briancarper.net (λ) (Tag: Hardware)

X automation with xte

Fri, 06 Aug 2010 13:03:01 -0700

I learned today (via a great blog post) about xte. This program lets you simulate X Windows mouse and keyboard events from the commandline. How much more awesome can you get?

Hans illustrates how to integrate xbindkeys and xte to make KDE4 effects activate. I wanted the KDE4 "Desktop Grid" to appear when I press a mouse button (because my new mouse has a lot of buttons to spare), so this is exactly what I was looking for.

xte is the kind of glue that makes Linux awesome. KDE lets you set global keyboard shortcuts for lots of things. xbindkeys lets you assign shell commands to mouse buttons. And xte ties the two together. Possibly none of the programmers on these three tools knew about the others, but they interact perfectly to let you do anything you want.

You may be thinking, "If you want to work with KDE from the commandline, why not use DBUS?" That's what I tried to do first. But I can't for the life of me figure it out. There's some indication that we might be able to do this somday, like so:

qdbus org.kde.kglobalaccel /component/kwin org.kde.kglobalaccel.Component.invokeShortcut ShowDesktopGrid

Or maybe it's already in the latest version of KDE and I haven't upgraded yet. Either way.

By the way: could DBUS possibly have a more verbose or cryptic interface? I was hunting through the available DBUS commands looking for something that would show the Desktop Grid, and I ended up having to scan through lists of crap like this:

~ % qdbus org.kde.kwin /KWin                         
method Q_NOREPLY void org.kde.KWin.cascadeDesktop()
method void org.kde.KWin.circulateDesktopApplications()
method bool org.kde.KWin.compositingActive()
signal void org.kde.KWin.compositingToggled(bool active)
method int org.kde.KWin.currentDesktop()
method QList<int> org.kde.KWin.decorationSupportedColors()
method void org.kde.KWin.doNotManage(QString name)
method Q_NOREPLY void org.kde.KWin.killWindow()
method QStringList org.kde.KWin.listOfEffects()
method void org.kde.KWin.loadEffect(QString name)
method QStringList org.kde.KWin.loadedEffects()
method void org.kde.KWin.nextDesktop()
method void org.kde.KWin.previousDesktop()
method Q_NOREPLY void org.kde.KWin.reconfigure()
method void org.kde.KWin.reconfigureEffect(QString name)
method void org.kde.KWin.refresh()
signal void org.kde.KWin.reinitCompositing()
signal void org.kde.KWin.reloadConfig()
method bool org.kde.KWin.setCurrentDesktop(int desktop)
method void org.kde.KWin.showWindowMenuAt(qlonglong winId, int x, int y)
method Q_NOREPLY void org.kde.KWin.toggleCompositing()
method void org.kde.KWin.toggleEffect(QString name)
method Q_NOREPLY void org.kde.KWin.unclutterDesktop()
method void org.kde.KWin.unloadEffect(QString name)
method bool org.kde.KWin.waitForCompositingSetup()
method QDBusVariant org.freedesktop.DBus.Properties.Get(QString interface_name, QString property_name)
method QVariantMap org.freedesktop.DBus.Properties.GetAll(QString interface_name)
method void org.freedesktop.DBus.Properties.Set(QString interface_name, QString property_name, QDBusVariant value)
method QString org.freedesktop.DBus.Introspectable.Introspect()

This is line noise to me.

Dell: the aftermath

Thu, 08 Jul 2010 11:11:28 -0700

In a previous post I outlined the ways in which Dell's customer service sucks. I finally got my computer yesterday, a Studio XPS 9000. Here are my first impressions.

The bad

This computer weighs so much I almost hurt my back lifting it. I thought computers were supposed to be getting smaller and lighter?
The HD indicator light is tiny and on the top of the case. I can't see it with my computer under my desk.

The optical drive is behind one of those stupid plastic flap door things. So there isn't even an indicator light for the DVD drive. I'm seriously considering taking a screwdriver the case to fix this.
It didn't come with a Windows install disk or a driver disk. It only has a recovery partition on the HD.

I found an order form which I think will get me my disks. In the mail. Seriously, Dell? Seriously? Why not come to my house and kick me in the balls while you're at it?

