Just read this report on the New Internet Explorer…

I loved the final statement:

“… So, in case you’re currently considering updating your Internet Explorer browser to version 8, just think twice if you’re addicted to Yahoo Mail and Gmail. Or just wait a while until the two companies include support to the newly released browser…”

What? Why do the frigging sites have to make modifications so the damn browser works? Why can’t the browser actually support the site?

Backwards thinking always Makes Me SO MAD…

Bleh.

It’s been an annoying and underwhelming week. I don’t know if I can lay it all at the feet of the new moon which is chucking all sorts of amusing energies around the place, a case of partial malnutrition due to a lack of money (and — obviously — food), a terrible spot to sit at work (right beside a major highway), the weird weather (last week, freaking freezing, this week, mid twenties), the constant chatter of geeks around me getting on my goat, Sysadmin buggering around with my computer or Microsoft products.

I’ll take the twin powdery lines of least resistance.

Last week we had the “new product launch” thing here at work, and my desktop image was hijacked by Sysadmin. Their reasoning was that Marketing should have checked it with everyone, but all I found was that it was irritating to have something changed on me without telling me, and — goddamn it — I don’t like being advertised at.

So I trolled the interweb for a hack, and managed to get into my own registry (as it had been disabled by the aforementioned twonks in Sysadmin) and dug through layer-upon-layer of MS contortionistic bollocks until I found the particular key; which I changed.

I had to keep changing it daily because those wacky Sysadmin guys had worked out that the easiest way to piss me off was to push updates through to the computer when no-one was looking.

Fortunately, they weren’t able to stick advertising on my desktop, as — thanks to the help of a co-worker — I’d disabled sysadmin access to the folder on the local computer which acted as suppository for said marketing crap.

But that, unfortunately, isn’t what’s annoying me.

Today I had to fight with a WindoZe 2003 Server. That was fun.

It’s hosting the TWiki instance which I’m working with, madly converting existing and creating new user documents for the happy little proles in the call-centers. I don’t know if they’re happy, I’m making that part up. They could be mad as a dozen jihadists on a party line; they could be as nutty as a conkertree, what do I know?

Anyway, I was finding the computer was running morbidly slow.. the sort of slow that indicates something is about to go “ping” within the black svelte Dell — Hell — plastic box. So I wandered over to it…

…I haven’t said that I dont’ work ON the server physically. I link to it through a web connection and through a Run window if necessary to do Jiggery-Pokery…

… and found there was no keyboard or mouse.

Fucking thieves.

So I tromped downstairs, found the guy who has a box full of keyboards and mice and asked if I could get one of each, please.

These items of dross thus obtained, I returned and plugged them into the server machine, to be greeted with two messages asking if it was okay to restart the computer because new software had been installed.

I restarted.

Then, while the Dual processors churned away happily, with all the expertise of a cheesemaker in a particularly well lit barn, and the dulcet tones of another worker’s music trilled away happily in his absence (what’s wrong with bloody headphones? What IS it with people?!), I waited for the machine to restart.

So I got in, and the frigging change password message came on.

Now, there’s a lot of things which are irritating and boring, and one of them is this sodding message.

Your password will expire in 14 days. Do you want to change it now

Fourteen fucking days? Half a bleeding month? What the F*ck is that all about.

Oh, again, it’s the wacky fun-loving guys in Sysadmin having fun with everyone.

No, I said, and clicked the appropriate button; then waited for another few minutes while the rest of the system updates were finished off.

If I’d had any money, I’d have wandered off and had a crafty Chai. Not the stuff downstairs, which is like drinking hot water mixed with a quarter cup of sugar and a pinch of cinnamon; what’s THAT all about?! No, I’d have walked a couple of blocks to where i can get a decent cup of — albeit pre-brewed in a bottle – chai.

Perhaps that’s one of the things bugging me. No, not the bloody chai. The money. Probably. Comes from being constantly whacked over the head with “you need money” from my father for twenty fucking years… my brother believed him and got money obsessed, I took the other route which occasionally leaves me in the shit, but on the whole removes the whole fear-factor of financial ruin. I’ve been penniless in France and Australia; it’s hard but I’ve worked through things like that, as I’m working through them now.

So the computer started up again, and I tried out the wiki… except it took Freaking Ages To Load. Even got a warning message saying “a script is taking longer to load than expected, do you want to abort”.

