Ask-Steve.com

Adobe: "You must install this mysterious update!"

When I opened my Acrobat Connect Pro desktop client, a message popped up telling me there was a mandatory update. I'm not even sure why they bothered to tell me at all if they're going to force me to download and install it anyway. When I clicked to expand the release notes to find out what was so incredibly important - it was blank.

Nice one, Adobe.

Does anyone do quality assurance testing any more?

 

 

Worst Laptop I've Ever Owned: Lenovo ThinkPad T60

Let me start by saying that the IBM and Lenovo service reps have always been very pleasant to deal with. And I've talked to a lot of them. Frequently. Which is the problem.

My first laptop (back in the early 1990's) was a Toshiba Satellite. It was thick as a brick and weighed as much. When that died I used a desktop machine for a few years and then had a couple Sony laptops that worked well. I eventually bought an IBM ThinkPad T40, first because it had a full-size keyboard and second because ThinkPads had the reputation of being bulletproof. I have to say, the T40 was bulletproof — except for the wireless connectivity. It would drop frequently and then it would take 30 minutes to get back online. I spent all kinds of time on the phone with IBM service reps troubleshooting, installing software, installing drivers, uninstalling software, rolling back drivers. Nothing every improved the wireless issues — and some of what they told me to do made it worse. Other than the persistent wireless issues, it's still going strong.

Eighteen months or so ago I decided to treat myself to a new laptop. I threw down a bundle of cash for a fully-loaded Lenovo ThinkPad T60p with 4GB RAM, 120MB hard drive (I store most of my stuff on an external hard drive), an extra battery, the travel accessories pack, etc. And I've hardly used it since. I've sent it in for repairs three or four times now and they've replaced almost everything in it, and I've spent more hours than I care to think about on the phone with service reps, researching problems online, rebooting over and over, etc. It's been a complete nightmare. I just received it back from yet another trip to the service center (thank goodness I invested in a great service plan!) where they replaced the video card and the fan, and it's running about as fast as my mid-1990's Toshiba brick. When it runs at all.

I won't list the seemingly endless list of problems I've had, but suffice it to say that they've replaced the motherboard, the video card, the fan —and no doubt a few other things along the way. Oh, and the wireless has sucked from day one, too.

I'm using a Dell laptop at work and that will probably be my choice for my next personal laptop, as well.

Palin's reverse snobbery and the myth of small-town superiority

Small town life isn't all it's cracked up to be. In fact, much of the common wisdom around the wholesome nature of life in rural America is just plain wrong.

“Americans disdain snobbery in all its forms except the most popular one: reverse snobbery,” said Steve Chapman [in the Chicago Tribune]. That’s why Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin repeatedly gets away with implying that small-town and rural Americans are more honest, more hard-working, and generally better than those lazy, lying scoundrels who live in big, bad cities.

My single favorite publication, The Week magazine, has an excerpt from Steve Chapman's article in the Chicago Tribune entitled Palin's small-town snobbery is faulty.

After citing some of Palin's statements indicating that country folk in America are holier than their urban counterparts, Chapman goes on to debunk much of Palin's insulting rhetoric.

Most Americans, it seems, can tolerate hearing of the superiority of the small town, as long as they don't have to live in one. You wouldn't know it from listening to country music stations, or to the governor of Alaska, but four out of every five Americans choose not to reside in rural areas.

Maybe if they ventured beyond the city limits more often, those people would not be so inclined to believe everything they hear about the merits of rustic hamlets, which harbor a full complement of social ills.

Not everyone in rural America gets high on fresh air and the smell of new-mown hay. Illicit drugs are nearly as common out there as they are in cities and suburbs.

Chapman doesn't mention recent findings that urban living tends to be far better for the environment than living in the country, but he does cite some interesting facts:

• country kids were 26 percent more likely to experiment with drugs than middle-schoolers elsewhere
• overall methamphetamine consumption among adults and teens is more than 50 percent higher in the country
• relative to their urban counterparts, rural youth ages 12 to 17 are significantly more likely to report consuming alcohol
• excessive boozing among adults appears to be no less widespread in Mayberry than in Metropolis
• the highest rates of births to unwed mothers are in Mississippi and New Mexico, both of which have high rural populations
• the most urban states, New Jersey and California, do better than the average in out-of-wedlock births

Chapman concludes:

One of these days, the 80 percent of Americans who live in more populated areas may tire of being obliquely insulted. Most urbanites and suburbanites don't think they're any better than their country cousins. But Palin might want to think twice before telling them they're worse.

Of course, we don't need statistics to tell us this at all. Sarah Palin loves to say that (despite being sandwiched between two foreign countries, giving her great international affairs experience) Alaska is a microcosm of the United States. Well, I think hers is a microcosm of the small-town family. And it doesn't take a very close inspection to quickly discover that it's far from perfect.

The myth of small-town superiority | The Week

Palin's small-town snobbery is faulty | Chicago Tribune

Phone book publishers aren't cool

Here we go again. Geoff K over at Our PDX Network posted today about the continuing scourge of telephone book spam.

I know that not everyone looks to the internet to get their information and directory services, and that there will always be people who prefer the ole book. But isn’t it time we changed it from something sent out to everyone, to something only delivered to people who REQUEST it? I’ve tried many times to opt out of getting phone books, but it doesn’t matter, they come whether you want them or not. The guys chucking phone books this morning weren’t looking at any list or checking which houses got them, they just chucked them, house after house not really caring about much (a side note, the book nearly took out one of our Halloween decorations…).

Not much more to say. These spambook publishers need to be stopped and held to account for their waste and litter.

More info on telephone directory waste

Qwest DEX telephone directories: 2,162 pages of waste

MySpace spamming former members

I'll never understand why companies like MySpace, with so much on the line in terms of reputation and brand, think it's worthwhile to engage in unethical business practices.

I deleted my MySpace account a while back. I have many reasons for deleting the account, but I'll save those for another post. Before I deleted the account, I unsubscribed from all their e-mail notifications, newsletters, etc. — just in case they didn't have the sense to stop sending me e-mail automatically after deleting my account. Apparently even that wasn't enough to prevent them from spamming me. Today I received another Member Newsletter from them. Of all the crap they might send, sending someone who is no longer a member the Member Newsletter seems pretty pathetic.

Annoyed, but wanting to get MySpace out of MyFace, I thought, "Fine, I'll unsubscribe again." I should have known they wouldn't allow that. Rather than having a one click unsubscribe option in the e-mail like real, ethical companies do, they instruct you to log in to your account to change your subscription settings. Well guess what. I don't have an account! So I have no way at all to unsubscribe from the MySpace Member Newsletter. And that is, without any doubt, by very careful design. If I want to truly rid myself of MySpace, I'm going to have to spend more of MyTime chasing down an e-mail address or phone number and haggling with someone.

If you want to know how trustworthy a company is and whether you should give them your time, information and/or business, take a look at how easy they make it to stop giving them your time, information and/or business. The harder they make it, the more you should avoid them.

PayPal spamming former customers, blocking unsubscribes

I haven't used PayPal in years, but they keep sending me e-mail newsletters, e-mail ads, etc. I finally decided to unsubscribe—and was reminded why I haven't managed to do it before.

Unlike all real, ethical businesses have been doing for years now, PayPal doesn't offer a one-click unsubscribe option. Or even a "reply to this e-mail to unsubscribe" option. When you click on the unsubscribe link in their e-mails, you're taken to a screen with the text shown here.

I don't know my login name, password or anything else. Sure I could spend 20 minutes chasing it down, but the point is that it's clear PayPal is doing this very specifically to block people from opting out of it's spam mailings.

The solution: Don't give PayPal your e-mail address in the first place! In the mean time, I've just added them to my spam list.

The Oregonian's gotta wake up their editor

Call this a petty complaint—on second thought, don't. It's not petty. It's alarming how rapidly major publications are deteriorating into typo-ridden, language slaughterhouses.

This photo caption from a story on the Oregonian's OregonLive.com site today reads:

Gotta good caption for this photo? Post it in the comments below.

Gotta? I can understand relaxing the language a little bit at times, but gotta? That's just plain tacky.

Please make OPB stop the pledge drives!

If you're a regular OPB listener like me, you're probably about ready to throw your radio through the nearest window at this point. Just when I think it has to have been a full month since OPB started what seems like their monthly "give us your money and we'll only harass you for two weeks" campaign, I turn on the radio and they're still at it! I either have the worst timing ever or they spend fifty minutes of every hour doing everything from begging to guilt tripping to barking orders for listeners like me to show my support by calling right now. Well what if I gave a week ago? Do they give me a secret, pledge-drive free frequency to which I can tune my radio to get my regular programming back? No! Even if I'd been the first person to call on the first day of the programming hostage drive, I'd have to put up with the grating mess for just as long as the last person to call on the last day of the drive. It makes no sense!

So for now I'm keeping a hold on my fragile sanity by listening online at the NPR website. I'm not getting any local news there, but I'll gladly trade that for no droning pledge drive spots. And there are plenty of other places to get local news—including the OPB website (where they should be doing their fundraising). In fact, I typically continue listening to NPR online for a few weeks or more after the pledge drive ends.

You can also listen to NPR via satellite radio (XM or Sirius), or via Rhapsody and other online music services.

Read my previous rants for more ideas on how to survive the pledge drives, and for some great feedback from readers and OPB staff:

OPB: It's time for the coercive marketing to stop

Time for OPB's Drive Listeners Away campaign again...

Local NPR stations: Drop the pledge drives

Reuters, meet spell check. Spell check, meet Reuters

I considered starting a series on Ask-Steve.com in which I would feature glaring typos from prominent news outlets, websites, e-mail newsletters, etc. I can see now that, given the fact that it's becoming difficult to find a page without a typo, that series would quickly consume my entire blog. But I'll post one more anyway.

Where have all the editors gone?

I don't think a day goes by now where I don't see a glaring typo in a book, magazine, major website, e-mail newsletter, etc. Many days I see more than one. It could be that it's because the sheer volume of stuff being printed everyday every day has skyrocketed. (Thanks for the guest proofread, Editor at Large!) Maybe it's just impossible for organizations to churn out this much content and actually send it through an editorial (or at least proofreading!) pass first. Whatever the excuse they might offer, it's inadequate. I love words and language and it sucks to see the attention paid to its proper use going down the toilet on such a massive scale.

[Note that Love is spelled properly (with an s) in the body of the e-mail, but not in the e-mail subject line—the most important part of an e-mail. Especially an e-mail trying to grab attention and sell something.]