Ironic or Apt?

Take a minute. Look it over. Is this an ironic collision of breaking news and the DirecTV guide, or is it an unintentionally apt statement? Perhaps it is a little bit of both.



Regardless of the coincidental screenshot, at least this story does one thing for the media. It gives them a story to bite into on a Friday night where the special report on 20/20 spotlighted a complete idiot who writes stupid things, such as "stinky" on images of celebrities... you know, like a third grader might be inclined to do. It's people like this getting press attention that creates and fuels the collective image of the internet as a group of insane, mentally deficient, immature, illiterate losers. To be famous, act stupid online in the form of picture and video. Very few people read anymore. Very few of them will read this.
So, thank you to Saddam Hussein, 2006's most popular "swinger" (oh f*** yeah, I went there), for cutting this guy's fifteen seconds of fame short.

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Big Cray: Accept No Substitute

Don't Adjust Your Set

It seems that the USA network is achieving new heights of "brilliance" in gimmicky programming. They are promoting (or perhaps it is better said that they are threatening) that they will show an episode of their inexplicably popular show, Monk, in black and white, followed by the same episode in color. Then, the viewers get to decide which they liked better. If someone likes shows in black and white so much, why don't they just turn the color on their TV off? Voila! Problem solved! Black and white! If they like black and white in the noir style, then turn the brightness down as well. Therefore, airing it in black and white simply annoys the audience members who are sitting at home, staring at a ridiculously expensive plasma TV, whining about a single pixel out of place. As for the people who have a black and white TV... nevermind, they probably don't have basic cable. This whole thing seems to only appeal to a small group of hardcore noir fans who are too lazy to adjust the settings of their television to achieve the desired effect in normal viewing. If a small group of [borderline insane] CBS viewers wanted David Letterman to be green, would CBS screw with the program's tint, or would they just tell the nutjobs to do it at home? Of course, now that I've mentioned that, keep an eye out this spring for The Tonight Show with Purple Jay Leno.
Of course, if anyone was going to pull this black and white stunt, USA would be a likely suspect. They are one of NBC Universal's babies and these are the programming geniuses that made fourteen dozen incarnations of Law and Order and it is believed by some that they once considered creating a new day of the week simply so they could create more Dateline.
I also happen to recall a crazy gimmick NBC threatened their viewers with years ago (and after spending 45 minutes googling, I can't find a single mention of it online, leaving me to believe I may be the only person alive who will actually admit to remembering this). It was way back when The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air and Blossom held an hour block of prime time ("The Fresh Prince-Blossom Hour"). NBC, citing some ridiculous story about a malfunctioning machine, threatened for a week to show the program(s) (I don't recollect if it was just Fresh Prince or if it was both) upside down. Of course, on the night of the actual broadcast, they copped out, quickly noted that the machine was fixed, and showed everything normally. Ah, bait-and-switch programming. It's really no small wonder that Vinnie Mac's WWE fits in so well in the NBC Universal family.

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Big Cray: Accept No Substitute

Duck and Cover

The little spotlight news topic on the left side of Hotmail this afternoon reads:

"Hot on Hotmail
Gossip: Is Jessica Biel now a Yankees fan?"

Seriously, when did this become news? I've made no secret in the past about my distaste for inane celebrity gossip, but I believe this reaches a new level of useless knowledge. This wasn't someone being dumped via text message. This wasn't a drunken driving incident. This wasn't someone shoplifting. This is a rumor about someone's taste in ball clubs. Excuse me while I change religions and prep the bomb shelter over this Earth-shattering news...
(Yes, I realize the article deals with a possible relationship between her and one of the New York Overpaid Babies, but just let me have my fun ridiculing the teaser.)

