Rick's World

I just discovered a feature in the iPod that I never noticed before. I thought everyone out there might find this useful.

When Apple recently came out with games for the iPod. I bought a couple and played them. One thing I discovered while playing the games is that the iPod can detect if you touch the scroll wheel, without you actually pressing the scroll wheel! I thought it only detected button presses (and 'scrolls'). I didn't know it could detect just a touch.

One thing that's always annoyed me about the iPod, is that if you are playing something, after a few seconds the backlight on the screen goes off. When the light goes out, it's very hard to read the screen. I thought you had to press one of the buttons in order to turn the light back on. This means you would have to pause the iPod in order to look at the screen. Then unpause it again to continue playing... This causes an annoying pause.

I just discovered, that if you just touch the click wheel, without actually pressing it, it will light up the screen without stopping the playback! This is much better! Thanks Apple!

Well, it took 6 weeks, 3 failed appointments and way too many angry phone calls to DirecTV and Mastec, but I finally won, and got what I want. Today, Mastec came by and installed the DirecTV wiring in my computer room! Even better, they didn't charge me anything!

I had an appointment with them this past Saturday to have my cabling done. They were supposed to show up between 1 and 5pm. They never showed up. They never called. Nothing. This was the third time in a row that they had stood me up for an installation appointment with no explanation. I was so furious Saturday, I couldn't speak.

I called DirecTV this morning to complain. She looked over the notes of my installation request and noted that I had told them that they had already failed to show up twice before Saturday's appointment. I told them and they noted in the installation request that this past Saturday's appointment must not be missed. It was and I was angry. After explaining this to the DirecTV agent, as calmly as I could manage, she called Mastec immediately while I was on the phone. She proceeded to chew them out (in a very polite way) that they had repeatedly failed to perform the installation and that this was unacceptable. She even implied that they would be CHARGING Mastec for these failed installation. After bouncing back and forth between the national and two different local Mastec offices, I was told they would definately arrange an appointment for today. Now, I was at work at the time, so the typical 4 hour installation window was not acceptable, and I told them this. I said that they would have a 1 hour window to show up. No more. After a few more calls back and forth, I was finally able to arrange for them to arrive at my house at 4:30PM this afternoon. I usually get off of work at 6pm, but I left at 4pm, in order to make the appointment. I was called by the installer himself who said he was on the way to my house. I gave him directions and headed home.

At 4:30pm, the installer arrived. I wanted to get 4 plugs installed - 2 in each of the two bedrooms that don't already have DirecTV. I wanted to get all possible future cabling done today so I wouldn't have to worry about it. I was fully prepared to pay them for the installation. The installer who arrived was obviously new because he didn't know what he was doing. He ended up calling a senior installer who also showed up and helped out. Then a THIRD guy showed up and between the three of them they were able to get the cabling installed. It took several hours, but I now have two cables running in my home office and DirecTV works. They said they couldn't do the other 2 plugs, but that whenever I decided to add another receiver to that room, I could just call them and the installation would be included. They originally told me they would have to charge me $55.50 for the 2nd wire in the home office (since a normal installation is only 1 wire). I told them I was fine with paying that... It was already less than I was expecting. I was expecting about $80/cable. $160 total. Once they were done, they just packed up their things and left. They never charged me anything.

So now, once all is said and done, it took me 6 weeks, but now I have working DirecTV in my home office, it cost me nothing and in fact my DirecTV bill went DOWN by $10/month for the next year to compensate. It was long and frustrating, but I did come out ahead in the end.

I haven't written about my attempts to learn guitar in a long time for a reason - I haven't been using the guitar much lately. It's been literally weeks since I've even picked it up. Why? In part it's been laziness, and in part because I've been very busy with doing stuff around the house. This weekend, something happened that is going to change this.

I was visiting with my parents this weekend and was telling them the story about my friend Dave and how he was going to be playing guitar at a friend's wedding. When I mentioned this, my mom mentioned that she'd always liked the Christmas song 'Oh Holy Night' and she suggested that I learn the song and perform it for the family at Christmas. I agreed. It will be my first performance of a song in front of an audience, even it is just my family (sure to be a friendly audience). I figure the song shouldn't be that difficult to learn. I just need to find some guitar tablature for it, so I can learn it.

Link: https://b2evolution.net/

You may notice a slight change in the appearance of my blog. A couple days ago, I made some minor changes in how my blog site is generated. I was having a problem with words and images being chopped off the right side of the blog area. After a few small changes I was able solve the chopped off text/images problem. Since my blog software is an open source application, I felt it was polite to send the author of the software my changes, in case he wanted to use them. So, I emailed the author (in France!) my two small changes and said he was free to use them if he wanted in the main package. I got a response back from him pretty quickly, thanking me for complimenting him on the package, but that the chopping off of the text was intentional. Personally, I can't understand the desire to make a web site intentionally chop off text. As a long time GUI designer, I long ago learned the first rule of GUI design - make no assumptions about the side of the window. This means your GUI should adapt to whatever size the window is. In web terms, that means that your web site should automatically resize itself to fit whatever size browser window you happen to have open. The design of my open source blog software was violating this rule by fixing the size of the web page to a hard coded width. Because this web page was a fixed width, the browser ended up chopping off the text. My small changes fixed this issue that, to me anyway, was a bug. To the author of the blog software however, this 'bug' was by design. Now, there's nothing wrong with the author deciding to make the web pages a fixed size. As the author of the software, it is his right. However, one of the great things about open source software, such as my blogging software, is that if the software doesn't do what the user (i.e. me) wants, the user is free to change it to meet his or her needs. The blogging software didn't lay out pages as I felt was correct. I was perfectly within my rights, legally and every other way to modify the software as I see fit. The rules of open source also say that any changes you make to the software should be submitted back to the author, so that others can make use of your changes, should they choose to. I did that. The fact that the author chose not to use my changes is perfectly fine with me. We simply have differing points of view in how the software should work. My site now works the way I want it, and it continues to work the way he wants it. Everyone is happy.