The recovery partition doesn't help you worth a crap if you want to do things like repartition your drive to put Linux on it. Windows7's sucky partition shrinking app wouldn't shrink it lower than 500GB.
The Dell recovery program is called DataSafe or something, and when you use it, it tries to upsell you like crazy to get a "pro" version that has a bunch of useless backup features. Uggggghhhhh.
The side of the case is white. In 10 years it's either going to be yellow with age, or scuffed up beyond hope. Kind of ugly, but I don't care much. The front of the case looks OK though. Black with red highlights. About as good as I could expect.
It came pre-installed with some crappy "Dell Dock" knockoff of Apple's Dock. Worthless and instantly uninstalled.

This thing caused the desktop icons to be hidden by default. Who would possibly want to do this in Windows? I can image everyone and their grandmother being awfully confused by the missing icons.

When quitting this dock, it said "Undo is not possible". I love a program that has no going back once you quit.
I wanted to find drivers for the wireless card that came with the Dell. So I went to Dell's support site and typed in the tag number on my computer. It gave me a link to drivers for the wrong card. I had to google all over the place to find the right ones. Way to go.

Dell's website is a labyrinth full of outdated information and dead pages in general.
The instructions I got with the computer reference Vista. I don't have Vista.
There's a "Windows inside" logo on the case. It will be removed shortly. They leave an awful lot of glue behind.

The good?

The i7 is about as fast as I had hoped. It only took a half-dozen cores and 12 GB of RAM to let me watch full-screen flash videos on Youtube. I feel so modern.
The inside of the case is OK. There are a lot of hard drive bays and lots of extra screws. It should be easy to expand if I need to.
It came with bloatware and crapware, but actually far less than I was dreading. And most of it was trying to sell you Dell crap.

In the olden days you'd get a hundred links to AOL and other 3rd-party crap. I saw a link to Skype and the obligatory nag to buy an anti-virus subscription (fat chance), but not much else.
Dell delivered the computer 2 days past the original estimated delivery date. So in spite of all the bullcrap and phone-jockeying I had to go through for billing, I can't complain about how fast it got here. Two days late isn't bad.

I've heard rumors that these computers are built in Malaysia, and mine was definitely shipped from the US (per the Purolator tracking site). So I'm surprised they can get these things delivered as fast as they can given that it was shipped halfway around the world first, and had to go through Customs at least once coming from the US to Canada.

Purolator was the only shipping option for Canada. I would've preferred to rush it. But maybe that's not possible given that it's coming from the US. Oh well.
It runs pretty quiet, given how huge the fans are. We'll see how hot it gets once I start putting some load on it.
It came with a DVI to VGA adapater and a DVI to HDMI adapter. I thought that was a nice touch, though it could be that they come standard with any nVidia card nowadays.
Works OK with Linux. It took 20 minutes to set up. (Not counting wiping the Windows partition and re-installing on a smaller partition from my own copy, minus the crapware. That took over an hour.) Sound, video and wireless work out of the box in Linux. All 12 GB of RAM are usable, given a 64 bit OS. (I discovered this the fun way, by unthinkingly trying a 32 bit OS first.)
It didn't burst into flames (yet).
It has a peanut tray on the top. Or MP3-player tray, I guess. But I really want to put peanuts in there.

Brian, you're stupid!

So why did I get a Dell? Because I had good experience with them in the past, at home and at work. Given, that experience was 5 years in the past, and a lot can change. And I'm new to Canada, and relatively unaware of what options exist here.

The other (main) reason was that they were far, far cheaper than going through newegg.ca to get the same hardware. But I guess you get what you pay for. Caveat emptor.

I wouldn't recommend Dell to anyone else, given how chaotic the whole buying process was. Too much uncertainty, too much room for mistakes.

Dave asked in my previous post why I didn't just a computer myself, like I had in the past. I said I didn't have time, but what I meant wasn't build time, which should be an hour or two max. I meant research time. Trying to match up compatible hardware, trying to find the best prices on all the components, checking for Linux compatibility, this takes forever and a half. I don't have hours / days to dork around with this any more.

On the other hand I can just google "xps 9000 linux" and see instantly what problems people had. I can be semi-confident that the hardware would all be compatible. And that did work out OK.

And the last reason I got Dell is that unfortunately I need Windows for work and gaming. Blarg. Paying the Windows tax to Dell is bad enough, let alone buying one off the shelf for $6,000 or however much they cost nowadays.

Dell sucks

Fri, 02 Jul 2010 10:57:41 -0700

Why did I order a computer from Dell? I guess I had a good opinion from 6 years ago when I last bought something from them.

