Windows Media Player just got moved to the naughy list.

So my wife got one of these little jumpoffs from her Dad for Xmas:

http://www.amazon.com/Philips-Flash-Player-3-5-Inch-Screen/dp/B0016763ES/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&s=electronics&qid=1262098303&sr=1-4

Sweet, right? She has an iPod already, so we agreed that we could just load this little goober up with movies to watch on the treadmill/airplane trips/camel rides across the Kalahari*. So being the good husband I am, I queued up about 8-10 movies on BitTorrent~, let my computer get at the downloads overnight, and got down to the nitty gritty of loading them on to Kat's player the next day. Should be easy, right+?

Wrong. With Windows Vista, nothing's ever easy.

So here's a rundown of the grueling journey^ that was loading the GoGear with movies:
-First, I took all 8 movies, threw them on an external harddrive, and transferred them to my wife's computer (the GoGear software only works on a PC; my computer is a Mac).
-Next, I tried to convert them to the optimal resolution/dimensions/file type for the GoGear using the software that game with the player. FAIL. The software won't convert/recognize .m4v files (which I guess are either too technologically advanced or too iTunes-friendly for Microsoft to bother with it).
-I went back to my computer and used Quicktime to convert the movies to 'self contained movies' aka .mov files. Great, not too bad, but takes about 30 minutes to render them all. Fine. I'm patient.
-30 minutes to kill: take a [CENSORED], fold some clothes, walk my dog, read Atlas Shrugged. Twice.
-After the files had converted, I used the external HD to move them back to wifey's computer.
-EUREKA! The GoGear software can convert these! HOOOORAY!
-Files start converting, estimated time to finish: 30 hours?!?!?!?!?! Ugh.
-3 hours into the conversion, my wife's computer crashed and all the progress was lost. [CENSORED]
-With anger swelling from deep within my loins, I restarted the conversion, got in the car, and drove to Hilton Head for Xmas with the family. When we returned a few days later... FILES ARE DONE! HOOOOOOOOOOORAY!
-So, now just gotta load them to the player using Windows Media Player. This should be easy, but it's not - why? WINDOWS MEDIA PLAYER IS HORRIBLE SOFTWARE! I can't load the movies without WMP trying to load every piece of importable media on the hard drive. After trying to figure out this horrible piece of [CENSORED] software for 20 minutes, I quit and decided to try another avenue. After some searching and 'strategery'...
-JACKPOT! I can open the GoGear as an external disk in My Computer and manage it that way. I delete all the [CENSORED] that WMP threw on the thing, add the movies, and blam-o, nice little movie player for my wife.

The moral of this story?

What can be done in iTunes on a Mac in 30 seconds takes approximately 8 days and 800 headaches to get done in Windows Vista. Also, Windows Media Player is the most unintuitive, least user friendly, and most mind boggling frustrating piece of software ever written.

Windows Vista, I hate you.**


*As I write this, this commercial came on:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oFEio0OCWek&feature=video_response    best. commercial. ever.
~Legal notice: I have never downloaded a pirated movie on BitTorrent; this post does not refer to downloading pirated movies using BitTorrent; I am not a crook.
+I put one of the movies on my iPod Touch via iTunes; it took approximately 30 seconds.
^Grueling journey = big [CENSORED] pain in the [CENSORED].
**So this post wasn't explicitly about my computer, but alas, it's about Vista - the operating system that I can't get rid of because AIMS won't work on Windows 7.

The forum makes me look like a prophet...

Check out this thread from the forum - pretty much makes me look like a prophet of the [CENSORED] computer:

"I have, until now, considered myself lucky to not have had any issues with my tablet. Enter battery FAIL. In 1 day, my computer went from holding a 2 hour charge to not turning on or staying on without being plugged in. The Power Manager says:
"A battery error has occurred. The battery cannot be charged. Replace the battery."
Something tells me I'm not the first one with this issue...does anyone know what might have happened and whether I should expect to pay for a replacement?
Thanks!"


