Samhain is the name for the Gaelic festival you probably know better as Halloween (All Saints’ Eve or All Hallows’ Eve).
For an excellent article on the history of Halloween and the origins of many of the traditions we know, read up on Wikipedia — you might be surprised by what you read.
I got two calls from the local Lowes store regarding my ceiling fan issue, and I have to say I was quite impressed by how efficiently the local store handled the issue.
They had a replacement fan ready for me when I stopped by, and they actually had no problem just putting the purchase price of the fan onto a gift card so that I could select a different model.
I would say the greatest failing of Lowes in this entire incident is that the corporate offices has put together an online system that poorly reflects on the ability of local Lowes management to handle problems; perhaps the best thing for Lowes to do is simply forward online request to local management and not ever try and resolve issues at a corporate level…
NOTE: I actually purchased a Hunter ceiling fan at The Home Depot since Lowes didn’t have a suitable replacement fan in a brand I trusted. The Hunter fan’s motor is easily three times the weight of the Harbor Breeze’s motor, and like the other Hunter fans I have (and have had in the past) it’s totally silent (and was much easier to install).
I’ve upgraded my [Intel] Macs to OS-X 10.6 - Snow Leopard, and all of the upgrades went fine; of course, they all had OS-X 10.5 – Leopard – with the latest updates applied, so I had every expectation that the install would go fine.
I tried to upgrade my sister’s [Intel] MacBook (Gen2) from OS-X 10.4 – Tiger – to OS-X 10.6 – Snow Leopard… and it looked like the upgrade was going to go fine until it sat at twelve minutes remaining for almost three hours.
I was a little nervous when I powered down the MacBook with the installation hung and let it reboot (the system drive wasn’t bootable, so it started up from the Snow Leopard image without asking). Fortunately the installer recognized that the disk had once contained OS-X and was able to install a new version onto it without loosing all the settings.
While the install didn’t go very smoothly, and it took on the order of five hours, it worked… but you might not want to do and upgrade installation on any Mac that isn’t running the 10.5.
One final note; I find it amazing that Mac bigots are totally blind to how much OS-X is like Windows… I just can’t figure out whether Mac users just aren’t very smart, or they’ve been brain washed.
So you’ve got your new copy of Microsoft® Windows™ 7 and you’re ready to install it on your computer… but you have to decide whether to use the 32-bit install DVD or the 64-bit install DVD.
There’s obviously special cases that might force you to use one version or the other, but if that’s the case you should have the question eating at you.
First thing is does you processor and motherboard support 64-bits? If it doesn’t, then the choice is easy because you don’t have one — you’ll be using 32-bits.
Second, is your computer limited to 2GB or 4GB of memory? If it is, then the answer is simple — you’ll want to use 32-bit.
Third, does you computer have 4GB or less or memory? If it does, then you have to ask yourself if you’re going to upgrade your computer soon. Take a look at memory prices, it may be more feasible to actually buy a new computer with a fast processor, better video, etc. But that’s a decision you’ll have to make. If you’re not likely to put more than 4GB of memory in your computer you’ll want to use 32-bit.
If your computer will have more than 4GB of memory you will likely want to use 64-bit.
These guidelines are only that, and your specific needs may have many more complex requirements — but don’t deceive yourself into thinking you need to put a 64-bit version of Windows 7 on a computer that will never be able to really take advantage of it; you will in all likelihood decrease your performance.
So you want to upgrade to Microsoft® Windows™ 7, but you’re not sure which version is the right choice…
Essentially there are only three choices for consumers in the US this time: Home Premium, Professional, and Ultimate… and certainly you can go through the matrix and figure out what’s best, but here’s my advice.
If your computer won’t be used in a business setting where it’s necessary that you join a domain (Active Directory Service) then you may not need anything more than Home Premium. If you have ADS on your home network, consider therapy.
If your computer is not capable of hardware virtualization (you can use the detection tool below) then you won’t be able to use the Virtual XP mode of Professional or Ultimate.
If your motherboard doesn’t have the TPM (Trusted Platform Module) you won’t be able to use the enhanced security of Professional or Ultimate.
The only other useful feature in Professional/Ultimate that’s not in Home Premium is the ability to be an RDP (Remote Desktop Protocol) server that would allow remote access from another machine. All versions support remote assistance requests.
There’s absolutely no reason to buy a higher end version than you can use; it will not run any faster or better. The version you install will be locked to the hardware you install it on, and it’s hard to move it to another computer (it might be impossible).
Don’t waste your money by stroking your ego — buy the version that fits your hardware and your needs best; and for most people that’s going to be Home Premium.
I’ve upgraded my site to WordPress 2.8.5, a “hardening release”.
As always, I recommend WordPress to power your BLOG; it’s likely your hosting company offers it as an menu selectable install option, and it’s easy to install and maintain yourself if you’d like to take advantage of it’s full customization potential.
I purchased an inexpensive ceiling fan from Lowe’s in July — I needed something small, something that would be close to the ceiling, and since I didn’t really care for anything I had to choose from, something that wasn’t expensive.
I ended up with a:
Harbor Breeze, 30″ White Breezeway Ceiling Fan
Item #: 20006 / Model: 0020006
For about $30…
I found the fan a little noisy from the start, and originally it wobbled quite a bit on the ceiling (that I took care of by taking it down, and putting it back up using some felt spacers to help cushion it against the outlet box).
