the daily snivel

  Bloody computers!

I am torn. At once, I love and depend on technology in general (and computers in particular) for my livelihood, both as a law student and a web content weenie for the CBCN, but I'm also extremely hateful of its faults and idiosyncrasies at the same time. This is why I'm normally quite found of my Macintosh iBook. I find it normally reliable and stable and predictable and easy to use, and it has brought much joy to my computing tasks, including a substantial contract I worked on this summer transcribing a conference for Health Canada. My many praises of it can be read here. Unfortunately, it developed a problem last week. When I opened the screen on my once-trusty laptop to a 90-degree angle or so, the back light went out and the screen went dark. I was boggled by it. How could it be that, when I closed the laptop and put it to sleep the night before, it worked perfectly, and the next morning, when I opened it up again, it was so dodgy? I was immediately worried that I'd done something disastrous and started checking the Apple.com support site. It turns out that what happens is that the connecting wire that runs from the mainboard to the display passes through the hinge of the iBook's screen. Occasionally, after repeated opening and closing over an extended period of time, the wire can fray from the compression and twisting. This in turn means that the back light will not operate properly at certain angles.

Happily, I concluded earlier this year that the one time an extended warranty makes sense is when buying a laptop, given that these machines really do take a pounding (I mean, I bicycle with my laptop) parts and labour costs for just about any problem rapidly approaches the cost of buying a new computer altogether. So I shelled out the money for the "Applecare" plan on my iBook which, if purchased at any time before the original one-year parts and labour warranty expires, extends your coverage to three full years of worry-free maintenance. So, I took it in to my local B.Mac store, and am now depressingly low-tech in my day-to-day adventures as I wait for them to replace the cable.

Still, you say, I have my trusty rusty desktop PC running Windows 98 at home, so I wasn't entirely screwed, right? Ha, I say in reply.

Last night I was intending to tune in to my friend Satnaum's radio show, broadcast all the way from Lakehead University in Thunder Bay. She was planning to squeeze in some time geared to find cool new music for me. I was really excited. All I had to do was listen to a streaming media broadcast over the internet. So, I went to the website, and tried to listen to the broadcast.

Trouble.

Windows Media Player didn't recognize the format. I didn't have any other media players installed. The computer asked me if I wanted to upgrade to Windows Media Player 9. I said, OK. Then I spent three hours trying to download it over my 56k modem. I kept losing the connection. I decided to try updating my modem drivers, because between the modem upgrades at NCF and my roommate's ADSL connection that creates all kinds of crazy interference on my phone line (that I have fixed with the odd gadget that you plug into your phone jack when someone in your house has ADSL, but I remain suspicious about), I lose my connection a lot and the speed is terrible.
So, I: went to Motorola's website. Downloaded the drivers. Installed, rebooted. Found out the drivers didn't work. Uninstalled, rebooted. Found out that installing the new drivers had sent my old drivers to hell. Searched for the CD with my old drivers. Found that, installed the drivers. Rebooted my PC about seven more times in the process. Got back on the internet. Finished downloading WM9. Tried to install WM9.

Error message: "You must have Windows 98 Second Edition, Windows ME, Windows 2000, or Windows XP to run this application."

Me: "Arrgh!"

I only have Windows 98 crappy edition! So, no happiness for me. Damn computers.