Old Computer Blues

Old computers die, they don't just fade away, and if they don't demand constant attention on the way out their replacement requires tender loving care before they are ready to step up and do their job. My six year old desktop, Asmodeus, has been plagued by random crashes for several years. I sacrificed to it's appetite for components by installing a new video card and power supply at a cost of over $100 each before deciding it was never going to be reliable long term again. Which of course means replacement.

I believe that Microsoft and computer manufacturers conspire to make the replacement of a computer only slightly less stressful than water boarding. Having been in IT for the last 30 years I have always backed up my computers obsessively. Not only to external hard drives, but by cloning to a second HD in the computer itself. Now Asmodeus refuses to run consistently even on the clone so replacement is the only option. The problem is that you can only back up your data files. All your applications and peripheral hardware have to be reinstalled.

Find all those DVDs and CDs with software you bought. Find the ones with your printer/scanner/midi and other drivers. Now sit in front of the new computer for hours babysitting the installs. Oops here's one that won't register because you already have it on the old machine - Oh boy! Now you get to sit on hold while you wait for customer support to grill you like a criminal. Finally got all that software installed and now you get to try to install the software that you originally installed by way of downloads. Now where did I put the product keys for those? Inevitably there are some you pay for a second time because you can't find the keys and have to have them. Computer roulette = trying to guess which program won't run on the version of Windows® on the new machine because you can't buy a machine with the old version any longer.

Bottom line it usually takes me the better part of a week to get the new machine up and running. Worse, it make take months before I realize I overlooked something that I use infrequently but is essential. Do I have really have to say that this sucks like a lamprey? It's my belief that the source of this periodic frustration is Windows' registry. This was a bad idea 30 years ago and as operating systems and programs get more complicated it is a worse idea. When you buy a new computer you should be able to transfer data, programs, drivers and settings in a single operation. Come on Microsoft, its time for a no more tears OS!

Microsoft - you ignorant slut!

Last night my Windows 7 desktop informed me that it had “critical” updates available. This happens on an average of once a week since Microsoft seems unable to get their products right the first fiftieth time. The Windows 7 update application also watches out for any updates it thinks are necessary to applications other than those belonging to Microsoft, because after all, Microsoft knows more about everything you may have on your computer than anyone else including you. So when it informed me that it had an update driver for my Nvidia graphics card I was surprised but willing to give it a try since I had been having issues with the card crashing when I was playing a MMORPG.

So after a 20 minute wait – standard for any Windows update – the computer restarted (really Microsoft? Really?? After all these years we still have to restart the machine after all updates and most software installs. Bush league Microsoft, bush league!) and low and behold all the graphics settings were hosed. I couldn’t get back to my original screen resolution. I tried to open the Nvidia control application only to be told that no Nvidia card was available!

Fortunately, and I almost hate to admit this, Microsoft did something right and included a restore feature in Windows 7 that allows you to return your machine to a previous state after they mangle the settings. This of course took half an hour and another restart but now I am back to where I was after over an hour of time totally wasted. The first version of windows came out in 1983. Thirty years ago!!! And Microsoft still can’t get it right. Seen Windows 8 yet? What a mess. Can you imagine using a machine with Windows 8 for business purposes? One can only hope that this is the final straw that pushes large business users like my employer over the edge and on to Linux.

Cell Phone Tyranny

I have consistently resisted the societal pressure to turn my entire telephone experience over to the not so tender mercies of the cell phone industry. My wife and I both have cheap pay as you go cell phones that we only use when we are either on the road or in case of emergency. The cost of both is around $18 a month and we have more minutes stored up than we will probably ever use.

I have a many reasons for this stance. I do not wish to become assimilated and like the Borg have this device seemingly grafted to my head as I see so many of my fellow humans have. I do not want the temptation to be “that guy” that I hurl obscenities at while he endangers my life as well as his weaving back and forth in traffic while he tries to both drive and engage in inane conversation. I absolutely refuse to even contemplate engaging in “texting”, a pursuit which – if random samples I have seen are any indication – has been invented in order to give the mentally challenged some means, however primitive, of communication. I long for the days when phones were used for the purposes of communication and not as a pacifier substitute.

Currently phone jammers are illegal in the United States. In spite of that I am mightily tempted to order one from Europe. Jamming phones might be the only way to return some people to consciousness. How about the mindless twit shouting into her cell phone on the elevator? I’m so thankful that your friend’s cystoscopy went well; or the 400 pounder blocking the aisle at the supermarket while regaling others with instructions to the kids on how to clean up the dog poo; and the self important blow hard that absolutely has to “take this call” in the middle of a business meeting and lets his co-workers hear the details of his offspring’s stomach virus. Right now phone jammers simply cause phones to lose the current call and prevent outgoing connections. I’m waiting for a model that not only jams the call but emits an eardrum shattering shriek. I want to make these dolts think twice before returning the phone to their head. Any rogue techy who wants to cobble a jammer like this together in their basement will have me in line for delivery.

