The New Computer is Up and Running!

The new computer was picked up from the nearest FedEx office last Monday but I wasn't able to get it up and running until now.  I am obviously connected to that information superhighway that Al Gore invented several years ago, and I'm learning this new OS, Windows 8.1.

As a longtime XP user, it's going to take some time getting used to.  I've had to get on the phone to Microsoft to get their help in being able to access the Office applications.....it isn't exactly obvious how to do this like it would be with XP or Windows 7.

That aside, I think I'm going to like this machine.  The new monitor has excellent graphics; I'm very impressed.

I've got some work to do though to get this machine to where I want it.  I'll have to transfer some files from the Dell onto CDs and then from the CDs onto the HP.  I'll have to get my favorite websites favorite on the browser here.  I need to call CenturyLink to somehow get their connection software downloaded onto here; they give me free Norton Antivirus.  I have McAfee on this new computer but I'm no fan of that outfit.

Checking in........4/14/14

Work has been very busy this past week and a half, and will be that way for the rest of the week.  We are under some tight schedules and also under some staffing pressure as well.  It is what it is; I try to keep the momentum going as best as I can.   I frequently get tired of being tired, but again, it is what it is.

My new computer has arrived and I don't figure on being able to get it set up until Friday at the earliest, that is, if it turns out to be an off Friday.  I am scheduled to have it off and I am trying to make my deadline ahead of schedule.  It would be nice to be done with everything on noon Thursday, but often available time has a way of being used up.  We shall see.

Seems as if there are a zillion things waiting for me on my next off day.  I have to get a screen door rebuilt, I feel the need to do an oil change, I probably ought to have my truck looked at as that I'm thinking I might have a slow leak in my power steering system, and of course there's the yardwork, the filing of papers, and the need to spend time with my hobbies.  I'm once again feeling the itch to pick up the guitar to jam a little, and to see if I can bring some songwriting ideas to fruition.

Speaking of music, Sheila and I were at Bookman's Saturday night.  They're a chain local to Arizona best known for used books and magazines, but they also carry some musical instruments.....usually the "starter" guitars and basses.  I picked up a bass guitar that was built to look like and emulate a Fender Precision, but it wasn't a Fender......I want to say it was a Squier but it may have been something else.  I quickly started thumping out the bass line to the BTO song "Not Fragile" and I have to admit that that one is a fun one to play on the bass.  I remember once, years ago, figuring out how to do that on my Fender electric, the six string regular that is.  The rhythm follows the bass line, but with the rock "power" chords, as I think they're called, you have to do that somewhat differently.

In the past I have been tempted to buy a bass guitar and an amp.  What holds me back from that is the lack of time I would have to invest in learning how to play it better.  Plus, when you're writing songs, you're going to use the regular six string anyway to put together a chord structure first.  At least, that's the way I do it.  Get a structure together, and go from there.  I've found it easier to develop the music first and the lyrics second, although I can think of one tune where I had the words written down and the music was done a few years later.

Yes, a bass guitar would be fun.  So would a handheld police scanner, so that I could listen to it while I'm out here on the back porch, blogging away. 

I think the handheld scanner will be the next new toy.

Purchasing a New Computer

Since March 2005 I have been using a Dell computer that was state of the art when I purchased it.  It was the latest and greatest, affording me more memory, more hard drive space, and a neat operating system that was far beyond the Microsoft 95/98/2000 that I had been used to using on previous and work computers.  It has served me very well; I love the machine dearly, but it is getting time to replace it, and so the replacement process has started.

The replacement process isn't something that I'm looking forward to.  That means taking apart my computer infrastructure here and reconnecting it.  It means transferring files from the Dell onto CDs, which will then be used to transfer them to the new computer.  And it means having to work with Windows 8.1.  I'm hoping that the new OS will be just as user-friendly as XP was, and if I had my druthers I'd still be using XP.  Trouble is, is that Microsoft has decided to end support of XP, which is what drove my replacing the Dell.  And let's be honest.....the Dell doesn't handle the browsers as efficiently as it used to, and if I run Google Earth then that really ties up my CPU resources.

Purchasing the replacement has become an adventure of sorts in and of itself, and will be the subject of what follows.

I started thinking about the replacement a few weeks ago.  I had it in mind to order from Dell again, who pleased me back in 2005, but I also felt the need to visit Best Buy to see what they could do for me.  (It could have been worse....I could have gone to Fry's Electronics in the Bay Area, and I have a story for them, as does every engineer who's spent time in Silicon Valley.)  So I waltzed into the Best Buy on Broadway, over near Wilmot, to gather some intelligence.

