It turns out WinXP does have a version of Personal Web Server. MicroSoft changed the title to IIS, for Internet Information Service. Now isn’t that something we’d all intuitively go looking for. That’s corporate group-think at its finest, there, Mr. Gates. I don’t want Internet, I want something that tests on my PC. Information, well, we all know how well MicroSoft does that. And the same goes for service. Dammit, why can’t you people just call it a “server emulator”? And yes, I mean “you people”.In another dying spasm by the ailing giant, MicroSoft has removed Office Picture Manager from Vista/Sys7. They want what, more money, for it? Somebody send them a fruit dish.
Author's note: Steve Fosset, mentioned below, is that azz-clown billionaire who kept getting himself in trouble pulling stupid stunts like flying around the world in a balloon. Millions in public funds were wasted hauling his fat ass out of the ocean. I have no respect for attention-whore jocks.
While I’m red-assing, let me express disgust that we have another Fossett in the news. This time some dense broad (Abby Sunderland) sailing around the world, and I say dense from hearing her “ga-hunk” talk on “ga-hunk” TV. Too stupid to speak coherently, yet these Fossett types have the money to get into trouble, but don’t pay back a cent when others have to rescue them from their idiotic exploits. I do not respect such people. Save them, but send them the bill.
Furthermore, I find these people stupid. They are young with money, but lack imagination to do anything original. They haven’t the brains to create anything or do the world any good. Do they dedicate their lives to helping mankind, or do they indulge in useless spectacularism? Solo around the world, I mean, what’s the IQ in that?
Later, it appears others agree with me. The parents may be charged with negligence. Yet, I’m against that which increases parental restrictions. (These parents went on record defending the costly rescue process, in which an airplane flew 2,300 miles from Australia. Easy to defend what you don't have to pay for. They act like they have a right to take risks at public expense.) The real answer is, of course, to prevent the media from glorifying such dangerous exploits. Removing the motive cures most ignorance.
By noon, I was knee-deep in another HP install. For some reason, I have a location where nothing works as planned. The HP manuals are of no help, more than often not even mentioning the problem being experienced. This time it was a L7780 wireless printer. It just would not work wireless no how. I went through every standard procedure and everything checked out, often twice or thrice, but it sat there and did nothing. My experience is only HP can design products prone to such difficulties.
The answer turned out to be, after three hours on a chat conference, to install drivers for a model 990c, then use an Ethernet cable to access and configure the printer. It worked, but is still not a real solution. First, what if the printer had been too far away from the computer to use the Ethernet (which was then removed)? Second, I then had to return to the two remote computers to install the 990c drivers.
Was this a success? I would say not. There is no way, and HP knows it, that the average consumer could have got this printer working by themselves. In the end, my customer wound up paying more than half the cost of the unit to get it to function, and that wasn’t part of the deal. It took 6-1/2 hours to complete the task, where I would have expected maybe 20 minutes. Even then, some of the directions I had to follow were material only a telephone technician would know. This is unacceptable, Hewlett-Packard.
This was exhausting work for me, the kind I can no longer endure without side effects, meaning a dangerous rise in blood pressure. So I grabbed a book, and by luck got a good one. An author I’ve never heard of (I am not big on fiction), Clive Cullser, writes a very slick if Clancey-ish style war-mystery novel. “Corsair” involves a refitted ship sent on some rather contrived missions in the Middle East. The plot contains very interesting historical speculations and is superbly researched to be accurate in detail. It is almost as if Cussler knew I’d come along and decided to do his homework.
I kept a copy of the chat with HP support. Count 3,633 words, that’s a week of blogging. Just to hook up a three-year-old printer. I think I’ll publish that on C-list.
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