Category: Kilroy Says
KILROY SAYS… Don’t Forget Father’s Day is this Weekend!
Written by Kilroy
Wednesday, 17 June 2009 15:57
5 Comments

As a public service announcement to dads everywhere, we at MTW wanted to point out that Father's Day is this Sunday, June 21, 2009.

You might have missed this, since no one advertises anything about Father's Day. There are no flower sales, or touchy-feely commercials about calling long distance to dad. Nope, as always, dads get the shaft.

Don't get me wrong, Mom's are important. You wouldn't be here without your mom. And in the sexist, atomic family of the 1950s, Moms stayed home, wiping noses and butts, making lunches and keeping the home spotless. In our modern world, Moms have to go to work, and share the household duties with dads (hopefully- if dad isn't helping in the modern home, he's a slacker).

Every year, Mother's Day is a big deal- people are encouraged to send mom flowers, take her to dinner, buy her perfume, clothes, etc. It's the ultimate girly holiday, surpassing even Valentine's Day where gals only get gifts from their mates. On Mother's Day, a mom can wrack up just as many presents as she would get for her birthday or Christmas.

But what about dads? In an era where both parents have to work at least one job, you'd think that dad's would get an equally-extravagant holiday. I'm not asking for flowers or perfume, but how about a nice steak dinner? A new tool from Sears? I don't recall one commercial this month for Father's Day.

That really isn't fair, when you crunch the numbers.

Moms play the mommy card up until you turn 18. Then it's kind of rare that you would drive home to get a band-aid on a boo-boo. I can't see anyone jumping in their car during a storm and driving to mom's house to snuggle during a storm.

Dads, on the other hand, see their parental workload exponentially increase after the kids leave the nest. Ever hear of someone having their mom fix their car? Or come over and mow their yard? Fix their roof? Fix plumbing?

That's right, dads are the preferred handyman of choice for most folks as they grow older. Especially when dad retires and is bored out of his mind with nothing to do.

What about moms? Does babysitting grand kids count as much of a chore as putting in a toilet? Changing the oil on the family minivan? If you paid non-family members for these services, you'd end up spending FAR more on a plumber than a 'sitter. You'd spend more on a mechanic, than a 'sitter.

And what do dads get for this lifetime of manual labor? Ties. Maybe a DVD. A card that we really don't want but can't throw away for fear of hurting someone's feelings.

We don't get national advertising campaigns guilting our kids into showing us appreciation. We don't even get to sleep in- our holiday falling on a Sunday where we're still expected to get up and go to church. Nor do we get to stay up late- Monday is a workday.

Nope, Dads, as ever, are underappreciated, even on their "special" day of the year. Moms get all the glory; Dads get screwed.

This Father's Day, give your dad some frickin' appreciation for his hard work. Don't get him a craft project to do with the kids- he'll be doing those the rest of his life in the form of odd jobs at the kids' homes when they grow up. Let Dad have a frickin' day off. No work. No getting dressed up or going out somewhere he doesn't want to. Instead, make Father's Day a one-man vacation, where the kids and spouse wait on dad and don't gripe at him or ask him to take out the garbage.

Make Father's Day the day your dad wants, not a sad imitation of Mom's day.

 
KILROY SAYS: You Need to Sit Closer to the TV!
Written by Kilroy
Wednesday, 10 June 2009 08:59
No Comments

Remember when you were a kid, and your parents used to yell at you, "Don't sit too close to the TV"? Well, that was back when TVs weighed as much as a person and had curved, fish-bowl fronts and consumed enough electricity to power the Griswold family Christmas tree.

Now, we're going all digital. We've ditched picture tubes for flat screen plasmas and LCDs. OLEDs are just around the corner. And now, we find out we need to move closer to the TV.

HDTV is broadcast in one of two resolutions: 720i/p or 1080i/p. Standard TV produced a paltry 535×240 pixels on the screen at once — pixels being those little glowing specs that form the picture you see (that's 128,400 dots forming your picture). That's more than a LightBrite, but still, not that impressive. HDTV, broadcast in brilliant 1080p cranks out over 3,000,000 pixels. Yes, THREE MILLION pixels. Comparing 1080p to SD (Standard Definition) is kind of like comparing your old analog TV set to a LightBrite.

