Wallet makers! What the hell?

It’s the 21st century. Why are wallets either hopelessly bulky or antiquated?

Here are my requirements:

• Made of something indestructible, virtually. I’ve tried stainless “cloth”. It’s virtually indestructible, it’s also sharp, which means it cuts holes in your pants. How about whatever kepur straps are made out of?
• Shitload of card slots! Everything has a card now! And until stores are ready to accept digitally stored cards directly from your phone, I need to carry them. Three is not enough. Six is not enough.
• ID window. Quick ID access is super convenient. Do it.
• Cash slot. Unfortunately I still sometimes have to deal with paper money. Until it goes away and we all get our subdermal microchips I still need this.
• Not an aluminum box. I just don’t like the shape of the current aluminum offerings. Also, they’re a fixed size. Every once in a while something stupid happens, like a bar owner pays me in $1′s, I need a wallet with “give”.
• No money clips! WTF?!? Why are these all the rage? Who are you trying to impress with paper cash in a clip? That’s ridiculous! Just carry one ATM receipt! That should be sufficient to impress anyone if you store your money in a bank like a normal person.
• A little pocket for whatever else. I drop coins in the tip jar or the nearest ash tray, but I still sometimes have small things to keep track of eg. spare guitar picks, SIM card, those tiny little “keychain” cards that I don’t want cluttering up my keychain.
• Modern looking. I realize that I could buy a thirty compartment nylon “tactical” wallet that looks like the first wallet I got when I was 9. I’m not feeling it.

Bring me this wallet and I will buy it.

Display quality of HTC Inspire 4G super LCD vs. Apple retina.

I spent a lot of time agonizing over display resolutions when choosing my latest phone, the HTC Inspire 4G.
I had seen an iphone 4 at the Apple store and was impressed with it’s nearly pixel free clarity. For reasons I won’t get into here, an iphone wasn’t an option this time, but I wanted to make sure I got the nicest looking display I could. I read a ton of reviews and really nerdy arguments about displays and competing technologies; qHD…s-lcd…amoled…WTF?
I’m here to tell you friends: It’s moot. These newer non-retina displays are beautiful. I could walk around on stage in a mock turtleneck being a pompous prick if it would help convince you, but trust me you would not be ashamed to take these ladies to the prom. All the things that I looked for and was so impressed with on the iphone are here. Text is nice and crisp with smooth curves. Corners of rounded app buttons are smooth, even when you look at them from up close.You’d have to get nose grease on the glass to be bothered by pixels.
My point is that while mathematically and intellectually you could argue the fine points of display tech and pixel density, even someone who spends a lot of time assessing visual quality doesn’t think there’s enough difference here to make this a factor on the pro/con list. You’d be wiser to consider whether you’d rather see videos and rich content or a blue brick when you visit a web site.

Super quick no frills wireless router shootout: Linksys E1000 vs. Netgear WNR1000v2

Are you ready? This is going to be a really quick one. Here goes:

Buy the Linksys E1000, it’s stronger* and it looks like something from Tron.

The End

*Ok, seriously. I loaded up Speedtest.net on the iPad and took multiple readings at different locations around the house. I repeated the test using both wireless routers. At the furthest corner of the house, the Netgear was delivering about 2-3 Mbps while the Linksys was delivering 6Mbps. At the point where data rate started to fall off with the Netgear (down to 15Mbps from 20), I was still getting full strength on the Linksys. Also worth noting; even though this is the bottom rung on the current ladder of Linksys home wireless routers (which run from about $70 to ~$200) I haven’t found anything that it doesn’t do well, from gaming to streaming Netflix movies. Downside: Comcast will give you the Netgear for free if you ask.

Hidden Comcast/Xfinity data restrictions

Let me just quote this to start, it’s from a hidden Comcast FAQ  related to a data usage cap that was not disclosed during any part of the service order/contract process:

What will happen if I exceed 250 GB of data usage in a month?

The vast majority – more than 99% – of our customers will not be impacted by a 250 GB monthly data usage threshold. If you exceed more than 250 GB, you may receive a call from the Customer Security Assurance (“CSA”) team to notify you of excessive use. At that time, we will tell you exactly how much data you used. When we call you, we try to help you identify the source of excessive use and ask you to moderate your usage, which the vast majority of our customers do voluntarily. If you exceed 250 GB again within six months of the first contact, your service will be subject to termination and you will not be eligible for either residential or commercial internet service for twelve (12) months. We know from experience that most customers curb their usage after our first call. If your account is terminated, after the twelve (12) month period expires, you may resume service by subscribing to a service plan appropriate to your needs.