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Big Cray: Accept No Substitute

Next-Gen... again

Earlier tonight, I saw two things that got me thinking about "Next-Gen" video game consoles due out shortly. It brought to mind years gone by, and the now-defunct systems that were, in their time, the "Next-Gen" beasts of the future.
One thing I saw was tonight's South Park episode partially revolving around Cartman's desire for a Nintendo Wii. I guess with this, and the PSP episode a while back, the boys behind South Park are going to write episodes endorsing new game systems as a habit. I was surprised by the choice of the Wii however, and not the Playstation 3 as the object of his affections. True, I'm not as plugged into gaming as I was once, but since when did anyone care about Nintendo again? While it is more than capable technically, the Gamecube is a closed architectured, non-versatile heap that you can play games like Pokemon on. Perhaps the Wii is the image revolution Nintendo needs. It seems to be packed with all kinds of gimmick... but so was the Virtual Boy.
The other thing I saw was an extremely creepy ad for the Playstation 3. It has what appears to be a baby doll staring at the shiny new console. The baby doll then goes through a series of emotions (and a possible seizure) which include a tear that goes down its face, while all kinds of funky crap goes on in its eyes. Why are new systems advertised this way? This commercial in no way makes me want to buy a Playstation 3. I'm not sure what the hell I was watching or what the hell it could really motivate me to do. It was just odd. Don't get me wrong. It was a different kind of odd than Sony's "Enos Lives" and "U R Not E" commercials that heralded the original. This was just completely creepy. I hate to say this to Sony, but it reminded me of Sega ads from years gone by. I don't recollect if it was the Dreamcast's "It's thinking" campaign, the Saturn's "We're never going to sell any of these" campaign, or both, but Sega produced some odd ads. Here's a thought: show what the system can do without the theatricals. If Sony starts releasing add-on systems that pile continuously onto the system, start to worry.
Oh, for the days when all it seemed like anybody cared about was the advertised data width.
"Sega Genesis is twice as good as NES because it is 16 bits instead of 8!" the ignorant masses would scream.
It's just too bad that logic (or "math" as they called it) didn't work on people when Atari was trying to sell the 64-bit Jaguar in 1994 when the dominant game systems were 16-bit. I need to stop thinking about all of this. I've got the old "Thirty-two.... X... Welcome to the next level" growl stuck in my head now, and it will potentially give me a bigger headache than thirty minutes of Virtual Boy play. Arrrrggghhh! Red lines!
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Big Cray: Accept No Substitute

Analysanalyzeded

Why is everyone so lazy today? Why can't anyone take the time to edit or even effectively proofread anything? The internet seems to be the breeding ground for the new wave of modern day illiteracy, with the oversimplification of even the simplest words (e.g. "your" into "ur," "are you" into "ru," etc), overcomplication of simple words into gibberish trash (e.g. 1337 5p33k), and the demise of any kind of punctuation. It's a complete breakdown of language into the grunts they started from.
But, that is just your average internet chatter, forum poster, email sender, or small time blogger, right? Reputable sources are safe from this "stupidifying" (an ironically stupid term I coined in 2001 to describe and mock the phenomena), right? Newspapers and news sites still have editors who scour the material and fix simple errors, right? The answer is no. Yes, people... it is spreading.
One can no longer flip through our semi-local newspaper, The Evansville Courier out of Evansville, IN, without catching obvious errors everywhere that should never have made it to print. It is full of doubled words ("The the bear was mad."), wrong words for context ("The bare was mad."), misspelled words ("Teh bear was mad"), or missing words that make the sentence ambiguous ("The was mad."). It seems most people are satisfied by a quick spell check, and then they are ready to go to print.
Of course, in some cases, it seems that a spell check wasn't even thought of. I was reading an article from Reuters about the honey bee genome on Yahoo News and it contained the sentence:

"The scientists who analysanalyzeded the genetic code have discovered the honey bee originated in Africa and spread to Europe in two ancient migrations."

"Analysanalyzeded?" How did they miss this? Later in the article, they write

"The insects also have fewer genes than the fruitfully or mosquito for immunity."

