Category: Technology

Techno-Woes, Part 17

Technology

One would think that the Gods Of Technology, having bricked my new laptop (bought in January 2025) and caused me to have to buy a new one, would have done fucking with me.

One would be wrong.

Last week, I picked up my phone, to feel and see this:

Yup.  The old case, she splody like an IRA bomb or Al-Qa’eda IED.

“Oh,” said the T-Mobile tech person when I brought it in to the store, “that’s the battery.  They do that.  How long have you owned the phone?  That long?  Wow, and the battery only went phut now?  You’ve been lucky.  Anyway, you’re going to need a new one.  No, not just a new battery — a new phone, because they stopped making this model about four years ago.”

Fortunately, I long ago made the command decision to pay a little extra on my monthly bill for a replacement phone deal, should Bad Things Happen.

So I picked up the New Phone yesterday.  Why only yesterday?  Because these phone stores no longer carry any actual stock, you see — unless you’re a New Customer, in which case they’ll whip one out and empty your bank account in a flash.  But a replacement phone for existing customers?  Oh no, we’ll have to order that one, and it’ll take a week or so, sorry about that.  At least I got an upgraded model, for no extra cost.

Blessedly, the transfer of all my stuff from Old & Broken to New & Shiny only took about 5 minutes, mostly because I didn’t bother transferring any photos (having already backed them up).

I guess that 5+ years usage out of one of these “smart” phones isn’t that bad — although considering that I barely use the fucking thing (compared to everyone else in the universe), I would have thought it would last much longer.

But back to my store visit… I wanted to have a clear screen protector installed.  Sorry, we don’t keep those in stock — but we can order one for you.  One of those rubber-like protective cases?  Nope, sorry, but if we order those for you, they’ll get here in a week or so.

For fuck’s sake:  what happened to the concept of one-stop shopping and customer service?

(I should add that the staff at said store were helpful and knowledgeable in the extreme — even for Southern Nice People, they were exceptional.  They’re not to be blamed for policy decisions like in-stock items.)

Anyway, I have the new thing, and it seems to be working okay.  Let’s just hope it lasts longer than that godawful ASUS piece of shit laptop.

And the next time I go to a mall (2026, if my existing shopping trend continues), I’ll just swing by one of those little kiosks and get the screen protector and safety casing there.  Life is too short to worry about shit like that.

ASUS Delenda Est

Technology, Two-Minute Hate

Quick recap of my laptop woes:

  • Several weeks back the thing bricked on me.  One minute typing, the next thing black screen, totally dead and unresponsive.  All efforts to revive are fruitless, including long chats with online support staff.  Off to Best Buy (an ASUS repair facility).
  • The Geek Squad informs me that they don’t do any warranty repairs on ASUS machines that they themselves have not sold.  Nice.  So I send the thing to ASUS, imagining fondly that since I only purchased this POS in January of this year, that it is still under warranty.
  • It isn’t.  [50,000 very bad words redacted]  So I tell ASUS to return the brick to me, because I’m not comfortable having repairs done at a remote location (Indiana, incidentally) when, if I’m going to have to pay for the fucking repairs, I’d prefer to have the job done locally.  So off I go to Micro Center (Dallas).  This was yesterday (Monday) morning
  • Micro Center gets on it right away — I mean, I got a sitrep text message only an hour after I got back home.  That’s about the only good news.
  • Apparently, the motherfuckingboard is kaput.  On a brand-new computer.  Cost to replace:  $380 (part) + $150 (labor).  For a machine that cost around $500 new.  But:
  • None of Micro’s vendors have the board in stock, and ASUS themselves are looking at a 4-17 week resupply time.

My options seem to be:

  1. Grit my teeth and have the repair done, continuing to stumble along for the next 2-4 months on my old HP laptop with its occasional freezing-up, malfunctioning keys and broken chassis.
  2. Buy a new replacement machine* from Micro Center — average cost for a similar-to-my-ASUS machine, about $600-$700 which I don’t have.
  3. Try to reinstall my whole fucking life onto  some other (secondhand) laptop, of which a couple of you generous souls sent my way, but which I cannot get to function.  (I have the best Readers on the Internet.)
  4. Migrate to New Wife’s desktop PC, which is tucked away in a dark corner of our tiny apartment, and has NONE of the features of any laptop, and by that I mean a decent keyboard, sufficient power and storage, Win10 (okay, I can live with that), all while I’d have to sit on an ancient office chair which will cause me to have back problems, guaranteed.

To say that I am angry does not begin to describe my mood right now.

And oh, by the way:  if anyone out there is thinking of buying an ASUS machine in the near future;  DON’T.

*New Wife has okayed this option, but it still sticks in my craw.

So Much For That Stereotype

Drive Time, Technology

My buddy (whom I’ll call “Brian” because, well, that’s his name) was once married to a gorgeous but rather empty-headed girl named Irene (also her real name).  Over the course of his twenty-odd year marriage, he would unfailingly buy her a new Honda Accord every two years or so.  When I asked Brian why always an Accord, his answer was quite succinct:

“Because not even Irene can fuck up a Honda.”

