Antenna Adapters

When dealing with antenna adapters, only one thing is guaranteed, the person(s) that you are assisting will have absolutely no idea what they need.

Today we had a gentleman come into the store with a transceiver and an antenna.  Of course, the connections on the transceiver and the antenna were not compatible and an adapter of some type would be needed.  Since I was busy at the time with another customer, the boss helped this man look for the adapter.  My first hint that there was trouble came when I realized that they were standing in the adapter section for an extended amount of time.  The boss then interrupted me to ask what kind of ends were on the transceiver and antenna.  Second sign of a problem, the boss nor the person seeking adapters knew what ends they needed.  The boss leaves and returns with an adapter that to an F connector, not the mini-UHF the person had.  Epic fail, considering that he owns an electronics store.

After much ado, the pair finally decide that the adapter in question was not present.  It appeared that they had been purchased earlier in the week.  Since this adapter is rarely sold, we only keep 2 in stock.  A plan is hatched to cut the mini-UHF end off and replace it with the correct end.  This brought up a new set of problems.  The end that needed to be put on the cable was for RG-8, a rather thick cable.  The antenna cable was RG-58, rather thin.  There was a long period of pondering with no clear solution.  I casually walked over and read the back of the package.  The directions stated that there were adapter for using this end with RG-58.  Problem solved!  Or is it.  This guy can’t figure out how this is going to work.

After a 15 minute processing period, the guy finally decides that this is going to work for him.  I actually got a little frustrated and opened all the packages and basically put the whole thing together for him.  He just needed to solder the thing at this point.  I was very excited to see this guy leave.

P.S.  Does anyone know where I could send the boss to learn about the products in the electronics section on the store?

Neuropathy Going Nuts

For the last week this neuropathy has been going absolutely nuts.  It is about to drive me crazy.  I have had about 14 hours of sleep total since Sunday.  I am exhausted, to say the least.  I can only hope that this lets up soon.  Every time I try to go to sleep, it seems as if it gets worse.  I don’t think it is actually worse, but I don’t have anything to do and it becomes more apparent to me.

1978-1981 20 Page History of Atari

This is pretty cool, a history of the Golden Years at Atari. The 2600 was my first experience with “console gaming”.  Many others in the geek and non-geek worlds also began their gaming careers with the 2600.  Compared to the games we have today, the 2600 looks a little ancient.  Many kids today would say that it was junk, but I actually enjoy the old 2600 games from time to time.  Nostalgia I guess.  Well I thought that this was a pretty interesting read, especially for the oldtimers out there.

One More Reason NOT To Trust China

Found this post at slashdot!

So James Powderly is about to debut a new protest display and low and behold, some Chinese police group comes and “detains” him.  Guess you don’t tell everyone there know how you feel about opression.

I know that China is basically a superpower, but this government continually goes too far.  It has been this way since before I was born and seems as if it will continue to be this way for some time to come.  The sad part is that the people of China seem to accept this and go along like sheep.

I know, the Chinese must have found out that this guy came up with throwies.

By the way, FREE TIBET!

Stupid Question of the Day

A customer brings a movie box up to the counter and shows me the following:

He says to me the following.  “The box here says languages are ENGLISH and FRENCH.  Subtitles ENGLISH and FRENCH.  What does that mean?”

What do you mean, what does it mean?  It means exactly what it says on the box.  You know, the box that YOU came up to the counter and read to me.  Really man, I think you are going to have to work on your reading comprehension.

The Chinese Gymnast Age Debacle

I revceived a tweet from hd moore about this post from Stryde Hax.  I found this very interesting and it points to lenghts that some governments will go to in order to hide information from the world.  I find it a bit funny that the Chinese forgot to erase the cache on a search engine specific to China.

My Contribution to the Screenshots

You will notice the offending underage gymnasts name in yellow.  This document clearly states that the birthday is Jan. 1, 1994.  That makes her 14, not 16 as the Chinese claim.  As the Stryde Hax blogger also states, I could care less the age of the gymnast.  I am simply supporting this due to what seems to be deliberate attempts to remove this information from public databases.

RIAA and MediaSentry

This article was posted on slashdot today.  I would like to know when some government agency is going to step in an take some action against these two groups, the RIAA and MediaSentry.  The RIAA seems to be pushing their luck by hiring this company, MediaSentry.  Over and over again, there has been news of MediaSentry overstepping the bounds of what is legal.  The disruption of Revision3’s legal video distribution was what initially caught my attention.  I doubt that Revision3 will see any justice for the blatant DOS attack on their system.

Now a University and two university students in Michigan have resorted to filing lawsuits against the RIAA and MediaSentry (aka SafeNet).  These groups have been allowed, by our government, to harass people of all walks of life.  They seem to be targeting college students with all types of harassment.  They even want the universities to police students behavior, ie stop them from downloading music.  This alone is ridiculous.  Its a classic case of going after the person/group with the most money that happens to be associated with the person/persons “breaking the law”.

