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Friday,
October 1, 1999 Paul Walker has found in interesting
message from Clippy.
Thanks. Of course this is a gif file. I presume that a licensed program
was used to create it, and that everyone was properly obsequious to Univac
or Burroughs or Multisys or whatever the name is of that silly outfit that
thinks it will collect money from every web site using gif files.
Incidentally I am filing my trademark on the letter "P" (the
capital letter only). All is want is 1/1000 cent a day for an unlimited
license to use my letter.
Red Glasses, RIP
His real name was Sher Bolter, but everyone called him Red Glasses from
his trademark eyewear, and he even managed to get most press room managers
to issue him a badge with that name. He was an odd duck, fanatically
concerned with ferreting out each and every party to be held in
conjunction with every computer trade show. When he was in that mode,
there was no hiding from him; if he suspected you knew about a party, he
we going to find it, and your only remedy was to avoid the press room. He
couldn't possibly go to all those parties, but he did seem to be at all
the ones I went to. I never quite knew why. He didn't drink much (if at
all), he certainly didn't overstuff himself with shrimp or dominate the
food lines. Presumable he wrote about the products demonstrated, but
I got left off that mailing list.
He could be irritating, and his sense of humor was best described as acerbic.
He was also a good source of information, not just about parties, quite
helpful to new members of the press gang. I never have much time at trade
shows, and lately the press rooms seem to be filled with people I don't
know. Red Glasses would always make a place at his table -- he always
seemed to have one -- in the press room for the Old Guard like me, and it
was always a pleasant place to be, just enough conversation to be friendly
without being pestered if I were trying to make notes to meet deadlines.
I'm going to miss that.
Announcement and details
in mail.
The search engine from atomz is a complete success
despite my not putting up the proper instructions. You can find
those in mail from Bob Thompson, who discovered this thing for me and
took care of the registration details.
Mothers may enjoy a new entry
in mail.
And I am off to Fry's. I am building a high end games machine with a
Pentium III 550.
Panic Bell strikes again! Do you have an unwanted "voice
mail" "service" from your local telco, one that charges .95
a message and cannot be turned off or made to go away? One that answers
your phone on the second ring or so? We do, and I need a lawyer. Or
villagers with pitchforks and torches. This is intolerable. Our
housekeeper is out in the garden a lot, and it takes a dozen rings to get
her; only the phone cannot ring that long because a "service" we
never asked for and can't get PacBell to turn off answers the phone for
me. This has been going on for a while and they refused to admit it was
them. Now they finally do.
They want that dollar, and they will disrupt my life to get it, and I
want them to STOP. There must be a way. Next step is Congress. I
just hope Judge Green's "service" is doing it to him, too.
For a pointer to information on a massive
Western Digital Drive recall, see mail.
Interesting afternoon at Fry's. The Pentium II 400 in Squirrel, the
machine destined to be at Larry Niven's station here, died in a weird
manner that will be in the column. At Fry's they said they couldn't
exchange it because I don't have the box it came in. I should get hold of
Intel. Of course Fry's has the sales record, not me. Those papers got
lost, I fear. I bought it in June, Fry's knows I bought it in June, but
because I don't have the box they won't exchange my dead chip for a new
one.
Replacements are $200. For $239 I could get a Pentium III 450, which
will work in the MSI 6147 motherboard, so I did that. Dropped it in,
system is working fine. No problems. But now I have a dead Pentium
II 400, and I have not the foggiest notion of how to go about getting
Intel to exchange it. I mean, I have one route: I am sure if I call on
Intel Press Relations someone will help me out. After all, about half the
Intel chips I have here came direct from them, and I didn't pay for them
(ominous that one of the few I did pay for didn't work, but it was in one
of those "previously opened" boxes at Fry's; and it did work for
a few weeks before mysteriously dying). But how would a reader, with a
chip that has a 3 year warranty and hasn't been in production for three
years and therefore must be covered, but no sales slips, go about this?
SyQuest used to have a telephone number: call, describe your dead
drive, and they would give you a number to put on the outside of the box.
Send in your dead drive in any package you liked, and they would send you
back a brand new one, boxed, no questions asked. I suspect Intel doesn't
have a similar policy, but I'll try to find out. I found about the the SyQuest
one when I found a telephone number on their web site. Calling that number
got me referred to another number where they took care of such things. Of course
SyQuest is out of business...
Anyway, if you know, tell me. If you don't, you don't need to send mail
saying you don't know. Stand by, and the story will develop...
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