The back story

I recently switched to Comcast because Qwest had been unable to provide the level of service that I’ve been paying for; typically delivering around 1.5Mbps rather than the advertised 7Mbps. At peak times Qwest performance would drop to near dial-up speeds, and at best we would clock close to 5Mbps around 3am with no one else using bandwidth in the neighborhood. We’ve been streaming a lot of movies on the Xbox recently, and this requires a fairly steady data rate for uninterrupted playback. Qwest just hasn’t been able to keep up. Picture quality is dynamically adjusted by the Netflix Xbox application to attempt to account for bandwith issues, but even with the picture at low quality there are still times where we can’t maintain a playable stream at all.

So when a Comcast rep knocked on the door offering higher speeds for roughly the same price, we decided to give it a shot. After a few hiccups (they wouldn’t drill through stucco, so we had to have a separate contractor put in the jack) we got Comcast internet yesterday. This morning, a graph appeared in my Customer Central page that wasn’t there last night. The graph shows my total data usage out of  a max of 250GB, already at 6GB used. It’s been a little over half a day’s worth of use. My math says we’ll be over the threshold about 21 days into a 30 day cycle. So then what happens? Like I said at the top, I had to do a little digging to find the answer.

Let’s take it point by point:

• “The vast majority – more than 99% – of our customers will not be impacted by a 250 GB monthly data usage threshold.”
  • Decodes to: If you exceed this limit, you’re an oddity. The problem is You the customer, not Us. Granted, my internet usage is heavy, but higher than 99% of all Comcast internet users? Even those that purchase the top tier speed package?
• “If you exceed more than 250 GB, you may receive a call from the Customer Security Assurance (“CSA”) team to notify you of excessive use. At that time, we will tell you exactly how much data you used.”
  • Decodes to: We have a special department to meter, micromanage and badger you about your internet usage. I haven’t dealt with this kind of heavy handed bandwidth management since the days of the local ISP operating out of a small office with a T3.
• “When we call you, we try to help you identify the source of excessive use and ask you to moderate your usage, which the vast majority of our customers do voluntarily.”
  • Here’s where it starts to get nasty. Comcast is now judging my internet usage and applying the term “excessive” and then hinting around at a threat: “We can do this the easy way or the hard way, buddy.”
• “If you exceed 250 GB again within six months of the first contact, your service will be subject to termination and you will not be eligible for either residential or commercial internet service for twelve (12) months.”
  • Ah-HAH! The threat at last. Decodes to: If you don’t stop using the product which you are paying a heavy monthly fee to use, we will kick you off the internet for a year.
• “We know from experience that most customers curb their usage after our first call.”
  • Decodes to: We are very proud of the fact that most customers are sufficiently intimidated by our threat that they stop using the product that we’re billing them for.

I find this interesting. Comcast is unable to provide the level of bandwidth that they’ve contracted for, so they avoid embarrassment by pushing the blame back onto their customers. In the modern era, 250GB of data is a lot of data, but certainly not the unreachable limit that they make it sound like. We watch by far less streaming programming than the average family watches TV, but we prefer the option of being able to choose when/what we watch. There’s nothing really “excessive” about it. It’s a feature that is offered on all standard game/entertainment consoles, and even smart phones and iPads.

So right now the plan is to watch our usage for the first month, and if necessary invoke the 30-day service guarantee. But I’d much rather have the best of both worlds, the unlimited usage we had with Qwest, and the speed that we’re getting with Comcast. I don’t fancy the idea of having to closely watch our data usage. This should be transparent to the end user, especially when you’ve contracted for the top tier of residential bandwidth.

The Elements

Last night, purely on impulse and a nudge from rabbit, I picked up a copy of The Elements by Theodore Gray. It’s an element by element rundown of the periodic table, and it’s thought-provoking, informative, enjoyable and laugh-out-loud funny. I finished it in about 4 hours, with lots of stopping to read the really interesting and funny bits to my partner.  That’s the first time I’ve managed to get a book completed in the last couple years, and the first time in the last twenty years that I can recall knocking a book out in a single sitting.