Let's count the ways in which their customer service has failed me. (And my computer isn't even here yet.)

As documented, their website couldn't process my credit card without a phone call.
After a week of my computer being "in production", I started getting more phone calls from an unidentified phone number that Google told me was Dell. Fearing another billing problem, I called back. And I was told "Thanks for calling, but our order tracking system is down. And we're all going home. Call back tomorrow morning.".

If only Dell had some means to acquire reliable computer systems on which to build their order tracking database.
I called the next day and was told my order was fine. I was also told (per script, I'm certain) that I could check my order status on Dell's website. Which of course I knew. I know it costs the company money every time someone calls, and they try to strongly discourage calls for that reason, but their script made it sound like I was an imbecile.

I found it quite condescending. I dislike these canned scripts pander to the lowest common denominator of customer. They should be happy to take my call. I just spend upwards of a thousand dollars on their crap.
Turns out the phone calls I was getting were from someone trying to give me "free internet from Shaw or Telus for 3 months", and I was eligible because I bought a Dell computer. So I was being telemarketed before my computer even got here.

I said I already had internet service, and they said "Oh, too bad, it's for new customers only." I do not appreciate this.
I got an email saying my order shipped. Joy! 20 minutes later I got an email saying my order was delayed, and if it didn't ship in 5 days I should call. What?

It really did ship though, I have a tracking number. Why the contradictory emails?

All of my phone dealings with Dell were via some offshored far-eastern country, judging by the accents of the phone reps. I have nothing against this in principle; I'm not a xenophobe. But the phone connection is always so static-filled and laggy that it really puts a damper on communication.

My computer isn't here yet, and I just hope to God it works and doesn't break in a month. I kind of wish this article had come out a week earlier.

That'll teach me for trying to save time, I guess. Next time I'll build my own system from scratch. Dell goes onto my List of Companies Not to Buy From in the Future (LCNBFF), along with Westinghouse and oh so many others.

DD-WRT: 1, Microsoft: 0

Tue, 20 Apr 2010 14:32:25 -0700

An xbox360 wireless card is $100, and it's theoretically the only wireless card that works with an xbox, so if you want wireless internet, you have to buy that card. I guess the idea is to sell the console cheap (for sufficiently large values of "cheap") and then gouge customers on proprietary cables and addons afterward. Microsoft isn't the only company that does this, by far. (Not nearly as bad as $20 for 8MB worth of PS2 memory card. Ughhhh.)

Fortunately, if you have a spare Linksys router lying around (as I do) you can throw DD-WRT on it, put it into Client Mode, connect your xbox to the router via a bit of ethernet cable, and there you go. I can also plug my aging desktop machine (sans wireless card) into the same router, and two other devices if I can find any.

Installing DD-WRT was surprisingly straightforward if you take the time to read through the wiki instructions first very carefully. A bit of healthy paranoia of turning your hardware into a brick goes a long way.

15 minutes, $100+ savings. Thanks again, Linux and open-source community.

Crackberry Acquired

Thu, 07 May 2009 18:26:26 -0700

All I ever wanted out of life was to SSH to my computer from a cell phone. That dream has finally come true.

Up to this point I have not owned a cell phone. I bought one a few years back, then I returned it and got a refund because it was pointless. Communicating with other human beings via spoken voice? How trite. My current employer gave me a phone for free but I never used it.

But nowadays cell phones are pretty much mini computers that happen to be able to make phone calls as a side effect. I almost got an iPhone, but I am very wary about hype. Apple's business practices turn me off; the app store is a shystering waiting to happen, their crappy proprietariness makes me puke, their overblown marketing and "image" makes me puke even more. I don't want an MP3 player in my phone; my Cowon D2 is far superior to any silly iPod. And as I tried the touch screen keyboard, I quickly realized that the Blackberry's physical keys win in that category by a mile.

So I got a Blackberry Bold and I'm pretty happy with it so far. I have yet to make a single phone call, but I've put it to good use. I installed all kinds of silly stuff on there, including an SSH client so I can do system maintenance while driving. (Not really, don't worry.) I can look at Google maps when I get lost, which happens embarrassingly often in my car. I can look at Slashdot from the sushi restaurant. I can get the weather updated every 15 minutes, which saves me from rotating my head 25 degrees and looking out the window.

I still object to certain cell phone things on principle. Paying $3 for a 15-second song clip as a ring tone for example; the insanity of this is almost physically painful to me. The Blackberry let me set any old MP3 I wanted as the ring tone though, which is nice.

