you sick liiitle monkeeeey!

I’ve lost a lot of screws over the years while repairing PC’s and other devices. It gets especially tricky to remember where all the screws go when they’re different sizes, like the PSP. (It’s now got half the screws that it should!!)

Today, I thought of an idea I should’ve remembered a long time ago. Take a big piece of tape and tape the screws down to the outer case in the vacinity of their original position.

Here I’ve taped down the  screws to the back of the laptop on the Dell I’m fixing for a client. The hard drive can be slid out from the left side after the screws have been removed. This poor sucker gets the BSOD upon bootup, so I have to siphon the data off the drive and nuke it.

The XBOX 360 is a pretty good system all around, but there are several things that annoy me. (Story later).

One thing that really bothers me is the size of the hard drive. For $99, you get a 20 GB, which is a total ripoff from just a price comparision point of view. You can get an 80-100 GB 2.5″ SATA drive for that price. The XBOX 360 drive is nothing more than a SATA laptop drive sitting inside a case with a proprietary connector. Ok, I’ll allow Microsoft a $10-15 premium for the styling and housing, but no more than that. But 20 GB?! Come on! I think Microsoft got a good deal from laptop manufacturers who were wondering what the hell they were going to do with their inventory of small capacity hard drives. Laptops are now in the 60-100 GB range. Microsoft found a clever way to use that surplus, it seems to me.
The second thing is that the drive comes pre-filled with 8 GB of videos and trailers right out of the box leaving you with 12 GB. Now, game demos take up anywhere from 500 Mb to 800 Mb on average. Some even top 1 GB. 12 GB’s not a whole lot of space. If you download a lot of trailers and clips from Xbox Live Marketplace, you’ll soon find it pretty frustrating to have to delete old files to make room for the new. I’ve downloaded some demos and videos I want to keep, but I can’t if I want to download some new stuff.

Sure, you can hook up an external HD to the USB port and use that as extra storage, but I’d much rather have the option to upgrade the included hard drive. I’d be happy if Microsoft offered a higher capacity drive, say 80 GB, or even 40 GB. I’d be even happier if someone figures out a hack to replace the drive with one of my own. Then I wouldn’t have to pay the exorbitant price for such a simply constructed device.

I’m going to research storage hacks and see if I can find some useful information. Hopefully I don’t destroy my system in the process.

I’m starting a Gameboy DS Picture Viewer Project (GB DS PVP). I got this idea while in the shower today. I wanted to give my dad a portable photo viewer to look at photos my parents take on their digital camera, without having to do it through the computer. There isn’t anything good on the market to do this. Not even close.

After purchasing about a thousand dollars in electronics and hardware for usability testing and evaluation, I found most of these devices to be horribly designed. All products should have to go through a “Grandma Test”. If a grandma can use it, then it’s a good interface. Why are interfaces so badly designed?

I am an interface designer, among other things I do (illustrations, web development, Flash). I don’t think interface design is complicated at all. Users of software I’ve designed in the past have all said they are very easy to use. The interface to a product is so important, so I wonder why so many companies get it so wrong. It doesn’t matter how great your device looks on paper. If it’s difficult to use, no one will use it.

For people who are not familiar with what an interface is, it’s the means through which we interact with a machine or piece of electronic equipment. Basically, an “interface” stands between “you” (the human) and “it” (the machine). It provides a means for you to communicate with the machine in order to carry out your desired actions. Windows XP is one example of an interface your probably know. Through your mouse and keyboard, you manipulate buttons and icons to tell the computer what you want to do like delete a file, print a photo, send an email, etc. Mac OS X is another interface. Your browser has an interface which lets you go to different web pages, etc. ATM and cellphone interfaces are also things you interact with on a regular basis.

So anyway, back to the DS Lite PVP. I am designing the interface. I need to find someone to help me code it. I know jack butt about DS programming. I want to make someone so easy to use, even a lobotomized moneky on crack can use it.

Stronzo, for you non-Italian curse-word speakers means “shit” or “piece of shit”. Apparently the owner of this car wants everyone to know exactly how great his car is! (well.. it *is* American…)

I guess the DMV doesn’t know what it means, cuz they have profanity rules for vanity plates.