Well, that may have been true back then, but apparently it’s not so true anymore:

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) has launched an investigation into more than 1.4 million Honda and Acura vehicles over defective connecting rod bearings that can cause complete engine failure. The probe targets 3.5-liter V6 engines in popular models including the Honda Pilot, Odyssey, and Ridgeline, along with several Acura vehicles.

The investigation underscores growing safety concerns about widespread engine problems that could leave drivers stranded or create hazardous situations on busy roadways.

Federal regulators opened the probe on August 20. They are focusing on the J35 V6 engine used across multiple Honda and Acura model lines. The investigation covers 2016–2020 Acura MDX vehicles, 2018–2020 Acura TLX models, 2018–2020 Honda Odyssey minivans, 2016–2020 Honda Pilot SUVs, and 2017–2019 Honda Ridgeline pickup trucks.

NHTSA has received at least 414 complaints involving engine failure tied to the defective connecting rod bearings.

Oops.

Strange that this problem should surface in their V6 engines;  I always thought they’d be bulletproof compared to the smaller 2-liter 4-bangers, but there ya go.

Readers thinking of buy a new-model Honda with said engine:  caveat emptor.

Quote Of The Day

Technology

…from Jim Treacher, talking about Grok:

“This thing is just telling me what I want to hear. Which is a nice feeling, but that’s all it is. The user is being manipulated, by design. People are now learning the hard way that these machines are programmed to give an answer, not necessarily the answer. They’re incredibly sophisticated, but they literally don’t know what they’re talking about. They don’t know anything.”

It’s received, not actual “wisdom”, because it’s only as good as what’s been fed into it.  Moreover, there are no footnotes to say where they got it, and there’s no telling how many hands may have played with it, massaged it and directed it before it reaches the end user.

Caveat lector.

Fine Motor Control

Technology

…and I’m not talking about Porsche’s new gearbox, either.

Consider this, which arrived on my recently-acquired laptop w/Windows 11:

It’s the scrolling button on the extreme right of any open window, and Alert Readers will no doubt have realized that it replaced the old square one that we all grew up with.

I have two questions about this shrunken silliness.

Firstly, as any fule kno, I use a Logitech Ergo Trackball:

…whose giant “thumb ball” controller gives one plenty of ability to steer the pointer over to the tiny space in the top right-hand side of the window with relative ease.  How do people achieve the same goal using the sloppy and imprecise finger pad of a laptop?

Secondly, and this is a question for the propeller-heads out there:  is there any way one can change the shape / size of the scrolling thingy back to its old appearance?  (I’d bet there isn’t because Microsoft, but I’ll gladly be proved wrong in this case.)

I get by okay with the LogiTech mouse, but even so it’s not as easy as it used to be, which irritates the shit out of me, and I can’t be the only one thus affected.

As always with Microsoft, change seems to come not only unrequested and generally unwanted, but also in such a manner that it requires considerable effort to manage it.

Garbage Collection

Science!, Technology

For a bunch of supposed scientists, these tits seem to be remarkably unworldly [sic]:

Earth’s orbit is filling up with junk. Greenhouse gases are making the problem worse.
By the end of the century, a shrinking atmosphere could create a minefield for satellites.

I’m going to ignore the “greenhouse gases” bit because I have an abiding suspicion of headlines which require that we stop buying SUVs and generating electricity.

I’ll buy the first part, though, because that’s actual scientific observation.

Now I’m not a scientist, make no claims to be one, and I’m certainly no astrophysicist.  But I am a capitalist, and it seems to me that the solution is not to turn off all lightbulbs on Earth, but to let the market take care of the junk problem, by simply collecting it and disposing of it as we do with all our other household junk.

Here’s my suggestion:  have ol’ Elon Musk design a giant Shop-Vac that can be mounted on one of his rockets, and launch it into space to collect debris.  Then, when the receptacle is full, launch the craft into the general direction of the Sun for eventual incineration.  This action could be repeated with more Junk-X spacecraft until our atmosphere is neat and tidy again.

Now this job and technology wouldn’t be cheap, and SpaceX would need to be paid (because Elon may sometimes be a philanthropist, but he’s not a complete sucker either).  But paid by whom?

Well, considering that this would benefit mankind in general, it should not be funded by any single country — yeah, ten guesses which country would be expected to fund it — but by all nations on Earth.

Is there a global organization which should sponsor SpaceX to complete this function? Uh, lemme think… oh yeah, how about this lot?

You might think that the U.N. doesn’t have the funds to pay SpaceX, but I’ll be that if their budget was scrutinized, there’d be a whole bunch of inefficiencies and waste which could be re-purposed towards so noble an objective.

And in a Great Circle Of Life manifestation, I bet that Elon’s DOGE whizzkids could find the dollars in about a couple of days, if they could be let loose on the United Nations’ budget…