Last week, it finally got cool enough here that I didn’t need the fan circulating air in my office… so I turned it off. Yesterday it got warm enough that I felt like it was a good idea to turn it on to circulate the air to keep the office as cool as possible.
To my surprise, a ceiling fan less than three months old appears to have bearing that are going bad (certainly I don’t class this fan as inexpensive any longer, I classify it as CHEAP).
I figured, I’d contact Lowe’s and find out what the warranty was and how painful it would be to get service… so I clicked on their web site, send off a message to customer service (with all the information on the fan, model, etc) and went about my business doing other thing.
Submitting online requests are great; they very low impact on a person’s time — you send in the request when you have time, you deal with the response when you have time — it’s the next best thing to not needing to contact support… that is when you actually get customer service.
I got a message fairly early this morning — they needed the item and / or model number in order to provide me with the information I ask for. Hmm — can you say careless, incompetent, and not really interested in providing service — all that information was in the web request AND embarrassingly enough, the entire web request (including that information was sent to me).
I replied that I had provided the information already… and if there was something more they needed they’d have to be more specific.
The next note came back that they couldn’t access the original web request; yes — you got it, all the previous information was once again copied onto the request.
Enough was enough… I picked up the phone and called.
The woman who I spoke with (after going through the obligatory maze of voice prompts and responses — a good sign a company doesn’t really care about it customers) seemed concerned, but she immediately needed to put me on hold (wasting more of my time) to research the problem. Then all she had to come back with was that the local store would call me. When I told her I’d like to speak with her manager, she immediately apologized and told me that the local store would be calling to help me (yeah — like I was deaf, dumb, or stupid — she obviously had been dealing with Lowe’s customer service people too much).
I was a little “rough” on her… and got a manager.
The manager was equally ineffective — but in fact confirmed that all the information that would have been needed to resolve this had been entered into the original message; but since it had been turned over to the store they would need to handle it.
As I pointed out to him; I did an online request for information because I didn’t want to spend the time chasing this down on phone calls — had I wanted to make a phone call originally I would have been able to, and that all they had really done was to waste my time and encourage me to shop elsewhere.
I received a voice mail this afternoon from one of the local Lowe’s store — apparently they’ve pulled a replacement for me and it’s ready for me to pick it up at my convenience.
I’ve got news for Lowe’s — it will NEVER be at my convenience, and I certainly don’t intend on wasting more of my time to take down this POS fan, drive to Lowe’s, pickup another POS fan, and install the same POS fan — I’d much rather invest a little more of my money and less of my time in acquiring and replacing this fan with something that provides better service than either this POS fan or Lowe’s!
It’s here…
Today is the official release of Microsoft® Windows™ 7.
If you’ve had problems updating your Microsoft® Windows™ Vista system to SP2 you may want to download the System Update Readiness Tool and run it even if you intend to skip SP2 and move directly to Windows 7… apparently upgrades to Windows 7 may fail if your Vista system is in a state where SP2 didn’t install correctly.
My advice, save yourself a headache by downloading and installing the System Update Readiness Tool — at least if you end up having to call Microsoft support it’s one less thing they will have you do before someone actually pays attention to your problem.
Does it occur to you that if a company has a slogan like “Can you hear me now?” perhaps that’s because it’s a question many of their customer have to ask over and over…
I’ve had Verizon Wireless service since the late 90s — and except for a two year period where I had a flat rate regional service in San Francisco I would say I was relatively happy with them.
Two years ago, when I started to make preparations to move, I opened an account with AllTel.
In San Francisco, I roamed on Sprint with my AllTel phone, but I still had my two Verizon phone.
I have to say, in San Francisco there’s no question that Verizon offers far superior service to Sprint.
However now that I don’t live in San Francisco, and Verizon has purchased AllTel I’m just not that happy with service any longer.
Frequently I have cases where my phone doesn’t ring… I don’t get a SMS message or voice mail notification for a day (or more)… in the middle of a call the other party can’t hear me, or I can’t hear the other party for thirty seconds (or so) and then it’s fine… twice I’ve been the unwilling participant in conference calls (right in the middle of talking to someone I wanted to talk too, suddenly I had two strangers on the call instead of who I’d called)… constantly I have issues with data connections.
The funny thing is everything worked just fine here before Verizon took over AllTel — but the cellular service is getting to be extremely unreliable, they’re closing several of their stores, and they keep trying to coerce old AllTel customers to change over to Verizon plans and pay more for less.
Well — I’m tired of it… and I’ve started looking around.
I pay about $110 [including fees and taxes] month for 350 minutes of voice, unlimited data, unlimited text, free nights starting at 7:00 pm, free weekends, free mobile-to-mobile, eleven air time free numbers I designate, and nation wide roaming (of course they did try and charge me $86 for roaming in my home area and that took three months to correct). For that I use about 2.5GB of data and 3700 minutes per month; and don’t incur any extra airtime charges (but it does require being cautious and having to plan ahead; I have to put customer service number I intend to call in my air time free number the day before I call them).
For about $90 [including fees and taxes] per month (with a regional carrier) I can get unlimited voice, unlimited data, unlimited text, and nationwide roaming — no games, no need to plan ahead, simple. I’m asking myself could service be any worse?
The only down side is a new two year contract.