Check out the awesome lens flare! I didn’t even have to Photoshop it.

This has got to be the lamest plant I’ve ever seen. I saw this at the Brooklyn Botanic Gardens this summer and it sounded really cool, so I bought it. I’ve never seen anything like this before, so I was curious.

I took it home and put it in some water. It didn’t do much at first and was pretty much a let down. It just uncurled and started turning back a dark green, but it was not the beautiful lush fern that package extolled. I went to sleep and let it absorb water for 24 hours like the instructions said. I looked at it again. Man, is this thing lame. Worst 2.95 I’ve ever spent…. at the BBG…

I’ll post some photos of the lameness in 24 hours when this thing unfurls.

Friday was one of those days when you just wished you had brought along your camera. The morning before I left the house for work, I saw my Sharp 2-megapixel camera phone lying on my bed. I contemplated briefly whether I should take it with me and decided I didn’t want to carry it around.

Well, as Murphy’s Law of Photography usually works out, you’ll never have your camera when you actually want to take a picture of something interesting. On this particularly day, I saw 3 or 4 things I really wanted to take a picture of within 10 minutes of leaving the house and another thing within 30 minutes.

The first thing: a really effed up car. The car was one color, but the hood was another. The side doors were all bashed in. There were other reasons to take a picture of this car, but can’t remember now. Poops for not having the camera.

Right across the street from, the effed up car was a milk truck delivering produce. It had a picture of an anthropomorphized tomato guy. Above it: “Johnny Rotten’s Produce”.

Now, ok, I thought to myself. Why on God’s brown Earth would you want to name your produce company something like that? So, maybe this guy really likes the Sex Pistols… but really now. Have some sense! If you owned a music business, it’d be perfectly acceptable to call your shop “Johnny Rotten’s CD Shop.”.. but a vegetable distribution business?

And wtf is the tomato boy about? If the tomato guy is their mascot and they’re calling him Johnny Rotten, that’s pretty stupid too. He’s not carrying a guitar, isn’t all tattooed up and spiked hair. He’s so not punk.

Let’s not even mention the fact that the words “Rotten” and “Produce” are right next to each other. That’s no good association. Imagine answering the phone: “Johnny Rotten’s Produce! How may we help you?” Why don’t they call it “Johnny Freshness’s Produce”? But that sounds lame too. Johny Freshnesses.

A few stops into Manhattan, some weirdo Kid Rock looking cowboy pimp walks down the length of the car I was sitting in, grumbling something unintelligible to me. The dude facial hair like Kid Rock and a ratty looking braid. He was wearing a long black leather trenchcoat, a Stetson hat (might’ve even had a feather in it.. I don’t remember), blue jeans, and walking with a cane! The dude seriously looked like a fuct up Kid Rock pimp.

I really wish I had my camera so I could share with you the stupid thoughts that go through my head.

Quality with a capital Q. I needed to install Office on my laptop today. I stuck in the CD that’s been collecting dust on my desk for the past 6 months and to my annoyance, it was not the full version, but an Upgrade.

The installer looks on your hard drive for a previously installed version of Office. It didn’t find one, so tt gave me this:

But no worries. Using a little-known and extremely complicated method, you can bypass this eligility check. Are you ready? Where it says drive in the dialog box above, point the installer to itself. So if your CD drive is E, select E. Then hit OK.

You should get this:

Microsoft programming is top notch. Completely fool-proof. Keep up the good work, ’softies.

This ad showed up while I was shopping at Buy.com. Lately, Buy.com’s been really going downhill. Everything has a rebate now and prices have been jacked up because of that and Google Checkout. Anyway, this weird Chinese ad showed up while I was browsing for a digital camera. Why a Chinese ad? I don’t know. The picture was weird enough that it made me want to click it. Looked like a scorpion hatchery.

This picture didn’t make things any less mysterious. It still looks like a hatchery of some kind, only this time not a scorpion hatchery, but more like maggots. (It’s a horrible illustration.) The smiling head with the hand coming out the side is disturbing.