Writing "fruitfully" in the place of "fruit fly" would imply that a spell checker corrected it automatically, but how did it miss "analysanalyzeded?"
Of course, I'm just giving examples. This is by no means an isolated incident, and these news outlets are not the only offenders. Editors need to actually take some initiative and do their job. If the trend continues, eventually, you'll see English textbooks with these kind of mistakes. Imagine how those kids are going to write.
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Big Cray: Accept No Substitute

Ghost Hunters

Yesterday, I happened to catch a long block of the Sci-Fi show Ghost Hunters. I had never seen the show or particularly paid attention to the advertising, but I was flipping through channels and happened upon it, so I gave it a chance. I tend to enjoy watching shows about the paranormal, mainly to see how strong of a case they can make. I really don't fall on either side of the fence. I don't say it exists, and I don't say it doesn't. I just love to watch people trying to prove it either way.
For those of you who have never seen the show, it is about TAPS, a team of "professional" paranormal investigators. In other words, two Roto-Rooter guys, a bunch of their friends, and a lot of expensive equipment. In each episode, TAPS goes to a location, plays around there for a night trying to get ghosts to interact with them while they are looking for EMF (electromagenetic fields) and recording the whole thing with audio recorders, DV cameras, and thermal imaging. Then, they show the owners of the location what they recorded.
Perhaps I shouldn't have said "whole thing," because they tend to miss a lot. It seems when the really spectacular stuff happens, they unfortunately have the camera turned the other way, they are reloading tapes, or they have some other convenient excuse. Then, all you are left with is the investigators' saying "Did you see that?" It is somewhat similar to when kids will go through a guided tour of a haunted house around Halloween, and the guides will be the ones who pretend to freak out in order to seed the idea into the heads of the children. This is either somewhat of a work, or the ghosts are simply outsmarting TAPS.
The show is put together as you would expect. The cameras record in the dark using IR, and thus the video is in itself a spooky glowing black and white. Add in the spooky music and sound effects, and the production adds more of the spook to the show than the actual paranormal phenomena they are recording.
I have to hand it to them about one thing, however. I like their approach. They don't point at every odd thing and scream "Ghost!" They are fairly even handed, and have on multiple occasions traced high EMF readings to leaking electrical boxes. They have, on at least one occasion, returned to the owner and told them that there is absolutely no paranormal activity in their house. This doesn't prove anything that they have brought back to other owners in the other cases, but at least it shows that they are attempting to be skeptical (or they needed a token wild goose chase story to add credibility to the other stories... you decide.)
All in all, this is not a bad little show if you're into this kind of thing or you need a seasonal spook fix near the end of this month. It beats watching Mr. T sell used cars.
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Big Cray: Accept No Substitute

Anytime!

I found out an amusing fact today. A certain evil corporate entity does not know the definition of the word "anytime." I'll give you a split second to guess who that could possibly be.
Did you guess Verizon? If you didn't, you haven't been paying attention. It appeared as if there was a possibility that I was going to be late getting my phone bill paid if I mailed it, so I decided to take Verizon up on their offer to handle it online. On every bill, there's a paragraph to the right of the account summary as follows:

Convenience! Manage Your Verizon Account Online, Anytime!
Order services, view & pay your bill, request repairs, anytime day or night! At verizon.com click "Sign In" under "My Account." New user? Start with:
User ID: [Phone Number]$
Password: [Password]
and customize your ID as you register.

Boy, that sounds like a good idea. As a new user, just log in with that information and then set up the account. So, I followed their directions to the letter, and I recieved:

Wonderful. Never trust Verizon. Apparently "this time" is not part of "Anytime!" Apparently the "inconvenience" they are apologizing for is part of the "Convenience!"
Anyway, I went in and registered for an account on their site using a method that completely differs from the instructions on their billing statements, and was prepared to pay my bill. I had my Visa check card in hand, ready to debit my way to victory. What could possibly waste my time now?
Verizon does not accept credit or debit cards. Yes, it is 2006, and they have a website where one can make payments, but they don't accept credit, debit, or Paypal. They only accept the routing number for your checking or savings account. Way to keep up with the times, Verizon! Perhaps in the future you can accept payment in the form of shiny rocks and livestock. So, now I have to go dig up my checkbook to get the routing number. I knew you'd find a way to waste more of my time, Verizon! To avoid another last minute payment like this, I'm going to pay next month's bill early. The chicken is in the mail.
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Big Cray: Accept No Substitute

