Category: Tech

XPerienced system

It was ten years old today that Windows XP went on sale to the public. Prior to its release I’d been running XP at work for a year in beta form, and knowing it would be a winner I bought a Compaq Presario 5300 desktop computer for Carol on October 25, 2001, as an early birthday present. Three years later, it became Eric’s system when I bought Carol a Compaq Presario 2210 laptop computer. Like the desktop computer it has 512 MB memory and a 40 GB drive, except the desktop came with only 256 MB and 20 GB.

Over the years I’d purchased two Dell desktop systems, and both suffered major motherboard failures, which means I’ll never buy another Dell. Meanwhile, both of the Presarios continue to chug along. Carol is still using the laptop and has no complaints and the desktop, with a USB hard drive attached, is in the basement ripping CDs and running Logitech’s free music server software.

Logitech Squeezebox Server

Microsoft will continue supporting Windows XP through April 8, 2014. There are two Windows 7 64-bit systems in the house now, but I have never used Windows Vista at home. Having used Vista at work, I knew it was a clunker.

P.S. This is post number 2500.

Hi-Five for Hi-Fi

The death of pioneering radio producer Norman Corwin, age 101, received some attention this week, but I’d like to point out another recent death. Edgar Villchur, only seven years younger than Corwin, was a pioneer in home audio. Villchur can take some of the credit — some would say blame — for the home hi-fi craze in the 1950’s that drove many a wife crazy, if not out of the house.

Villchur started Acoustic Research in Cambridge, MA, and his sealed box design, the so-called acoustic suspension speaker, proved that low frequencies could be reproduced in a home without a gigantic cabinet like another legendary speaker had, Paul Klipsch’s Klipschorn. The trade-off was efficiency. Acoustic suspension speakers require a lot of power.

In 1957, the year before Villchur introduced the legendary AR-3 loudspeaker, Herman Horne on Hi-Fi was a 3-part parody on The Stan Freberg Show, a radio series on CBS. The entire run of the show is on archive.org, but with only so-so sound quality. I’ve assembled the Herman Horne segments, taken from the Smithsonian Historical Performances CD collection of the show, and it’s obvious that only part 3 came from the original magnetic tape.

[audio:http://s3.amazonaws.com/dogratcom/Audio/2011/Oct/HermanHorne01.mp3,http://s3.amazonaws.com/dogratcom/Audio/2011/Oct/HermanHorne02.mp3,http://s3.amazonaws.com/dogratcom/Audio/2011/Oct/HermanHorne03.mp3|titles=Stan Freberg: Herman Horne on Hi-Fi,Stan Freberg: Herman Horne on Hi-Fi,Stan Freberg: Herman Horne on Hi-Fi]

Note how Freberg changed the voice of the character, making it more comical in the second and third installments. A lot of what he made fun of about audio fanatics is still quite true today. I think the only real difference is there isn’t much of an emphasis on sound effects.

Pulling on a Poulan

I’ve had a Weed Eater gasoline leaf blower for 10 or 12 years. The spark plug won’t come out anymore and the muffler is rattling around loose under the partially melted plastic body, but last fall it still started and ran. Knowing that its days are numbered, and with the New England autumn coming on fast, I’ve been looking for a replacement. Today I bought a Poulan Pro BVM210VS, on sale at Lowes for $90.

I got it home, installed the tube, put in some 2-stroke gas, and followed the starting instructions:

  1. Set the choke lever to “start”
  2. Press gas primer bulb 6 times
  3. Pull the cord five times
  4. Click the trigger to make choke switch over to “run”
  5. Pull the cord until it starts… or the cord comes out in your hand

Huh? That last part wasn’t in the instructions. I stared at the cord in my hand, no longer a part of the leaf blower. So I poured the gas back into the can and drove back to Lowes to return the Poulan Pro. When I got home again I saw that the old Weed Eater — also a Poulan product, by the way — still had some gas in it, and the thing started right up.

No Qwikster!

This is welcome news from Netflix. Qwikster is dead before arrival.

Dear Douglas,

It is clear that for many of our members two websites would make things more difficult, so we are going to keep Netflix as one place to go for streaming and DVDs.

This means no change: one website, one account, one password…in other words, no Qwikster.

While the July price change was necessary, we are now done with price changes.

We’re constantly improving our streaming selection. We’ve recently added hundreds of movies from Paramount, Sony, Universal, Fox, Warner Bros., Lionsgate, MGM and Miramax. Plus, in the last couple of weeks alone, we’ve added over 3,500 TV episodes from ABC, NBC, FOX, CBS, USA, E!, Nickelodeon, Disney Channel, ABC Family, Discovery Channel, TLC, SyFy, A&E, History, and PBS.

We value you as a member, and we are committed to making Netflix the best place to get your movies & TV shows.

Respectfully,

The Netflix Team

A computer icon uploads to the cloud

I got home from work, took a short nap, and when I woke up I learned that Steve Jobs had died. Jobs’ return to Apple was the all-time greatest corporate comeback. He not only saved the company from going under, Jobs revolutionized personal computing, as he had done before with the Mac, thanks in part to an inspirational kick from a visit to Xerox PARC. Steve Jobs was only six months older than me, and I didn’t need a further reminder of the passage of time, but I have one anyway.