I couldn’t read the first few two characters of the product description to figure out what this thing is. I looked it up and here’s what I found.

Highlight the end of this sentence to see what this weird crap is: a spring sorter

To the one or two of you who read my blog, you know that I have no love for the Salvation Army after being snubbed. I called them and was told they wouldn’t do pickups for anything but furniture. I expressed surprise over the phone and just to be sure they knew I wasn’t donating just crap like old shoes and stained BVD’s, I told them I had several hundred dollars worth of useable but old stuff, like computers, video game systems, 3 TV’s, DVD/VCR players, digital camera, memory cards, printers, stereos, etc.

All of this stuff could benefit a homeless shelter or some other underfunded community center or organization. But NO, the Salvation Army was too good to send a van to pick up my shit. I couldn’t help feeling a little insulted… Alright, a lot insulted. What ingrates! What kind of charity makes giving so hard to do? And why would you want to be such a prissy queen of an organization when people are trying to donate stuff to you?
Well this story has a happy ending. That night I came home from work, I saw a pink flyer for United Veterans of America on the kitchen table. The flyer said they’d be in my neighborhood again in a few days. My brother had given to them the previous few years and prepared about 8 bags of clothes and shoes for them this season.

I spent the entire night packing boxes and half the morning fixing the G3 and installing the updates and some software to give to them. I went to sleep around 8 and at 10:30, this HUGE honking truck shows up! (Honking as in “HUGE”, not honking as in “making noise”.

United Veterans of America goes around all year, but around this time, as it approaches winter, the holidays, and tax time, their pickups are more frequent. They provide transitional housing for homeless vets as they try to re-integrate themselves into society. Here’s their website. I think it’s a wonderful cause. The flyer specificially requested clothing items because that’s what’s needed most around this time, with the weather getting progressively colder.

I brought the two dozen of boxes of stuff and clothing bags to the front steps and the friendly driver, who didn’t seem to speak much English, loaded all them into the back of the truck. I was a little concerned when I saw the driver toss the G3 I had spent all morning fixing into the truck, but it landed on a bed of bags filled with clothes so no harm done.
I was happy to get rid of all that stuff that’s been sitting in my house for years. I get to clean out some space, get a receipt for some tax deductions, and feel good about helping a local charity. I know that my old electronics and computer equipment will go to someone in the area who needs it, and they’re happy to be collecting much needed stuff for retired vets and other servicemen. I would’ve felt really guilty about trashing my old goods and having it end up in the landfill. I don’t like throwing perfectly good things away, especially when all my stuff still has many years of life in them for someone who isn’t concerned with the latest technology. While I’ve upgraded to HD DVD, LCD, and the latest digital everything for work, a retired vet would probably be just as happy to receive a donated TV and a VHS or DVD player to watch some movies on.
I would be really happy if my Mac might end up in a VFW (Veterans of Foreign Wars) or community center and got to be used as an internet kiosk. Or my digital camera taking pictures of their next Christmas celebration. Anything to brighten someone’s day, cuz there are so many miserable scumbags out there out to ruin yours.

Help out UVBH if you can. I admire their work and will definitely try to do more for them.

It’s pretty typical of Microsoft design to make something annoying and intrusive, like this stupid Automatic Update auto restart. I didn’t realize I had automatic updates turned on and my laptop last night went and downloaded some more of the latest Microsoft patches and whatnot. I came into the office today and the same thing happened on my Dell workstation. Every 10 minutes or so, I’d get a popup warning me that the computer will restart in 5 minutes.

As I was in the middle of working in 4 different programs, I didn’t want to interrupt my workflow and restart the computer. It would’ve been fine if Windows asks you ONLY 1 TIME, but it kept #&$ing asking me to reboot every 10 minutes or so. Take the hint already! I’m working! Stop bothering me. Would it be asking too much from Microsoft to put a button that says “Don’t ask me again.”

I’ve had the misfortune of losing several hours of design work by accidentally saying OK to this. And on more than one occasion. Some programs don’t ask for confirmation before quitting!

Unfortunately, to disable this nuisance, you have to dig into the registry, which is not something novice users should do. I found some instructions for the brave here:

http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/archives/000294.html