Now Best Buy really isn't my favorite firm to do business with.  Circuit City, years ago, used to be much better, but Circuit City decided to fire every sales agent who knew his or her stuff so that they could hire cheaper replacements, and they've long since ridden the bankruptcy horse off into the sunset.  Anyway, Best Buy, I figured, would be a decent place to gather some intelligence....and.....what if I came across a good deal?

Well I saw what I thought were good deals.....and they seemed like good deals, until I started asking some questions from their salesman.  He was likely a college kid working part time who knew some things about computers, and he might have even been an engineering major, but I wasn't getting any good vibes from this guy.  Oh, I want Microsoft installed?  That's an extra $140.  Oh, I want a monitor?  Another $140.  Oh, I want this?  I want that?  They had that too, but it wasn't included in the price.  All I was getting was a box that held a hard drive and some RAM, and it might even have had an optical drive except that I forgot to ask about that, and that might have been extra too.

I went out of there thinking, OK, I should call Dell.  But I spent a couple of days thinking it over, asking some co-workers what they used, and one of them pointed out that our firrm has been using Hewlett-Packard, better known as HP, for years and we never had problems with them.  At that time I was thinking that since Dell sold me a good machine nine years ago, they would sell me one now if I wanted one.  I was disabused of that notion when I called Dell the very next day.

Before I called Dell, I visited their website during my lunch break in my office, jotted down some notes, and picked out a model that I thought I wanted to own.  I then called their toll free number, and I was immediately routed to a menu tree.  Fine, I don't really like the damn things, but I navigated thru it, indicating to the robot on the other end that this call was about purchasing a desktop computer.  Then I was put on hold.

Then it got better......I was routed to another one of those dreaded call centers in India!  I'm thinking OK, maybe these guys are going the way of Earthlink, but I'll play along and see where it goes.  The sales agent confirmed that my call was about a desktop computer for home use, and then said he would transfer me to an agent who would help me with this.  I'm thinking OK, am I going to get India again?  Or am I going to get routed to Texas?  I would find out, if I would just hold.

Sitting on hold, like the menu tree, is again a feature that is fast becoming ubiquitous when it comes to trying to get something done over the telephone.  And like everywhere else, I was treated to some music, with robotic interruptions reminding me that my call was important, please stay on the line, and the next available agent would be along soon to help me.

I waited some more.  The robot female came on again, "your call is very important to us....please continue to hold"....blah blah blah.....yok yok yibble yibble and then some more canned music.

Pretty soon I'm thinking, I sure am waiting a long time to get rid of some money here.  How much longer am I going to be on hold?  What will happen if I get thru?  Will I once again be talking to "Edward" or "George" or "Houston" with an Indian accent that I can't understand, or, will they drop the call......since like Earthlink, they're trying to drive down the number of customers to a level that they can handle?

I never found out.

I hung up the phone.

They were taking too long.

My lunch break was over and it was time to push forward with one of the several assigned tasks that I have.  And, I made the decision to not buy from Dell this time.

I spent some time the next few days researching HP computers.  I found that I could order from them, customize a model if I wanted to, and I found a Pavilion model that seemed like it would fit the bill.  One terabyte of hard drive space.  Optical drive.  Six USB ports, with two of them on the front.  Windows 8.1 and a fourth generation Intel processor.

I made the call last week.  I was forced to go thru the menu tree, and after a hold time of maybe fifteen seconds at the most, I was talking to a most welcome American voice that I later learned belonged to someone in Boise, Idaho.  He knew his stuff and he intelligently answered all my questions.  Yes, the machine would do this.  It would do that.  And with the software package and monitor, it came out to a price that I was willing to pay.  So, I placed the order.

It's not going to arrive all at once like the Dell did, but I will know when it will arrive, and I can even arrange with Fedex, a preferred delivery time (it will have to be signed for).  And, I might be spending an evening or two, getting it up and running.  The important thing though, is that I have a peace of mind about this purchase; a peace of mind that I knew I wasn't going to get from Best Buy, and probably not from Dell......though I won't ever know about peace of mind using Dell since they can't be bothered to hire people to pick up the phones to close a sale.

In the meantime, I'll be using my laptop beginning Tuesday, for the next few days, as that the CenturyLink modem also has contained within it, a wireless router.  And, I'm glad to say that not once have I had a net outage from my new ISP.

Once that's all set up and running, I can then start thinking about my next new toy.

Don't forget to pet a dog or a cat.

Randy Bachman Interview

This was sent to me by a friend of mine in Phoenix metro, Carl P, who's been backstage with me to meet Randy Bachman and Fred Turner.  We also got to visit with Carl when we were up in Glendale earlier this month.....he's a great guy, and more knowledgeable about the music business than I am.