No, I don’t. I want to get to the bottom of why this Server with not one but TWO processors is grinding to a halt like it’s been dipped in a bath of Golden Syrup.

There’s a funny memory – I used to eat Golden Syrup on bread as a kid.

No bloody wonder I can’t handle sugar now.

I started uninstalling things; Google Desktop was the first. That was an utter bag of powdered offal if ever I saw one. When I was running it on twin displays it crapped-out like it was the victim of a dozen cases of salmonella.

I progressed to windows components that weren’t useful; easy done and happy to remove them. I had to restrain myself with my desire to frag the whole OS; unfortunately I don’t know enough about Linux to install it, and would have had to spend a couple of days reinstalling TWiki.

And I restarted.

No, I Don’t Want To Fucking Change My Password.

Churn…churn…churn…

Right, up it comes again.

Silly me, let’s try it in Internet Exploder.

A message came up talking about PHishing and whether I’d like to enable or disable the filter, or be asked again next time until I caved-in and did what the heathen gods at Redmond want me to do. Never!

Only I couldn’t do anything. That’s because the damn thing had locked-up. IE, already low in the opinion scales, in the same way that chewing my own elbows off is, had disappointed again.

I killed the process and tried again.

And killed the process after chucking the mouse at the screen, while uttering “fucking Microsoft Crap”.

I tried again in Firefox, and got the same error (the one about the script).

I tried the defrag…but it conked-out at 3% and didn’t move again — even though there’s hardly anything on the bloody computer.

I think it’s going to kark it. I should get it changed-over.

*sigh*

What else is irritating me? Could be a conversation I had with a friend yesterday… could be emails from over the weekend…

Could be I need something to eat. I’m down to Very Fucking Little at home, but thankfully am being paid tomorrow. This means there will be much rejoicing and a big breakfast out to reward myself for my hard yards in the malnutrition department.

I might even do a Bikram class; I’ve been too shagged this week to do one… especially after the hardcore coding I did over the weekend.

But you’re a writer I hear you say… go on, you can do it.

Yes, comes the answer… but I’m branching out for the sake of my sanity into other areas: web design and pinching other people’s CSS and Javascript to name but three.

And seeing as the first time I actually used JavaScript was in the wiki at work about a week and a half ago, the things I’ve achieved in the site I’m putting together are nothing short of Bleeding Miraculous.

However, the site isn’t quite right yet, and lacking the years of experience in web design that most people who happily use that moniker share, I have catching up to do.

Doing my best is sometimes all I can do… but again, I am tripped up by the vampiric hordes of Redmond with their twin abominations, Internet Explorer 6 and Internet Explorer 7.

Render a website one of you.

Why won’t you do it properly.

You are doing it properly?

How come your distant cousin Firefox, and the grrl down the street Safari can do this.

Oh, it’s because you’re the mutant offspring of your ex CEO and new CEO.

And you try, and I understand that you do… the issue I have is that your creators can actually fix you both up, and refuse to do so, that’s what I find so awful.

Really.

Can someone explain to me why IE6 and IE7 can’t be patched to render pages in Exactly the same way as every other damn browser on the market?

Is it some kind of perverted weird-arse Holier-than-thou, we’re-bigger-than-anyone, 90% market-share arrogance of their cross-eyed knucklehead management?

Someone? Anyone?

Pure Gold

Apple to release Vista fix 

So here I am again at my friend’s place trying to get two HP printers to talk to a newly reinstalled Windows XP SP2 setup on — no less — an HP laptop.

I’ve tried the casual hope-it-prints-and-I-can-go-home-to-play-with-the-cat (not the pussy, which is another image entirely), but this has failed, and I’m in for the long-haul.

Okay, so job number one is to uninstall the software.

This is where things get funny; upon selecting “Add Remove Programs” I get the flashlight-of-doom. Hello?! This is a newly reformatted and reinstalled system! I expect the damn flashlight to appear on a machine that’s at least 6 months into its lifespan, not a scant month after reinstallation.

Then we get the laughably OTT warning messages from the software I’m unistalling.

Yes, I know it won’t work if I uninstall the software. Trouble is, it doesn’t work WITH the damn software.

Am I the only one who finds the increasingly doom-ladened messages from software laughable when uninstalling it?

