The Vent and Rant Thread

[Katsunami]

I hope no one in your family had epilepsy or something when you showed them that creation

[Cinisajoy]

Originally Posted by Katsunami

I hope no one in your family had epilepsy or something when you showed them that creation

Nope, no epileptics were hurt by that creation.
I didn't keep it on long either.

[CWatkinsNash]

Why is it that I only have shipping / delivery issues when I really, really want something?

I decided to use part of my meager tax refund to upgrade my Fire, and yesterday I noticed that the HD8 Reader Edition is now $199.99. So, I went for it and even sprung for next day shipping so that I'd have the whole weekend with my new toy.

After checking for a status update all day, Fed Ex finally puts wheels under it at 4pm, with a delivery date of Monday. Yes, that's right - I paid for next day but will actually get it two days later than I would with just regular Prime 2-day. I'm fairly certain it was all Fed Ex, I don't think it was Amazon's fault, but it also wasn't my fault so I got my shipping charges refunded.

I would have rather just had my new Fire and it's leather cover, since I don't feel well and that's the perfect thing to mess around with when I don't feel like leaving the bed. But my HD7 is still working just fine so it'll get me through.

[Cinisajoy]

Originally Posted by CWatkinsNash

Why is it that I only have shipping / delivery issues when I really, really want something?

I decided to use part of my meager tax refund to upgrade my Fire, and yesterday I noticed that the HD8 Reader Edition is now $199.99. So, I went for it and even sprung for next day shipping so that I'd have the whole weekend with my new toy.

After checking for a status update all day, Fed Ex finally puts wheels under it at 4pm, with a delivery date of Monday. Yes, that's right - I paid for next day but will actually get it two days later than I would with just regular Prime 2-day. I'm fairly certain it was all Fed Ex, I don't think it was Amazon's fault, but it also wasn't my fault so I got my shipping charges refunded.

I would have rather just had my new Fire and it's leather cover, since I don't feel well and that's the perfect thing to mess around with when I don't feel like leaving the bed. But my HD7 is still working just fine so it'll get me through.

I thought I had no mail this week.
Caught the mailman this morning. No, the substitute put it in the box that plainly says house delivery. Not sure why, other than laziness.

[PeterT]

Not a vent or rant but I'm now just over a week into what might be a multi month assignment. The community health care agency I work for as a driver is now acting as primary health care provider to refugees who are housed at a nearby hotel. I in turn am now dedicated to taking them to and from the various clinics they need to attend.

Over 200 refugees at this hotel with many of them being young children.

And of course as more permanent housing is found for them the next wave will arrive.

Language is an issue; the nurses doing the assessment at the hotel normally have an interpreter or can use a phone system, likewise at the clinics the same options exist. However one the trips I'm normally just with the clients.

Of course today almost all the staff have sniffles.... Here's hoping we survive.

[cromag]

If my estimates are correct, I should be finished shoveling the driveway just about two days before it all would have melted anyway.

[Katsunami]

This is really rantworthy. I've got quite some cables in the house, and stuff lying around such as AC-adapters. I've been cleaning out stuff I don't need anymore, and organizing stuff I do need. (Kind of not smart to throw out my laptop's backup drive, for example.)

To make things easier to organize, and to (finally) start labeling things, especially cables, I decided I wanted a label printer. So, I read some reviews, and thought to take advantage of the Dymo cashback action that I stumbled upon while doing so. I ordered the Dymo LabelManager 280. Have a look:











Looks nice, doesn't it? Its description states that it has a "big, clear screen, easy to read in any circumstance." (Translated from Dutch.) For all intents and purposes, it looks as if this thing has a backlight. I read some reviews, and saw no complaints, so I ordered it.

When I got it today and turned it on, it turned out to have a crappy, low-resolution, non-backlit screen that all but impossible to read. After taking a look at the user guide, and specifically searching for it, it turned out that this device does NOT have a backlit screen.

Could I have known that this device didn't have a backlit screen? Yes, I could have downloaded the manual; I could have read even more reviews or specifically search for possible problems, but IMHO, there is only so much review-reading I'll do before deciding.