Followed by:

"Same thing happened to me. The computer folks gave me no explanation, apparently it just happens. Which is fun.
You can buy off brand batteries online, but I don't know how well they work.
You can get a new Thinkpad battery at student stores for $90 which is cheaper than they sell them online (or at least that was true a few months ago).
Good luck"


Followed by:


"My battery did the exact same thing the day after Jason's post.
I have questioned the possibility that Lenovo puts a time bomb in the batteries set to go off just past the 1 year warranty date...
After the battery totally gave out, my computer starting pulling up the THinkVantage Rescue and Recovery screen at start up. I tried restoring, but my computer still isn't working correctly.
My internet browsers have all also crashed and will not open. Thus I have no internet access from my computer.
Anyone else have this problem?
I don't understand what kind of IT person thinks a Lenovo is worth anything close to 2 or 3 grand."

I don't want to toot my own horn here, but...

TOOOOOOT TOOT! TOOT! TOOOOOOOT! TOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOT!

Toot.

Money well spent...

Okay guys, I know it's been all quiet on the terrible laptop front, but I have good news to report... My computer hasn't given me any trouble lately. No crashes. No random failure of the fingerprint reader. No unexplained shutdowns followed by popups imploring me to report product meltdowns to the good people at Microsoft*. Hallelujah!

So here's my plan: now that everything is going smoothly, I should cut my losses and sell while I still can. Even if I can get half of what I paid, I could get some sweet stuff, right?

So I paid like $2200 for this beast, so let's say I can get a grand for it... time for a shopping spree!

1. Asus Eee Netbook - $330 which will be pretty nice with the sweeeet 4G WiMax network that we just got in the triangle: http://newsreleases.sprint.com/phoenix.zhtml?c=127149&p=irol-newsArticle_newsroom&ID=1349318&highlight=

2. Playstation 3 - $350 gotta have that Blu Ray; and let's be honest, I'm probably going to need...

3. Madden 2010 - $50

So I'm up to $670, still got $230 to spend... hmmm...

4. Private Reserve Executive Suite - $230 http://www.omahasteaks.com/servlet/OnlineShopping?Dsp=70&PCR=1:Private-Reserve:Private-Reserve-Steak-Combos&PID=&IID=7727&ITMSUF=XE&shoptype=PROMOTION&shopsrc=PRMCategory+Featured+++&RAND=XB9386

So all I have to do now is sell this thing; I paid over two grand... let's see what they're going for...

...

http://cgi.ebay.com/IBM-Lenovo-Thinkpad-T60P-Core-2-Duo-Laptop_W0QQitemZ320463174484QQcmdZViewItemQQptZLaptops_Nov05?hash=item4a9d17fb54

Son of a [CENSORED]!!!!!



*Ladies and gentlemen, the CEO of Microsoft! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8To-6VIJZRE&feature=PlayList&p=C8C29B40CA420773&playnext=1&playnext_from=PL&index=10

Wanted: Your Hatemail

So people have been telling me about their computer problems* and urging me to write about them in my blog. Well people, you're in luck, because if you email me your T61p horror stories, I will post them. I can't guarantee that I'll tell your story verbatim without mocking you slightly, but I can promise that you'll be happier than Tiger Woods in a strip club when I share it with the world (Trevor). I'll even accept hatemail from those of you that bought the tablet, but I can't promise that I'll be sympathetic - why would anybody want to spend $2900 on a piece of [CENSORED] when they only had to pay $2200? Oh that's right, you had to have that little pen that can write on the screen but not on a piece of paper... that's definitely worth the extra $700^.

That said, here's my legitimate post of the day. This guy does what my computer makes me wish I could. Enjoy.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sTJcBHA9bhM

*Since this blog has solidified my reputation as the guy-who-hates-the-CCI-computers-the-most, I am the first person everyone seeks out when their computer screws up.
^Me and Tiger just spent the $700 I saved at the Gold Club over lunch (http://archives.cnn.com/2001/LAW/06/15/gold.club.trial/index.html)...  Their buffet is unbeatable!