The author is one of the founding partners of WolframAlpha, who are famous for Mathematica and for just being really smart folks in general. He’s also one of a rare breed of collectors who focus on trying to obtain a sample of all of the elements – or at least all the ones that are possible to obtain (in keeping with the laws of the land and the laws of physics). His writing style is conversational and witty. He gets into the underpinnings of atomic structures and electron orbitals without going so far off into the woods that a layperson wouldn’t get it. I found it particularly enlightening to read about all of everyday uses for “uncommon” elements. Uncommon not necessarily meaning less plentiful in abundance, but rather the ones that aren’t quite the household names that they probably deserve to be (and the ones that were once household names, and really shouldn’t have been). Like Radium.

I forgot to mention the photographs. Every page has big beautiful photos of the elements  in their purest available form, as well as examples of objects containing those elements. If you’re already someone who watches shows like Mythbusters, this book is right up your alley. If Dancing with the Stars is more your speed, you’ll probably still enjoy turning the pages and looking at the pretty pictures – or you might just see a bunch of shiny rocks.

Does Kalashnikov make a lawnmower?

After attempting to repair two gas lawnmowers in two weeks (the score is 1:1)  I’m astonished to report that the proper operation of a Tecumseh engine comes down to tiny pores in metal barely visible to the eye, and springs scarcely larger than those in a ball point pen. Is this really the best we can do? I understand planned obsolescence, but one of these babies only lasted 2 months before failing to start. How are we supposed to maintain our lawns after the zombie apocalypse with such delicate machines?

Growing up we had just one lawnmower and we never babied it. I don’t recall dad putting fuel stabilizer in it, running it empty at the end of the season or rebuilding the carb every year. Maybe he did without me knowing, but anyway… They don’t make them like they used to.

Briggs & Stratton, you’re on my list too.

Dyson guy, if you’re out there, lawnmowers need a thorough reinventing. I just want it to work properly, as you say.

Another great product discontinued: Kepur guitar straps

Kepur, a brand of Core One Creative, made a type of guitar strap that I happen to love. They’re now discontinued and soon-to-be extremely hard to find. Musician’s Friend are selling out their last bit of inventory as we speak.
What’s so great about them? They are built to withstand nuclear attack. They will never ever EVER come off the strap knobs. I’m a fairly enthusiastic player, and one of the things I like the least about being an enthusiastic player is having my guitar come off the end of the strap and hit the floor while I’m playing it. All it takes for this to happen is a 180 degree twist of the strap and a little push. Guitar players have tried various methods for overcoming this common hazard.

The most expensive and complicated method involves various brands of strap-locks. These are basically special knobs you install in place of your existing strap knobs, and mated clips that you install on your strap. They click together, and you’re all set and secure. I tried a set of these once. As it turns out, they’re made of shit metal. (I’m pretty sure that’s not the official metallurgical name.) I had a strap-lock knob strip its way right out of the socket and the guitar fell to the ground. I was super pissed. I said to the strap lock, “You have one F@!*ING job and you FAILED!!!” Needless to say I’m not on speaking terms with strap locks any more.

A less elegant but 100% effective solution is to unscrew your strap knob, place a large flat washer over the inside of the strap knob, then the end of your strap, and then re-screw the strap knob to the guitar. The washer keeps the strap from ever coming off. Ever. Not even when you want it off, unless you go get the screwdriver again.

A third and very common solution, though probably the worst, is the Shitloads of Duct Tape™ method that has been popularized by every punk rock musician everywhere. You just put the strap over the knob and wrap it in shitloads of duct tape. This gives you a temporary solution that is extremely high in street cred.

OR, you buy a Kepur strap. You modify nothing. Just put it on your guitar. It’s kind of a bitch to get it over the strap knob the first time, and honestly kind of a bitch to take it off, but you could if you wanted to – without tools. It doesn’t really twist, and the ends are so indestructibly built that I can’t see any possible way that a guitar could come unfastened without deliberate intent. Even frenetic musical gyrations are not gonna do it. No sir.

One night, while I was wailing particularly hard on my guitar (punching it like it owed me money) I noticed that the end of the strap had managed to turn around and flip over into the dreaded just-about-to-fall-off configuration. [See graphic] I watched to see if the strap knob was going to come back through the hole, but I kept wailing and it held on just fine.  Mission accomplished.