Paying for text messages is almost as painful. How can it cost a quarter to send 160 bytes of text to another phone, when the whole freaking internet costs orders of magnitude less? How do cell phone companies get away with this? It's such a racket. But I can put IM clients on my phone and use email and I have "unlimited" data transfer each month, so that's nice. (And I really grilled the salesperson about what "unlimited" means. She said some people go into the gigabytes of transfer each month without consequence, so it looks like I need to find a torrent client now!)

Maybe one of these days I'll call someone. What a novel concept.

Unicomp Customizer keyboard review

Thu, 16 Apr 2009 19:52:39 -0700

I got my Unicomp Customizer 105 in the mail today. This is a keyboard using the same technology as the infamous IBM keyboards of yore.

Why?

The Customizer is an enormous blocky hunk of hard black and grey matte plastic. It is the very antithesis of modern, soft, rounded, Apple-esque fashion. It has no "multimedia" keys, it doesn't glow in the dark, it doesn't have a built-in USB hub, it looks distinctly 80's-ish, and it costs $70. Why on earth would anyone want this thing?

A couple of reasons... one is that it's a status symbol of grizzled old hackers. This keyboard has gotten a lot of good reviews, e.g. last year on Slashdot, but I've heard the sentiment repeated elsewhere. There are stories of people rescuing old IBM keyboards out of dumpsters and selling them on ebay.

If it was simply a status symbol I would look away without a second glance. (Which is why I own a Cowon D2 and not an iPod. I like to research my purchases to the point of paranoia.)

But the popularity seems to be backed up by real functionality and build quality. These keyboards have a reputation for being great to type on due to the unique feel of their buckling spring "clicky" keys, and for being indestructible, with some keyboards still in use after two decades. So I decided why not see for myself?

A keyboard is the main tool of my livelihood and one of the main tools of most of my hobbies. It makes sense to try to get the best tool for the job. The three most important parts of a computer in my opinion are the keyboard, mouse, and monitor. CPU? RAM? Hard disk space? I'll take whatever you give me. But the things I interact with on a constant basis, I want those things to be comfortable.

Clicka clicka clicka

Yeah, this thing is clicky. Even after all the reviews, I was unprepared for just how clicky it is. You can feel the click of each keypress in your fingers and hear the clicking from 3 miles away.

I tried pushing a key down slowly to make it click without activating a keypress, and I found it very difficult if not impossible. You can always tell when you've successfully pressed a key on this keyboard: if it clicked, you did; if it didn't click, you didn't.

One bad thing about the clicking is annoying everyone in the room with you. I'm a bit worried I'm slowly going to drive my wife insane.

Finger workout

The keys have a lot of weight to them compared to the mushy feel of modern keyboards (which usually use some rubber or plastic dome under the keys). The Customizer's keys have little springs in them, and you can feel the keys pushing back on your fingers as you type. It feels much different than any other keyboard I've used.

Is it a good or bad feel? I'm undecided. It does feel pretty good, there's a lot of response to the keyboard and you can more easily tell when you miss a key or flub a keypress and hit two keys at once. I think this probably aids accuracy. I don't type more accurately but I more easily notice my mistakes.

I'm afraid the weight might lead to fatigue though; the keys are harder to press than other keyboards and my hands feel like they're getting a workout in comparison. However I've had a few long nights of typing on this keyboard and haven't noticed any more fatigue than usual, so the worry may be unfounded. On the other hand, I do often notice how annoying it is to type on a laptop which has no resistance and no distance to the keys at all. The resistance in this keyboard is a nice change of pace.

Built well?

I think "indestructible" is probably an apt word. I've only had mine for a couple days, but just hefting the thing, you can tell it's built like a tank. Very thick hard plastic all around. It weighs a ton. If I had to choose a keyboard to use as a weapon in a pinch, I'd grab this one immediately.

The keys come off easily; every key is just a cap over a smaller plastic key beneath, and that cap is a simple piece atop a tube with a spring in it. There isn't a lot of room for mechanical failure here unless you lose the springs. Everything comes off and goes back on very easily, which is nice for when I need to clean out the gunk in a year.

I have heard that if you spill a cup of milk into one of these keyboards, you may find it hard to drain. So don't do that.

Lack of features is a feature

Multimedia keys suck. I've never used them. They waste space and the only time I remember they exist is when I push them accidentally.