Cray's Tech Journal: PeoplePC

Today I thought I'd talk about my experience with PeoplePC's dial-up internet service. I happened to have had a customer back at the beginning of the year who bought PeoplePC service. He was a first time internet user. He had just paid around $1500 for a Dell XPS as his first computer, and asked a friend what internet service he should get. His friend led him wrong, and told him to go with PeoplePC because it was cheap. Like a true wide-eyed and naive internet newbie, he signed on for a full year contract right away, and a few weeks in, he called me out there to figure out some of his computer issues, namely his getting kicked offline constantly.
At the time, my only contact with PeoplePC was seeing their odd commercials. When I saw the kind of setup they had, my first instinct was to ditch their proprietary dialing software and use DUN, but it turns out he was paying extra for the "accelerated" (glorified proxy server that decreases image quality to decrease load time), so I didn't have the heart to tell him it was bunk.
In addition to the frequent disconnects, I noticed a serious lack of performance for a two week old dual-core performance beast. After playing with the processes a bit, sure enough, it was PeoplePC's dialer that was hosing his performance. If you're not familiar with their dialer, or as they call it, the "Smart Dialer", it has a hacked Internet Explorer window that you must keep open the entire duration of your connection. If you close it, it disconnects from the internet. Well, isn't that completely useless?
As I was fiddling with the settings on the "Smart Dialer" trying to find a setting that would stop it from disconnecting so often, I came across his list of phone numbers in the "Smart Dialer". One was local, one was EAS, and the other three were local toll! As it turns out, these are the numbers PeoplePC had given him to use in the "Smart Dialer" when he called their support number... their 1-900 support number. No, I did not stutter. Their support is via a 1-900 number. Anyway, they had primed the "Smart Dialer" with these numbers, and wouldn't you know it, the dialer liked to dial one of the local toll numbers best. Therefore, every time he connected to the internet, he was getting charged about $0.10 per minute by the phone company. As you can see, this is no "Smart" dialer. It is simply a method by which PeoplePC controls their bandwidth, and it has nothing to do with optimizing anything for the user. They couldn't care less if you end up dialing long distance to connect to the internet. I was quick to disable all the numbers but the local one, and it connected just fine. It disconnected about 45 seconds later, but it did successfully connect. Then it crashed. Actually, it had crashed a few other times before, but I didn't feel like writing "It crashed" every other line, so from now on, just assume it crashes often. I gave him a heads up on the awful phone bill he was going to receive, and then continued with my exploration.
I failed to find any setting that seemed to improve connection stability, so I had to reach into the tech toolbag for a few tricks. In my pursuit of underhanded "stay alive" methods, I took a minute to read their terms of service to see what exactly was legal. It turns out that, as part of the terms, you agree that you will only connect to their service using the proprietary dialer provided, and not with DUN. I was becoming more and more impressed with how it seemed they were actually trying to be the worst ISP ever. I'm gonna have to give them the award. They've done so much to do so little.
Eventually I got everything to a workable state, but it was only designed for the short term. My customer, already conceding the money he'd paid to PeoplePC, had decided to choose a local ISP that actually works. So, in this particular case, PeoplePC makes out like a bandit because of their subpar service and shady business practices. They get paid without actually having to provide any service. Wow, that's a pretty effective business model.
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Big Cray: Accept No Substitute

