Well, reinstalling the media center drivers and their associated paraphernalia did the trick (it seems my helpful help desk employee actually deleted a video card driver, which is a strange thing to do in the service of making the computer start up faster). But from now on, no one from work touches my PC. I think I'll reinstall the HP help, too (which he deleted with the verbal flourish, "You don't need them now, you have us").
And thanks to HP, which actually puts all these reinstallation and troubleshooting tools where a novice (read, moron) like myself can find them, even under the influence of rage at having my leisure time stolen and even at 2 in the morning.
Saturday, June 16, 2007
Why I'm Not Watching a DVD
On Thursday, I was waiting for stuff to come to my house, so I couldn't go in to work. This was unexpected, and my out-of-office message only covered me for Wednesday. My boss didn't know I wasn't coming in. I wanted to rectify the situation.
I remembered the technical geniuses at our help desk showing how I could remotely log in from home, so I called them. I had some trouble, so they remotely connected to my home PC. Immediately, they were horrified. "What's all this extra crap you have here? My God, what are all these things?" I should have been suspicious when they pondered deleting my PMP Exam study program, but I wasn't.
They deleted a bunch of stuff. Games, HP help programs, stuff like that. Well, lo and behold, they also deleted something called a "video decoder." So now I have a slick media PC that can't use media.
Words cannot express how pissed off I am at them for single-handedly removing all the fun from my PC and turning it into something that can be used only to surf the internet and work. Oh, and as a doorstop.
I'm trying to fix it myself, but so far no joy. I have downloaded free video decoders--nothing works. I have tried to restore my machine to the day before they started screwing around with it, but to no avail. I'm now using HP's handy dandy application reinstaller to reinstall the media player (that didn't work) and some other associated stuff (results TBD). But in my opinion, work has stepped well and truly over the line by ruining my Friday night.
And really, had I known these were my options, I would have just CALLED my boss or e-mailed her on my crackberry. Because truth be told, I want to play a DVD or CD on my computer almost every day. I'm looking forward to reformatting my iPod for Windows (damn it), which will entail reloading my music onto it, which will mean that I will need the computer to recognize music. And at this point, I don't really care if I can never use it for work again.
I remembered the technical geniuses at our help desk showing how I could remotely log in from home, so I called them. I had some trouble, so they remotely connected to my home PC. Immediately, they were horrified. "What's all this extra crap you have here? My God, what are all these things?" I should have been suspicious when they pondered deleting my PMP Exam study program, but I wasn't.
They deleted a bunch of stuff. Games, HP help programs, stuff like that. Well, lo and behold, they also deleted something called a "video decoder." So now I have a slick media PC that can't use media.
Words cannot express how pissed off I am at them for single-handedly removing all the fun from my PC and turning it into something that can be used only to surf the internet and work. Oh, and as a doorstop.
I'm trying to fix it myself, but so far no joy. I have downloaded free video decoders--nothing works. I have tried to restore my machine to the day before they started screwing around with it, but to no avail. I'm now using HP's handy dandy application reinstaller to reinstall the media player (that didn't work) and some other associated stuff (results TBD). But in my opinion, work has stepped well and truly over the line by ruining my Friday night.
And really, had I known these were my options, I would have just CALLED my boss or e-mailed her on my crackberry. Because truth be told, I want to play a DVD or CD on my computer almost every day. I'm looking forward to reformatting my iPod for Windows (damn it), which will entail reloading my music onto it, which will mean that I will need the computer to recognize music. And at this point, I don't really care if I can never use it for work again.
Wednesday, June 13, 2007
Culture Shock
Walking everywhere is fine. The noise, the weather, the shopping, all fine. Even the entitled superiority of New Yorkers everywhere is surprisingly easy to get used to, once you learn to drift along with the zen acceptance that we employed when friends from eastern Europe once insisted that they had a much better Grand Canyon in their own country. (N.B., wine helps.)
The culture shock is in the advertising. It still makes me laugh hysterically and snort at inappropriate moments. (Don't look at me like that. There are moments when a good loud snort is entirely appropriate. But I find that if you snort near a particularly superior New Yorker, you begin to feel threatened--like the guest of honor at a cannibal picnic.)