The Customizer is very "traditional". There are no multimedia keys, no volume controls, no programmable (i.e. useless) macro keys, no email or internet shortcuts. Just the standard 105 keys. This is a plus in my book.

Caps Lock is slightly shortened with a gap between itself and the A key, which is nice to avoid hitting it accidentally. The version of the keyboard I got has a modern Super ("windows") modifier key, but you can get a version without even that, if you like. Otherwise there are no frills.

Speed typing

I took a couple of silly online typing tests, and I got between 75 and 95 WPM with 98% accuracy, which is as good as I've ever gotten. My six-fingered typing style is a bit odd but this keyboard suits me well.

WPM is a terrible measure of programming speed, because programming has a much higher punctuation-to-letter ratio than English prose. So I also tried an Emacs session and a bunch of Vimming, and I experienced no problems. I forgot I was using this keyboard almost immediately, which is a good thing. It means it wasn't annoying me.

Very important to me, as a Vimmer, is the position and size of the Escape key. I have one other keyboard that has Escape offset to the right a half inch, which is horrendous and messes up my Vimming all the time. My other other keyboard has a tiny little Escape key, half as big as a normal key, which is equally bad.

On the Customizer, Escape is positioned off by itself in the corner as it should be, with a ton of space between itself and the number row, and the Escape key itself is freaking enormous. This is a huge plus in my book. You can't miss Escape on this keyboard.

Similarly, all the other keys are the right sizes and in the right places.

Verdict

So how is the Unicomp Customizer?

It's solid, standard, unique, and has a nice retro, minimalist style that I personally enjoy.

It's also huge, loud, and expensive. Is it worth buying? If you have the money to spend, I think it is. I don't regret the buy after a few days. When I come home from work and start typing on this guy, I'm always pleasantly surprised.

A Sad, Dark Day

Mon, 13 Apr 2009 01:27:12 -0700

Today was a terrible day. I found myself subconsciously trying to use Emacs keystrokes in Vim. I feel dirty. I took a bath but it won't come clean. : (

It just goes to show that you can get used to anything if you do it often enough. Emacs still drives me up the wall but maybe I've achieved a critical mass of enough custom keybindings to let me tolerate it.

Aside from paredit, which has no equal even in Vim, Emacs does have some vaguely non-sucky features. hi-lock is pretty nice (Vim has an equivalent of course). Once I learned a few of the shortcuts for git-emacs I actually found myself using Git much more effectively. Having to drop into a shell to type Git commands is just enough of a disruption to prevent me from doing it often enough. I never got the hang of any version control library in Vim.

I'm almost even getting used to the Emacs buffer model. I find myself C-x bing and flipping back and forth between buffers by name, rather than my Vim practice of opening buffers in certain carefully-placed windows and leaving them there.

On the subject of typing, I broke down finally and ordered a Unicomp Customizer 104 keyboard. I've heard too many hackers say that the old IBM clicky keyboards are good for typing. It should arrive Tuesday, and I'm a lot more excited than anyone should be over a keyboard.

Expect a keyboard review. Try to contain your excitement until then. I know it'll be hard.

My Poor Headphones

Thu, 02 Apr 2009 11:45:01 -0700

My precious Grado SR-80's needed some emergency surgery a while back, resulting in this disaster. They still work today, in the sense that sound is still emitted from them, but in terms of aesthetics, the situation has rapidly deteriorated. I've got bare wire and sticky electrical tape hanging all over the place. Also I'm probably one good yank away from snapping the wires off again.

If anyone reading this has a good tutorial or information on re-wiring a set of headphones, it'd be appreciated. I've never soldered anything in my life. I don't know where to acquire the wires; I imagine any wire will do, but I'm clueless when it comes to such things. I think I might like to do something like this mod and run the wire up over the top, to prevent the inevitable twisting from destroying the wires in the future, but I'm uncertain I could pull it off without complete destruction.

(At least I know enough about these things to cringe when people start talking about the "performance" of their headphone wires. $400 for a hunk of wire? Wow.)

I can't figure out my phone

Mon, 16 Feb 2009 12:36:40 -0800

Bjarne Stroustrup said:

I have always wished for my computer to be as easy to use as my telephone; my wish has come true because I can no longer figure out how to use my telephone.

I have to agree. My phone at work is indecipherable. What do these buttons do?