I am of the opinion that product shots such as the above ones should be prohibited. That is misleading. I am fully aware that products sometimes don't exactly look like as on the pictures, but this is ridiculous. On the last picture, the screen of that label printer is as bright as the computer screen for *** sake, while in reality it looks like a 320x200 black and white laptop screen from 1981... without the backlight.

This thing is packed up already, and slated for return to the seller. I'm going to either get a desktop label printer, or one that can connect through wifi and use the computer to make the labels. Probably from Brother, just because I've never had problems with the two printers I have from that company, and out of spite towards Dymo for making products look like something they're not.

[Cinisajoy]

Katsunami,
I may can save you some money.
Check your word processing program for making labels and just buy label paper.

Now have you been looking in my file cabinet? I have a ton of cables and stuff too.

[DMcCunney]

Originally Posted by Cinisajoy

Katsunami,
I may can save you some money.
Check your word processing program for making labels and just buy label paper.

Would that it were that simple. The advantage to label maker devices is that you don't need a PC, word processing program, or label paper when you use them. The idea is that you carry them around and make labels on the spot. I've used kit like that in server rooms full of racks with gear that wasn't labeled to make what it was and what it was a connection for easier. A proper device is well worth the money. The Dymo Katsunami bought doesn't qualify as "proper".
______
Dennis

[DMcCunney]

Originally Posted by Katsunami

Good observation It is indeed circular. It doesn't run from top to bottom, but in a circle, and everything runs all the time. The code itself is rarely complex. It actually is very easy most of the time. The circular part and having everything run all at once is what makes it difficult.

The joys of event-driven programming...

One of my earliest real programs from 1990 or 1991 was a front-end for pkzip/unzip. It basically had one (1) useful line of code: the one that executed the command-line to actually zip or unzip something. The rest of the program was the front-end, and error handling. I used it for years, until I switched to OS/2 and later Windows NT, and it worked well.

I began in computers in the days when the original IBM PC , with a 4.77mhz 8088 CPU, up to 64kKB of RAM, and dual 360KK floppy drives was just starting to take over corporate desktops.

Archivers were wild and wooly back then, with everybody and their dog trying their hand at writing one. Zip was just the tip of the iceberg, and I needed to deal with ARC, ARJ, LZH, RAR and ZOO files among others in addition to ZIP, and needed to keep an assortment of archivers about to do so.

One of my early adoptions in the MSDOS world was 4DOS, a shareware replacement for the COMMAND.COM program the user talked to on a DOS PC, and what you got at a C:\> prompt. 4DOS vastly improved on COMMAND.COM, including a greatly enhanced batch language that made it possible to create useful small applications in batch. (4DOS batch, among other things, built in the ability to get input from the user in a batch file and do something based on it.)

Another happy addition was Gordon Haff's Directory Freedom, a freeware file handling utility based on code originally published in PC Magazine. Run DF, and it put up a menu of files in the directory you ran it in and let you perform operations on them. You could program just what actions DF would take. I wanted to be able to select an archive in DF and view the content or extract it without caring what the format was. The solution was a 4DOS batch file attached to a key that parsed the archive file name, and called the appropriate archive utility based on the archive's extension to handle the job. The guts of it were the filename parsing routine, using primitives built into 4DOS, and a lengthy switch statement that called the appropriate archiver depending upon the extension. Worked a treat, and was carefully not spaghetti code. I was already firmly in the "Write for maintainability" camp.

(There's a hilarious comparison of programming languages based on how you shoot yourself in the foot. In perl, for example, you shoot yourself in the foot, but no one else can figure out how you did it. Six week later, neither can you... )
______
Dennis

[Katsunami]

Originally Posted by DMcCunney

Would that it were that simple. The advantage to label maker devices is that you don't need a PC, word processing program, or label paper when you use them. The idea is that you carry them around and make labels on the spot. I've used kit like that in server rooms full of racks with gear that wasn't labeled to make what it was and what it was a connection for easier. A proper device is well worth the money. The Dymo Katsunami bought doesn't qualify as "proper".

Indeed; I want a device that can be used through a computer, but can also be used on the spot. I also want to be able to use as many tapes as possible that are not too expensive.