A fiesta of examples greets me in my Sunday Times, a gift from my mother. I don't know what an ad in the Times costs, but I don't think it could be exaggerating to say it's got to be gobs and gobs of cash. Naturally if you're going to throw that sort of money around, you're probably not advertising the topsy tail. You're not even advertising products of any kind. ("Products" are so commercial. How crass that would be.)
No, you are advertising wackadoo items for people with more money than sense. Frippery. Lifestyle. And, oh yes, ludicrously expensive real estate. I don't mean the 200 square foot apartment that costs half a million dollars. That part of the culture shock is over--that's no longer ludicrous. I mean the kind of real estate where the luxury is so over the top that you couldn't successfully satirize it.
The frippery isn't especially funny. It's a little revolting, like a horror movie that's all blood and no good scare. But it does convince you that Forrest Gump could write a really high-end ad. Your average high-end frippery ad (for, say, a watch that costs more than a home would cost out west) is a big photo of the frip in all its sexy hedonism, and then tiny, tiny text that tells where you'd go to buy it. Never the price (perish the thought--there you go being all crass again). But you see what I mean? All Forrest needs is your business card and a glossy photo and he's done.
The real estate ads, however, are hysterical. My favorite is an artist's rendering of a building that looks like Sims live there. It's plastered against a blue sky drawn with the sky blue crayon, and the only other buildings in the picture flank it diminuitively like the maiden aunts standing next to the graduate in a photo taken by an over-proud mother. The caption promises that the building (and therefore the lifestyle that it affords you) is "Stylishly Proper."
The part of my brain that presents me with a running commentary of everything I read and watch trips all over itself when I read that. "Are you serious?" one part of it asks. "You can't be serious" another part guffaws. "What would the building be doing in the picture if it were improper?" asks another, conjuring up a picture of the building getting into the back of a limo with its vestibule riding up over a skimpy thong. Then I start to imagine the target audience of this ad, and imagine a day during which a bunch of women prance into the building dressed like the Queen Mother, with wide brimmed hats and perfectly coordinated outfits and white gloves. My brain sort of wants them to burst into song, ideally the sort of song that ends with one of them being popped into a hamper and sold into white slavery like Mary Tyler Moore in "Thoroughly Modern Millie," but that would be very undignified.
I know that this part of my brain is going to get me into big trouble. I think the only questions are "how big" and "how soon?"
The culture shock is in the advertising. It still makes me laugh hysterically and snort at inappropriate moments. (Don't look at me like that. There are moments when a good loud snort is entirely appropriate. But I find that if you snort near a particularly superior New Yorker, you begin to feel threatened--like the guest of honor at a cannibal picnic.)
A fiesta of examples greets me in my Sunday Times, a gift from my mother. I don't know what an ad in the Times costs, but I don't think it could be exaggerating to say it's got to be gobs and gobs of cash. Naturally if you're going to throw that sort of money around, you're probably not advertising the topsy tail. You're not even advertising products of any kind. ("Products" are so commercial. How crass that would be.)
No, you are advertising wackadoo items for people with more money than sense. Frippery. Lifestyle. And, oh yes, ludicrously expensive real estate. I don't mean the 200 square foot apartment that costs half a million dollars. That part of the culture shock is over--that's no longer ludicrous. I mean the kind of real estate where the luxury is so over the top that you couldn't successfully satirize it.
The frippery isn't especially funny. It's a little revolting, like a horror movie that's all blood and no good scare. But it does convince you that Forrest Gump could write a really high-end ad. Your average high-end frippery ad (for, say, a watch that costs more than a home would cost out west) is a big photo of the frip in all its sexy hedonism, and then tiny, tiny text that tells where you'd go to buy it. Never the price (perish the thought--there you go being all crass again). But you see what I mean? All Forrest needs is your business card and a glossy photo and he's done.
