Rick’s Rants and Raves

We recently wiped and reinstalled Windows XP on Anne’s computer. There were various little annoyances, and it hasn’t been wiped since we bought it two years ago, so it sounded like a good idea.

I used, among other techniques, the File and Settings Transfer Wizard to save off her important files. I told the wizard to save the files in the root directory of an attached USB hard drive. After an hour or so of copying, it finally completed, with only one warning: Outlook was open and it was trying to grab the .pst file. I closed Outlook and told it to retry.

I booted her laptop from the Windows XP cd, put it in recovery mode, formated the hard drive, then re-installed Windows. Overall it was a relatively painless process.

After it came back up, I let Windows update download and install all the updates it could. It went through 4 reboot cycles for the updates. After the updates were finished, and AVG Free Antivirus was installed, I decided it was time to restore her files and settings.

I fired up the wizard, told it to restore from the drive where everything was stored, and it came back with “The location that you specified does not contain stored information”


I checked the drive. Everything appeared to be stored in a directory called USMT2.UNC. It was the appropriate size had the correct time stamps, so I knew it was right.

Since I had most everything backed up in alternate ways, I didn’t panic yet. I figured there had been an update to the Wizard, but it probably wasn’t considered critical. So I went back to Windows update and found this update:
KB896344: You cannot transfer files and settings…
The description talks about updating files from Windows XP to Windows XP Professional x64 Edition. This was not the case for me, but I decided to try it anyway.

After installing the update, it recognized my “stored information” and was able to restore the files and settings perfectly.

I really don’t mind being a late adopter. I like letting technology mature before I take the dive. I’m intrigued by the possibilities, and I am typically aware of the trends. However, I generally don’t spend my hard earned cash until an equilibrium has been reached between price and features.

For example, I recently acquired a DVR from my cable company as part of a package deal. When I compared that package against packages from competitors, I was essentially getting the DVR for free. That’s what I call equilibrium. I’m comfortable that my mother has had a DVR for over a year now, while I have not. My family simply doesn’t watch that much TV, so it hasn’t been a priority.

But last night, I realized just how late my adoption of an MP3 player had come: not only did my wife and daughter have one before me, my mother nearly beat me to it. She asked me to come help her learn how to use it. Fortunately, I already have one…

A month or so ago, I bought a refurbished Sansa e250 from Woot.com for only $50. I’ve been very pleased with the purchase, especially considering I did it with very little research (which is what Woot’s business model counts on). Here are some of the pluses of this particular player:

• 2GB internal storage that doubles as a flash drive. That’s 400 songs, which is a fair bit of the stuff I care about.
• Micro SD card slot. Since I can get a 2GB Micro SD for only $25 (at the time of writing), that means I could have a $75 4GB player. The equivalent iPod Nano is still $200, and doesn’t play video.
• The e250 is capable of playing video if you don’t mind converting it to its supported format. On my PC, it takes about 45 seconds to convert each minute of video. The only annoyance is that the smaller resolution quicktime file ends up taking more disk space than the original.
• There’s a pretty decent Free Open Source firmware for it called RockBox. The user interface leaves a little bit to be desired, especially when manipulating play lists, but it has a much deeper feature set than the stuff that came on the e250. And it has GAMES! It will even play Gameboy (Advance and color) games if you have the .gbc file. And of course, the ultimate in geek, It Plays Doom.
• The battery life has been fabulous.

One final complaint: FM transmitters seem to nearly universally suck. And why don’t any of them actually list their transmit power? A week transmit power would probably lead to a poorer signal strength. A strong transmit power would indicate a better likelihood of downing out the noise prevalent in most cities.

I’m finishing a business trip in San Diego, and there were a couple of “convergences” of trust that I found interesting.

The first part of the first convergence came when I was finishing breakfast in the hotel dining room. I could have the meal charged to my room, rather than pay for it right there. All I had to do was write my room number and name on the receipt and walk out. Since the wait-staff hadn’t been terribly attentive, I could have been half-way across the city before they noticed. Of course almost no one ever does that, so it is obvious that the trust is worth while for them.
Later that evening, I went to the bar and had a conversation with the bar tender about what it would be like if he had an “honor system” to pay for drinks. Then he hands me my bill, and I point out to him that it is the honor system–I could put a fake name and room number on and walk out. If he isn’t quick about checking, I could easily get away with a lot of free drinks (once).

At the end of my trip, due to scheduling difficulties, I decided to get a taxi cab from my hotel to the airport, rather than use my rental car. (The car was going to be returned by my co-worker). I went to the front desk of the hotel and asked who they recommend for a taxi service. She told me about a “town car service” that is much cleaner, much nicer, and has a fixed price to get me to the airport, whereas a taxi is variable. The price for the town car would be $55 for cash (“The EXACT same price as a taxi”) or $65 for credit. That’s when the red-flag went off in my head: should I trust a service that is willing to break a key term in their contract with credit card companies, namely that they must charge the same price for credit and cash? I declined to have her set up the pick-up for me. When I got to my room I called a local cab company (chosen nearly at random) and asked them to estimate how much my trip to the airport would cost. The answer: $45. “Do you take American Express?” “Yup.” Then it dawned on me: how could a town car cost the same as a taxi cab if they are so much better? In a competitive environment, every improvement in service will likely increase the cost. I chose to trust the cab company’s quote and arranged to have them pick me up. The final cost: $46.80 (plus tip).

The irony of my trusting the cab company is that the driver failed to hand my Amex card back to me after processing the charge. He handed me my receipt and I dashed out. I only discovered the lapse after I got through the ticketing line. I don’t know if it was intentional or not–I’ll lean toward the better side of human nature and assume it was a mistake. Of course, I don’t trust them enough to let them just mail the card to me. I called Amex once I was at the gate and had them cancel the card. Oh well. Lesson learned. Trust is a flimsy thing.

Today I flew on United Airlines for the second time in 3 weeks. The last time I flew, I learned that what my flight reservation system called a “light lunch” was really a “snack available for purchase.” I was so pissed at the time, I didn’t even look at the description of what I would be getting for my money (well, my company’s money).

Today, I decided to find out because I knew it would be a while before I got food, even on the ground. They have four different snack boxes to choose from aimed at four obvious demographics. I don’t recall the exact names but the demographics went something like this: person who fears heart attacks, person who wants a heart attack, earthy crunchy type, and aerobics instructor. I chose the “person who wants a heart attack”, called “Quickpick” and this is what I got:

• Beef jerky, 1 oz.
• Blue corn tortilla chips, 1.25 oz.
• La Victoria single serving salsa
• A shortbread cookie package (forget the size, but it had four cookies the size of a single side of an oreo)
• Some sort of “baked cheese snack” that tasted a lot like cheezits, but looked nothing like them. I’m guessing it was around an ounce or so.

So, in a vending machine at work that would have been $1.25 (jerky) + $0.75 (corn chips) +$0.75 (cookies) + $0.75 (cheese snack) + $0.75 (salsa, guessing) = $4.25. Not a bad deal considering the convenience of having it handed to me at 37,000 feet.

So, for future reference, the United Airlines snack boxes appear to be a pretty reasonable deal if you want more than a half dozen mini-pretzels.