In more ways than one...

Last night my friend Dave and I went to see the Queensryche concert. This was their 'Complete Mindcrime' concert. Operation Mindcrime was an album that they came out with back in 1988. This ablum tells the story of Nicky, a man who becomes a government assassin. He ends up meeting a nun, who is a former hooker. They fall in love, but she is 'mysteriously' killed. He is accused of the crime and is eventually captured and sent off to prison. Yeah, it sounds like a pretty dark and violent album. It is, but it's also one of the best rock albums I've ever heard. I've been listening to this album for 18 years. I discovered this album back in college and I've lost track of the number of times I've listened to it since. Earlier this year, they came out with a second album that acts as a sequal to 'Operation: Mindcrime'. This new album was called (cleverly enough) 'Operation: Mindcrime II'. The new album continues the story of Nicky. It's 18 years later, and he is released from prison. He immediately sets off in pursuit of Dr. X, the man who drove him into his life as an assasin, and the man who killed Mary, the nun/hooker. I suppose you could almost call this 'Mindcrime II: The Revenge of Nicky'. :) I bought Mindcrime II the day it came out and honestly didn't like it much. It was nowhere near as good as the first Mindcrime. When I found out that they were coming in concert to perform both Mindcrimes, and that my friend Dave had already bought tickets, I told him that if he had a spare ticket, that I'd absolutely go with him. He had a spare ticket, which he offered me. That was months ago. Last night was the concert. The concert started at 7pm. I left work at 6pm on the dot and hoped on the highway. It was raining. I was not happy about this, since the concert was in an outdoor ampitheater. I didn't have a rain poncho and I didn't think they'd let me bring an umbrella, but I went anyway. It took me 45 minutes to drive the 15 miles to the concert. Combine rush hour traffic with rain and you get a very slow crawl. Anyway, I got there at 6:45pm, and was in my seat at 6:50pm. Just in time! The concert starts in 10 minutes. I just made it! The rain had pretty much stopped by this point. It was down to a very light rain. Only a few drops every now and then. I bought a t-shirt and poncho on the way in. A few minutes later, Dave showed up. The concert didn't start until 7:30pm. As soon as the concert started, it started to rain! It rained nonstop for the next 1 1/2 hours. Just long enough for the band to finish performing the first Mindcrime. The performance of the first Mindcrime was a fantastic show. The audience was singing along and having a good time, myself included. After a 15 minute or so break, the band came back out and performed the entire second Mindcrime. I gotta say that these guys really worked hard out there. It was just one song after another with no breaks at all. No talking to the audience. They just jumped right in and played nonstop. Other than a 15 minute break in the middle, these guys pretty much didn't stop playing for almost 3 hours! It was a great show. They finished the second Mindcrime, and after a couple of encore songs, the show ended. That's when things got really interesting... Dave and I were just about to leave when these two girls in front of us turned around and handed these two small triangular passes to us and asked if we wanted them. I honestly didn't know what it was. I looked at the pass and all it said was "Queensryche Afterparty". My thought was, "Big deal, some bar in town is having a party after the show. Who cares?" Dave, however was very excited when he saw them. He told me to take the pass. I did. The two girls left. I then asked Dave what the big deal was about these two 'party passes'. He looks at me and says, "They are backstage passes!" Holy crap! I wasn't expecting that! The idea of being able to meet a band I've really liked for 20 years, was great! We went up to the security guys at the front of the stage to ask about it. The told us to sit down over at the front of the audience seats and wait, along with about 20-30 other people who had passes. Apparently the security team had to wait for the entire rest of the amphitheater to empty out before they could let us in. They were really strict about security. After about 20-30 minutes of waiting, we were led off to a small side building to the side of the stage. We went inside. It was a very plain looking little meeting room. It reminded me of the kind of little side rooms you would see in a church where everyone plays bingo. Nothing to speak of. Just some tables and chairs. Dave and I had no idea we were going to be meeting the band. Apparently a lot of the other people did. They all brought different things for the band to autograph. One guy brought in an entire electric guitar to be autographed. Several guys brought in CDs and one guy even brought in some records to sign! All Dave and I had for them to sign was our new t-shirts. So, the two of us went around and had all the band members sign our t-shirts. Mine was wet! I was worried it would be too wet for the ink to set, but it seemed to work OK. And of course, me being the clueless person I am, didn't even know who was who in the band (other than the lead singer). I had to get Dave to point out who needed to sign my t-shirt. I think I still managed to miss one member of the band since I only got four signatures, but there are five guys in the band. Dave got all five signatures. Oh well. And of course since we had no idea we'd be there, the only camera I had with me was my crappy cell phone camera. But, I had a guy take my picture with the lead singer anyway. That's what that photo is up top of the blog. I'm the goofy guy on the left with the 'Incredibles' t-shirt. The guy on my right is Geoff Tate, the lead singer of Queensryche. How cool is that! I gotta say that last night was an incredible night, and a night I'll never forget. Thanks for the ticket Dave, and thanks to those girls, whomever you are for the backstage