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OK, I haven't posted in quite a while and my fan base is starting to erode. In fact, there have been complaints. So I'm gonna try to start writing more and messing around less with pictures since they are the reason that I don't post so often. I feel like I need a picture to go with the blog entry and if I don't have something eye-catching, then I don't post. So no more of that.

I have two things to talk about tonight, a tribute and a rant.

Harmon Killebrew passed away today. I don't follow baseball much but this made the news. Why do I care? When I was a kid, I played little league baseball. I was terrible at it. I didn't really like it a whole lot either but there wasn't much else to do. Part of the problem was that I couldn't throw. I couldn't catch either and I was piss poor at bat to boot. One other problem that I had was that I couldn't see. It was always too bright outside for me. I could see better than anyone alive at night, but what that meant was that a bright sunny day blinded me. Still does. And it makes me sneeze too. But on a nice cloudy day when things were going right I could occasionally get a hit. The reason was that I used a Harmon Killebrew bat. No other bat felt as good to me as the Harmon Killebrew. It had the right balance of size and weight that perfectly fit my attitude. If I didn't use the Killebrew, I struck out for sure. So I've always had fond memories of the guy even though I never knew much about him. He was 74 and died of esophageal cancer. May he rest in peace.

The other thing I want to talk about has to do with computers and their peripherals. I'm the guy in the house that everybody screams at when things go wrong. We have a fairly complex setup here in the house. We have, from time to time, up to 8 computers that can connect to the internal network and also have 4 printers. The 8 computers include a computer for each person in the house plus two older ones plus an iPod touch and an iPad. Actually, my son's computer isn't usually here and the two older ones aren't usually on the network. We also have 4 printers. Why? Well, I bought one for my company that makes no money a long time ago. I keep it going even though it makes horrible noises, because it also will do faxes. We have one that I got from work when we closed down a couple of years ago and we have two wireless ones that we got for free (after the rebate) when we got my wife and my daughter's Macbook Pros. I also have a bunch of external hard disc and a small server disk that I've had for years. And it's all hooked up to a router that's hooked up to a modem that connects to the cable. So things go wrong all the time and I have to figure out what the problem is and fix it.

So here's my rant. You can do a million things to try to make things work again. You can play with the software, you can read the manual, you can change a zillion parameters, you can change the connections, you can try wireless or ethernet or USB but nothing works quite as well as unplugging something and plugging it back in. Somehow that cathartic purge does more to help recalcitrant electronics than anything else you might try.

So here's my rant. Why don't the people that make this crap just admit to it and make it easy to turn this stuff off. It's a real pain to get to the plug on a lot of this stuff. Yesterday, the internet went down. I tried a bunch of stuff. Finally I pulled out the modem, with it's 3 thick attached cables and blindly pulled out the power cord. I spent a minute trying to get that stupid cable back in. Once I did, everything worked again. This morning my daughter couldn't get the printer to work. I don't think she was aware there were 3 more on line. I switched her to another one and got her stuff printed. Anyhow, I spent 20 minutes trying to get the router to see the printer. It never happened. Finally, I reached around and pulled the plug on the printer. This one even had a little clicky thing to make it a pain to get out. After pulling the plug, I had to pull the printer away from the wall to see how to plug it back in. And when I did, Presto! the computer that had been hiding was now visible again.

I wish every piece of computer equipment that I own came with it's own ugly power switch, not those wimpy things that merely put your equipment on standby, but a real switch with exposed wires so you could be sure the electricity no longer flowed. Something like this: