Rants

The new laptop has Windows 7 and I like it pretty well and decided that it was time to try it on the desktop computer as I stumbled into a $50 legal copy of the program. I only had two real problems with the install, one there is no Outlook Express for Win7 (or its predecessor Vista), so I needed a different desktop email client.

I have been using Outlook Express for email at home for about as long as I have been using a computer. It has only been around since 1996, but it just seems like forever. I can’t remember what I used for email prior to OE, maybe Pegasus Mail (which according to Wikipedia has been around since 1990 and is still in use today), but it didn’t come up in my web search for a replacement. Thunderbird seemed to be the top pick, but folks complained of issues importing email from OE. To test it out, I downloaded, installed it and tried it out. Everything went smooth for me, so I learned how to export the new email data and how to restore it for after the the 7 install.

The second issue came about after I had installed Windows 7. My old sound card was no longer being supported and the last official drivers for it were for XP. There was a small speaker icon in the task tray with a bright red X through it. That would never do. Google searched turned up traces of possible drivers, but I had no luck locating them. Looks like I might have to buy a new sound card (like I did 7 years ago when I first got this PC.) I was sort of surprised by that development because I had downloaded Micrsoft’s Windows 7 Upgrade Adviser software and it didn’t flag that as an issue.

It did flag a couple other things, so I decided to try and get some drivers for those items to see if I needed anymore new hardware, because if it did I might just revert back to XP. Somehow, don’t ask because I don’t remember how, but while getting those drivers a box popped up with a list of attempted driver updates. The sound card was listed and and lo and behold it found a driver. I have sound.

Now comes the task of reloading all the programs I normally use, but I should be all finished by tomorrow.

Well it is not really new anymore, we’ve had it for over a month, I’ve just never got around to writing about it, ’til now.

We’ve had a pay as you go cell phone from AT&T for some time now (it was still Cingular when we got it.) While we were genuinely happy with it, it was quite small and for those of us who grew up when phones had dials, phone numbers that started with words for the interchange and big handsets we never got used to not having the mouthpiece anywhere near our mouths.

Plus, whenever it would get dumped into Donna?s purse when on, it would come out with a display full of random numbers and we were afraid it might accidentally call someone in Kenya. The keys would get pressed from the phone being jumbled around inside there. It did have a key lock function and we tried using it, but it was more of a hassle before we were always forgetting to unlock the phone before trying to dial someone.

The solution to both those issues was to get a larger flip phone, but for pay as you go customers there is no phone upgrade path. I hunted and hunted around on the AT&T website and couldn?t find any way to do it. I then called their customer service and was told that it just couldn?t be done.

This time when we got down to zero minutes on the phone we thought, what the heck, there are only like 2 dozen people who know our cell phone number anyway, why not just but a new pay as you go phone with a new number? So we picked out a $50 flip phone (Samsung A167) that came with $30 worth of air time.

When the new phone arrived there was a large bright yellow sticker on it that says something to the effect, “ATTENTION AT&T customers just transfer the SIM card from your old phone to this one.” Cool, maybe that will work for me. I plugged the old SIM card in the new phone, turned it on and nothing happened. Not actually nothing, the screen displayed a line of text that roughly implied, ?Sorry Sucker.” Sigh.

So I took out that SIM and put in the one that came with the new phone and went online to the AT&T site and registered the new phone with the same contact info as the old phone and waited. It was supposed to take 30-45 minutes for the $30 airtime to get credited to my new account.

After an hour I checked to see if the minutes were there and they weren?t. For the heck of it I logged into the old phone?s account and what do you know there was $30 worth of airtime! So now we have and old phone we don?t want to use with big minutes and a new phone we want to use that has zero minutes.

Ever the tinker, I take the new SIM card and put it in the old phone. Turned on the phone and it works, no minutes to really test it, but when I check the Own Number in the phone?s menu it reads the new number. So I put the old SIM in the new phone and it works! In spite of everyone saying it can?t be done, it was, I have successfully upgraded my AT&T pay as you go phone.

Now if I only hadn?t erased the contacts of the old SIM in the process of looking to donate it to Cell Phones for Soldiers?

My rants about this movie the other week turned out not to be as big an issue as I imagined. The intro to the Stark Expo was still a little long, but taken in context not all that bad. The race scene/suitcase suit grip disappeared because Whiplash didn’t just wait for it watching, he was pinned to the side wall by Happy driving a Rolls Royce. Mickey Rouke makes an awesome villain. I don’t understand why they change the opening bit from the trailer wher Tony jumps out of the plane unless they though it might spoil the the ending bit. I thought it would have been a perfect way to tie that together…

Scarlett Johansson looks good in black hair and her chemistry with RDJ leads me to believe she would have made a good Pepper Potts had not Gwyneth Paltrow already had a lock on that role. But the whole Black Widow bit seemed tossed in as an intro to the character and for the sex appeal of the suit (not that there is anything wrong with that.) But if rumors are correct and the Black Widow gets her own movie, I think I feel a repeat of Cat Woman or Elektra coming on.

There is more action in this one, some dangerously close to being too much (and/or too long), but all and all very satisfying. Man I need one of those suits…

Two important lessons can be learned from this movie, 1) do not ever let a Russian near your computer, both the males and females seem to be trained hackers that can break any encryption thrown at them and 2) (this one I already knew) a convertible is as good as a pick up truck on a sunny day.

Brian gives it 2 thumbs up and Donna says I owe her a Julia Roberts movie.