Wins, Losses and a Pye.
Sep. 30th, 2011 10:58 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
captainsblogDubya:
* For the possibly one musician who didn't see this the eight or so times it appeared on his or her Wall yesterday:
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Ell:
* For Rick Perry, who is clearly misdirecting his gorram prayers. We've been dodging downpours for the past two days, and I mean DOWNpours. As in pre-trials being postponed because opposing lawyers have to run home and bail out their already-drained pools. As in our gutters looking like they're about to fall off. Yeah, dude. Maybe if you didn't piss off Jesus so much, he'd LISTEN to your prayers.
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Pye, which rhymes with "tie" (for the moment, at least)
* Last week, our DVD-recorder stopped recording. It still plays things fine, but it simply announced that anything we put in it to be recorded on was a "bad disk," including brand new ones and a variety of plus, dash, R and R/W formats.
Damn thing owes us nothing. We bought it almost exactly five years ago, under trying circumstances. It replaced a previous unit that shat the bed just over a year after purchase, and on which we'd actually bought the extended warranty coverage from the store. Surprise!, they said; the serial number on the receipt isn't the same as the one on the unit. After some veiled threats about calling the Attorney General about sharp practices, they honored it, but the unit was no longer in stock and we wound up having to pay 10 or 20 bucks extra for a no-name brand that was then the cheapest and closest one they had, from the famous Pye Video company. Laugh all you want, but the thing gave us nearly five perfect years, and its manufacturer, Funai, is still in business. The sharpies at Circuit City? Aren't:P
Partly out of cheapness, and partly due to the aggravation of having to rewire, reprogram and relearn a new remote, I hesitated before just going out and replacing it. First, I went looking for a disk cleaning CD we'd had laying around. It's not; it was last seen atop the stereo, where Zoey likes to plant herself and then go bowling with all the jewelboxes. Replacing that was a quicker and less expensive proposition, but seven bucks and three passes later, the thing still wouldn't record. One last try, though: I looked for a can of compressed air (usually used on my desk as a Dalek to chase away the cat, with the red hosey thing pointed at her nose while I chant "EXTERMINATE!"), and that, too, had fallen into flotsam. Amazingly, I found a nearly-spent can in the cellar, sprayed it around inside the DVD drive of the recorder, and.... a whole segment of some cheapass infomercial on ESPN Classic is now preserved for my viewing pleasure!
I'll likely go out and buy the replacement anyway, because with Dexter starting this weekend, the babe's gonna be getting some heavier recording use, but it's a nice win over the shopping gods to fall in the midst of my workday, rain and all.
* For the possibly one musician who didn't see this the eight or so times it appeared on his or her Wall yesterday:
----
Ell:
* For Rick Perry, who is clearly misdirecting his gorram prayers. We've been dodging downpours for the past two days, and I mean DOWNpours. As in pre-trials being postponed because opposing lawyers have to run home and bail out their already-drained pools. As in our gutters looking like they're about to fall off. Yeah, dude. Maybe if you didn't piss off Jesus so much, he'd LISTEN to your prayers.
----
Pye, which rhymes with "tie" (for the moment, at least)
* Last week, our DVD-recorder stopped recording. It still plays things fine, but it simply announced that anything we put in it to be recorded on was a "bad disk," including brand new ones and a variety of plus, dash, R and R/W formats.
Damn thing owes us nothing. We bought it almost exactly five years ago, under trying circumstances. It replaced a previous unit that shat the bed just over a year after purchase, and on which we'd actually bought the extended warranty coverage from the store. Surprise!, they said; the serial number on the receipt isn't the same as the one on the unit. After some veiled threats about calling the Attorney General about sharp practices, they honored it, but the unit was no longer in stock and we wound up having to pay 10 or 20 bucks extra for a no-name brand that was then the cheapest and closest one they had, from the famous Pye Video company. Laugh all you want, but the thing gave us nearly five perfect years, and its manufacturer, Funai, is still in business. The sharpies at Circuit City? Aren't:P
Partly out of cheapness, and partly due to the aggravation of having to rewire, reprogram and relearn a new remote, I hesitated before just going out and replacing it. First, I went looking for a disk cleaning CD we'd had laying around. It's not; it was last seen atop the stereo, where Zoey likes to plant herself and then go bowling with all the jewelboxes. Replacing that was a quicker and less expensive proposition, but seven bucks and three passes later, the thing still wouldn't record. One last try, though: I looked for a can of compressed air (usually used on my desk as a Dalek to chase away the cat, with the red hosey thing pointed at her nose while I chant "EXTERMINATE!"), and that, too, had fallen into flotsam. Amazingly, I found a nearly-spent can in the cellar, sprayed it around inside the DVD drive of the recorder, and.... a whole segment of some cheapass infomercial on ESPN Classic is now preserved for my viewing pleasure!
I'll likely go out and buy the replacement anyway, because with Dexter starting this weekend, the babe's gonna be getting some heavier recording use, but it's a nice win over the shopping gods to fall in the midst of my workday, rain and all.
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no subject
Date: 2011-09-30 03:08 pm (UTC)Hope you manage to find a good replacement for the DVR!
no subject
Date: 2011-09-30 03:51 pm (UTC)Right after finding a good replacement for the all-in-one copy/fax/scanner, which is now likely in need of a new print head.
FML.
no subject
Date: 2011-09-30 04:48 pm (UTC)And my recent experience with printers and drivers leads me to suggest avoiding HP's recent offerings, because their printer drivers are so badly broken it's not even funny. Constantly demanding reinstallation, creating duplicate virtual copies of the printer in computer memory until you're wondering why your print jobs never get printed and you check and find you've got five HP printers, four of which read as disconnected, and ... well, I could go on.
I had much better luck with Canon.
no subject
Date: 2011-09-30 06:14 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-09-30 06:53 pm (UTC)BTW, I think I dodged this bullet, too, with, what else?, spraying compressed air onto the printheads. I should try aiming a can of the stuff at a Teabagger and see if it makes THAT problem go away;)
no subject
Date: 2011-09-30 07:03 pm (UTC)Don't worry. Won't happen again.
no subject
Date: 2011-09-30 09:12 pm (UTC)