are bad, imagine how obnoxious some of these little townships are.  I can’t wait until some backwater town decides to tax the Internet in some stupid way.  You know it will happen.
3. Someone will decide to try tax e-mail or some bullshit like that.  That will be fun.  Let’s have various national, state, county, and city, governments tracking our every Internet activity so they can tax it.  Not to mention the joy someone in that chain will take in knowning what everyone is doing.  I’m sure nothing nefarious could happen…. uhm yeah.

If the bureaucrats who are so effective at wasting all the money we already give them insist on taking more, here are my recommendations:

• Create a national sales tax and redistribute it to the states so at least it will be uniform to collect and pay.  (And if we’re lucky cause a panic and never pass.  Because, just like income tax, once they get their hand in the cookie jar they will never take it out.)
• Only tax companies that do a large amount of business over the Internet.  Like $100mm or more so that the cost of developing systems to manage and pay all these gazillion different taxes (in Texas the sales tax is different in every county…. imagine having to sort that crap out as a small web site.)  

God save us from these jackass like Senator Michael Enzi from Wyoming who wants to mandate taxes on Internet purchases.   I’m glad that the National Governor’s Association is lobbying for this.  BTW, I bet those hypocrites don’t pay the voluntary sales tax now.

The states are collapsing into financial ruin from missing this sales tax so far.  Let them whine some more.  Besides, if they actually get money from some new windfall like this they’ll just waste it anyway.  No, I’m not cynical about government spending.  Not at all.  If only they were run like businesses. 

Oh and while I’m on the subject I love this one: 

“I’ve got to spend this money now or my budget will get reduced next year.”

Way to encourage the right behavior.

/rant

Trainwreck is one of my favorite terms.  You know its horrible and you are appalled that you are watching it, but you can’t look away - that’s a trainwreck.

Paris Hilton is a good example of trainwreck.  I don’t really care about some crazy heiress, but I just can’t look away.  I’m pretty sure that is somehow the case with much of America.

CNN has plasted this article:  Paris Hilton sentenced to 45 days in jail as the home page feature with a big picture for the last six hours or so and I, of course, eventually had to read it.  It made me laugh.  What a broken family.  What delusional lawyers.  Some of the shit these people say is disturbing.  Let me highlight the facts (plucked from the article.

The facts:

• September 7, 2006:  Arrested for reckless driving.  Police report she appeared intoxicated and failed a field sobriety test.  She had 0.08 blood alcohol, which is against the law (to be fair, I think this is on the nose for the level that is illegal…. and she probably has a really high tolerance LOL.)
• January 2007 (no specific date in the article):  She pleads no contest and gets some fines, alcohol education, and 36 months of probation.  It doesn’t say it in the article, but it appears her license was suspended at this time.
• January 15, 2007 (after the no contest):  She is pulled over, informed she is driving on a suspended license, singens some that acknowledging she was not to drive.
• February 27, 2007:  She is pull over again because she is speeding with no headlights on.  (Nice!)
• As of April 17, 2007:  She has not enrolled in the alcohol education program she was required to enroll in as of February 12.
• Today (May 4):  She shows up ten minutes late for her court appearance.

During the hearing (all quotes are from the CNN article):

As a city prosecutor said during closing arguments that Hilton deserved jail time, Hilton’s mother, Kathy, laughed. When the judge ruled, Kathy Hilton then blurted out: “May I have your autograph?”

That cracks me up.   As I’m reading this I’m thinking, “At least her mom knows she’s out of control and needs some sense knocked into her.”  But alas, the indignation of it all:

When a reporter asked what she thought of the judge’s decision, a visibly angry Kathy Hilton responded: “What do you think? This is pathetic and disgusting, a waste of taxpayer money with all this nonsense. This is a joke.”

Yes!  Ms. Hilton it is a joke!  If anyone else had gotten pulled over (for speeding with their lights off) on a suspended license after a DUI.  Oh wait, I mean pulled over twice.  And ignored the court by not going to the required alcohol education and further taunted the court by showing up late….. well I think they would have gotten much worse punishment all around.  Paris is out of control, everyone who reads the news knows it, and now she knows she is not above the law.

But it gets worse.  Her lawyer says:

Defense attorney Howard Weitzman said he would appeal.

“I’m shocked, I’m surprised and really disheartened in the system that I’ve worked in for close to 40 years,” Weitzman said.

He said the sentence was “uncalled for, inappropriate and bordered on the ludicrous.”

Let’s address these one at a time:

• Appeal.  Oh good let’s waste more taxpayer money!  WTF is he appealing on?  “Your honor my client is rich, thinks she can ignore the court, and can throw a lot of money at this.  On those ground’s I would like to appeal.”
• Wow 40 years as a lawyer and this disheartens him?   Maybe he hasn’t seen the chonology of this in bullet format for easy digestion.  WTF is up with this guy, he needs to get a grip or maybe he’s so disheartened he’ll resign.  We can only hope.
• OMG I don’t even know what to say on the last one.  45 days in jail for a reckless driving (DUI), two driving on a suspended license, ignoring court orders, showing up late, etc.  If anyone else had done that they’d be in jail a lot longer.

Oh and to cap it all of he says:

“I think she’s singled out because of who she is,” Weitzman said.

Yeah for special treatment! 

Wow, anyway she needs better lawyers that say things like:  “YOU CAN’T DRIVE UNTIL THE SUSPENSION IS UP!” and sign her up and force her to go the court order alcohol education program.  I mean she’s freaking super rich, how hard is it to get a freaking driver!

Gah.

/rant

This is the kind of crap that goes beyond frivolous lawsuits into something totally different:

Sarcastically, judge tosses KFC trans fat lawsuit

In my opinion, if you bring a stupid lawsuit like this - one so laughable that the judge just tosses it out - here is what should happen:

• You pay all the legal fees of the defendant.
• You are billed by the court for the cost of the courtroom, the judge, the bailiff, and anything else.

This decision would be up to the judge.  We don’t want every failed case to be penalized like this, but for unreasonable crap that wastes the time of the legal system and a lot of taxpayer money there should be a penalty.  Further, not everyone has the money to defend themselves from this kind of bullshit so there should definitely be a path to get your money back if you are a defendent in this type of crap.