It’s really a big lie when they promise you the data rates. This is a snapshot of the data rates I’m getting from my 3 data modem. The numbers listed for the transfer rates are in kilobits per second, not kilobytes per second. There is a factor of 8 difference in the rates, and I’ve never seen the damned thing go much above 1000. I’ve tried, using the blacknight Irish ISP speed test, and have not seen it rate my line as much better than ISDN download and 56k modem upload.
Then there’s access to various web sites. I will regularly get cut off downloading – a lot of times I can never download the damned stuff I’m trying to get at. This is particularly annoying with google and youtube videos – they stall about a minute in and I can’t see anything else from them.
Every time in the last three weeks I’ve tried to access del.icio.us, it’s been a bust – it simply does not make the connection, I’m left with a stupid error message.
Every time I try to download my email from my pop provider (indigo.ie – i.e. pre-eircom), the connection times out. I can connect using any other provider. Waulgh! This is just not worth it for only having it for the weekends. I should get eircom into the house in Kerry, that way at least someone else can get some use from it.
It’s cheaper to visit the US
Ok, thinking about buying one of the new Ipods (Yes, the capitalisation is InTeNtIoNaL). Daire is going to hate me for mentioning that I have been considering getting a Macbook Pro. So I did the math. The Euro:Dollar exchange rate is about 1.3:1, so it saves me a bit more than €500 to get the machine. Soooo…. it’s cheaper to fly to New York for a long weekend and buy all my Apple desires in the US than it is to buy it in the store in Euro. So, I’ll probably be visiting the sister relatively soon then 🙂
Class act Creative…
Evidently Creative believe that we’re running some form of toy operating system that can be limited to running only one application at a time. Come on guys, get a grip here. There are facilities for installing in-use files under Windows. In fact, if you used the installation system properly you could tell us who is using the files you’re planning on replacing, but no, we get this crummy dialog that says, essentially ‘leave me alone while I screw with your system‘. It’s a little bit silly, really.
Great music sale
Hey, it looks like itunes is having a huge blow-out singer-songwriter sale – all albums are an amazing 7 cent!!!!!!! This is what you get from using a symbol (€) in the wrong position for the locale that you’re presenting, and also having a symbol that coincidentally looks horribly like another language’s cent symbol (¢). Just another morning complaint.
Oi, apple stop installing the ‘update service’
For some reason even though I explicitly un-check the ‘apple software update’ option when installing either itunes or the bonjour service I am unsurprised to find that it has been installed.
Along with the quicktime icon in the notification area. Please respect my wishes to keep my notification area clear. It’s already cluttered with the detritus of outlook, pidgin, vmware, creative X-fi, hotsync, sync manager, bluetooth, quickset, virtual daemon manager, the power status, network status, volume and the sidebar. At least I can switch off clock, volume, network and power if I so choose, and they respect my authoritay.
Simpsonize me
As part of a shameless plug for the simpsons movie there is a Simpsonize me website that allows you to turn a picture of yourself into a simpsons style character. This is my end product.
vmnetnat.conf musings
I wonder does the ‘allowAnyOUI = 1’ option that’s commented out allows me to pick an oui from a previously created virtual machine that’s part of the pre-allocated set.
Vista, unidentified networks and vmware
The network interfaces that get configured by vmware always fall into the ‘unidentified realm’. The reason seems to be tied to the lack of a router or default gateway entry for the address.
So we cheat, and add in a router entry for the networks that is the same as the IP address of the connection and bingo, you get the option to put it into another network and give it a label! So I put both the VMware network interfaces and the Microsoft loopback interface into a group called ‘local only’, and providing I don’t use any grotty windows virtual machines, it should service me well. Of course, this is all purely academic for those who don’t use vista
three (3) no PPTP cookie for you
Waulgh. Trying to debug a VPN configuration using my 3 data modem was proving fruitless. It turns out that they are knobbling the GRE packets somewhere along the way which is killing the ability to establish a PPTP connection to the remote service.
Alternative solutions are to use OpenVPN, but let’s be honest about this, it was simply to connect to an already configured Windows vpn environment.
Having talked to the support bloke on the phone he told me that ‘three currently does not support VPN connectivity, but it is in the pipeline’, when asked about the schedule/timescale on that he could not comment – dadblastit!
Old School
I just uncovered the photographic evidence of my debs (prom) – a sleeve of photographs from the night. I cringe and then remember that some of the people in the pictures are no longer here.