Just out of curiosity, what is it that makes people think that they have to shout to be heard on a cell phone? I can hear your end of the conversation from fifteen feet away. It reminds me of the movies where the rural phone of the thirties is shown, the mouthpiece jutting from a box on the wall and the earpiece on a cord held to the ear with a character hollering “Gertie! Can ya hear me Gertie?!” Presumably the user doesn’t entirely trust the technology and hopes that somehow the soundwaves they are emitting can make it to the listener’s ear on their own. I don’t think that the cell phone provider commercials with the guy saying “Can you hear me now?” have helped this situation.

Finally, the cell phone providers do it to you without either a dinner or a kiss. A friend has a cell phone from a well known national provider that rhymes with horizon. Stuffed with too much hot technology, the phone’s touch screen stopped working. Company rep says: a) this is a known issue, b) phone is over a year old so no warranty, c) contract only allows discounted phone purchase every 20 months – so you can either pay full price for a new phone or I’ll sell you a used one (very likely to develop the same problem). What’s wrong with this picture? You’re locked into a contract with these thieves, your phone develops a “known issue” (translation: we bought a bad batch of phones) and the company tells you your only recourse to have a usable phone for the remainder of your contract is to buy a new phone at full price or take your chances with a used one. And I thought extortion was illegal.

Cell phones – feh!

Technology Fear

I work in an IT capacity for a large financial company. Specifically I write and troubleshoot software as well as training new developers using a proprietary programming language specifically designed for document production and maintenance . We've had this application in place for over six years during which time my department has gradually taken on documents for a variety of business units that formerly had their documents produced and maintained by third party vendors. When you produce many thousands of documents a month, having a third party vendor involved gets enormously expensive. One such vendor recently raised their price to one dollar a document. When a single business unit can easily generate in excess of 30,000 documents a month, dealing with dozens of different business units on a company wide scale gets expensive fast. Naturally the motivation to move these services in house is strong and we add several units a year to those serviced by our department.

With this kind of incentive and a six year track record of producing thousands of accurate documents day after day when an incorrect document has very negative legal consequences you would think that once the decision has been made to move another business unit's documents in house this decision would be embraced by those who stand to benefit most by it. Namely those employees who have had to wrestle with the demands and deadlines of the third party vendors. But not so! These employees, which now need to provide my department with specifications and assistance in saving their department piles of money annually, inevitably dig in their heels and give their assistance only grudgingly and half-heartedly. Some of this is expected because long time employees approaching retirement age grouse that "we've always done it this way and it works, we don't see why we have to learn to do it a new way" and people are just naturally resistant to change. However, the largest component in this resistance, in spite of the fact that computers have been involved in business applications since the sixties, and personal computers since the eighties, is technology fear.

Technology fear should not be confused with technology ignorance. Technology ignorance is responsible for calls to the help desk such as "my cup holder is broken" referring to the CD drawer or "My computer won't turn on" when the electricity in the building is off. These people are perfectly willing to work with new technology and just need a little generalized training. Either that or their IQ is not sufficient for their position (a situation that sadly is becoming more and more prevalent as American education continues the ongoing process of dumbing itself down). Also, technology fear should not be confused with compartmentalization. My wife works for a university where her job requires fairly advanced skills using Excel and Access yet she needs help figuring out how to chat on Facebook. She's not afraid of technology, she just sees no reason to explore applications beyond her immediate need. Instead technology fear is a combination of Arthur C. Clarke's pronouncement that "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." and "oh my God what if something goes wrong?" In the first case the fear is that if all things are not in some mystical configuration the technology in question will immediately cease to function. Thus adding a new business unit to a functioning system must be accompanied by great trepidation and perhaps appeasement of some sort. In the second the fear is that should a malfunction occur there will be no one that can fix it. It puzzles me that these same individuals have no qualms in purchasing a new car and expecting it to work reliably when they have no more understanding of how it works than they do the technology that they fear.

It would be easy to dismiss these individuals if they did not present such an enormous cost in time to implement any proposed project. In a large company interested parties in a new project can be widely distributed geographically and a new project demands numerous meetings in the form of conference calls to get all systems involved to coordinate the changes necessary for implementation. This results in conference calls with up to thirty people wasting company time while questions like the following are fielded:

What happens if we can't print our document? (what happens when you can't print an email from Aunt Tillie? You call help desk.)
What happens if there is a power failure? (on your end - you quit working. On our end - the same fail-over plan that the company has used for 10 years applies.)
What happens if the home office is closed?(the servers run 24 hours a day - always have, always will)
Will there be training? (this is particularly annoying when everyone knows that the change will be transparent to the user)
How will we know what icon to click? (same as above. I'm not making these questions up.)
Will the documents fit on our printers? (no, we plan to make them billboard sized)
How do we know the documents are correct? (ever heard of QA testing? We have several hundred people company wide involved in this.)