DVD, Verizon, and uhhh

First off, I'd like to apologize for the lapse in new material here. I wrote a Lucha article for Andyville on the sixth, but even that was six days ago, so I've really been slacking on the internet publishing front.
I've been incredibly busy wrapping up a Dimbee Multimedia DVD project. The last week has been spent building every component, and perfecting every aspect of the overly complex (yes, everything I do is overly complex) DVD menu structure. It's now finally satisfactory in my eyes, and the customer has given me all the last minute additions to the extras menu, so it's time to release this bad boy.
This was actually my first delve into the world of a large commercial release. I had previously done shorts ranging up to about ten minutes, but nothing too spectacular. This project was also my first experience with a real video editing solution: Sony Vegas. It is expensive, but this software is worth every penny. I experimented with too many software packages to count, but out of all of them, two stood out. One, of course, was Vegas, which was excellent. The other was Avid's FreeDV. I understand that it is a cut down, free version. However, it was beyond useless. I had my movie source split into three large avi files, and FreeDV churned away trying to import them for two days. Even then, it had not completed importing the final one. As I said, I understand this is free software, but I also understand that performance like that isn't going to get people to buy the expensive pay versions. Vegas did the import in near no time (seeing as it worked off the originals instead of making its own files), and once the main feature was complete, it rendered fifty minutes in DVD ready 720x480, 8Mbit MPEG2 in a little under five hours on a 2GHz Celeron. Considering the amount of effects I implemented, I think that's pretty respectable.
For the DVD authoring, I used Sony DVD Architect, another expensive application that proved its worth. It has a very straightforward, but highly effective interface. I like that combination.
Of course, in addition to the use of those two applications, there were hours of painstaking frame by frame work on certain hand made animated graphics, but I'm not going into that. I've rambled about this long enough, so I'm going to move on.
In breaking news, Verizon came out and buried my phone line on the seventh (yes, they did it in less than two weeks, and I didn't have to call them to remind them), so I really have nothing to complain about regarding them right now... other than their complete lack of broadband solutions, but that's been covered.
Now that I've covered all that... I've completely forgotten what I was going to write about. Oh well, perhaps next time.
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Big Cray: Accept No Substitute

Verizon: The End?

Today was a fairly productive day for Verizon. Sometimes I think that they often do so poorly to lower the standards so that when they actually do something fairly adequately that it is notable. This morning, a Verizon van pulled up to take a look at our crosstalk issue. Wow, a whole five days early! This sounds great until you realize that the service call was placed nine days before. Anyway, it takes Verizon Guy a whole ten seconds to figure out that there is some serious problems with our buried line. The final diagnosis is that there is a serious short in the line. Therefore, as I had deduced long before, the underground line needs to be replaced. Normally, they would run a temporary line just strung across the yard to the pillar so we would have good phone service until they came in and buried the new line. However, the pillar is across the road, so they can't quite do that with our case. Luckily, the cable that ran to the old house (buried in the 1950's) still had the wires strung up in the pillar, and just disconnected. After seeking out the line in the yard, digging down to it, cutting it and testing it, we discover that our 1950's era phone line is in better condition than our 1977 phone line. So, there's a splice in the middle of our yard with a brake fluid bottle over it, and then a bright orange cable strung across the yard and to the box on the side of the house. This provides crystal clear phone service, believe it or not. The down side is that we probably have to have the temporary line across the yard for two weeks before they bury the new line, but at least our line is clear. I made a comment about how that 1950's line was vintage GTE before my dad (resident historian) informed me that I was wrong. That line was vintage GT (General Telephone)! Regardless, it works. So, after Verizon Guy left, I figured I'd tempt fate and try long distance. We called one number that was long distance, but still in our MSA (Market Service Area), and lo and behold, it worked. So, then we tried to call a number that was out of our MSA and we got the three tones of death. I called the 700 number to see what it said, and I got the MCI message and the three tones, so that was a no go. We waited until the official time it was supposed to be fixed, and sure enough, it wasn't. So, it was time to call Verizon again. At this point, we pretty much have the service number memorized. We explained our long distance problem yet again, and they say they'll fix it in eight hours. At this point, we did not believe them. However, three hours later, I gave the 700 number a try, and amazingly, now it says our carrier is Verizon! We gave our long distance a try, and it works. Outstanding! Verizon has successfully accomplished two things today. That has to be a record. So, this may end my Verizon rants for a while, at least until they come out to bury the cable. Who knows what kind of chaos they can cause while they're doing that? Verizon: They just now started sorta working for me... it's about damn time! -- Big Cray: Accept No Substitute

Verizon... Seriously, More Verizon!