I'm now looking at the PT-E550WVP



It can do everything: stand-alone, connected by USB, Wi-Fi, and even AirPrint/PrintDirect using an app. It takes all tapes currently produced by brother. It can run off of an adapter (supplied), battery (supplied), or 6x AA batteries. It also has built in functionality for the labels I need most: cable wraps and cable flags. It also does half-cut labels so they peel off easily. (Didn't know about this function before.)

Obviously, it also has a backlight. Detail: it does NOT mention this in the specifications, but it DOES in the list of functions, and twice in the product leaflet.

Funny... this is an industrial label maker.

Once again, I'm going to end up with business/industrial stuff. It has been so with almost everything computer-related I buy. The consumer-oriented stuff always turns out to be crap (in my eyes, IMHO), and I end up switching to business/industrial devices. My current laptop is a portable workstation; my previous one a (back in 2008) high-end business notebook. My main printer is a small office laser printer (Brother DCP-7070DW), and the second printer is an office inkjet A3 printer (Brother MFC-J5620DW). Both have remote access capabilities and are connected by network. Both my old and new monitor are Eizo's. Even the router and switch I use are business models.

Maybe I should start learning a lesson and just disregard most consumer products. The business products are more expensive (this label printer will be 50% more expensive than the above Dymo; and 3x as expensive if I had kept the Dymo and used the cashback), but I tend to not replace stuff until it either stops working, or doesn't do what I want it to do anymore.

[Cinisajoy]

Well now, I do have a portable label maker. I am not sure if you can still get the label tape for it.
Note, it does not need power.
You do have to turn a wheel to get the letters you need.
I thought Katsunami was just needing a label maker for a quick project.

[Katsunami]

Originally Posted by DMcCunney

Archivers were wild and wooly back then, with everybody and their dog trying their hand at writing one. Zip was just the tip of the iceberg, and I needed to deal with ARC, ARJ, LZH, RAR and ZOO files among others in addition to ZIP, and needed to keep an assortment of archivers about to do so.

Ah, ARJ... I used that a bunch. Later, the front-end I wrote got some extra code to also support ARJ, but that was it. Never used the other ones back then. In 1991, it was either ZIP or ARJ, at least in my circle.

(There's a hilarious comparison of programming languages based on how you shoot yourself in the foot. In perl, for example, you shoot yourself in the foot, but no one else can figure out how you did it. Six week later, neither can you... )
______
Dennis

http://www.toodarkpark.org/computers...f-in-foot.html

Blast from the past

Assembly

You try to shoot yourself in the foot only to discover that you must first invent the gun, the bullet, the trigger, and your foot.
You crash the OS and overwrite the root disk. The system administrator arrives and shoots you in the foot. After a moment of contemplation, the system administrator shoots himself in the foot and then hops around the room rapidly shooting at everyone in sight.
By the time you've written the gun, you are dead, and don't have to worry about shooting your feet. Alternatively, you shoot and miss, but don't notice.
Using only 7 bytes of code, you blow off your entire leg in only 2 CPU clock ticks.

That one cracked me up

[Katsunami]

Originally Posted by Cinisajoy

Well now, I do have a portable label maker. I am not sure if you can still get the label tape for it.
Note, it does not need power.
You do have to turn a wheel to get the letters you need.
I thought Katsunami was just needing a label maker for a quick project.

My great-grandma also had one of those

It's not a very advanced 'project', but it's a lot of cables and stuff I need to label. I have 8 AC-adapters lying around here, for starters, and I always pick the wrong one :X Not to mention all the USB-sticks I use for different things (work, private, bootable software....), and the various backup drives....

[DMcCunney]

Originally Posted by Katsunami

Maybe I should start learning a lesson and just disregard most consumer products. The business products are more expensive (this label printer will be 50% more expensive than the above Dymo; and 3x as expensive if I had kept the Dymo and used the cashback), but I tend to not replace stuff until it either stops working, or doesn't do what I want it to do anymore.

The moral I got from the story was "Take the extra time and do the research to make sure the product does what you want."

The consequences of not being willing to spend the time up front are what you experienced - getting something that won't do the job and having to spend more time and money afterward to repair the oversight.

And yes, if what you have is basically business/industrial needs, buy business/industrial products. The Dymo you got wasn't really intended for your use case. The Brother you are looking at is.
______
Dennis