PROG
Call Park
DND
VM Transfer
AUTO
DND/CF
EXT
FLASH
Some kind of little squiggle

To the best of my knowledge, there are only so many things you can DO with a phone. It rings, and then you pick it up and talk. Or it rings, you don't pick it up and it goes to voicemail. There are also HOLD and CONF (conference call?) buttons which I never use, but I'll allow that they can be useful. But the rest of those? In my wildest imaginings I can't fathom what they might do.

The phone also has a bunch of lights all over it. Sometimes they light up one color, sometimes another. Sometimes they blink and sometimes they light up steadily. There must be some kind of pattern to them but I don't know it. When lights start lighting up I start pressing buttons and talking to the empty room like a madman, and when someone talks back to me or the lights go out (whichever comes first) I consider that a victory.

What pioneer came up with hidden voicemail options? I call my voicemail, it tells me "To listen to messages, press 1, to do blah blabbity blah, press 2", etc. But there's a HIDDEN OPTION 0 to configure the voicemail, which the disembodied phone demon never tells me about. Why is this knowledge hidden? Is it too powerful for the average phone-user? Do you have to prove yourself worthy of the knowledge first?

I'd like to read a manual for the phone, but I don't think a manual exists. No one knows how the phones work at my job. What knowledge actually exists is sort of spread around via word-of-mouth, like the tribal history of some primitive civilization passed down from generation to generation by village elders telling stories around a campfire.

Is this what people who aren't good at computers feel like when they sit down at a keyboard? Do they look at a screen and see a bunch of meaningless squares and colors and words, where I see buttons and menus and useful GUI widgets?

Stylus DIY, hand health

Sun, 01 Feb 2009 14:39:52 -0800

The stylus that comes with a Nintendo DS is a very mild form of hand torture. Not sure whose hands those were designed for, but not mine. In googling for a good replacement, I chanced upon a blog post which suggests finding a nice big ballpoint pen and jamming a DS stylus inside so just the tip sticks out. This works amazingly well. It's not as portable, but I will make that sacrifice to prevent being crippled.

I am in fact always a bit worried about preserving the health of my hands. I have no hard data to support this, but I suspect my generation may have major hand-related problems in the coming decades. What with computer keyboards and tiny cell-phone and PDA keys and lots of other techy things. Many of us use our hands to communicate almost as much as our voices. Until we have Star Trek voice-recognition software, this will be a problem.

I started experiencing a lot of aches and pains in my hands and wrists a decade or so ago, and I attributed it to computer use. Since I started paying more attention, things are better. I maintain a very comfortable typing position for my hands. I have a nice big comfortable mouse. And so on. My hands don't hurt any longer nowadays, which is nice. If I become unable to type someday, I'm completely screwed. How can I work as a programmer if I can't input text into a computer? And I won't be able to draw or do origami or play video games or do many other things I enjoy.

Cowon D2 = awesome MP3 player

Tue, 13 Jan 2009 18:33:15 -0800

I finally broke down and replaced my crusty old Creative Muvo². Like any self-respecting geek, I agonized over which to buy. I settled on a Cowon D2.

I did tons and tons of research before settling on this. I knew exactly what I was looking for and the D2 met my requirements almost to the letter. So maybe I can save you some time and effort if you share my tastes. My requirements, which the D2 satisfies:

16 GB flash memory. More importantly, expandable via SD / SDHC cards. This means this thing is going to last me a good long time. 8GB of flash memory is $20 or less nowadays, and there are already 32GB cards though they're crazy expensive. The price is going to drop fast though, giving me almost unlimited storage space.
Shows up as a simple FAT partition. This is essential for me. (Also supports MTP, if you can stomach it.) Music transfer via Devices in Amarok 1.4 works just fine.
Folder browsing or ID3 tag browsing. I obsessively tag my music, so I like that way.
Supports non-Latin alphabet filenames and tags. Most of my music is Japanese, so this is also essential for me. Cowon is a Korean company anyways, so they've got this down. The interface itself can be switched to many different languages, which is nice.
Audio codec support: MP3, FLAC, OGG, WAV, WMA, APE. You can't beat that. All I needed was MP3, OGG and FLAC, but the others are a nice bonus.
52 hours of battery life for music, optimally. You'll never hit this in real life, but you're still likely to get almost two days worth of playtime. Comes with an A/C adapter, charges in 3.5 hours. Can also be charged via USB, of course. (The USB connector is a standard cable, no proprietary garbage, which is also nice.)
Displays album art, including embedded art in MP3 tags.
FM radio.

