Broke Down, And Crossed Over To The Dark Side

I just broke down and bought my first wife the iPad 2 (16GB, WiFi + 3G) for $683.25 including tax. Of course we're going to have shell out another $30 a month to Verizon.

The problem is, while my wife has a Blackberry through her job, her firm's network blocks a ton of websites including many quality ones like Marginalizing Morons. The Mrs. has two 40 minute or so train rides each day (Mon-Thu) and she's been pining for an iPad that she can use for a couple months now.

I kept kiboshing it but could do so no longer. The money is irrelevant - since we are so cheap otherwise. But I do hate to think of myself as an iMoron!

I was planning on getting my 4.98 year old daughter her own PC and strongly considered buying her a Mac - if for no reasons other than the that I've never heard anyone complain about Apple products and because I realized I was displaying *extreme closed-mindedness* on this front. But the $1200 price has been giving me pause.

As a compromise, I decided to buy the iPad for $600 and then just get her what I bought her brother - a totally sufficient $600 Dell.

Another reason I did get this iPad is because I, as someone endeavoring to create and sell some content,....I should probably familiarize myself with the technology platforms it'd be delivered on. A Kindle might be next...

Experimenting On My Homeschooled Kids, Still

We are trying something we haven't done before - NO COMPUTER.

Yeah, I've temporarily banned what's probably the biggest element of their home-based education.

It's been a whopping three days now since the computer next to me, theirs, was even turned on and there are no problems to report, yet. My son is just reading up a storm and both he and his sister have been playing outside a whole lot more. In fact today we went down to the beach (only 500 yards away, Long Island Sound) and the kids were cursing me for not bringing their swim trunks. What...it was only in the low 70s!

Don't get me wrong, the computer wasn't a problem by any stretch. I just felt like mixing things up a little. I'll try to keep them off for the rest of this week right up to the departure for our trip to that homeschooling vacation/conference in Ohio. That way, by the time we get back, they'll have gone a full two weeks without the PC.

While they are getting a whole lot done on the web, I can't help but think it's *crowding out* a few other activities that we could be getting to.

I myself am also trying to spend less time at the computer. Heck for 6 years I've been blogging religiously and perhaps I'm tiring of it???

Lately I've been working hard on my golf game, doing a ton of yard work, I'm amidst about 7 books right now, and I'm focusing more on my kids and their organized activities than I have in the past. Life is very good here in New York for us, overall anyway. We're coming up on *one year* since we moved from Boston's South Shore and a full review of that important life-change is forthcoming.

Soaring Little Girl!

Check out this blog post my daughter authored today.

I was sitting there playing chess with my son and she did this one all on her own.

She logged into her account and uploaded those pics from her personal pics file.

I'll bet 73% of 'old coots' couldn't do that.

Yet the Princess is only 4.47 years old!

Normally when we do a blog post, I write it out on paper, she types it up, and I upload the image for her.

Of course, she's been using the computer for quite some time now.

See - Another Great Activity For Kids.

I simply can't believe the number of parents who explicitly tell me that they *don't want their kid on the computer* for reasons X, Y, and Z. Mostly the excuses have to do with an irrational fear that their children will be *preyed upon* by a bogeyman they heard about on the color TV news.

But these same parents send their kids to school all day to be prodded from rectangle to rectangle like farm animals. These same parents allow their kids to be raised by agents of the government, strangers and know-nothing age-mates. And far more kids are sexually abused at schools than by online stalkers.

The computer/internet has been THE central part of my own life's education.

So I'd be a Moron not to make it a huge part of my children's.

Living With The MIL Chronicles 4 - Leading 'Old Coots' To Water

It was painful and took MONTHS of convincing, but I finally got my MIL to buy a new computer.

Though maybe it wasn't necessarily my persuasion that did the trick. It might have been the fact that HER COMPUTER WOULDN'T BOOT UP.

In fact, it was so bad that you couldn't even start it up in *safe mode*.

Being five years old and no doubt riddled with viruses and malware, it was certainly time anyway.

'Old coots' just ALWAYS get computer viruses. But that's what happens when they forward emails to EVERYONE in their inbox, ALL THE TIME.