And, any good home theater fan knows that the distance you sit from your TV should be very precise. To keep the field of view just right, you have to adjust your distance based on the size of your set. Say you have a 46″ TV, then you should be sitting  5.75 to 9.5 feet away, so you have the optimal field of view (you don't want to have to turn your head back and forth to watch your movie).

But now, there's a new twist to viewing distances and resolutions: The Lechner Distance. Apparently, this guy, Bernard Lechner, figured out that when you're sitting nine feet from your TV, it's hard to make out all that wonderful 1080p detail.  Apparently, if you are watching 1080p at nine feet, you need a 69″ TV to get the full effect. If your TV is only 720p, your eye can distinguish the wonderful detail at nine feet on a 46″ screen.

Hmmm… So, seeing as how the national average for viewing distance is nine feet, do you want to buy a 1080p 69″ set, costing you over $1300 for a DLP, or a nice, crisp, clean 46″ LCD set for about $900?

Already bought your HDTV? Is it a cost-effective 37″? Well, forget what Mom said, man, you better sit closer to the set to get your money's worth.

 
Kilroy says: HP Customer Care sucks out loud
Written by Kilroy
Wednesday, 27 May 2009 08:19
14 Comments

(Editor's note: this post may appear lengthy, but it is well written and well worth a couple of minutes to read.)

If you’re a Hewlett-Packard fan, then I‘m sorry. Actually, no I’m not. If you’re a fan of this company, then I suggest you get therapy, because you’re paying big bucks to have the corporate giant abuse you.

ATTENTION A.D.D. SUFFERERS: Now, for those of you with a short attention span, I’ll cut right to the chase: HP sucks out loud…or at least their tech support does. If you’re considering calling them for help, you’d better know a good hair implant surgeon (we call ‘em rug doctors). You’d also better have deep pockets. Now for the rest of you overachievers, I’d like to puke out my sad story for your thoughtful consideration. It’s a long story, but well worth the read.

It all started last week when I contacted HP customer care (an oxymoron if ever there was one). For it seems like every time I call HP with a problem, their tech guys would rather sell me some piece of equipment I don’t need rather than solve my actual problem, which brings me to my latest experience with HP Customer Care.

Anyway, I contacted HP last week to solve a problem with my computer’s cooling fan running continuously and to address my processor’s sluggish performance. The first thing my tech guy (who I’ll call Habib) asked me was how long I was running the computer. I replied, “I’m running the little sucker all day, as I use it for my business.”

Habib then said that if I was going to be running it like that all the time, I needed to purchase a “chill mat” to facilitate cooling of the unit, which was overheating due to my excessive use. Funny, I thought; it didn’t used to do that as a newspaper editor (yes, the "Kilroy Times"), and believe me, I was running that laptop 24/7 back then. But okay, he’s a professional, right? I’m sure he knows better than I do. So, I purchased a chill mat from Habib. Next, my fearless tech guy went to work on my sluggish processor performance. He began with the usual things, like cleaning up temporary files, etc. When he finished, he said I should see a difference in performance. When I didn’t, he suggested I upgrade my RAM from one Gig to two. I’d been thinking about that for some time, anyway. Perhaps he was right. I am using more programs now. “How much for the upgrade,” I asked. “$130” was Habib’s reply. That seemed like a lot of money to me, but if it would solve my problem, it was worth it. Reluctantly, I agreed to follow Habib’s suggestions and ordered the RAM upgrade as well. He even offered to help me install it over the phone. Wow! Now that’s customer care, I thought to myself.

So, after waiting about three days, the RAM arrived, along with my $30 high quality molded plastic chill mat. I was ecstatic. Who knew what wonders that lay ahead for me in computing, now that my chill mat and RAM upgrade had arrived. With sweat on my upper lip, I greedily unwrapped my chill mat, booted up my computer, and plugged in the new  mat. Almost as soon as I began performing some operations with my computer, my cooling fan kicked on, and remained on, until I shut the laptop down later that evening. I thought this to be strange, since my expert computer tech, Habib, had instructed me that my “made in China” chill mat would solve that problem.