The Kepur straps were pretty inexpensive, as musical equipment goes. The 2″ wide model was about $22. They had custom versions with little rockabilly style graphics on them for slightly more. I have a plain one and one with a cow skull graphic. I guess the reason that they weren’t successful is that they just don’t look like they’d be comfortable. And they’re not terribly sexy. They look like rubber. They’re actually a kind of bomb-proof heat-extruded polymer over some sort of webbing. You can tow a truck with them, literally. Fortunately, they don’t feel like rubber. They’re smooth, matte, dry-feeling, not sticky. They slide over sweaty cotton t-shirts as well as any other guitar strap material, and they’re pretty comfortable as well. Because they’re so restistant to distortion of their shape, they actually feel more like a padded strap than a 2″ wide nylon strap. The weight stays evenly distributed. I can speak authoritatively on this because I play HEAVY guitars made from blocks of solid aluminum. My back goes out well before my shoulder starts hurting.

Anyway, they were really cool. Now they’re (almost) gone. Too bad they didn’t catch on. Maybe they should have added some optional duct tape for the ends, so you wouldn’t have to sacrifice your punk aesthetic. But hey, what do I know. The people have spoken, and these great straps obviously suck.

Update:  Please see the comment below from Kepur! They’re alive and well! Buy them!

Update on Qwest issue with HD streams via Xbox/Netflix

I had written previously about an issue I was having where I could not view HD movies through Netflix on the Xbox. Any time I initiated an HD stream, the internet in my whole house would disconnect. I did a bit of troubleshooting, and some Googling and found that it was most likely a Qwest issue with the router.  I contacted Qwest after being prompted to do so by one of their customer service people who crawls the internet looking for disgruntled customers. Within 24 hours I was contacted by a live person on the phone. A few days, and a few speed tests later I had a new modem and the HD stream problem was fixed.

I had also been having another annoying problem where my bandwidth was nowhere near the capacity that I was paying for. Nearly dial-up on a 7Mbps connection. This issue was not resolved by the new router. Again, I contacted Qwest and had a live technician on the phone the next morning. He ran some tests on his end and found that there was a problem at the central office that was sending a ton of errors down to my modem so that it was unable to sync at the appropriate speed. He moved me to a different switch and the problem is now solved.

I just wanted to post an update because I did a fair amount of bitching about Qwest in my initial blog post, and Qwest support really did a great job of handling my issues and winning back my loyalty as a customer. I work in the support field, so I know that providing this level of support is a lot easier said than done. And Qwest, if you’re still paying attention, don’t offshore your support. You’ve got great staff and they deserve to keep their jobs.

Qwest + XBox Live + Netflix + HD Streaming = FAIL

Qwest DSL has been shutting off my internet every time I initiate an HD steam in Netflix via XBox live.

Steps to reproduce:

1. Turn on XBox and log into XBox Live
2. Launch Netflix via XBox Live
3. Select an HD movie for streaming, eg. Superman II (Kneel before Zod!)
4. At this point Netflix determines your optimal speed. (Presented in HD! FTW!)
5. Error message comes up saying that it cannot play the movie. (OK…)
6. At this point, every computer in the house loses internet access!!! (WTF?!?!? Points STRONGLY toward Qwest, not XBox Live or Netflix.)
7. A few minutes later, internet access comes back.
8. Any time you repeat the process, all internet access in the home is lost after selecting an HD movie for streaming.
9. After repeating this several times, internet access WILL NOT come back on. Manual restart of router is required to restore internet access.

Qwest has some goddamn explaining to do.

How to mount a Ubuntu drive in Windows

This is another one of those “pay it forward” type posts. I spent the better part of an hour researching/installing/uninstalling/reg-editing and generally banging my head against a wall trying to get my girlfriend’s Ubuntu drive to show up as a readable drive in Windows XP so she could migrate her personal files over. It was hard enough to even find a good discussion of the problem, much less a list of solutions. Once I found a list, I tried every half-assed application on it, to no avail. Finally, on one forum thread, a user posted a link to a solution that actually works and is completely painless.

http://ext2fsd.sourceforge.net/

Go there. Download. Install. Use the Ext2 Volume Manager to assign a drive letter and then browse the drive in Windows Explorer. Couldn’t be much easier than that. Anyway, enjoy.

One more quick plug: The drive was attached to the XP computer via the Newertechnology USB 2.0 Universal Drive Adapter, which I’ve plugged previously elsewhere. It’s the best $30 guarantee against future frustration you’ll ever find. Get one.