I told my MIL that she positively has to get rid of her AOL email account because, first of all, it costs her money (she pays for *technical support*!). Secondly, clearly her inbox has already been a portal for viruses. So it'd be downright Moronic to access it from the brand new computer I ordered and set up for her, wouldn't it?

But she won't change and doesn't want to hear it. She doesn't want to *learn a new email system* - because they are soooooo complicated.

She also leaves her computer on perpetually. And it's not just on, browsers are open as is her AOL inbox.

Now I don't care what anyone says - and I've heard the techno-quacks myself. One should not leave a computer on all the time. The fan is running hard and the longer connected to the internet, the more prone a PC to those ubiquitous viruses.

You know what, fine. Leave it on all day, mine essentially is. But there's NO REASON whatsoever not to turn it off at night.

I even put an e-sticky note reminder on the middle of my MIL's screen *TURN OFF PC AT NIGHT* but she still won't heed it. She actually tried to tell me *I don't think it's bad...* before I cut her off. Now all of a sudden she's a computer expert. Behold this one:

The other day she went into Manhattan to pay homage listen to Karl Rove at some event. After she left I walked up to her PC - which hasn't been turned off in maybe weeks - and turned it off.

But when she got home, she had NO IDEA how to turn the computer back on. Completely helpless, she called me frantically...

CaptiousNut - Do you see the big box under the desk? That's the CPU. Press the button in the middle of it.

MIL - I don't see it.

CaptiousNut - It's a circle in the middle of the box.

Now, after much agony, she probably found it and may have even pressed it.

MIL - IT'S NOT WORKING.

CaptiousNut - Calm down.

MIL - IT'S NOT WORKING!

CaptiousNut - Calm down. We just turned the CPU on. Now we have to turn the monitor on.

Oh, and forget that. New monitors today have those semi-invisible buttons built into the frame. She couldn't find that either. On the road and at my wit's end, I had to end the *tech support* call.

Essentially, despite spending 10 hours a day on the computer - forwarding and reading political nonsense - she HAS NO IDEA how to even turn a computer on. It's only two buttons, right?

Forget it. My MIL and technology make oil and water look like life-long best friends!

But they're all disasters with it, these 'old coots' and 'old bags'.

Check out my own parents:

I Swear...

My Crazy Parents - 1 - Tiny Pics

See also:

Living With The MIL Chronicles 3 - Already Over?

Living With The MIL Chronicles 2 - Off The Hook Phone Ringing

Living With The MIL Chronicles - 1

Absolutely Everything Online?

It just dawned on me that I have to channel MOST of my experimental homeschool art lessons over to the computer.

The future, and probably present, of art is all digital: flash animations, digital photography, photoshopping, movie-making, and whatnot.

I'm not fluent in these subjects, at all. So I need to do some work for myself as well - especially if I ever hope to produce any marketable content.

New York has everything. Only one town over in Great Neck I found a school that offers classes - for youngsters grade 2 and up! - in precisely what I am interested in: flash animation, video game design, and whatnot.

The only problem is, they work out to a pricey $60 per hour. So scrap the idea of outsourcing this subject. I'd rather buy the software and plow through the tutorials on my own. How hard can the introductory stuff be anyway?

And yeah, that is my work pictured above! I guess for starters I'll have my kids, particularly my art-enthused daughter (age 4.16), mess around with the Microsoft Paint program.  We see how that works out and then proceed from there.

See also - Art From My Butt.

CaptiousNut Incognito!

Recall I just upgraded my 5.75 year old PC and boy is it nice to be out of the Dark Ages!

Everything is better: the speed at which it turns on and off, the Paint program, MS-Office that's NOT from 2002, etc.

My old PC, with the hard drive 83% filled, was on the fritz and hence didn't respond well to the barrage of updates that continually flew in: Windows, Java, virus software...so I couldn't really install the latest versions of everything, nor did I feel like I needed to.

But now that I'm back up to speed, there's one thing in particular that I'm enjoying - the Google Chrome Browser. It's a vast improvement from the version of Explorer I had been using, IMO. One aspect of it that I just discovered is the *Incognito* option.

