Rant: People Who Change Personal Settings in Windows

I am a CSR, and I also just like helping people with their computer problems. Category A,: simple fixes, things go screwy sometimes so they need fixing. These are about 90% of all problems. Category B: real errors, like viruses or something really broken. They take a minute to fix and are around 5% of all problems. Category C: User Preferences: not any kind of real problem, but rather that people tried to personalize something too much, that it ended up breaking other things. Sadly his last 5% takes more time to fix than all of Category A because you have no idea what they did, and thing are just weird. Yesterday I had a friend ask for help in converting files from Apple's stupid unsupported everywhere format AAC, which is another Rant altogether into something her old MP3 play could read. Switching to MP3 is an A problem, something annoying that Apple did, but has a simple fix, it just take a minute for apple to change it for you. That would have been all simple to solve except she is a C kind of person. Instead of files just opening like they should, she decided to throw in a little Windows 3.1 action, and have each folder open in a new window. Completely useless and very confusing. In a matter of seconds, while trying to locate the folder I was looking for I now had 15 windows open and no idea where I was. That would have been annoying enough, except she decided to throw another fun unexpected change. If you are guessing left handed mouse, that is a common C problem but not this one. She decided to switch windows to the single click system. For those who don't know about it, usually when you use a computer you click once to select something, and again to open it. Very intuitive, easy for selecting files to move and such. Hers instead would on that first click just open things. New folders, iTunes, random other applications. It was a mess. I eventually learned that to select you just have to hang your mouse over and it would select on it's own. Scary for those of us who ctrl click to select only the files we want. All and all it made something that should have been super easy become super complicated. This isn't the first time I have run into something like this, like the man at work, who needs everything flashing colors and bigger, or the lady who decided she needs to personally backup the servers, but sometimes you just need to fix what you can. Take a deep breath and move on and try to forgive and forget.

Rant: iPhone 4.01

I haven't ranted about anything in a while, mostly because i am generally a nice guy, but something are still annoying, or at least funny, as in today. Apple just released iPhone OS 4.01, which fixes the antenna problems in the new iPhone 4, and supposedly all the old ones too, like my 3Gs. I would like to show you what it actually did.

Before:

After:

Now focus, with all your might, on the signal strength on the left to see the difference. The iPhone is now magic and will never not work, because the bar has grown tall enough that even when you have no signal, it will still tell you that you do. Yay for Apple!

Rave: Meebo Bar

Today I was telling my roommate about the bar that I have here at the bottom of my page. It is really cool, because it lets me(or you) chat with friends, share this page, or just ask me a question right now. He thought it was cool enough to put on a page for himself. If you want one, just go here, sign up, and then add the script that it gives you into whatever web page you want. Mine is kind of one of the boxes on the side, that is why you might see something that says Meebo Bar but show nothing around it, but that slight annoyance is more that worth it. Meebo is awesome!

*Update: I deleted the name from the widget like meebogreg commented, and I now have the bar, and nothing else about it on my page.

Rave: Free iPhone Texting.

After almost a year of trying to figure it out I kind of got a work around working for texting through Google Voice on my iPhone. First get a GV account. They are now free if you have a gmail and live in the US, just go to here. You need to make up a new number, which is the annoying thing, but you can use it with your phone forever after. From that point you can text and call from the mobile web page, but it it is kind of annoying. Instead go to Voice Central and sign up, that will tell you how to get something that looks as good as an app on your phone, to text and call from, with your GV number. There would be a real app, but apple is a bunch of jerks and blocked all of them. The only problem is that it doesn't do push notifications. From this point, you can just get emails every time someone texts you, but that gets boring, so instead go to GVMax and set up an account to forward your texts to your google talk. It is really simple to sign up. Last download meebo! and sign in with your google talk account, which is the same everything as your gmail, and tada, it pushes every time you get a new text, and added them to your buddy list, so that you can text them forever from there. That is what I do, and it works pretty well, if you ever need to start a new text to someone not on the buddy list, just open voice central and start it there.