Trevor is Numero Uno

I would like to take a moment to thank Trevor for being the first official follower of my blog; now that I am officially followed, I'm heavily leaning towards investigating the "Monetize Blog" tab in the settings. The only problem is that the ads that I could allow to run in the sidebar are by Google - I have to imagine that every time I key in the word Lenovo (even when paired with 'is a piece of [CENSORED]'), Google will try to sell you a laptop. A [CENSORED] laptop. A soul-devouring laptop that has the asthetic appeal of Danny DeVito's Penguin and the shelf life of this guy's new liver+: http://boston.barstoolsports.com/random-thoughts/drunk-has-a-39-alcohol-level-with-donated-liver/

So before I get into my most recent rant (which had to wait until today, because one of the hundred assignments UNCSOM hit us with before break needed to be completed), let's take a moment to profile a randomly chosen follower of this blog:

Trevor graduated from UVA in 200 - wait a second, his Facebook page lists that he too has a blog (http://www.trevorstravels-trevor.blogspot.com/) - a blog about going places that I'm nowhere near cool enough to visit. What's that Trevor, you went to Malawi and dug wells and delivered babies and breast fed the children in the Sally Struthers^ commercials? Are you trying to make me look bad? Did you create this blog because you know the only third world country I've been to is Myrtle Beach?
I wonder if Trevor decided to follow me because he thinks we're some kind of blogspot brothers-in-arms... Maybe he thinks I'm his competition and is just keeping tabs on me...
Hopefully he won't go after me like the Russians went after the President of Ukraine with those sophisticated radioactive KGB poisons that slowly destroy your liver and leave you passed out on a LaCrosse Wisconsin sidewalk at 3 in the afternoon... Check out the before and after:  http://www.smh.com.au/ffximage/2004/12/05/yushchenko3_wideweb__430x287.jpg

Honestly, that guy used to look like George Clooney's chubby insurance salesman/gambling addict half brother; now he just looks like Seal*.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
So here's something I learned yesterday. Our computers have built-in software that detects keystroke capturing software - the kind of bugs the ominous cyber criminals use to steal your passwords and social security number and identity of the most played Taylor Swift song on your iTunes#. I now know we have this software because it started running a diagnostic randomly in the middle of Clin Epi yesterday. I'm cool with it trying to watch my back, but I'm not cool with it making my computer crash IN THE MIDDLE OF A GAME OF CANDY STAND MINI GOLF**!!!!

I was 3-over on the front nine! I was kicking [CENSORED]!

Then...

"Your computer just recovered from an unexpected shutdown."

Whammy.

+My buddy from college (Paul Kenyan) sent me this one; unreal. sad. angering. all of the above.
*Apparently when you're the ugliest man on Earth, God takes pity on you and awards you the affection of the prettiest woman on Earth. I guess he does have to live with her horrible late nineties Arnold Schwartzenegger accent. Christmas Day in their house must be like Jingle All the Way on repeat.
^I have no idea how to spell her name, but she's definitely not famous enough for me to look it up. Sorry Sally.
#White Horse
**http://www.candystand.com/play/mini-golf-classic

Ally Sheedy and the Mystery Machine

I would like to start out this post by saying that my computer only crashed once this weekend, which is (in the words of the most credible journalist on Earth+, Borat) a great success! It also made it through my nephrology midterm without any problems - hooooooray! That being said, I would like to make a few observations from this morning:

1. A person in my general vicinity had to start their exam late because some combination of Lonovorrhea and AIMS decided that their morning was too usual and needed some color.
2. My computer did nothing to help me take this exam; it should have noticed that I was taking 3 times longer than usual to answer each question and offered some help. Yes, computer, I would have enjoyed you telling me if it was Pre-renal Azotemia or Acute Interstitial Nephritis; instead I just sat there like an idiot calculating BUN:creatinine ratios/marking questions for review/thinking about how much I like Krispy Kreme. If you weren't prepared to give me the answer, you should have at least offered me a few words of encouragement. When I want KITT*, I get the Mystery Machine. I'm supposed to be Steve Guttenburg, and you're supposed to be Johnny 5^. Get it?
3. After the exam, I had to restart you twice before you'd detect the LAN cable I plugged into at my desk. Vista blows.