I know that everyone is probably tired of my Verizon rants, but good god, they just keep giving me things to rant about! Yesterday, I talked about their little unlimited long distance plan they were pushing that cost the same in this area as everywhere else, despite not being able to fulfill all the features. What I neglected to mention is that switching to that particular plan and dropping AT&T as the long distance carrier will save us some serious money, and at the time of writing yesterday, we had already put in the order for it. Yes, I hate Verizon, but I also hate spending more money than I have to. What a horrible predicament. So, Verizon says that they will take care of everything, and get us switched over from AT&T within 24 hours. They actually called us within 6 hours and said the service was all set up. We took this under advisement, but really had no need to make any long distance calls that day. Today however, we did need to make a long distance call, and guess what. Seriously, guess... OH YEAH, didn't work! Amazingly, Verizon has reached a new level of incompetence. 30 hours after they said the service would be ready in 24 hours, and 24 hours after they actually called us up and told us it was ready to go, it's not. I've gotten ahead of myself though. It's not a matter of when I attempt to make a long distance call that I hear an AT&T tone or something. No! When a long distance call is attempted, we get the three tones of death and the message that the number we are calling from has been disconnected, and that for assistance we should call customer service. Local calls still work fine, as do toll-free and EAS, but long distance doesn't. Wonderful! It's one day into the new calling plan with unlimited long distance, and Verizon has found a way to completely disable long distance. I guess that's one way to guarantee that it is a flat fee. So, we called Verizon. They claim that their records show that everything was switched over successfully, and that our service should be working. Well, their records are wrong. So, they pull the classic Verizon move, and instead of doing anything now, they say they'll get it fixed within 24 hours. They also made reference to the other pending service call which I put in the 17th and they are scheduled to respond to on the 31st. They suggest it may be related. Really? Our poor quality ground lines are the cause of Verizon disabling our long distance service? Wow. After we finished with them, the next course of action was to call AT&T and see what was up on their end. Amazingly, Verizon had never contacted AT&T about us changing our service. So, I had to break it to them that we were dropping their service in favor of the cheaper and vastly inferior Verizon. I also explained what was going on at the current time. She said that she would start the process on their end, but Verizon controls the big switch that determines who our carrier is. She was the most helpful person I talked to all day, and gave me the toll free number 1-700-555-4141. Calling this number will reveal to you who your long distance carrier is. Brilliant! So, I called it up, expecting to hear one of three choices: AT&T, Verizon, or that I don't have a carrier. What I heard was one of the most WTF inspiring moments of the day: MCI! It repeated a message twice thanking me for having MCI One Plus service and then it rang twice before giving me the three tones of death and the error message mentioned earlier. Now, I'm aware of the whole Verizon/MCI buyout deal, but I had Verizon long distance on the line in my trailer in Carbondale in 2002, long before they started their buyout of MCI. Thus, I know they had their own long distance service, so why are they trying to hook us up with remnant MCI, and more importantly, why doesn't it work? So... can anybody lend me two cups and a whole hell of a lot of string? -- -Big Cray: Accept No Substitute

Verizon: The Never Ending Saga

Yes, Verizon still sucks.
As I mentioned in the previous entry, Verizon, continued, I mentioned an offer for an unlimited calling plan that came in the mail as I was typing it. I ridiculed their slogan and some of their presumptuous and just plain incorrect claims.
Well, I looked into their little calling plan, just for fun.
The key to it is the unlimited long distance, but there are also three other key components to the package: caller ID, call waiting, and voice mail. So, one would assume if they pay for the service, they would get all the advertised features, right? WRONG!
Yep, it actually turns out that Verizon does not offer voice mail here. So, seeing as they can't fulfill the entire advertised package, they'll give a discount to make up for the missing services, right? WRONG!
Of course not! They're Verizon! Without the misery of their customers, how would they power their cell network? No greedy, evil, monopolistic corporation would ever give a discount for anything as simple as not being able to actually provide the service the customer is paying for.
I have found a fun game to play with Verizon, though. When you write the check to them, mix it up month to month in the "pay to the order of" section.
Here are some past examples that cashed out just fine:
"Verizon Monopoly"
"Verizon Evil Monopoly"
"Verizon Pennybags"
"Verizon: Almost as good as a cup & string"
"Veribadservice"
and, for some reason:
"Lifelong Virginz"

I think next month, it needs to be written out to "Anyone BUT Verizon".