When I first saw it, I partially inferred what it was. I could open an *Incognito* browser and it would be disjoint from my extant browser sessions. Right away I successfully opened my other Gmail account in it. You see before I could only be logged into one at a time and it was real annoying. If my wife wanted to come over and check her email I had to log out of not only my Gmail account but also Blogger, my Google Docs, and Google Reader. What a pain in the butt it was.

Then when I got the Droid phone, I'd do all my personal email on the tiny *smartphone* while I had my CaptiousNut account open on the PC. It was ridiculous how I used to forward personal stuff from my phone to my C-Nut account just so I could see it on the computer without logging out of everything!

But apparently the incognito browser does more than just permit simultaneous access to multiple Gmail accounts:

For times when you want to browse in stealth mode, for example, to plan surprises like gifts or birthdays, Google Chrome offers the incognito browsing mode. Here's how the incognito mode works:

Webpages that you open and files downloaded while you are incognito aren't recorded in your browsing and download histories.

All new cookies are deleted after you close all incognito windows that you've opened.

Hmmmm.....let me see.

ALL browsing history, download history, and cookies are expunged...

If you believe this were designed for hiding *surprise birthday parties*, then you my friend, are a Moron.

BTW, there are a whole bunch of other innovations that I am enjoying on updated PC like Sticky Notes, Chess Titans (for my son), the scribble pad, the improved Movie Maker, and no doubt plenty more things I've yet to discover.

It's kind of exciting to deny yourself all the latest and greatest in some areas because it makes the eventual upgrading all the more fun - like a time-warp into the present.

Now I'm going back to planning my wife's *surprise birthday party*. Her special day was actually last week, but it's going to take me a full year (of browsing) to plan next year's soirée...

How To Set Up Multiple Monitors On ATI Radeon 5450

So why am I writing a how-to post?

Because I spent about 6 hours trying to figure out how to get my second monitor to work!

I've been Googling my brains out and reading all sorts of message threads to no avail.

My graphics card, the cheap ATI Radeon 5450, asserts that it has *dual display* capability.

So I bought a splitter, just like I did on my last two-monitor PC, but that only reproduced the same output on both monitors, and at a much lower image quality.

Previously, I had used a DVI splitter, this time I used a VGA one. Did that matter?

Well, it depends on what you read. Some people said that a VGA splitter couldn't *extend* or *stretch* the desktop* onto another screen....and some people swore it could.

The manufacturer is no help, of course. I didn't even see a phone number I could call or someone I could email.

Call Dell? No way. They'd tell me to call Microsoft or to call AMD - but only after wasting 40 minutes on hold and with some clueless ESL tech support person.

All I freakin' wanted to know was what kind of cables to connect my monitors to the card with. THAT'S IT.

Rather than waste all this time, I would have been perfectly content to order them, whatever splitter or adapter I needed, or even a totally new graphics card - BUT ONLY if I was sure it would solve the problem. It was astounding to me the deficit of easy-to-find guidance for such a simple question.

I did finally stumble upon the solution though around lunchtime today.

The answer was incredibly simple. I just plug one monitor into the VGA slot, and the other monitor into the DVI slot! For some reason I assumed that you had to use one kind or the other - and *split* the output somehow. Using both of them seemed counter-intuitive.

Yeah you multi-display video gaming geeks can go right ahead and laugh at me.  While you're at it, why don't you post this knowledge online somewhere?

It is amazing isn't it - that the private market for tech support is (usually) much better than that provided by manufacturers?

Printers = Trash

Maybe four years ago I excitedly bought a *3-in-1* printer from Dell for $150: copy, scan, fax, and print. Was that really four functions?

Anyways it worked fine at first. Then the scanner died. The copy function went. And I was just able to print.

The color ink runs out and I figure that I don't need it. But apparently the printer won't work with just black ink. What a scam, right?

Then I hear a similar story from a relative who spent an inordinate amount of time on the phone with Dell's technical support. She was also told that it wouldn't work without BOTH full color and black ink cartridges.