If you uninstall this software, your hardware will no-longer function. Also, your dog, cat and first-born child will become agents of satan and impale you in your sleep with rag-dolls soaked in methylated spirit, and then set them all aflame to the chants of “Oh Satan, lord and Master, give us this day our daily toast.”

I mean, honestly, get a bloody grip.

So, while I sit here alternately scoffing a rather nice asian rice and vegetarian stir-fry thing (with battery bits which I am assured are not fish, but tamarind), typing out this blog entry and glancing upwards periodically to watch the mind-numbingly slow progress bar sliding across the screen like a glacier in the ice-age, I wonder why.

Why what you might ask?

Why HP is creating such dross these days. Why it’s so damn hard to get their own software — supplied with the hardware, and that supplied by their barely navagable website — to actually do something as blindingly simple as print a damn document.

If I had a dollar for every hour I’d been working on this stupid problem, I’d be on a beach sunning my dazzlingly gorgeous body (and you’d have a gorgeous bod after 23 days of Bikram Yoga, let me tell you) on a beach in Acapulco, while swarthy male men-folk fall over themselves to be the next person to serve me a blindingly alcomoholic drinky.

But then I wasn’t. I’m in Melbourne being fed Chinese. Which would be nice, apart from the fact I still don’t have this stupid printer working.

Ah, it’s uninstalled. Onto the next stage of my evil plan: clean-up the registry.

Except there’s two folders and neither of them are clear enough for me to want to take a risk of turning this PC into the doorstop it so resembles.

Okay. Plan B – there’s some sort of HP software cleaner.

ooo, a carrot. Yum.

Sorry, got distracted with eating while waiting for the HP site to load.

Oh and in another win for idiocy over common-sense, the HP tool which will tell me if I need to update HP software will only work on IE 5.o and above.

Like the bloody tax-office; what’s the obsession with Internet Exploder anyway?

But I digress.

Clicking the back button on the web page just repeats the same test and I get the same stupid message. Click back on the Firefox interface instead… Dumbasses.

Okay, another tack again: some information I’ve come acrosss suggests that XP Sp2 might just cause some issues.

So drastic measures are called-for: let’s frag Sp2!

Hmmm, still unconvinced those non-fishy bits *were* non-fishy bits.

On the whole though, a nice meal. And there’s my lukewarm peppermint tea on the counter, too. Hmmm, cold tea; just the way I like it.

While the SP2 uninstaller grinds on like all those people out there who still think saying “Luxury!” followed by some bizarrely inane comment is still funny after, what is it, nearly 40 years, I shall add this.

Several of my cunningly discerning readership have pointed-out that endless PC bashing is unfair to PCs as a whole, and that they’e had just as much problems with Apple Macs.

To this I say, I believe you; I really do. It seems that any PC that comes within coo-ee (an Australian vernacular term meaning “within spitting-distance”, which is far more gross than you might actually think) of this little black duck seems to pop a cog when I start using it. I was a feared systems tester in one of my former jobs for this very reason; my abilities to not just break, but pound and nuke-til-it-glows various pieces of software was legendary. All right, semi-legendary.

The point I am attempting to make is this: My experience with Macs makes me love and admire them as easy to get along with and rarely do they actually make me swear. My experience with PCs is as diametrically opposite to that of Macs that it might as well be in an alternate universe wearing a goatee beard and cackling wildly about what it will do with me come daybreak.

Maybe that’s not the best way to put the point. I’ll try again.

PC’s don’t like me. I don’t like them. When we’re in the same room it’s an unpleasant experience for both of us, and frankly we’d rather let the relationship shrivel-up and die than spend another moment with one-another. We have no shared assets, resources or small humans running around causing chaos; it was fun, but it stopped being that a long, long time ago.

Oh, look: the status bar has disappeared on the uninstaller, and we’re “running processes after install”. How spiffing.

Good grief, now it’s playing the glocenspiel at me! What’s that all about? One minute you get more talk bubbles than a bloody cartoon strip, the next minute you get two-tone glocenspiel going off like Mike Oldfield in a cyclone.

Okay, it’s now 8pm and it’s performing the cleanup. I don’t expect that to take seconds, do you?

Damn, no more food. But the tea’s still there.

w00t! It’s finished.

To restart your computer, click Finish.