But wait; it gets better. After a bit of investigating on my own, I realized that my “D” drive was almost completely full. My “C” drive wasn’t much better, with only about 8 percent of its memory available. I knew that couldn’t be right (I’ve got 80 Gigs in there). I decided that I wasn’t going to call Habib back again. If I wanted this fixed, I was going to have to do this myself. So I began transferring all my multimedia files to an external 500 Gig hard drive. Just to make sure, I also cleaned out my word documents. This action brought my available space on “C” up to 12 percent. Rats! Not even enough space to run my defragment operation. I would have to find another solution.

Next, I was going to install the RAM, but before I could do that, Habib called again and asked if I received the RAM upgrade, etc. I told him I did, but that I also found my “D” and “C” drives were clogged up and could he please fix that before dealing with the RAM. “Yes, of course. No problem,” replied Habib.

So, Habib proceeded to clean up my “D” drive. It is now 97 percent free, for which I say, “Thank you Habib!” Habib then deftly guided me through the RAM installation. This involved removing an access cover and taking out two RAM chips from my laptop. Following that, Habib asked me to install the single upgrade chip into my laptop. After doing so, we booted up my computer, which Habib was controlling remotely from his cubical in India. He asked me if I thought the computer was faster. I told him I wasn’t so sure it was. So he opened a few programs and insisted my laptop was responding much better now. That ended our session for that day. But, Habib was going to call me in two days and clean up my “C” drive. I couldn’t wait. My computer was going to be super-fast when Habib finished with it…or so I thought.

The next two days were marked by escalating frustration as my computer continued to run like the Microsoft piece of crap that it is. I knew something was up, so I went back and inspected the packing slip on the box which contained the RAM upgrade from HP. To my confusion, it read, “1 GB PC 2700 SODIMM.” Then I remembered I had taken out two chips and replaced them with the single chip for my alleged 2GB upgrade. Hmmmm…Checking the old chips, I found that they were 512MB each. Hey, that’s 1GB of RAM. And what I replaced them with was (get this) one 1GB of RAM. The difference? My 1GB of RAM was now on a single chip instead of divided between two. To be sure, I checked the BIOS and sure enough it read “1024MB” or 1GB of RAM.  Now that’s what I call and “upgrade.” Thanks HP!

When Habib called to do the clean up on my “C” drive I told him what I had found. He balked slightly at first, but then when I cornered him with my impeccable logic, he had to agree that I hadn’t upgraded a damn thing. Then I said, “So, what about my 'C' drive?” Habib replied that after extensive analysis of my “C” drive data, he had concluded that my Halo for PC game was what was hogging my “C” drive resources and that if I would remove that program I would see a big improvement in performance. He also suggested I purchase an external hard drive. He didn’t know that I was already running a 500GB external with my laptop. At this point, I was like, “whatever Habib.” It was plain to me that he was more interested in selling me hardware I didn’t need than he was in fixing my computer. In any case, there’s no way in hell that game was hogging 80GB of disk space. But since Habib wasn’t going to do anything else, other than take down my credit card number, I redirected the conversation back to the whole RAM upgrade problem, which Habib had created. I told him that either HP needed to send me another chip free of charge for my trouble, or they were going to have to take the new chip back and give me a refund. Habib’s response was text book. “I don’t have the authority to do that,” he said. So I told our tech-support-wanna-be that if he didn’t have the authority, he needed to find someone who did. He put me on hold for about 10 minutes while he tried unsuccessfully to get his supervisor. He then told me that he’d transfer me to sales, and they would refund my money. After another ten minute wait, Habib came back on the line and said he couldn’t transfer my call, but that he could give me a phone number for sales, and I could call them myself for the refund. In all of this, I don’t think I got so much as an apology from Habib, much less compensation from HP for my trouble. Did I tell you this is a service I’m paying for? That’s right. I have extended warranty coverage through HP for just this sort of thing. What did I get for it? Many wasted hours on the phone over the course of about a week, talking with someone who didn’t know what the hell they were doing. It was the blind leading the blind. I also spent $171 on items I didn’t need.

Now that’s what I call customer care.  Once again, thanks for nothing, HP.  I’ll never purchase another thing from your crap company EVER again. I won’t be extending my warranty (AGAIN!), and I won’t be calling you for customer care anymore either. Nor will I be purchasing another one of your laptops. I’ll spend my $1200 dollars somewhere else…like Apple.