I'd never in my life (outside of a Sony PC that lasted a month) had such a bad experience with a piece of technology as I had with that printer. It got to the point where I couldn't print at all and was transcribing internet driving directions down on paper - even sketching out street maps which drew mockery from my wife! And I was often emailing stuff to Mrs. C-Nut (e.g. tax returns) for her to print out or scan at her office. There was no way I was going to try to fix that printer; I was just going to wait a bit and order a new one when I upgraded my PC - which I just did.

But I didn't find anything on Dell's site that looked appropriate. I wanted a higher quality printer that just printed in black. But everything I found screamed *cheap*. I think their 4-in-1 printers were down to $60 or something.

For those of you unaware, printers are essentially given away. The manufacturers make all their money by charging people who print more, well, more. It's all in their lucrative ink business; they force you to buy, one way or another.

I just looked at HP's printers. See below:




Look at those user review ratings and tell me I should be eager to buy one or them!

Rightfully, they should bundle a baseball bat in with each printer purchase...

C-Nut Family PC Upgrades

5.75 years ago I purchased my last new PC - a Dell Optiplex with two 19 inch flat panel monitors and *gold* customer support. I didn't even go in my pocket for MS-Office and the bill for this, at the time, top-of-the-line system came to $3,000.

Its replacement, which I just ordered a minute ago, only cost $1,300. And of course it should be a whole lot more advanced, have a whole lot more memory, etc. I felt like I was splurging going for the cordless keyboard, the built-in webcam, an external hard drive, and MS-Office (my wife insisted on this $119 add-on).

I also decided to get my son (and daughter) their own PC - for $635 or whatever. There's literally so much educational stuff online for them that I could, and plan on(!) leaving them at the PC all day long. The web is rapidly even making people like me, a hands-on homeschooling parent, obsolete.

BTW, the 21 inch widescreen HD monitor pictured above retails at Dell now for $139.

I recall that my two old 19 inch monitors, all by themselves, cost me a total of $700 back in September of 2004. And that was only because I bought two and got a *deal*. One by itself was nominally listed at near $500.

The bill for both new computers came to $2,205.05. Let's see how they perform!

Never in my wildest dreams did I think the computer I'm still typing on would last so long - not given the sheer amount of use and abuse I got out of it.

WWW and C-Nut - Reunited!

Today I, still in the fog of my 4-week long staggered move to Long Island, I FINALLY got my computer set up and re-connected to the internet.

FiOS, which amazingly is now three years old, came this afternoon and after a few hours the technician was able to hook me up with a modern cable connection and a hard-wired internet line in the basement/office. No problems so far for me or my wife at her station behind me. She's hard at work after midnight, yet again, sifting through the 400 emails in her inbox.

It suffices to say it's been a long 3-4 weeks of being technologically unsettled for our entire family. Personally, I've grown sick and tired of using laptops and other people's networks. It feels good to be back in my $900 ergonomic desk chair and in front of my dual-monitor display - which, by the way, is due to be upgraded presently.

I'm trying to order myself a brand new, souped-up PC from Dell with a couple of 24 inch monitors AND a new PC for my son who needs a computer as much as anyone on this overheated Earth.

But I am having an extremely hard time navigating the Dell website. I do appreciate the fact that their computers are infinitely customizable and that their prices are near rock-bottom...

However, someone over at DELL Inc. has to design a dumbed-down/user-friendly version of their online store.

I don't well care if I save $185 on my new PC if it's going to cost me 2-3 hours of precious time to imagine what I'm buying!

Making Virtual Flashcards

Check out my 3.86 year old's new *pics*:















Those are from her *word pics* folder that we just created on my desktop.

At this point, she's learning phonics, learning to read. So I pick the word; we Google an image of it; she gets to choose which one she wants (it's quite the process); and I'll scratch the spelling on it with a photo editor if needed (but only in the color the Princess demands!).

Of course when we're perusing *her pics* she has to say the word, spell it, and say it again. All this may seem rather simple and mundane but I submit it most definitely is not.

This make-your-own approach gives the child a very active part in the educational process. It'll be a whole lot of fun for them and far more effective than a boring phonics book.

Both she and her older brother LOVE to sit at my computer and flip through their pics. The enthusiasm for this - and most other things *computer* - is simply off the chart.

For more on *pics* see - Another Great Activity For Kids.

