Computer glitches? What's new?

Many, especially Republicans, are complaining about the computer problems with the rollout of the Affordable Care Act.  What did they expect?  Version x.0.1 to be ready on day one?

They should look at the software on their iPhones.  Everyday I seem to receive an update to one of the apps that I downloaded.  What is the main reason for the update – bug fixes!

Many think of Germans as being superefficient.  Consider one of the reasons for the latest update for the Die Zeit newspaper app update: “Generelle Stabilitäts-Updates!”  In other words, the previous version of the Die Zeit app crashed.

We often do our own screwing up.  I received a letter from my bank that they had moved money from my savings account to my checking account.  On my first try to access my account, the bank’s system was unavailable.  When I finally got on, I found that there had been yet another transfer made.  As I reviewed the online statement, I found that I had transferred money from checking to savings instead of the other way around.  At least I have an account that makes sweeps rather than overdraft charges.

That grand and glorious new iOS 7 for the iPhone and iPad is now at version 7.0.4!  Apple’s customer help forums are filled with questions on how to fix this problem or that problem, many of the questions unanswered.

I have been using Microsoft’s Outlook and Apple’s Address Book and iCal for years.  Outlook for email and events, Address Book for other purposes such as envelopes, and iCal for events.  Supposedly they should sync with very little effort.

Some time ago I found that I was getting more and more duplicated events and two items for every person in my address book.  If I remember correctly, my daughter’s birthday was duplicated 800 times!  After I cleaned that mess up, I stopped using Outlook’s calendar.
         
I also had duplicate names in my address books.  As with the calendars there was a sync that went bad long ago with the Outlook and Apple address books.  I gave up on syncing them and kept updates to each manually.  This past week I cleaned up the Apple address book on my laptop with Contact Cleaner.  It eliminated all the duplicates.  The duplicates were eliminated on my iPhone but almost all the names disappeared from my iPad.  There was only one entry for each of a dozen or so letters of the alphabet!  Needless to say, I did not sync my address book to my iPhone.

Then my iPhone would not turn on!  Off to the Apple Community.  Rather quickly I found a customer comment that said to hold the power and home buttons at the same time.  This is now happening on my iPad!  Could it be iOS 7.0.4 for this and the disappearing contacts?

My bluetooth keyboard would not sync with my iPad.  It had been working fine and made life much easier than typing on the screen.  Off to the Apple Community.  I had to “forget” the keyboard and then look for it again.  Thank you, Apple Community.

On top of all these other problems, I spilled coffee on my laptop keyboard recently.  I tried holding too many things at the same time.  Now the shift key on one side wouldn’t work and neither option keys worked.

I took my laptop to Best Buy to find out if the Geek Squad could repair my keyboard with little time and no charge.  I found out that I still had a service warranty that covered all hazards.  The agent recommended that I take my laptop home and back up everything.  He wasn’t sure if my laptop would be repaired or scrapped.  I’m glad that I backed most of the stuff up because I could then use my wife’s iMac to do all the computer tasks I’m accustomed to, including writing this column.

On Friday the Geek Squad called me that my computer was back.  Now we’re seeing some corporate efficiency.  Instead of the “safe” promised one month, the Geek Squad did the repair within a week.

It often seems that if one has a problem, one hears of others with the same problem.  Pamela Jaskoviak, a Swedish writer, spilled coffee on her MacBook Pro late at night working on a past due deadline.  She did worse than I did; the computer quit and she had to have her hard drive copied to a new computer.  If you understand Swedish, you can find her “Godmorgon, världen” monologue at http://sverigesradio.se/sida/default.aspx?programid=438

So many companies cannot be satisfied with their websites.  They seem to regularly roll out “exciting” new sites, sometimes they provide some useful new features, sometimes they are no big deal, and sometimes they are major screw-ups.  Recently Yahoo Finance did a major makeover of its website.  To me, they removed some clutter and replaced it with other clutter.  It took me awhile to figure out how to get quotes for a list of stocks, but once I did Yahoo Finance provided the request data in the format I was accustomed to.