Some backstory:  Bachman-Turner Overdrive are set to be inducted into the Canadian Music Hall of Fame in Winnipeg on the 30th.  Seems to me that this is 20 years overdue.

If you're a BTO fan, you may have already seen this, but if you're not......enjoy!

Randy Bachman Interview

The Man Who Counterfeited Nickels

Francis Leroy Henning is a name that is not found in history books.  His portrait will not be found in any art museum or on any postage stamp.  As far as I've been able to determine he has not walked the Earth's surface for the last several years, and yet in his own strange way, Francis Leroy Henning managed to do something that no one before him had ever done before and no one will ever do since.  Francis Leroy Henning is The Man Who Counterfeited Nickels.

He was not the only man who counterfeited coins, but he was the only man we are aware of who counterfeited your average run-of-the-mill five cent piece commonly found in circulation, who mass produced over 400,000 of them from the basement of his home in Erial N.J., near Philadelphia.  His nickels are still being found in circulation today, and are much sought after by coin collectors.

I first heard of The Man Who Counterfeited Nickels when I was twelve years of age, in a book about the U.S. Secret Service that I had checked out of the school library.  His criminal enterprise was one of the strangest stories of this type of criminal activity that I had ever heard of, and still ranks as such today.  Although a nickel had considerable more purchasing power in 1954 when he counterfeited as it does today, the Secret Service, per my recollection, was having trouble understanding why he was counterfeiting common coinage.

The story in that book has it that Mr. Henning had been mass producing these fake nickels out of an alloy that is similar as to what the real nickels use today.  He was somehow getting large numbers of these into circulation and that his efforts were undetected until a paperboy in Philadelphia got one of these in his change when he was collecting payment for the newspapers on his route.  He was jingling the coins in his pocket, and noticed that one of them wasn't sounding right.  He got his change out to look at it, and immediately spotted the fake nickel:  a nickel dated 1944, but missing the mintmark on the reverse.

I'll have to digress a little bit and explain about mintmarks.

In those days, coins minted in Philadelphia did not have mintmarks on them until 1942, and that was only on the nickel.  The alloy was switched to a wartime alloy and in order to distinguish these nickels from the regular copper/nickel alloy, the mintmarks on the reverse of nickels were enlarged and placed conspicuously above the Monticello.  The Philadelphia mint, for the first time, used the "P" mintmark.  This practice continued for all nickels dated 1943, 1944, and 1945.  In 1946 the regular alloy was resumed and the mintmarks went back to where they were for the pre-war years, and Philadelphia dropped the "P" entirely ("P" marked coins returned in 1979 for Susan B Anthony dollars, and have been used on all coins, save for cents, beginning in 1980). 

Anyway, to get back to the story, the paperboy knew that he had a fake nickel, not only by the way that it sounded, but also because it was missing a mintmark that should have appeared on any nickel dated 1944.  The paperboy showed the nickel to his father, who in turn contacted the Secret Service, and the Secret Service began investigating.  Significant quantities of fake nickels, some with dates other than 1944 were being reported, at which point newspaper reports of large quantities of fake nickels circulating in the Philadelphia area were appearing.  Francis Henning read about himself, realizing that he was attracting much more attention than he wanted, and he decided that it was time to get rid of the evidence.

Up until then, he had been depositing his nickels into banks, using the story that he owned a vending machine route.  His nickels were of decent enough quality to not draw attention, but weren't cost effective.  One story is that he figured out how much this was costing him, and that he learned that they were costing him six cents each to make.  Another story is that he abandoned counterfeiting nickels since he figured he would make five dollar bills instead, and yet another story is that he had been caught faking the fives, and switched to nickels when he got out of prison. 

The one story that is consistent here is that he dumped 200,000 of his nickels into the Schuylkill River, and another 200,000 in Copper Creek.  This suggests that he had to get rid of the evidence before fleeing the area.

Somehow, the Secret Service caught up to him, and when looking at various links this evening, one source said that he had fled to Cleveland before being arrested.  Arrested he was, and Francis Leroy Henning found himself in the slammer, in federal lockup for one of the more strangest counterfeiting schemes in human history.

As previously stated, Henning nickels are still found in circulation.  There were so many of them placed out there that some coin books, when you look up the value of the 1944 nickel, will have an asterisk next to that date, and the footnote will read that "1944 nickels without mintmarks are counterfeit".  Henning used other dates, such as 1939 and 1953, and authenticating fake nickels (as silly as that sounds) is a subject that frequently comes up on the coin collecting discussion boards.