MS-Deflation

I don't know about you clowns, but that's what's running on my PC - the 6-7 year old version of MS-Office!

But what else would you expect from someone who drives clunkers?

Check out the Google search suggestions:



Piracy galore!

The whole slate of results aid and abet people in *not buying* the 2003 version of Excel, MS-Word, etc.

I think *torrent* is some Napster or Morpheus type of peer-to-peer file sharing network.

And *keygen*, "... generates cracks and serials online for your software to unlock it."

I'm about to buy myself a new PC - and probably one for my kids. I can't see any way that I end up springing for new Office products - not with Google Docs out there for free.



Shoot. Microsoft has been dead money for quite some time now - 11 long years!

Marginalizing Groups

Just a little vent here...

Have any of y'all ever had to suffer an experience with Yahoo Groups?

They are essentially private message boards.

I had to join a few in the last year or so for *home educational* reasons.

But I have to tell you - YAHOO GROUPS really SUCK!!!

I CANNOT STAND navigating within them. Without itemizing my complaints, or prescribing the fixes, let's just say that these forums are so far behind, so cumbersome....that using them feels like being back on a Trash-80 or something!

Remember those POS(s) - with their orange *reset* buttons???

Fascist Moms...

Here's my kind of mom:



Hah! The stones on these brats dictating *5 MORE MINUTES* to the people that pay for the over-head roof, the food,...

Full Disclosure - I once tried to smash my snot-nosed nephew's computer (albeit, one that I had given him). But all I ended up with was a semi-broken big toe!

For sure, these kids today(!) all have *unhealthy* addictions to their computers and cell phones, pPods or whatever they're called.

But in fairness, a lot of adults (big kids?) are getting just as bad.

The bars are notorious, but last Friday I was at some uppity restaurant with my wife. I saw several couples there with heads immersed (interred?) in their Blackberrys. The guy next to us divided his attention equally between his wife and his freakin' PDA that was placed prominently an inch to the right of his plate! IT WAS FRIDAY!

I'm at the point now where I'm itching to *confront* some of these pathetic people. I'll ask them what's so important, do they have an addiction or something, and if they realize how much of a loser they look like.

The Ego Cycle

From Wired:

Jobs, characteristically, did not mince words as he spoke to the assembled, according to a person who was there who could not be named because this person is not authorized by Apple to speak with the press.

On Google: We did not enter the search business, Jobs said. They entered the phone business. Make no mistake they want to kill the iPhone. We won’t let them, he says. Someone else asks something on a different topic, but there’s no getting Jobs off this rant. I want to go back to that other question first and say one more thing, he says. This don’t be evil mantra: "It’s bull$hit." Audience roars.

About Adobe: They are lazy, Jobs says. They have all this potential to do interesting things but they just refuse to do it. They don’t do anything with the approaches that Apple is taking, like Carbon. Apple does not support Flash because it is so buggy, he says. Whenever a Mac crashes more often than not it’s because of Flash. No one will be using Flash, he says. The world is moving to HTML5.

Apple certainly is *on top of the world* at the moment; and it's oozing the arrogance usually accorded that station.

But these things are fluid. Some 12-13 years ago I saw Michael Dell speak to a standing-room-only hall at the University of Pennsylvania. At that time, Dell Computer was *on-top-of-the-world*, posting the best stock returns over the entire decade of the 90s.

Most of the audience was wide-eye Wharton MBA students. They were positively drooling over the success of Michael Dell, a man only a couple years older, if that, than most of them.

The speech was awesome and at the end the discussion was opened up to the audience. I'll never forget Michael Dell mocking the viability of Apple Computer and then Sun Microsystems who he said was going "...to go the way of our fruity little friend."

He sounded as arrogant as, well, Steve Jobs today!

Check out the longer term charts and recall that I heard Dell speak in either 1997 or 1998:







Sun Microsystems did in fact just about go to zero. AND, Apple, in the early part of this decade traded for *cash on its books*. For example, if the company had $1 billion in cash, then it's market value was also $1 billion. In other words, Wall Street valued Apple's computer making business at ZERO less than 10 years ago.