Then, poof!  It didn’t work at all.  Every time I clicked the return button, it added a string of nonsense to what I had copied or typed in the quote box, and it told me it couldn’t find what I requested.  Off to “the community” to seek answers.  Hoo boy!  The critics of ACA should see the long list of bitter complaints, and some of these complaints come from people who make their living with timely stock quotes!

All those complaining about the ACA rollout should remember two bits of folk wisdom:

Murphy’s law: If something can go wrong, it will.

To err is human; to really screw up it takes a computer.

Also posted on the Reader Weekly website at http://duluthreader.com/articles/2013/12/05/2582_party_of_one-7.

Short cuts can short change you: Part II

For Part I, click here.

After I returned from the fruitless search for the missing sheet of plywood, I ate supper, went to bed, and tossed and turned too much of the night, considering various options for the next day.

The next morning I plotted out the work for the day.  On one of my crawls underneath, I noticed that there were lots of staples sticking out.  These would have hindered moving plywood sections and so I began removing them.  I think it took me all morning to get them out; I don't remember if that was one-quarter of joists or all of them.

Finally, maybe it was after lunch, I measured out lengths of insulation and stuffed them between the joists, two layers of 3-1/2 inch denim "no-scratch".  I think I did one "sixteen inch by six feet" section at a time.  However, the insulation would not stay between the joists; it sagged and even dropped completely out.

I had set aside some of the old insulation supports, springy sixteen-inch wire rods.  These did the trick of holding the insulation up.  I also had a full package of them left from when I had first put insulation under the floor.  Fortunately, I didn't let my wife throw them out or give them to a rummage sale.

Sometime in the afternoon, I had insulation in place on one-quarter of the joists.

My memory may be wrong, but I think I considered that it a good stopping place.  The next step would be to cover what I had done with plywood.  That would be the next visit's work.  Now it was time to return my friend's trailer.

For some reason, I took the longer way around, thinking that a more direct road was still closed, even when I knew it had been opened.  I had gotten directions to my friend's house from Two Harbors from Map Quest or Google.  When I got into Two Harbors and cell phone coverage, I called him to let him know I was on my way (his Duluth number was long distance from our cabin).  It's a good thing I did.  He told me that I can't use Cant Rd. to get to his place.

When I did get there he noticed the tire iron wasn't on top of the loose spare tire.  Hoo boy!  At 65 mph it must have bounced out.  At least traffic was sparse and it didn't slam into someone's grille or worse.

On Friday I returned to our cabin and tried getting a 4x8 sheet of 1/4-inch plywood in place to screw it to the joists.  No way could I manage this by myself.

So I cooked up what I call Plan A-.  My trying to cover the insulation with whole sheets of plywood was Plan B; the original Plan A having been to put the insulation in from the top.  Plan A- was putting in pieces of plywood from the bottom and holding them up by some means.

Before I cut up my brand new sheets of plywood, I found some old, squirrel-chewed 1/4-inch plywood on our lumber left-overs pile.  The squirrels probably liked the glue.  There was enough good wood to make two about 70x14 panels.  I also found that my circular saw, unused for many years, had a plywood blade and still worked.

My original thought had been to screw runners to the side of the joists and then zigzag the plywood up and let it drop back down.  I measured a "pocket" carefully and tried to cut each piece carefully.  I cut one piece in and tried to fit it in.  I couldn't push up on one side and get the other side to go over the opposite runner.  That didn't work so well.  I took the runners off one side and then just held the piece up with one hand and used a cordless drill to put 1-1/2 screws every 18 inches or so.  That worked.

Except!  There were hangers over the support beams that prevented the piece from going completely to the outside edge.  I had to make notches in the piece.  Then, because I was using low supports to cut the plywood, my cuts weren't the straightest possible.  I had to trim wherever a piece was too wide.  And of course, the joists are not precision cut or placed lumber and are different distances apart - 14-1/2 inches one place and 14-1/4 another.  Some places a piece may fit snugly, and other places there are huge gaps that will have to be filled with caulk.