Of course, this mentality I have when it comes to my sub-par phone company is nothing new. Once, when I was in college, we actually burnt the corners of the return envelope, smeared motor oil on it, wadded it up and stomped on it a bit, dipped it in butter and then drug it through some dirt. Ah, good times. Now, before one says I brought their wrath upon myself, I must say in my defense that this occurence was after Verizon had double billed us and we had to work our butts off to get them to fix the error.
So it has been, for years on end. Verizon screws with us, and we screw with Verizon. Sadly, when it all comes down to it, it's not working in our favor, and it seems that whatever we do, we are the ones who will end up screwed.
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-Big Cray: Accept No Substitute

Cray's Tech Journal: Zone Alarm 6.5

This is the first post [to Cray's Tech Journal], so it will work to give you an idea of what I'll be getting at. It's pretty simple. I tell you what the user reported as the issue, what my more professional diagnosis yielded, and the solution(s) employed. I'm sure many of the problems I'll be covering have been covered elsewhere, but I'm just posting as I come to them. Some posts will not be in this style, I'm sure, but I'm aiming to make this the general style.

Report: User cannot change home page in Internet Explorer on one machine. Machines cannot "talk to each other."

Equipment: Two computers connected on south side of DI-524, both machines XP Pro SP2 with Zone Alarm. One machine has Zone Alarm 6.1.744.1, while other has 6.5.731.0.

Diagnosis: Both machines still successfully access internet. Zone Alarm settings for trusted Zone are correct. Program access rules seem correct. Upon changing home page in IE, after applying, leaving internet options and returning to internet options, home page has reset to previous setting. No known home page locking softwares on machine.

Troubleshooting: Lowered firewall on machine with ZA 6.1 with no improvement. Lowered firewall on machine with ZA 6.5 and achieved connectivity. Reraised ZA 6.1 on other machine and connectivity continued. Rechecked settings on ZA 6.5. Despite matching ZA 6.1 settings on other machine, ZA 6.5 has blocked communication between the machines in the trusted zone, although I'm not sure why this has occured all of the sudden after functioning correctly for so long.

Solution: I went ahead and uninstalled ZA 6.5, figuring on a corrupted install, and, just for the hell of it, attempted to change the homepage in IE. Amazingly, it now works correctly. Reinstallation of 6.5, however, once again locked the home page, although trusted zone connectivity remained intact. In the end, I uninstalled ZA 6.5 again, ran Regscrub, and installed ZA 6.1.744.1. All reported issues now seem to have been resolved. I set ZA 6.1 to manual updates to avoid it asking user to be updated to 6.5.

After working on this, I did some googling, and sure enough, ZA 6.5 seems to be troublesome. It bothers me a bit that it has been out for so long, and yet these problems remain. I actually noticed a little later that one of my personal machines has ZA 6.5.722.0, and sure enough, my IE home page is locked. I never change it, so I hadn't even noticed. Hopefully, Zone Labs will fix this issue in later releases, or at least add a control so you can disable the home page lock.
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Big Cray: Accept no Substitute

Get out of my head!

I've been driving myself crazy today, and it is from the craziest thing. Never underestimate the effect that even the smallest, stupidest things can have on a person. Things can get deeply imprinted in one's memory, and then torture them endlessly.
Today, I'm driving around, taking care of business, and for some reason, out of nowhere, with no provocation, as if I suffered from turretts, I said out loud "Thank you Quicksilver!".
Now, before any of you call the guys in white coats that have the rooms with padded walls, hear me out. I didn't just say it normally. I said it in a fashion mimicing the wonderful 16-bit sound of the Sega Genesis. I had just quoted the classic Genesis game "Captain America and the Avengers." After chuckling to myself about the randomness I had just uttered, I then continued with the obligatory "Captain America!", "Ironman!", "Vision!", "The Aveeennnnngerrs!", and for some reason "OH, MY KNEE!" from "Super High Impact."
At this point, my passenger is looking at me like I am completely insane. She may have been right. I'm actually, right now between typing sentences, drumming two fingers on my desk to the tune of the classic NES game Jackal. Ahh, I can even hear the "weeeeeeeeoooo" of the grenades and the "kapop!" of the barracks exploding to release the POW's.
This all is very odd to me for one reason: I have not played any of these games for probably 3 years or more. Why is it coming back to me now? Why is it haunting me? Why do I sometimes, when seeing someone do something incredibly stupid, think to myself "What'd you do that for? What a bonehead move!" or "Dunno, think we might have a little brain fade here." Both of these were things one would hear when ramming the pace car in Papyrus' "NASCAR Racing 2" for the PC.
Perhaps all of this roots back to some video game trauma at a young age, such as never figuring exactly what the f*** I was supposed to be doing in NES' "Star Voyager." I still, to this day, have no clue what the point of that game was. You floated through space like a lump of crap, got into firefights with random fleets of baddies for no apparent reason, and then eventually got killed. Yeah, I'm going with the trauma theory.
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Big Cray: Accept No Substitute