It is a strange irony that these nickels, fake as they are, are still sought after to this day, and auction prices for these have been known to run as high as $80. 

I have to admit, that I wouldn't mind owning a few of these nickels myself.

Yes......a coin collector, wanting to own a few fake nickels. 

Go figure.

The First Day of Spring, 2014

I haven't posted in quite a while as to what's going on here on the personal front.  So what I'm going to do here is catch up on some things.  It's been an exhausting day today as part of an exhausting week, but tomorrow is my off Friday and this evening I don't have anything on the calendar.

* * * * * * *

Yes, I am still seeing Sheila.  We're seeing quite a bit of each other.  Things are going very well in that regard.

I'm hoping that later on this year we can see more of US 66, the Arizona portion between Kingman and Flagstaff, and during the spring.  It's challenging for both of us to get any extended time off.  I switched assignments at work effective January 2nd and we're on a very tight schedule.

* * * * * * *

Two weekends ago Bachman & Turner played in Glendale, at the Jobing.com Arena, the present home of the Phoenix Coyotes.  Sheila and I got to meet up with Fred Turner a few hours before the show.  I knew before last Christmas that we might be seeing them.  Fred told me in an email about there being rumors of an Arizona show, and when it became official I bought some tickets.

We ran into Fred and his wife Donna in that mall area north of the arena.  I had related to Sheila the story about how I had run into Fred on Fremont Street in Las Vegas several hours before their scheduled show, and within ten minutes it was happening all over again! 

I have been wanting Sheila to meet Fred for some time, and it happened!  Sheila was impressed with how down to earth Fred is, and me, even though I've now met him more times than I can remember, I still get giddy with excitement whenever it happens.

As for the show, they were preceded on stage by Trooper and Loverboy; both out of Canada.  It was "Canada Fest" and from audience response to questions by the lead singer of Trooper, 40% of the audience was Canadian.  He also gave a friendly shout out to us Americans.

Bachman & Turner ended up closing the festival.  It was a shorter set than I would have liked, but they were more improvisational than I had ever seen.  Randy Bachman extended most of his solos with extra measures......even his "drumstick" solo was a little longer and not quite to script, for lack of a better expression.

There weren't any songs from their 2010 CD, but they did play "Shakin' All Over"......I don't think they've done that one live since 1986.  They did not indicate that any new material was coming out, but I can tell you what I know here.

A 40th anniversary of their Not Fragile album is being released later this month.  It will be a two CD set and will have some live/rehearsal material.  It is also public knowledge that Fred would very much love to do a new album, but logistically it's difficult since he's in Winnipeg (and Tampa during the winter) while the rest are in B.C..  Randy's also got a lot of side projects going on with a radio show on CBC as well his "Every Song Tells a Story"concert series that he does without Fred. 

As for the new album, there's some chatter that Randy would love to do a new one, concentrating on blues, and Fred could contribute beyond measure to something like that.....not only as a vocalist (he's got the right vocals for it) but also in songwriting.

I can only hope, as a nearly 40 year fan, that they are taking good care of themselves, and that the Good Lord will bless them with many more years.  It's hard to believe that both of them are now 70 and are still rocking.  It's likely that 40 years ago neither one of them thought they'd be playing together in 2014.

 

* * * * * * *

I got my first 2014 coin in my change this morning, a Lincoln cent.  Tucson usually doesn't get the new coins as quickly as other locations.  Mine came in change from a purchase at the Quik Trip on Broadway and Camino Seco.  Just a few days ago they were handing out shiny 2013 cents.

The guy behind the counter told me that they've been getting brand new rolls from their armored car carrier (Brinks?) so it sounds as if the 2013 supply is near its end.

 

* * * * * *

This may be an early bedtime tonight for me, so I'll sign now. 

Weekends are great.  Especially the long ones.

A Warning About Earthlink

The below is from an email that I sent out on 2/7/14, detailing my problems with Earthlink.

I would not wish this experience on anyone.

* * * * * * *

For the past two days I have experienced a severe outage of the internet thanks to Earthlink.  Right now my service is very spotty, and repeated calls to their so-called customer support have failed to resolve the problem.  Since as I write this I am temporarily on line, I would like to take this opportunity to warn everyone on my contact list about this company, as that I may not have this opportunity until Wednesday of next week when my new ISP has been commissioned.