+Yeah major media outlets, that's a jab at you. You suck. You don't actually report news - you just create hype and fan flames. And if you're Fox News, you actually doctor the news to coincide with your hyper-partisan world view. In my opinion, the only newspaper worth reading is the Wall St. Journal; too bad subscriptions are so expensive.
*If you don't get this reference, you're Fox News. You suck.
^If you don't get this one, it's cool; you just missed out on some super cute Ally Sheedy before her career tanked with the rest of the Brat Pack (minus of course Demi Moore for her Oscar-worthy performance in Striptease; I'll give Rob Lowe a pass too for an early 2000's comeback attributable to the West Wing). I'm not going to make a case for Emilio Estevez's career being any good after the Breakfast Club. Sure he was in the Outsiders and the Mighty Ducks and that trash man movie with this brother Charlie Sheen, but almost everything else he did was crap. And let's be honest, if you went back and watched the Mighty Ducks, you'd probably be really disappointed. I find that most of the movies I loved when I was a pre-teen are suckfests later in life. Little Big League and Cool Runnings are still badass though. Rookie of the Year - not so much.

Slobbered-covered carrot.

So apparently LF actually cares about my sanity and wants to save my computer's soul... After the disaster that was trying to clear my phantom backups, she sent me lovely little nugget of knowledge:

"Found the way to delete manually (Examples 3 & 4). You have to do everything from a command prompt though. You can either attempt it yourself, or see if ITS will do it for you. http://www.symantec.com/connect/articles/9-thinkvantage-rescue-and-recovery-40-integration"

Take a minute, look at this link, and digest its instructions...

...

...

...

At first, I thought, "This is doable, I'm pretty good with computers, I can put these commands in to prompts and solve my problem."

A few minutes later: "What the [CENSORED] is a  Task Server Deploy Software task? Oh well, I'll just skip to the part about deleting backups."

"Why can't I run rrcmd.exe? Why won't it boot up? What is Altiris task? Why can't I find it on my computer?"

"[CENSORED] it. [CENSORED] this computer. I'm going to ITS."

---------------------------------------------

L, you're a doll*, but I'm batting .000 on your fixes... It's not you, I promise, it's me. I'm like a man without hands, and your instructions are Braille. It's like trying to feed vegetables to a dog - even if you load them up with peanut butter, the dog still won't actually eat them. They'll just lick all the Skippy off and leave you with a greasy, slobber-covered baby carrot that you have to pick up and throw away^. 

Currently my computer is that slobbered covered carrot... 

*Calling somebody a doll reminds me of my grandfather - he has all these great outdated ways to address women that are somewhat demeaning, but so endearing that they (almost) never piss women off. We'll go out for dinner,  and he'll say to the waitress, "Hey Darling, could you get me another Dewer's?" And when it comes, "Thanks sweetie, you're a peach." Something tells me that if he called Rosie O'Donnell a 'peach', she'd probably have a coronary as she went to stab him in the testicle. Then again, she did play for the Rockford Peaches in A League of Their Own, so maybe the jury's out on this one. 
^I have, in fact, tried to get my dog to eat vegetables. I don't know why, but I like trying to trick her into eating things that I know she won't like. I think it's payback for always trying to snatch food off the coffee table in the living room. I'm deranged, I know.

Almost better... almost.

Last night I got this lovely email from classmate LF:


"Hey Elliott,
 I saw your blog post. A & I had this exact same problem earlier this fall.
Search for Rescue & Recovery in the start menu
When it opens click the little arrow button under Backups that says "change schedule, name a backup, delete backups"
Change your frequency to never and start deleting backups (starting with the most recent one first)
 If it tells you that you don't have enough disk space to delete files. There's a work around that, but I forget how I did it offhand.
I don't trust ITS with my laptop when it takes them weeks to figure out a fix I can google in under an hour.


 Hope this works! I was able to free up like 40 gigs.
-L"
-----------------------


Okay, this is great - something that may actually work to make my computer suck less than John From Cincinnati. So I took her advice, found the Rescue and Recovery app, went to look at my scheduled backups, and clicked the option to prevent further backups and delete the ones that already happened. Woo-hoo, I'm on my way; LF, you're like a miniature Buddha!  So, a little progress screen pops up that says "deleting", maximum arrousal ensues, and BLAM-O! MY [CENSORED] COMPUTER FREEZES!!!!!


I do a hard restart (like the ITS gnome wizard girl told me to last time I went there) and open Rescue and Recovery again..."No current backups saved."
Great! It must've worked despite the freeze/restart suckfest! 
Open My Computer, check UNC PRELOAD, and... Space free = 5.14 gb out of 95.7. 