I am sure you can get the drift by now. What is particularly galling is that the people on these calls asking these questions are invariably middle to upper management who must have an answer before we can proceed. Even more galling is that they ask the same questions on call after call as if expecting the answer to change. The goal of the endless questioning seems to be to postpone putting off any decision making so no one can be held responsible if something goes wrong. On the last call of this nature I was on, the project manager, having waded determinedly through the morass of mindless queries, finally reached a point where he could ask "So who is in favor of moving ahead with what was proposed." Of thirty people on the call, not a sound was heard. The PM then asked "OK so who has objections to moving ahead with the proposal." Again crickets. The entire meeting was paralyzed by fear.

I'm sure glad I have a desk large enough to allow room for head banging.

Do I Really Sound Like That?

Last Sunday afternoon the orchestra I am a member of gave a concert. The concert was one of our regular series but in this instance it was dedicated to the memory of a former conductor of the group recently deceased. We commissioned a new work for this concert in memory of this man, a tribute not lightly undertaken for a semi-amateur group that struggles mightily with the funds necessary to stage free concerts in order to make classical music more accessible to those whose financial circumstances don’t allow $50 tickets to hear the “pros”. So we had the composer in attendance at what was a world premier of a new work. The widow of the honored conductor flew in from the east coast to attend and many former orchestra members were in attendance as well. The orchestra more than rose to the occasion and rendered a memorable afternoon of music which was warmly appreciated by the audience.

Twenty minutes after the concert ended our current director took me aside to inform me that the student staff of the concert hall we rent from a local university had failed to record the concert. To those of us who help maintain a recorded archive of the history of the orchestra, who planned to provide the widow with a recording of the concert as a memento, and to the composer who rightly expected a recording of the first performance of her new work this was a disaster.

Last night as I began what will ultimately be a long and somewhat disappointing effort to produce some sort of acceptable recording from a fragmentary dress rehearsal recording made with a digital recorder’s built in mikes from an acoustically poor location on the main floor, I began to think about how unusual the performer’s experience is now compared to 90% of the history of Western music over the last one thousand years. It is only since 1877 that the recording of sounds has been possible and only since around 1930 with the development of the electronic microphone that recorded sounds have been more than a sketchy representation of what an actual performance sounds like. And there are still theoreticians who claim that the “fidelity” of modern recordings still require the brain to complete the analogy between what emanates from a speaker and what it heard at a live performance.

Reflecting on Saturday afternoon when my wife and I listened to the dress rehearsal recording of the second movement of Schumann’s “New England Triptych”, where we have slow exposed extended duets between oboe and bassoon, while mentally making notes about balance, reed strength, and other minutia I wondered how, for that 90+% of music history, performers knew how they sounded.

With the advent of recording technology that could be used in the home and small studios from the 1950s on, listening to recordings of oneself or one’s group has been a huge part of the process of a performer’s education and a valuable tool for conductors. Previous to this revolution, a large part of the job of one’s teacher would be to verbally try to mold the sound the performer produces to conformity with what recognized virtuoso class performers produce. The individual himself was, and still is, not able to accurately evaluate how his performance sounds to others. The phrase at the head of this essay “Do I really sound like that?” is almost universally uttered when one first hears one’s recorded voice and points out how sounds that we produce ourselves sound differently to listeners. For the players of wind instruments this may be more pronounced than keyboard or string performers. (Although I have heard a recording of myself on keyboards that I completely failed to recognize as my own performance.)

It makes me wonder about the “original instrument” school of performance. They want to sound like the original performance. How in the world do they evaluate their efforts? No one knows what the first performance of most of the classical library sounded like. Not even the performers. Beethoven never heard, even once, most of his later works and when he did have his hearing he would be extremely fortunate to hear a composition performed anywhere near adequately a single time. If you wanted to hear a new piece of music, either you found a live performance or you did without. Hearing a major work like Beethoven’s Ninth was a once in a lifetime event and far more people read reviews or heard hearsay than ever experienced the actual music. As a result, every town of any size whatsoever had an orchestra and maybe an opera house as well. Live music flourished everywhere. Quality had to be questionable in smaller towns, but there was no alternative. Now we can listen to music written hundreds of years ago whenever we want, we can compare performances of major works as rendered by dozens of major symphonies. We can hear almost immediate replays of our own performances due to the quality of consumer electronics. But live performances not so much and certainly at a premium price. For those who own a library of recorded music what would the cost be of attending a live performance of every selection owned?

In the last 30 years much has been made of the computer revolution because of its economic impact. But the impact to our leisure, hobby, entertainment and general enjoyment of life because of recording technology is incalculable.

Just sayin’