endperform.org

Now I remember why I hate calling into tech support, and why I built my own computers back in the day. Today I spent a total of three hours going back and forth with Dell support. Why? I wanted to get the 64-bit Vista Home Premium disk sent to me. Microsoft has a program in place where you can request the 64-bit edition of Home Premium and only have to pay for the shipping, so I figured I would go ahead and take advantage of that so I could get the most out of the machine I have. I did some research in the Dell forums prior to calling in, so I knew that they were in fact doing this for customers. So, I placed a call. I had a case number since I had called in on Friday and the customer care center was closed, so I figured there wasn’t much to do other than to give them some information and get the disks out to me. Boy, was I wrong.

The first person I get in the customer care center totally misunderstood my request. They thought I was trying to locate the product key for my machine. I had to tell her three times that I knew where the key was, I had it written down, and that all I’m looking to do is to get the 64-bit edition sent to me. She tells me to contact Microsoft. The product key doesn’t work in their little web app because the Vista I have was an OEM edition, which I told her. She again tried to tell me where the key was, and I was getting upset at this point. I told her fine, I’d try Microsoft but guaranteed that in an hour I’d be calling back. I hang up, and an hour later, I call back in.

The second person I get, once again in the customer care center, was still misunderstanding my request and didn’t have a clue as to what I was asking. He told me that I could call back in an hour, or he could transfer me to technical support. I took the tech support option, because I knew I’d have to go through all of these hoops yet again. I hit tech support, and finally… finally… someone understands what I’m doing. The tech checked with his ‘manager’ and said that since I was a first time caller (I never had to call tech support, ever), that he would send the CD out, but that they typically aren’t doing this for customers (bzzt, wrong, I have documented proof that you are), and I got a dispatch number and a few confirmation emails.

The end result is that the 64-bit media is on the way to the house, but I had to fight tooth-and-nail to get it. According to the site, they’re overnighting it, which is a nice touch. I had mentioned to the tech that I had gone through hell, so I guess that’s how they’re making it up to me. At any rate, I really hope nothing else happens to this box before it goes out of warranty, I dread having to call Dell Hell again.

I hadn’t updated on the status of my little Emacs experiment lately, simply because I’ve gravitated away from it. Of late, I’ve been back to using Vi(m) or whatever else is available to me to do things. I know enough about Emacs that I can get into a file, edit it and get back out, but that’s about the extent of my knowledge. I’ve decided that I’m going to wander back to Vim-land and be happy with that editor. Granted, Emacs is pretty cool, but I’ve used Vim the most and I plan to expand my Vim knowledge a bit more, and hopefully reduce me dependence on GUI-based IDEs in the future. I wouldn’t say it was a waste of time, but it just affirms the fact that I dig Vim a bit more than I do Emacs.

What am I talking about? See this post on the official Google blog.

I had a long diatribe here, but I broke a promise to myself that I wouldn’t get too darn political on this blog, so therefore, I edited it.

I tried to give you a fair chance. I installed you on both my work and home machines and used you for a few days, but sadly I’m afraid this might be the end of the road for us, dear KDE. While we’ve been through a lot together, a lot has changed since the 3.5 days. I really don’t want to get into it, but it’s probably for the best that you know why I’m parting ways with you.

You’ve just become too blingy for your own good. You’re not Windows Vista, nor will you ever be, so why try to keep up? While on my higher end desktop you performed OK, you seemed quite sluggish on my work machine. It’s not the latest and greatest, but it seems to run KDE3.5 just fine. Dolphin, your file manager is terribly slow. When I right click for a context menu, there shouldn’t be a 5 second delay in showing it to me. I’m sure there are options somewhere for me to turn that off, but I never had to deal with that before on this box using Gnome or KDE3.5.

Crashing the main GTK application I rely on for work is not a good way to make inroads with me. Granted, you only did this to me on my work box, but regardless it’s something that I cannot soon forgive. There are some other nagging issues, such as when I run a script or program from your “runner” (Alt-F2), you’ll execute it, but when you’re done you whine that you now can’t find the executable. Neat trick, and I’ll file a bug on it if one hasn’t been filed already.

You’re sluggish, I’m sorry to say. That new bling has come at a price, and that price (at least right now) is performance. Yes, my work desktop has integrated graphics, but should that really matter to you? It just seems like you went for the bling and left performance for another day. Unfortunately, these things combined will leave me with no choice but to find something else until a later release, when hopefully you’ll be back to a level where I can use you daily.

Some of you may have heard about the goings-on surrounding Hans Reiser, creator of ReiserFS, and how he was convicted of killing his wife. Most recently, he lead police to her body in an effort to get his sentence reduced. An interesting idea came up on Ubuntu’s Brainstorm site that sparked a lot of controversy. Exhibit A: Brainstorm Idea #10930. The summary is that the submitter things sending a laptop to Reiser while in jail would give him a chance to contribute to society. Ignoring the fact that the laptop would never see it’s intended recipient, some of the comments got rather interesting. Eldmannen, the originator of the post, sees Hans as a ‘victim’ in all of this and has some rather ludicrous thoughts.

There’s this gem:

mtrausch,
Whatever, it was just one kill. Big deal. Others have killed way more. George W Bush is responsible for the death of hundreds of thousands of people.
Also if he commit a crime, he should be locked up so he is no harm to society. But he should still be allowed participate and contribute to society so that he can become a good and productive citizen.
Plus, she deserved it. She cheated with Sean Sturgeon, embezzled money from his company, and was an irresponsible mother who abused illegal substances such as ecstasy.
Let this be a lesson to all; avoid post-order mail brides.

chipbennett,
It is much better to let him be a productive citizen of society that contributes to society, than have him locked up and do nothing, just waste tax money.

neon,
It is not like he killed Gandhi, he just killed his wife.
Perhaps other people can work on it too, but Hans is the genius who designed it, he can make bring the best to it.

And this is the comment that spurred me to post this:

Endperform,
She was a irresponsible mother abused illegal substances such as ecstasy, putter her kids at risk and who dated Sean Sturgeon a dangerous serial-killer who have admitted to killing 8 people and leaving a ninth for dead.
* http://www.wired.com/politics/law/news/2007/05/reiser

I cant imagine the tremendous stress and abuse that poor Hans must have endured. :(
Driving an kind and peaceful man into such an act. :(

“He took someone else’s life and should have to pay for his crimes.”
The guy is paying for his crime. He is doing time.
But he should be given an laptop so that he can be a productive citizen and contribute to the society.

Poor Hans? The guy KILLED HIS WIFE. Eldmannen seems to think Hans is the victim in this, and that his wife drove him to murder her. If you’re having problems with your significant other, there are ways to fix or defuse the situation. If he was really that ’stressed’, he should have separated from her, or better yet, divorced her completely. The fact remains that he killed his wife. We don’t know the exact surroundings of the murder, but to say in no uncertain terms that she deserved to die is just completely insane.