Guess I'll be mingling with magical wizard gnome fairy pokeball girl at ITS sometime tomorrow or next week... 




PS - John From Cincinnati Season 1 (the only season of this winner) was in the Employee Favorites section at VisArt in Carrboro. When I take a hammer to this laptop, remind me to save a couple of blows for the [censored] that thought this show was "dark, satisfying, and endlessly interesting". Honesly, I say the same exact thing about poops...

UNCPRELOAD = Full. Contents? That's a secret.

Dear Elliott,

You haven't backed me up since ... well, ever. You've never backed me up, yet I ask you every other day if you'd like to do so now. I know that you've been backing up your documents folder to your Gmail (that filthy digital strumpet with its whore-ish 7.397 gigs of free storage space) and I don't like it. You should be backing up all the wonderful program files that go along with the cornicopia of free crap that was graciously pre-loaded onto your computer - you know, the ones that really matter to you on a daily basis.

So I've come up with a solution to your recklessness; I've secretely backed up all your files myself. Remember that 95.7 gig hard drive you  never thought you'd fill? Done. I've filled it without ever telling you.

Want to know what it's filled with? I can't tell you; that's a secret. I know if you find them, you'll just delete them. So go ahead, you can open all the folders on UNC PRELOAD and look for yourself - there are plenty of folders alright, but there's almost nothing in them. Yet the hard drive is full!

You can thank me later... chump.

Your Loving Laptop,

Colonel T61p, Esq.

PS. I have gonorrhea. You should probably go get tested.

Damn you AIMS.

So here's what I know: 1. Windows Vista is a terrible, RAM consuming, bug filled operating system. 2. Windows 7 is a much more efficient, easier to use, bug-free operating system. 3. Switching Windows 7 might make me hate my computer less.

Today I get this soul-crushing gem of an email from the SOM:

"The Windows 7 operating system renders certain required components of the testing system inoperable, and therefore is not permitted on computers used to take your exams. If you have installed Windows 7 on your laptop, you are required to have OIS remove and re-image your computer prior to your next scheduled AIMS exam."

My laptop nightmare continues.

Right now I like UNC's technology policy about as much as I like Chairman Mao, vegemite, and 80's porn...

How to cure my computer? Magic.

(Backstory: my computer just crashed while I was using it - as if the battery had died; except the battery couldn't be dead, the computer was plugged into the wall. It wasn't even using battery power! Even when I switched wall sockets, the little charging light wouldn't come on, so I assumed that my computer was FUBAR. Uh oh. ... ... ... The next day in class I tried my cord/computer again - no dice. So, I grabbed the girl-sitting-next-to-me's cord, plugged it in, and started my computer; HOOWAH! It had to be the cord that was broken... I can just get a new one from ITS.)

So I brought my suitcase-sized wundermachine to ITS yesterday and explained to them that I had a broken power cord...

"You'll have to go over to the Ram Shop and buy a new one."

So I asked: "Could you have a look at it? I just had to replace the battery and this thing's only a year and a half old."

Which was the polite way of saying: "I just replaced the [censored] battery for this hastily made piece of [censored]!!!! Now you want me to go buy another [censored] part?!?!?!? Are you purposely trying to [censored] me?"

So this wonderful little brown-haired wizard lady took my computer, whipped the battery out, unplugged the thing, said three magic words/sacrificed a chicken/put on one of those creepy Tom Cruise in Eyes Wide Shut masks and BLAM-O! the computer and charger works perfectly. Apparently it happens all the time; the computer stops recognizing it's own charger and needs to be reset.

I hate my life.

Why won't you turn back on, Laptop?

I'm actually not writing this post on my $2200 Lenovo laptop that the school required me to buy; it crashed yesterday and won't turn back on...

I checked the power cord; it's good. It's not the battery, because I had to replace that a month ago because the stock one bit the dust. So, I guess I'll be back at ITS on Monday for the third time in recent history complaining about the expensive piece of trash I was required to buy and trying to salvage some of this ten pound piece of black plastic.

Honestly, I should've just put the money the School of Medicine made me spend on a computer into Powerball tickets and scratch offs; at least then I'd have a chance to get something out of that loan money...