This is a late-coming review of something I’ve been using for a couple of months. But first, let me set the stage. A few years ago, I was frustrated with the direction Apple computers seemed to be taking. The iMac line stagnated, and it was expensive, anyway. As my old iMac became more and more […]
A long time ago, I abandoned AT&T for the crimson-tinted waters of Comcast. They offered faster service, and they didn’t directly try to hoist a fraudulent contract on me. However, AT&T came around about a year ago with an offer a nerd can’t resist. Symmetrical, uncapped, 1 Gbps residential fiber-to-the-home. No strings attached. No requirements […]
I like 3D printing. It’s an interesting, if fiddly, hobby. Quite fun as long as you don’t actually need to print anything, because things go wrong All. The. Time. The filament snaps and your printhead goes on, obliviously, for hours. Data communications break down. The hot end that melts the plastic clogs, and no more feed. There’s […]
Yes, I got an Apple Watch. Sorry, Watch. And people want to know. What is it? How is it? Is it any good? Is it worth the money? All reasonable questions. I’ll answer them as best I can. Once again, there’s already way-too-much written about the Watch all over the internet. I’m not going to rehash […]
This comment by a FB friend on my post about leaving AT&T made me think. That wasn’t the first time I heard lies from AT&T reps, especially retention reps. If I have to guess, the basic explanation of why this happens is pretty obvious. (Warning: complete speculation forthcoming). Retention reps are paid to retain customers. […]
I’ve been a pretty happy AT&T customer for many years. They’ve never been the cheapest (some MVNO, as of this writing), they’ve never been famous for their network (Verizon, probably), but for me they worked reliably day after day after day. Billing was arcane, but reasonably predictable. As long as I didn’t have to meddle […]
If you want a formal, professional, detailed review of Apple’s new shiny just head to my favorite tech haunt, Ars Technica. This is a personal account. A long, long time ago my wife dragged me to the Apple Store to check out the new, just released iPhone. On the day it was released. It was […]
I bought a phone! Granted, it’s not the latest and greatest. I even bought it used; it was less than $70 on a certain jungle-themed shopping website. I’ll be doing some international travel soon, and it’s useful to have an unlocked, multi-band GSM smartphone. This fits the bill, and it gives me an opportunity […]
This is the state of my Lync problem as of today. Yes, I changed the background. The rest looks the same. Bounce, bounce, login, crash. I never stopped to think about this before, but if you’re Microsoft, people obviously blame you for everything wrong with their computer. Dodgy hardware crashes Windows? Microsoft sucks! A pirated […]
These last few days I’ve had a few unpleasant run-ins with support for different companies. These were not the result of mean people, but of uncaring and somewhat incompetent companies. Today I’ll be mocking the software titan, Microsoft. I use Microsoft Lync a lot at work. It’s a good IM solution, and used to work […]