OK, I finally, FINALLY, got the cable modem working and the iBook and I are now broadcasting at light speed.

The tears of joy...

I could give you a few paragraphs on the anguish that went down in the set-up here, but I will spare you. Let it suffice to say that it was a month-long pain in the ass.

Before we got this working, I was connecting via dial-up at 28.8 and had to use the microwave for a desk in order to avoid sitting on the floor.

Now, because the cable modem is located in a dumbass place, I had to drag the red chair into a corner like some kid in a dunce cap so I could sit like a normal person.

We'll get a longer cable, but do you understand now why I hate the Internet?

So much for modern conveniences. How have all these state-of-the-art gadgets and gizmos made your life more complicated instead of more cutting edge?

-- Anonymous, August 02, 2001

Answers

Oh, I could write all day on this one. You know what I really hate? Incompatibility. I have this camera, right? And it works beautifully on my old computer. Cut to the new iMac, which is fancy and lovely and has flowers, and then down to the right of the lovely iMac, where sit the camera and the sixteen adapters I had to get to make the thing even PLUG IN to the computer.

Does it work? Oh, noooooo.

Also, can you please explain to me why I sent the iBook away for a month and paid big cash money to have it repaired, only to have it come back and find that the speakers had gone out?

Modern conveniences, my foot.

-- Anonymous, August 02, 2001

Well, I hate Compuserve. They need a huge dose of Viagra just to stay up!

Also, I bought this LOVELY computer cabinet to conceal my little workspace and all of its veins and guts only to find that the printer doesn't fit and has to be placed catty cornered and a scanner will not fit either. Too Long! So, can anyone answer this one? Why would a furniture manufacturer make an expensive, solid wood piece of cabinetry which will not even accomodate anything except a monitor and hard drive? Are printers and scanners not pretty much standard sized? Do I need to get out more?

Suffice it to say that if I had not "stolen" this piece (less than 1/2 price at Sam's,ya'll) it would be loaded up in the back of one of the pick-ups in my drive way and taken right back. Don't think it is tacky because it came from Sam's either! Aesthetically, it rocks!

-- Anonymous, August 02, 2001

I hate my dailup. Hate it. HAAAAAAAAATE. And that's all I've got to say about that.

I love JoLo, though.

-- Anonymous, August 02, 2001

How much do I hate modern technology? Let me tell you this two times:

DSL fucked my world today.

DSL fucked my world today.

And Jump.Net can take a long walk off a short bridge. What bothers me the most - is how utterly helpless and drooling I was while I had no outside Internet access. I didn't find out till JUST NOW (that's Thursday, 4:39 PM CDT) that Mariah Carey tried to commit suicide and that's why she's been acting so freaky lately.

-- Anonymous, August 02, 2001

Technology done gave me bad vision and carpal tunnel. That's what it's done for me lately.

Damn you iBook! Damn you and your spunky little tangerine self.

-- Anonymous, August 03, 2001

Alright, speaking of the iBook. I love it, but the speakers blew out a while back and I am pissed as hell about it. I'm going to start calling around tomorrow to see if there's someone in town to fix it, but I'm afraid I'm going to have to mail it off to Apple.

It makes me so mad. I bought this thing two years ago before they got so cheap, and it's no longer under warranty.

So, anyway, I really want the speakers to work. I know AB has had this problem, and I was wondering if anyone had gone through it with a Mac and had success in getting it

-- Anonymous, November 25, 2001

Al, if you don't want to send it to Apple, http://www.pbparts.com/_svc/rma.php is pretty good, and the turnaround is fast.

-- Anonymous, November 25, 2001

Also, Al--if you take it somewhere local they'll probably end up sending it to Apple anyway (and then you'd pay for both services), so it would probably be better just to call them directly, or check out Sara's link.

I'll see if I can find that number they gave me that one time.

-- Anonymous, November 25, 2001

All right, I'll check out all of that.

I just called this place in town that may be able to fix it in-house. They suggested I try to use headphones and see if I can hear anything to see if maybe the speaker just had a bad connection.

Well, the headphones work. So... maybe they can fix it without having to send it off.

I am listening to Bootylicious as I write this, and people, if you're ready for this jelly, I'd be surprised.

-- Anonymous, November 26, 2001

There are no words for how much I hate Hotmail. I check my account about 2x a month. I have EIGHT HUNDRED AND TWENTY SIX new messages. Junk mail filter my ass.

Oh, and I just looked. There are FOUR messages in my junk folder. 4.

-- Anonymous, December 13, 2001

Hotmail sucks ass. People sometimes send email to that account, and if they're wondering why I don't ever reply, it's because every time I click the reply button, my machine crashes. And not just my work computer - ANY computer.

-- Anonymous, December 14, 2001

Hotmail keeps telling me my account is over limit. Like, every five seconds.

I used to keep 82 messages in my inbox, and store all my emails from my favorite peeps. I've deleted all that, I'm down to maybe 4 messages in my inbox and practically nothing in any of my folders, and every time I go more than 5 hours without checking my mail, it's over limit. Bastids.

-- Anonymous, December 19, 2001

I hate Hotmail because when a prospective employer I REALLY wanted to work for sent me a questionnaire as an attachment to my Hotmail address, I could not for the LIFE of me get the damned thing downloaded to my PC. I tried and tried but it was saving the Hotmail HTML page instead of the attachment. This was regarding a computer programming job. Y'all, sometimes they expect you to have technical experience with computers for jobs like that. And here I couldn't even get a goddamned attachment downloaded from my email. I was about to call them and humiliate myself by asking them to send it again, but finally I clicked on "forget the saving, just open the stupid thing" and hallelujah, it worked.

-- Anonymous, December 19, 2001

Y'all, it's all about Postmaster. Clean,fast, reliable, and doesn't sell your address. Plus you get the added bonus of having people think you're all cool and British.

-- Anonymous, December 19, 2001

So, thoughts on the new iMac?

-- Anonymous, January 08, 2002

Well, I don't know about the new iMac, but I love adore love my new iBook. It's faster, it hasn't crashed yet (something my old iBook did at least 3x a day), and it's prettier.

-- Anonymous, January 08, 2002

HB, does this mean new iBook haiku?

Despair and dismay / When Gates's icon appears. / I have no iBook.

I was required to buy a PowerMac for college in '95, which was apparently the absolute worst time possible to buy a Mac. It was slow and prone to crashing, and one of the biggest problems, for me, was that I had to jump through all kinds of hoops to convert my (WordPerfect on a PC) documents written at home to work on WordPerfect on a Mac. While I drooled a little looking at Apple's website yesterday, I don't want to switch back to Macs until I know all my PC documents will work okay.

-- Anonymous, January 08, 2002

I hate the Internet too, and I hate modern technology, except in those rare cases where it is well designed and easy to use and does just what I want. I yearn for a simpler life, but I do love my gadgets--that small subset of those I've tried that do not disappoint. The problem is that most gadgets, and above all the Internet, take time; and the vast majority of them disappoint. The irony of it is that I design spy satellites for a living. People ask me about NASA missions and stuff like that. I don't tell them of course, but I hate space flicks and think NASA is a collossal waste of taxpayers' money. Communications satellites are a fine commercial product that I have nothing against, but I hate broadcast television, which is, of course, their biggest use. So I'm a 99% ludite / 1% gadget freak who draws my living from modern technology. I'd go see a shrink, but I don't believe in them.

--Walt

-- Anonymous, June 11, 2002