Only too glad. Fingers crossed…

Well, I’ve had some luck finding people with the same sort of HP printer problems as I’ve experienced. Glad to see I’m not the only one losing time and energy attempting to do something as simple as installing a printer.

It just goes to show what I was saying earlier: HP isn’t a company I’d like to deal with on an ongoing basis.

Honestly, if they made any other items in the world with this degree of difficulty to get them working, they’d be out of business in three minutes flat. What is it with the computer industry churning out stuff that becomes incredibly difficult to use?

Dear Hewlett Packard,

I have a friend who owns both a Windows XP PC and a HP Officejet 9110 multifunction print,fax,scan,copy machine.

I’ve recently been asked by her to clean-up and reinstall her system for her, a task which took a little time due to the computer being the aforementioned Windows machine.

However, I have achieved this task admirably.

That is, until it came to reinstalling your printer.

Initially I thought that the Windows drivers might handle the printer; the system certainly popped up saying the system had found the printer with monotonous regularity. But alas, this did not work once I shifted the printer to the Apple wireless network. It didn’t even work when the printer was connected to the computer!

So, I reconnected the printer to the computer and started again, with your purpose-built HP Officejet 9110 CDs which came with the unit.

This took a little time to install, but it wasn’t an issue, I felt like a latte anyway. When I arrived back from the shop, I found the software had installed. A quickish restart, and there appeared to be no more complaints.

Being the arse-covering tech that I am, I tried to print. This worked. Good; just what I was hoping for.

So I tried to scan something.

The printer initially came up with an error stating there was no software installed.

Funny, I thought, I could have sworn I just had a latte while waiting for the software to install. A quick check revealed my empty cup and there, in the Start Menu, was HP printer software.

Odd, I thought.

So I tried the process in reverse by firing up your image management software. Another latte later and it was up and running.

I clicked the scan button in the UI and was greeted with a message saying there was an error connecting to the scanner.

I checked the cable. Yes, connected. But of course it was connected; it just printed something.

Right, third try; Let’s try someone else’s software: Apple’s Bonjour in this case.

This solved the printing, but not the scanning.

Back to the drawing board, or more accurately, the Control Panel and the Add Remove Programmes folder, where I attempted to uninstall the HP printer programmes.

But to no avail; An error message told me I would have to attempt uninstallation again once I’d restarted the machine.

I resisted the urge to go out and get another latte; the caffeine was beginning to make me twitchy (or perhaps it was the ongoing frustrating failures of your software to speak with your hardware?). No matter; I was made of sterner stuff, so restarted the machine once more.

Then I tried the same process: Start>Control Panel>Add Remove Programmes.

And I got the same error message.

I wondered briefly if I had offended some heathen god, but persevered, finding an unistallation programme in the Start>Programs>HP printer folder. This uninstallation worked, and required only one more restart of the system.

Like the dutiful hardware user that I am, I performed said restart, located the HP CD once more and commenced the software reinstallation process. I went for lunch, knowing that it would finish some time before I arrived back.

And I was right, it had finished, and required another restart to make things work.

So I restarted the system and tried printing again. This worked. Good.

I tried scanning again. This did not.

I’m at a loss why your hardware won’t talk to your software and vice-versa on a clean installation of Windows XP SP2. There’s a direct connection, there’s nothing wrong with the cable (as evidenced by the fact the printer can receive a print message and that XP goes freaking bananas and beeps repeatedly at me when it’s connected); so what’s the issue?

Perhaps it thinks I should be running Vista. Think again bozo.

Perhaps it misses the old installation of XP? So sorry, it’s dead; move on.

Perhaps even, it just doesn’t like the muttering and cursing I have allowed to be uttered in its presence while trying to get it to work? Well, to quote The Master: tough, I’m like that when I’m frustrated at inane plastic objects refusing to work.

Whatever the reason, one thing is certain: as long as there is breath in my lungs, as long as I have conscious thought processes going through my head, I will Never Ever purchase an HP product.

Yours with much love and kisses,

Lisa 4.0

Windows fanboys and girls need-not read any further.

I’ve been sitting here all evening — 3 hours — trying to get software and hardware to work on an XP machine. 3 freaking hours.

HP and Windows aren’t good bedfellows. Neither is Palm and PC. Never mind the issue that Symantec virusscan had trying to do a liveupdate.

Everything is so damn hard on a PC. Why is that? Is there some sadistic-streak within every windows user? Or is it the old male paradigm of battling with everything until it bends to your will.

