Geniuses and Idiots
Jan. 20th, 2010 03:07 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
captainsblogSo many of both types to choose from today. Where to begin?
I made my first visit to the Genius Bar today. Overall, the place was not as overwhelming as I thought it would be. If these are geniuses, they tend to keep their IQs reasonably well hidden. I brought Frank two issues. One was hardware- the headphone jack on the phone not connecting right- and while he inspected it with something much resembling a sonic screwdriver, his ultimate tool for the actual fix? An unbent paperclip. It did get out the nasty piece of pocket lint that had gone down the headphone hole, and connections seem much better now. On the software end, I asked him to explain why I could get my office email to come into the phone but couldn't get any replies (or anything else) to go out. He explained it was a Time Warner issue, where its servers won't send mail not originating from their network, and his sneaky little fix for it was to jigger it so my outbound office mail now goes out through the Gmail SMTP server. Okay, maybe he IS a genius. Not just a suuuuuper genius.
HP, on the other hand, is suffering from a total lack of geniuses on their staff. Through some online checking, we identified the cause of Eleanor's printer error as emanating from the "cradle" that holds the print cartridges and emits their contents along the carriage. The whole assembly looks to be a piece of plastic about three inches square, but nothing in the printer documentation- online or in the manuals- give it a part number or even a specific name. Meanwhile, the aftermarket part seller that was recommended for the fix? IT has a wide variety of parts for sale at reasonable prices, but they don't identify them by picture or other indicator of which is the right one. They've referred me back to HP, so I'd better brush up on my Hindi before tackling this again.
Even before surrounding myself with such mental giants, I set myself up for even more intellectual inadequacy. As I mentioned last week, an old AOL trivia acquaintance was on Jeopardy! last Friday night, losing to the returning champion (who's from Chautauqua County, of all places); then, we wound up watching again this past Monday, where the same champion again won. The latter win turned on a Final Jeopardy category of "Early Man," where the winning question played on the movie title Out of Africa. Oddly enough, we had just watched that film the night before, after not seeing it in years, so I considered it enough of an omen that I checked, and am now signed up for the online contestant test for this coming Monday night. I passed it at least once before, but the last time I remember doing it, the questions were all totally out of left field and I stunk up the joint pretty bad. Maybe the third, or 18th or whatever, time is the charm:)
The biggest idiocy of the past day, of course, comes from the many dear Massholes, who turned out a Democrat just because they didn't like her, and/or because she doesn't like sports. (That opinion did not come from exit polling- far as I heard, there really wasn't any- but from Florida progressive Congressman Alan Grayson, who was on the Ed Show deconstructing the outcome; he took Coakeley to task for both the Curt Schilling gaffe and dissing the outdoor hockey game at Fenway Park.) I will never understand why a Kennedy didn't run for the Kennedy seat (I know, a non-Kennedy Kennedy did on a minor-party line, but that didn't affect the outcome); hell, Caroline was all ready to come here and carpetbag last year after Hillary left office. So the one state with public-mandated health care and gay marriage winds up contributing to a Congressional makeup which now severely reduces the prospects of either of those reforms coming to the rest of the country.
D'oh indeed.
I made my first visit to the Genius Bar today. Overall, the place was not as overwhelming as I thought it would be. If these are geniuses, they tend to keep their IQs reasonably well hidden. I brought Frank two issues. One was hardware- the headphone jack on the phone not connecting right- and while he inspected it with something much resembling a sonic screwdriver, his ultimate tool for the actual fix? An unbent paperclip. It did get out the nasty piece of pocket lint that had gone down the headphone hole, and connections seem much better now. On the software end, I asked him to explain why I could get my office email to come into the phone but couldn't get any replies (or anything else) to go out. He explained it was a Time Warner issue, where its servers won't send mail not originating from their network, and his sneaky little fix for it was to jigger it so my outbound office mail now goes out through the Gmail SMTP server. Okay, maybe he IS a genius. Not just a suuuuuper genius. HP, on the other hand, is suffering from a total lack of geniuses on their staff. Through some online checking, we identified the cause of Eleanor's printer error as emanating from the "cradle" that holds the print cartridges and emits their contents along the carriage. The whole assembly looks to be a piece of plastic about three inches square, but nothing in the printer documentation- online or in the manuals- give it a part number or even a specific name. Meanwhile, the aftermarket part seller that was recommended for the fix? IT has a wide variety of parts for sale at reasonable prices, but they don't identify them by picture or other indicator of which is the right one. They've referred me back to HP, so I'd better brush up on my Hindi before tackling this again. Even before surrounding myself with such mental giants, I set myself up for even more intellectual inadequacy. As I mentioned last week, an old AOL trivia acquaintance was on Jeopardy! last Friday night, losing to the returning champion (who's from Chautauqua County, of all places); then, we wound up watching again this past Monday, where the same champion again won. The latter win turned on a Final Jeopardy category of "Early Man," where the winning question played on the movie title Out of Africa. Oddly enough, we had just watched that film the night before, after not seeing it in years, so I considered it enough of an omen that I checked, and am now signed up for the online contestant test for this coming Monday night. I passed it at least once before, but the last time I remember doing it, the questions were all totally out of left field and I stunk up the joint pretty bad. Maybe the third, or 18th or whatever, time is the charm:) The biggest idiocy of the past day, of course, comes from the many dear Massholes, who turned out a Democrat just because they didn't like her, and/or because she doesn't like sports. (That opinion did not come from exit polling- far as I heard, there really wasn't any- but from Florida progressive Congressman Alan Grayson, who was on the Ed Show deconstructing the outcome; he took Coakeley to task for both the Curt Schilling gaffe and dissing the outdoor hockey game at Fenway Park.) I will never understand why a Kennedy didn't run for the Kennedy seat (I know, a non-Kennedy Kennedy did on a minor-party line, but that didn't affect the outcome); hell, Caroline was all ready to come here and carpetbag last year after Hillary left office. So the one state with public-mandated health care and gay marriage winds up contributing to a Congressional makeup which now severely reduces the prospects of either of those reforms coming to the rest of the country.D'oh indeed.
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no subject
Date: 2010-01-20 09:14 pm (UTC)The Doctor really needs to be more careful with leaving advanced technology lying about...
no subject
Date: 2010-01-21 02:27 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-01-21 11:33 pm (UTC)Also BEST of luck on the Jeopardy test. I would LOVE to see you get a spot on the show. For that I would gladly skip "Entertainment Tonight" and watch you. :P
As for the Mass. election, as you might guess, I am pleased. And that's all I got to say about that...to quote Stone Cold Steve Austin. :D
no subject
Date: 2010-01-22 01:52 am (UTC)I associate that phrase more with Forrest Gump, which seems closer to the level of intelligence displayed in those results.
On the subject of which: you must, MUST see Idiocracy; it was the outright-LOL-funniest thing either of us have seen in an age, taking down our entire generation for its utter stupidility.