The RIAA is too old school.  They need some new blood in their ranks.  Maybe then, they would come up to the times and realize that they need to adjust their business model if they want to stay in business.  The RIAA makes claims that they do this to protect the artists.  I call BULLSHIT!  Where is the documentation showing the money that goes to the artists?  Oh yeah, there is none.  The artists should consider exactly what the RIAA is involved in, attacking the customers.

MediaSentry, a la SafeNet, needs to be fired.  First of all, they have no legal right to do what they are doing.  Second, they use automated tools to attack systems that are responsible for “pirating”.  Well, what was Revision3 pirating that Friday when the DOS attack was launched against them?  Third, any of us who launched a DOS attack against any company would receive a visit from the Feds, complete with a free trip to jail.

There are very few people born in the last 35 years that have not at some point copied a piece of music that they didn’t own.  It started, back in the day, with playing a cassette on one boombox and recording it onto a blank cassette with another boombox.  Then the two boomboxes could be linked an audio cable, which greatly improved the sound quality.  Next came the dual cassette decks that allowed a cassette to be dubbed on the same machine.  CD’s came along and recording those to tape was just as easy and made a pretty decent sounding copy.  After what seemed a long time, CD burners made there entry to the consumer market.  By this time people were already using their computers to store music and now they could make perfect copies.  Now we have .mp3’s and their variants.  Small little files with decent sound quality that allow a person to store and make available tons of music.  So I guess we all need to turn ourselves in now.  Of course, this last paragraph is all theoretical.

Asurion Insurance Experience

In all the years (14 plus) that I have owned a cell phone or cell phones, this is the first time that I have had to replace a phone through an insurance claim.  I only have insurance on two of the four phones that are on my account, but I selected these two due to high cost of replacing one and the high risk of damage to the other.  The phone with high risk of being damaged was indeed the phone that needed to be replaced.  It it the phone that is in the possession of my daughter and it was damaged fairly early into the contract.  Replacing the phone without insurance would have cost a bundle, but with the Asurion coverage it was only $50.

I have to say that I was pleased with the experience.  I used Asurion’s online claim system to file my claim, which was approved quickly.  The phone was shipped by Asurion that day, although their choice of DHL should be reconsidered in my opinion (see earlier posts about DHL).

When the phone arrived, I simply followed the directions in the box for activating the phone and the phone was up and running.  The total amount of time that I invested into this phone replacement was about 20 minutes total.  I have no complaints about the service that I received from Asurion.

I will comment about insurance for cell phones.  Before you purchase this service you should investigate how much it is going to cost you to replace your cell phone.  On the Verizon system, the cost of the insurance is $5 per month or $60 per year.  Replacing the phone will cost you $50.  So if you break the phone on the 12th month of your contract, your total cost would be $110.  Generally, this is cheaper than replacing the phone by purchasing a new one.  Also keep in mind that once you reach the time at which you can do an upgrade, it is definitely not in your best interest to keep the insurance, because you can get a free or greatly reduced cost replacement directly from Verizon in this case.

DHL Package Arrives

Yea, the package from DHL finally arrived.  By their estimate I received the package 2 days early.  The box is clearly marked “2 day” shipping, but it took 6 days to reach the final destination.

By the way, the tracking system that DHL uses is poor, at best.  They definately need to do a little work on that system if they want to even call it a tracking system.  The last entry in the tracker listed the package as being in Aurora, CO.  Thats even what it said after I signed for the package.  Now I don’t know for sure, but I suspect that the package changed hands at least once before it’s arrival.  Generally, these packages get scanned many times as they move along the delivery system.  When I have items shipped by FEDEX, their system is pretty amazing.  Right after I signed for a package, the tracking site updated the status to “Delivered”.  That is a pretty good system.

DHL Package Delivery Experience

On August 6, I filed a claim with Asurion to replace a cell phone that was damaged.  So far, the interaction with Asurion has been pretty easy.  I decided to use their website to place my claim.  (I will post later to update everyone on this experience).

After my claim was all processed, the package was to be delivered to my place of work by DHL.  I noticed that the package was going to be shipped 2-day.  If figured that it would take a little while to get the claim processed thought the Asurion system.  To my surprise I noticed an e-mail from DHL stating that the package had been picked up and was on its way.  The sent a tracking number in order for the package to be tracked by their nifty system.  Just for fun, I decided that I would track the package, know full well that it had just left.  The tracking site even states that the shipping method is 2-day.

So, the package leaves on the 6th.  That put delivery on the 8th.  We live in a rather rural area, so I decided that it would more likely be delivered on August 11th.  This is usually how it works out here, although FEDEX is pretty good.  Well, this morning I check the tracking site to see if the package was any nearer to the destination.  The last entry was 8/8 Aurora, CO.  I look a the entry stating the estimated day of delivery.  It says 8/14.  What kind of math is that.

A package that leaves on 8/6 and is shipped 2-day, should arrive on 8/8.  Ok, not counting the first day, a package leaving on 8/6 and arriving 8/14 would be 8-day shipping.  I love their math.