What has happened is that my connection went down again for 48 hours, for the third time in the last six months.  When I have called tech support, after a 30 minute wait I am talking to someone in India, and 75% of the time I can't understand the person I'm talking to and that person can't understand me.  If on those occasions when some semblance of communication does become possible, that tech support agent will insist that I go behind my computer, disconnect wires and report to him what I observe, then re-connect those wires, report again....in other words, their first line of defense, when they decide to drop the connection, is to insist that the problem is at your end and that you must ensure that your connections are good.  They absolutely positively refuse to consider the possibility that the outage is at their end until you go through these monkey motions of disconnecting cables to risk introducing a failure at your end so that they can blame you for it and refuse to take responsibility for the problem.  Please hold this thought, we'll come to back to it.

Once you're past that, then the tech support agent *MIGHT* offer to check the problem at his end.  You'll be put on hold, and then they'll acknowledge that there is a problem, and that it will be fixed in 24 hours.

When you try again in 24 hours, guess what, you're still not on the net.  This means that you have to call again, rinse and repeat, and then you have to go thru more monkey motions with opening and closing browsers, typing in special addresses to verify that yes indeed, you're not connected.  What this means is that you have to wait another 24 hours.  This is usual operating procedure, however, with this week's issues that I'm having with them, they actually got innovative and figured out a new way to irritate their customers.

With this week's issues, they admitted the problem was at their end.  Two nights ago, their story was that this was affecting several regions in the southwest, and that this would be fixed within one hour.  One hour later, the story was changed again, and that this would be fixed within 24 hours.

Last night it took four attempts, yes four, to get hold of someone.  The first three, after a 30 minute wait, the phone rang to a tech support agent, and I was immediately disconnected.  That meant having to call again, and to go back to my place at the end of the line.  Persistence in some cases does pay off, though I had to waste two hours of my life so that I could talk to someone that I could not understand.

When I got thru, the story changed again, and that "all of Earthlink" was affected.  Curiously enough, when I accessed their webpage at work this morning, they listed some select area codes that were affected by their server outage, but mine (520) wasn't one of them.  Their webpage said that all issues had been resolved and they were up and running again.  

When I got home, guess what, still no service.  So I had to call again.  Things had improved somewhat as that instead of being immediately disconnected three times, they only disconnected me two times.  When I got hold of someone, he insisted that they had fixed the problem.  I then wanted to know why my fourth modem light wasn't turning on.  They put me on hold, asked me to try connecting again, and this time I was able to connect.  I'm guessing that when they fixed the server (that is, if that was what was really wrong in the first place) they had to be reminded to turn it on, or something like that.

Earlier this evening, Earthlink went down again.  When I tried calling the tech support number, they changed the canned message to admit that there was a widespread outage, and that due to high call volume, they could not take the call. 

Anticipating the need to change ISPs, I had a conversation with CenturyLInk, and I have made the decision (after talking to some co-workers) to go over to them.  The switchover may not be complete until Wednesday of next week, but the way things are going right now, it will be a quicker fix than what Earthlink is willing to do.  Until then, I will *NOT* be quick in answering emails.  I will only be able to answer them when I'm able to take my laptop to a Starbucks or somewhere similar.

Now let's get back to that thought about their tech support wanting you to play computer engineer.

I went to the Consumer Affairs (I hope I got this name right) website to read Earthlink reviews.  I learned that Earthlink has a 92% highly unfavorable rating from this website.   There were also 237 horror stories posted about their tech support. 

Many of them said the same thing that I told you, but there were also instances of where one tech support agent asked a customer to go climb onto his roof to verify the connection to his satellite dish!  There were several other bizarre stories of a similar nature, but what was really disturbing was a common theme when people terminated their service: Earthlink continued to bill their credit cards and/or took money out of checking accounts, for six months after being notified by these customers that they were cancelling their service!  

So....not only am I going to have to terminate Earthlink, I'm going to have to call one of my banks to get an existing credit card that I have cancelled, and to get a new one assigned.....good thing I have more than one Visa card!  I have to do this as a preventive measure in order to keep Earthlink from stealing money that they are not entitled to.  (McAfee will do the same thing; though in my case when they tried to do that they found that I had cancelled that credit card because I switched over to another card).

What we have here is a company that was once reputable, that has been run into the ground by a management that is either incompetent, dishonest, unmotivated......I don't know which word to use here. 

What I do know is that there are too many people in that company who are getting their paychecks irrespective of whether or not they do their jobs in the first place.

Me, I'm done with them.  Period.  

As for my purpose in sending you this......I'm not calling for a boycott or anything like that.  I'm not going to ask you to forward this.

What I am going to ask you is that if you are considering using Earhtlink as an ISP, is to rethink your consideration of them.  You don't have to take my word for this.  Just google "Earthlink reviews" and decide for yourself what you need to do, if anything.

best regards,

Dave