Obviously, since then Apple has risen 20-fold, while Dell stock has gone nowhere.

And today, there's supposedly only one guy out there saying to short Apple!

Me? I believe I've made a little bit of money over the last few years shorting AND buying this stock. But I have no opinion on it at the moment. But you just watch, if the overall market tanks soon as I expect it to, this stock will trade back down below 100 towards its high from four years ago. Then say, for example, the iPad thingy flops, competition erodes the margins of the iPhone, etc. This is how it begins; this is how high flyers morph into decade-long flatliners like Dell Computer - and how a fall cometh after pride (See Proverbs 16:18) for egomaniacs like Steve Jobs.

Michael Dell is kind of quiet these days, at least relative to the others, isn't he?

Coming Soon?

The future of PCs?

I love my desktop; but can't stand typing on phones and laptops!

Web Homeschooling

My kids, the 4.93 year old Prince C-Nut in particular, are all over my computer these days.

Here's just what we were playing with this evening:



As one might deduce, you drag the geometric figures down, rotate them, and try to squeeze them into the polygon at the bottom. Since this stuff is online and free....those popular tangible Tangrams needn't be bought.

Obviously, exercises such as these serve as good introductory geometry.



My son LOVES Egypt for some reason. We googled *egypt quiz for kids* and easily found exactly that.



And since the Prince has mastered the States....we're onto state capitals. He's picking them up fast and will probably know them all by the weekend. Do y'all know/remember the capital of Alabama?

Two points about the vast store of free educational resources online:

1) There's so much out there, I can't imagine how MUCH MORE will be there 3, 5, 10 years hence!

2) Some of the stuff is so good....it's going to make much of today's professional *educational world* obsolete - if it hasn't already.

For one final example, I just googled *teach me to read* and found a great website - Starfall.com. It starts with letters, and then phonics, and then full-out reading:



One clicks on a word....and the computer pronounces it!

Who needs an adult to teach them now?!?!?!

We could probably take a toddler, lock him in a cell with a computer limited to the best educational sites, slide mush under the door every morning for 15 years,....

AND he'd probably walk out a nuclear physicist!

[More ideally, he'd develop into a high order polymath.]

Although he might be somewhat anti-social, and ornery.

IMO, kids should be on the computer at age 2.5, or 3.5 years at the latest.

Marginalizing My Nephew

Last week or so, my 13/14 year old nephew asked me if I could get him a discount on a computer.

"I don't know," I snapped, accurately sensing incoming nonsense. These punks are always scamming to *get something*.

"I guess, your aunt can get you a 10% discount at Dell through her work. Why?"

Nephew - Because I want to buy a laptop. Can she get a discount at Apple?

CaptiousNut - No.....why?

Nephew - I want a Mac.....It costs LIKE $1,000.

CaptiousNut - First of all, why do you need a Mac? This computer I am using right now (a Sony) costs $600.

Nephew - Macs are better....they don't get viruses.

[Mind you, that was coming from a kid who's helped ruin a bevy of computers his grandfather had bought for him and his siblings. They all died because of spyware (from games) and viruses (from file sharing).]

CaptiousNut - How much money do you have right now?

Nephew - I have $500. Can you get me the Mac and I will pay you the rest after my birthday?

CaptiousNut - Let met get this straight, assuming somehow, someone gives you $500 for your birthday (which was total, rank BS by the way), you want to spend every penny you have on a laptop?

I terminated the conversation there because the inanity had passed my tolerance threshold.

We all have Moronic nephews. They are allowed to be somewhat flighty at that age. But still, 14 year olds used to be itching for their own acreage; itching to sever the yoke of paternal authority and strike out on their own; itching for a bride. Heck, for thousands of years these *young men* contributed financially to the household AND fought in wars!

Now, they are shiftless nothings. They are lazy, disrespectful, entitled, and profoundly clueless about the planet they live on.

Of course, it ain't their fault. We have to blame their parents and the Baby Boomers who raised them.

AND, to be fair to these culprits....their negligence was a direct symptom of the *times*. This country got so wealthy that it stopped working, stopped growing, and stopped innovating.

Instead, it opted for consumption and redistribution....and wanton self-amusement.