Category: Tech

Bose Sucks

I go past the Bose headquarters every day on my way to/from work, and a neighbor friend works at Bose. The Wave Music System is known for having more than its share of problems, but I bought one anyway, because it fit perfectly on the porch, and I could get it at a good price through our neighbor — not a factory renewed unit, but factory fresh.

Well, after only six weeks of light use, this is what happens when you try to play a CD. Eric demonstrates. Listen for a different neighbor’s cute, little attack doggies in the background.

[flv:http://www.dograt.com/Video/2008/JUL/BoseWave.flv 440 330]

At least the slot loader mechanism works, so the disc isn’t stuck in there. I should be able to get a new replacement Bose Wave without a hassle. This has been a bad summer for product defects.

YouTube, YouSuck

For single videos that I don’t capture and master myself, I download from YouTube and post them. Putting playlists into custom players was the one feature YouTube offered that I found useful. But now YouTube’s playlists are blown. Gone. Snafu. Broken.

7/31 Flash! As in Flash player. Playlists seem to be working again. I’ve only checked a couple of them, but at the moment, for now, YouTube has redeemed itself.

Tech Trouble Quiz

I’m still, can you believe it, pulling stuff from my old tower PC onto my new mini-tower PC. We’ve been having lots of thunderstorms lately, so I’ve been good about turning off my computer before leaving the house or going to bed, because the battery in my uninterruptable power supply is just about played out.

Tonight I couldn’t start my PC. Dead battery in UPS, but that’s OK because I paid only $12 for the thing (thanks, tastewar, how long ago was that?), and it’s worked well until recently. The UPS wouldn’t turn back on, so I moved the PC plug over to the surge protector side of the unit.

I powered up the PC and logged onto my account. Within moments the computer shut itself down. Huh. Did it again and it powered itself off again. Ah. Of course. I powered it up again but got into safe mode. I ran a Windows utility program and changed something. Then I restarted Windows, logged onto my account and it was fine.

What did I change to fix the problem? tastewar will know the answer, I’m sure.