Verizon, continued

First off, I'd like to apologize for the layout here at the time of this writing. I just registered this blog, and simply haven't had time yet to get into modifying the template into something more presentable. I'll get to it... trust me.
Secondly, for those of you who don't know who I am, you may need to read up on some of my former writing to get up to speed with some of the things I'll talk about. I am a computer technical professional, as it is made apparent at cray.atspace.com. I'm also a bit of a loudmouth, as it is made apparent by my writings at Andyville. This particular entry is a continuation of my recent rant on Verizon. Now that you're up to speed, we can move on.
When I last spoke of the evil corporation that is Verizon, it was regarding their refusal to offer DSL in certain smaller markets where they have a monopoly on landlines. This, along with a gross lack of broadband services offered in our area combine to leave me with dial-up... in 2006... friggin' dial-up!
Well, after that wonderfully refreshing rant, some time goes by, and sure enough, the Karma for torturing old Stan came around and bit me in the butt because my two phone lines started crosstalking to an unacceptable extent, not to mention picking up what sounds like a ground loop.
I have two phone lines: one for normal phone operations, and one for data. Recently, if I pick up either line, especially for about three days after it rains, you can hear, sometimes quite clearly, the activity on the other line. This is accompanied by a loud buzz and sometimes some crackle.
This plays serious havoc with the data line. I've had days where the best internet connection it could achieve was 4.2kbps. Most days it is connecting around 21.6kbps. However, a few months ago, it connected 38-42kbps. Also, it has gotten to the point that one can hear the modem talk so loudly when listening to the normal phone line that they can barely hear the person on the other end of the conversation. In addition to this, ringing of the main line seems to be disconnecting the modem on the data line now.
On a dry day, when the problem was not too severe, I tested at their network interface box on the side of the structure, effectively disconnecting the house wiring, and plugged in two phones, one on each line. I then hit a key on each phone to silence the dial tone, and held a button on one phone while listening in the earpiece of the other. The touchtone was clearly audible in the earpiece. I've also done a similar test on a wetter day, and gotten the same results, in addition to the ground loop sound and crackle. Therefore, I've deduced that it is somewhere in the line coming into the box, and not associated with the in-house wiring. What I'm guessing is that some of the vintage 1977 line has began to leak, and it's grounding out when it rains. Of course, that's just my guess.
So, I finally decided to call Verizon about it. I explained the problem, and then explained the tests I had performed. Despite my explanation that the problem existed when the house wiring was not even connected, she mentioned that we had "inside line maintenance" on our plan, so there wouldn't be a charge for the visit they would make. That's good, but why does that matter? It's in their line, not our internal line!!! Regardless, Verizon says they will come out and look at it. However, the date they gave me that they would be here by: two weeks from the date I called. Wow, talk about service....
The irony knows no bounds, because, as I was typing this entry, the mail arrived, and in it was an offer for an unlimited calling plan from Verizon. Now, for fun, I'm going to quote parts of this that just make my head hurt.
"Talk all you want -- with service you can count on."
"And of course, you'll get it all with the reliable service that you've come to expect from Verizon."
"Everything you want is right here. So why go anywhere else? From phone service and high-speed Internet to home entertainment, no one gives you a greater range of services at a better price than Verizon."
Ok... they're not paying attention. The service sucks. The reliability is non-existant. They don't offer any type of internet service or TV here... hell, they barely offer phone service... AND THEY OWN ALL THE LINES! Verizon: They never start working for me.
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Big Cray: Accept No Substitute