To shorten this long tale of fortitude, stubbornness, stupidity, and cleverness, the two pieces of scrap worked, and so I cut four more pieces out of the new sheets.  At five o'clock Saturday afternoon, I had one quarter of the insulation up and supported.  Now I began putting all my scattered tools away.  That took an hour.  Then another hour straightening up the cabin and packing up.  When I went to turn off the refrigerator I discovered I never turned it on.  Fortunately the cabin had been so cold when I arrived the day before that the food stayed cool enough.

At about seven I drove out the driveway and locked the cable.  I looked East down the road and saw a full moon almost over the center of the road.  Take a few pictures.  I should have done it with a tripod; the moon is bleary.  Off I go on the hour-long drive listening to the latest "To the Best of Our Knowledge" on my iPhone plugged into the radio.  It gets darker and darker.  I'm not used to this.  My eyes dart back and forth watching for deer.  Then I realize I don't have my high beams on.  Ah, that makes a difference.

Finally I arrive back in Duluth, but no way am I going to prepare supper for myself at this hour.  I stop at Bulldog Pizza for a pint and a big sandwich.  What a relief to sit down without a cabin floor hanging six inches from my face or without a steering wheel in my hands peering into the dark.

Still 3/4 of the insulation to go.  At least the next time I'll have my wife there to help in so many ways.

Short cuts can short change you

For readers not familiar with American idioms, let me explain the title.

A short cut is doing something with less time or money than normal.  It comes from taking a shorter route than the usual route, say cutting through the woods rather than following the road.  A short cut now may mean doing something quicker than normal.  Like not putting on a hard hat to save time.

Giving short change is not giving all the change due a payee.  For example, if you present $20 for something that costs $16.10, the seller may give you only $3.50 in change or $2.90, not $3.90.  Short change has now come to mean not getting full value from something.

So, my short cut in building a cabin has cost me more money and time over the years than if I had done it right the first time.

When we built our cabin in Brimson, Minnesota in 1994 or so, we were living in the Twin Cities, a 200-mile, 3-1/2 to 4 hour drive each way.  Each time we did a bit of work, we tried to make as much progress as possible.

We built the cabin on six posts stuck in the ground with the floor about 2-1/2 feet above the ground.  I should have put insulation between the joists before I put the floor on, but I didn't want the insulation to get wet if I didn't have time to put the floor on.  The way to put insulation between the joists is to nail runners along the sides of the joists, drop plywood on the runners, caulk the result, and drop insulation between the joists.

No, Mr. Know-It-All would crawl under the building and put the insulation in from underneath.  No big deal for a fifty-something "kid".

Our cabin floor was warm through most winters, but then the squirrels discovered this wonderful nesting material.  We would see wads all over our yard.  I tried putting plastic screen under the insulation, but the squirrels would rip that off.  I talked about putting 1/4-inch screen underneath, but never put more than a few square feet in.

Finally, there was practically no insulation left, and our floor was always cold in winter.  This spring and summer, I pulled out what was left.  I intended to install new insulation the proper way this fall.  I finally started two weeks ago.

I intended to stuff insulation between the joists and then screw 1/4-inch plywood to support it and protect it from squirrels.

I borrowed a trailer from a friend, went to Menard's to buy all the plywood and a couple of packages of insulation.  As a clerk helped me put the plywood in the trailer, he asked if I wanted to put the spare tire on top to hold the plywood down.  I said no, I have tie-downs.  Mistake one!

When I tried putting my tie-downs on, I could not find a good purchase on the side of the trailer, at least within reach of a single tie-down.  I didn't think to hook two together.  Mistake two!

