Semi-constructive response

So, yeah, I finally got a semi-constructive response out of Leadtek about my balky Leadtek PX6600TD video card.  After eight and a half months, with three and a half months of manufacturer's warranty to run, they have conceded that there might possibly be a problem with the card, and have told me to return it to the original vendor for test and/or refund.  The vendor's 30-day warranty expired, of course, seven and a half months ago.

I've contacted the vendor citing the original invoice, my mail to Leadtek, and Leadtek's response (reproduced here).  We'll see what happens.

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Me, to Leadtek:

I have a PX6600TD, purchased new in February.  It appears I got a card with obsolete firmware; the firmware version on the card is much older than the version downloadable from your web site.  Ever since I bought the card, it has suffered from random video lockups that usually (but not always) crash the entire machine.  When I've tried to update the firmware, the update utility refuses to do it, and you've simply told me "Don't update the firmware" without offering any alternate solution.  I have exhaustively tested the machine's RAM and it's fine.  Every indication is that the video card has a problem.

I've put up with this problem for eight months now, and I'm tired of being told "It can't possibly be our card at fault".  I refuse to spend a thousand dollars to swap out the entire rest of the machine just to verify that the problem is the card.

This card is still under warranty for another four months.  I want to know whether your warranty is worth the paper it's printed on, and what you're going to do about getting me a card that works and doesn't crash.

Leadtek's terse and somewhat garbled response to me:

Please direct send back the card to test or refund in original dealer where you bought.

Thanks for your incoming letter!

Best regards,

Marketing Department, Leadtek Research Inc.

Several inches about a foot

The good news about the foot, two days later:  There's no bleeding visible through the dressing, and no indication of complications.  It continues, by all appearances, to go well.

The bad news:  by day +2, post-op pain is becoming significant.  Pain kept me mostly awake last night; I plan on taking some of the Vicodin tonight so I'll be able to sleep.  I have a suspicion it's as much the compression from the Coban outer wrap on the dressing making my foot ache as the surgery itself, and I'm going to try taking the Coban off for a bit to see if that gives me some relief.

I'm also already heartily sick of hobbling about on crutches again.  It's not just that you need crutches to go anywhere, or that you can only travel slowly, it's that you can't CARRY anything.

Here's now you get a plate of food from the kitchen to the table, without crutches:

1. Pick up the plate.
2. Carry it to the table.
3. Set it down.

Here's how you get a plate of food from the kitchen to the table, with crutches:

• Option A, if help is available:
1. Get someone else to carry the plate to the table for you.
• Option B, if a wheeled cart of some kind is available:
1. On your crutches, push the cart to the kitchen.
2. Pick up the plate and set it on the cart.
3. On your crutches, puch the cart back to the table.
4. Pick up the plate off the cart and set it on the table.
• Option C, if neither of the above holds:
1. Set one crutch down.
2. Pick up the plate.
3. Reach as far towards the table as you can and set the plate down on an available horizontal surface.
4. Grab the crutch again.  Move a couple feet towards the table.
5. Repeat the above steps until you reach the table.
6. Set the plate on the table.
7. If at any point along the way there is a gap of more than your arms' reach between available horizontal surfaces, you're SOL.  Game over, you lose.

There HAS to be a better way.  I have a couple of ideas in mind, and we're not too terribly far from Dean Kamen's company whose name escapes me (yes, Dean Kamen of the iBot and the Segway).  I'd like to get an opportunity to meet with him sometime and discuss my ideas, because I figure he's the most likely person to actually design and build what I have in mind.

This is ... disturbing.

Greenpeace reports that not only has the US Government never abandoned the idea that there's such a thing as a winnable nuclear war, but that the Bush administration has actually dramatically lowered the nuclear threshold, and is arguing internally over whether you actually need to do things like, say, warning allied troops in the area that a nuclear attack is imminent.  They obtained a copy of a document from a Pentagon website (now removed) which discusses the use of nuclear weapons as just another tool in the toolbox, and which condones the use of nuclear weapons in pre-emptive first strikes against nations, even non-nuclear nations, which the US government thinks might use chemical or biological weapons against US forces or allies.

Think about that for a moment.  Had this policy been in place only a couple of years ago, Baghdad, Tikrit, Mosul, Basra, Fallujah might very well be glowing glass craters today.  I suspect you can imagine how universally reviled the US would be in world opinion had that happened.

I know, this is basically going to be old news to some of you.  I was already aware of it.  But I didn't know this document existed out on the Internet.

This document was removed from a Pentagon website in September of 2005 "because even in an unclassified world this is not the kind of thing you want flying around the Internet," according to a Pentagon Spokesman.

We believe this is exactly the kind of document which ought to "fly around the internet," and so present you the draft report complete with tracked changes.

Download the PDF here.

Bah, humbug.

I got pinged about a Solaris x86/Linux support contract with Sun in Burlington, MA.  I've never actually worked with Solaris x86; I know it's different, but not how much.  The Linux experience they want is RHEL4 and SuSE.

Problem:  This is not a job that pays well.  It's a fairly low-level support job.  The recruiter fed me some actual numbers, pre- and post-tax, W2; post-tax, I'd bring home about $737 per week.

With both of us working away from the house during the day, we'd need child care ten hours a day, five days a week.  We've been given to understand that for 2 to 3 kids, it's actually cheaper to have a nanny come into the home, and that's going to cost around $20 per hour.

Do the math... taking the job would put us about $260/week into the hole.  That is, of course, before deducting childcare expenses from taxable income; but even taking that childcare cost from pre-tax income and assuming it wipes out the taxable income from the job, I'd net $100 per week ... before commuting expenses.

 

Math is hard, so it's said, but not doing it can be harder.