The real estate ads, however, are hysterical. My favorite is an artist's rendering of a building that looks like Sims live there. It's plastered against a blue sky drawn with the sky blue crayon, and the only other buildings in the picture flank it diminuitively like the maiden aunts standing next to the graduate in a photo taken by an over-proud mother. The caption promises that the building (and therefore the lifestyle that it affords you) is "Stylishly Proper."
The part of my brain that presents me with a running commentary of everything I read and watch trips all over itself when I read that. "Are you serious?" one part of it asks. "You can't be serious" another part guffaws. "What would the building be doing in the picture if it were improper?" asks another, conjuring up a picture of the building getting into the back of a limo with its vestibule riding up over a skimpy thong. Then I start to imagine the target audience of this ad, and imagine a day during which a bunch of women prance into the building dressed like the Queen Mother, with wide brimmed hats and perfectly coordinated outfits and white gloves. My brain sort of wants them to burst into song, ideally the sort of song that ends with one of them being popped into a hamper and sold into white slavery like Mary Tyler Moore in "Thoroughly Modern Millie," but that would be very undignified.
I know that this part of my brain is going to get me into big trouble. I think the only questions are "how big" and "how soon?"
Tuesday, June 05, 2007
Brooklyn Sounds Like...
the ambient soundtrack of "Rear Window," except with more traffic noise and... children! Lots of children! I don't have an issue with the children, who are preternaturally wholesome. They are outdoors. They have skateboards and jumpropes and chalk. One of them has a kazoo tonight. I ask you, did you think that any modern child would have the wherewithall to figure out a kazoo? 18 levels of your hardest video game, yes, but I would have forecast that they'd all be stumped by a kazoo. Not only that, he seems to be enjoying it. It's all so very '50's. I feel like I live in the set of "Rear Window," except that not one of my neighbors resembles Raymond Burr.
None of them really fill the role of the loony sculptress, either. Which I think is odd. You would think that Brooklyn would be liberally sprinkled with loony sculptresses. My neighbor does have a canary, but it just doesn't have the same impact without the loony sculptress.
No, my question was, where were the children in "Rear Window"? Were the apartments in Jimmy Stewart's little community just too damn small? I remember a lot of studios, but the salesman had a railroad apartment, and I'd wager that some fairly affluent children are, even now, growing up in smaller homes somewhere in this city.
At this point, my practical accounting mind intervenes and decides that children were probably a Big Hassle. Child labor laws and that sort of thing. I know Hitch worked with kids in other movies, where they were bona fide characters, but I bet if you don't need a kid in your movie it's wiser not to have any. Still, it's odd, because the neighborhood is practically its own character in "Rear Window." What, they couldn't get a kid to skip rope when Thelma Ritter ran to get the name off the moving van? I think I may have to watch that movie again.
Fear not, sometime soon my furniture will arrive and I will have something to do besides look out the window. Although I've already missed the first episode of "Hell's Kitchen," which Fox is heartlessly failing to broadcast on MySpace. Losers.
None of them really fill the role of the loony sculptress, either. Which I think is odd. You would think that Brooklyn would be liberally sprinkled with loony sculptresses. My neighbor does have a canary, but it just doesn't have the same impact without the loony sculptress.
No, my question was, where were the children in "Rear Window"? Were the apartments in Jimmy Stewart's little community just too damn small? I remember a lot of studios, but the salesman had a railroad apartment, and I'd wager that some fairly affluent children are, even now, growing up in smaller homes somewhere in this city.
At this point, my practical accounting mind intervenes and decides that children were probably a Big Hassle. Child labor laws and that sort of thing. I know Hitch worked with kids in other movies, where they were bona fide characters, but I bet if you don't need a kid in your movie it's wiser not to have any. Still, it's odd, because the neighborhood is practically its own character in "Rear Window." What, they couldn't get a kid to skip rope when Thelma Ritter ran to get the name off the moving van? I think I may have to watch that movie again.
Fear not, sometime soon my furniture will arrive and I will have something to do besides look out the window. Although I've already missed the first episode of "Hell's Kitchen," which Fox is heartlessly failing to broadcast on MySpace. Losers.
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