As I drove the fifty-plus miles to our cabin, I kept looking in the rear-view mirror to be sure the insulation was still there.  At not quite 25 miles, the insulation wasn't there.  The North Star fire station was just ahead and I used that to turn around.  Within a mile of backtracking, I saw the two insulation bundles stacked beside the road.  Some kind person had stopped, picked them up off the road, and put them at the side.  This time I put the bundles in the back of my SUV.  But I didn't count the sheets of plywood; I saw that the top sheet was wedged under one of the back slats of the trailer and that should hold them in place.  Mistake three!

When I unloaded everything at the cabin, I discovered I had only five of the six sheets of plywood.  Hoo, boy!  I drove the twenty-five miles back to where I had lost the insulation,  looking carefully on both sides of the road (lots of tall grass, embankments, and such), as the daylight dwindled.  As I drove, I pondered that I'm probably spending as much in gas as the missing sheet of plywood cost.  I didn't find the sheet.

Tomorrow or soon: Part II - the actual progress of the insulation.

Nuclear energy and floods - everything has been taken care of

Nuclear plants around the country are in flood plains, and some have had barriers placed around them.  One barrier sprang a leak when a worker accidentally punctured it.  However, nuclear plant operators are saying there is nothing to concerned about, including Xcel Energy in Minnesota, which has had a faulty back-up switch for years.

Be sure to consider the "first fully automated passenger plane".  "Welcome ladies and gentlemen to the world's first fully automated passenger plane.  There is no crew on board and everything has been put in the control of fully tested computer systems.  So, please sit back and relax, and relax, and relax, …"

A realistic look at war

My take on war is that the winner is the one with the most sustained resources.  The North had the industry and population to outlast the South.  The Allies had the industry out of reach of the Germans and the Japanese plus a much larger population.  This last component of resources was forgotten in Vietnam and in Palestine.  The Vietnamese had many more people willing to die for their cause than the U.S. did, despite the latter's greater access to industry.  The Israelis are aware that they are surrounded by a much larger population that does not share its interests; the more the Israelis make war, the more enemies they create.

You can find a much broader perspective on how war rarely accomplishes its ends in "War and Truth in Libya and Palestine", Tarak Barkawi, Al Jazeera English, 2011-04-28.

Simple simply ain't simple

Because a University for Seniors luncheon next week is at our Russian class time, we decided we would try to sit at the same table. I volunteered to make a table tent

Русский Стол
Russian Table

As you can see above, the Russian is no problem with my computer. The big problem was rotating the text so that it would be right-side up on each side when I folded the paper.

I could find no way of rotating the text in Word. What I could find in the help files was not on any of my palettes. I tried Excel instead. I did find Text Box in the Insert Menu and I could rotate the box with the text in it.

The next hard part was getting the "two sides" balanced on the paper. It seemed each box was on a different page or somehow otherwise badly balanced. I finally would click print, look at the thumbnail, cancel, readjust the boxes, and repeat until I was happy with the result.

I had printed one copy a plain piece of paper with much grinding of the printer. We had cleaned it once recently, but kept putting off doing again.

I put in a sheet of matte photo paper for heavier stock and clicked print. Grind, grind, and then grind again. "Load paper in main tray" Darn it, there is paper in the main tray. Adjust paper carefully. Grind, grind, same error.

OK, OK! I'll clean the printer. With a bit of searching, I found the generic instructions for cleaning the printer on HP's website. I unplugged the printer, turned the back towards me, and opened the back access door. There was a little piece of paper peeking out at me! I couldn't pull it with my fingers and went downstairs to get needle-nose pliers. That did the trick but the little piece of paper was a quarter sheet of paper.

Neither of us could remember printing quarter sheets recently. How long was that in there causing all the grinding? And why did it choose this job to position itself to stop all printing?

Once I put everything back together, the paper fed properly. It still made noise, but nothing like the awful racket before.

Some two hours after I started, I finished the ten-minute job.

I also put the result in a protected space in my backpack. That should ensure that I will have it at the luncheon to "reserve" our class table. Is that Murphy I see peeking in the window?