As a female I don’t get that sort of thing. I just don’t have the inclination (albeit I do tonight because friends have made me dinner in exchange for hopefully fixing their PC), but honestly, having to fiddle for hours on end in the vain hope that the fixes you make in the evening are still standing come the daylight, and not sitting there in a gelatenous heap stretches the belief-systems a bit thin. They are the single greatest time-sucker on this planet, the single simplest reason why the hordes of the great unwashed have not yet risen-up, thrown their shackles off and nailed their masters to the nearest tree.

I kid you not, Evil Overlords rule #1: If you want your takeover of the world to go smoothly, give the population PCs (and don’t be using them yourself).

But there is a bright-side to all this:

‘You’ve convinced me to get a mac,’ said G, the owner of the computer.

Chaos and destruction: the PC’s work is done.

HP* -  Shite!

MS** – CRAP

Why? Installing printers. Try installing a printer on an HP laptop… a printer that is connected to an apple airport network… and you’ve got hair ripping fun for the whole freaking family.

Here’s one of the many sites that I’ve just found — at 11pm at night while in bed — to potentially find a cause for the issue.

Bottom line, however, was that my plan to be in bed by 9pm has gone right out the damn window.

However, I have discovered — or managed to put into words — something that has dogged me for some time.

Which is this: I take failure personally.

—————-

*or as I now call them, Hewlett CRAPard

** Great piece of dialogue in “The Last of the Time Lords” (SPOILER ALERT), from the professor trying to get a computer to work: “Whoever thought we’d miss Bill Gates.”. I L O L’d.

Riddle me this: Why won’t the Windows XP search find and display a file that exists on the system?

Try searching for *.pst and you might come across the same issue that I did.

For those out there that don’t know what a “Pst” file is – and are perhaps wondering if it’s something to do with drinking – I shall explain: it’s a file which is used to store all the email from Outlook.

It suddenly occurs to me that Microsoft products suffer from systematic “Trying-to-be-too-many-things-to-too-many-people”. What this means is that their products, while they can do all sorts of amazing things, are either too complicated for the average Jo to understand but at the same time, set-up with the Lowest-Common-Denominator in mind, thus annoying the hell out of the more advanced user. MS Word Paperclip anyone? How about that sodding dog for searching?

In short, the designers don’t know their own audience, and so the software isn’t any good for anyone specifically. The features are vast, but you can’t get at most of them without a brick-thick book next to you, titled something along the lines of Windows functionality for people who don’t necessarily know everything about it but need to do a single simple thing. Setting up your email? A home network? Turn off those damn bubble messages that popup whenever windows has found something and wants to tell you about, like some 4 year old?*

Apple on the other hand, has designed their software with simple useability in mind. Yes, the systems restrict you to doing things in a particular way, but once you know that way, you’re fine.

Take the iPod. Yes, that old chestnut. Install iTunes, plug the iPod in and you’re off. Anycomputer (Mac or Windows [not sure about Linux to be honest]), any time.

Now take the Creative Zen that I was trying to get to work 2 years ago, brand-new, out of the box. I do hope they’ve improved their software and hardware because frankly, a system requirement that I had to search high-and-low for on the net because it wasn’t on the box is fundamentally bent-in-the-head. Turned out, the hardware required an obscure XP service pack to be installed, a version of Windows Media Player 10 and dose of good luck (and I’m not joking about that last bit) before it would even think about working with Windows and copying music. And if you had a mac, well, forget it, because it wouldn’t work.

That is why Apple carved-up the personal player market. The Zen has more features, an FM radio, good internal functionality, but if you can’t load music onto it, then it’s an expensive doorstop.

Similarly, the PC versus Mac thing. All right, PC has got the lions-share of the home and business computer market, but given the sick, sick joke that is Vista, computer manufacturers offering windows XP as an operating system and Microsoft’s forcible retirement of XP (presumably because they just can’t admit what a brick Vista actually is and there’s far too much money at stake share-wise if they do, not to mention the scalps of many on the payroll) and you’ve got what could very well be The End Of The Line.

——————-

*Ah, you might say, what about the Interweb? To which I reply, what about it? I’ve got a PC at home which can’t see the bleeding network which is connected to said web, and you’re telling me to refer to the internet to tell me how to connect to the internet?