The only one of my requirements the D2 didn't meet was to have a replaceable battery. From what I've read of people who disassembled this thing, the battery is screwy and may be difficult to replace, but I'm not too worried.

The D2 does lots of other things I don't care about, like playing movies and displaying pictures and text files and Flash, and it has a scientific calculator and displays the time and so on. All I wanted this for was to play music, and it does that amazingly well.

The sound quality on the D2 is noticeably better than my old Muvo. It sounds very good. There are a lot of equalizer settings, bass boost, and a bunch of things I don't understand. I turned them all on, and everything sounds awesome. I can turn this thing up VERY loud (ear-shatteringly loud) before getting any distortion. With my Grado SR80's, music on the D2 sounds as good as or better than the sound card in my computer.

The touch-screen interface is good enough for me. I'm not thrilled by such things and I'm smart enough to adapt to any usable interface; "user-friendliness" was not on my list of priorities. I'd rather have power than simplicity, and this gives me the power I want.

This player is like the KDE of MP3 players; there are options for almost everything you can think of. The interface is crammed full of information but the stylus works well to get through it. If you like a dumbed-down minimalist iPod click-wheel kind of interface, the D2 isn't for you. The D2 also has three hardware buttons, two for volume and one for menu, and their function can be customized.

All of this for $175 from amazon.com. This is a very good time to buy a D2, because the next generation of Cowon players is right around the corner. The D2 is likely to be discontinued in favor of fancier, flashier, more expensive but less awesome players. I couldn't let this pass.

AnythingButIpod has a good review of this player including videos.

Please die already

Sat, 13 Dec 2008 23:19:36 -0800

My one and only MP3 player is (still) a Creative Muvo². Complete with all of the state-of-the-art technologies you'd expect in an MP3 player:

4 GB hard drive. They don't make them like this any more.
A microscopic two-line black-on-greenish-grey monochrome display. It takes so long for song titles to scroll across that the backlight goes out before I can read them.
Two buttons. Play, and a sort of primitive swivel thing for everything else.
2 cm. thickness, so you never have to worry about losing it. You can't miss it. (By comparison, an iPod Nano is 6.2 mm.)
Cheap plastic exterior. Mine has all the corners cracked off.
Inability to display foreign-language ID3 tags. My Japanese song titles show up in some mixture of Chinese and Korean characters.
All for a low low 2004 price of $250.

Well, it's old. I want a new one. But similarly to my darned Grado headphones, this thing simply won't die and I can't justify buying a new one while this one works.

It's been dropped from great heights onto hard concrete, had heavy objects slammed on top of it, had cell phone power chargers plugged into the USB data port, had the filesystem all but corrupted by unproperly unmounting it from Linux, but nearly four years later it just keeps going. It has a HARD DRIVE in it. You'd think just wearing the thing while jogging for years (which I have done) and banging it around on the front seat of my car to and from work every day (which I have also done) would wear it out. But no.

I don't want to just break the thing outright. So I'm subtly trying to mishandle it in more and more extreme ways, to maybe coax it into giving up the ghost. I sort of accidentally listened to it in the bathtub and splashed water all over it today (again), and now none of the buttons work and it keeps booting into recovery mode. Then I put it directly in front of a space heater for 15 minutes to dry it off. This is awesome, except that I tried the same thing before, and once it dried out it came back to life.

Next I'm going to pry it open with a screwdriver. But it's probably still going to work. I'm going to have this thing until I die. I'm going have to pass it on to future generations.

Crap... I fixed them

Mon, 06 Oct 2008 16:24:58 -0700

I couldn't give up on my precious Grado SR-80s. Turns out the cable was only broken in three places; nothing a couple hours and a lot of electrical tape couldn't fix. Now I can't justify buying a replacement.

They really do sound amazing. If only they weren't so fragile and difficult to transport. And ugly, for that matter.

Grado Labs SR-80: RIP

Sun, 05 Oct 2008 23:00:46 -0700

My precious Grado SR-80 headphones died today. :( I hardly new thee.

This picture may not be suitable for small children or those with a heart condition:

These headphones sounded really great, best I've ever owned. They should, for how much they cost. But they were designed so so so poorly. The cups can rotate 360 degrees, which means no matter how well you take care of them, the cables from the cups to the Y-splitter will get twisted. Once I realized this I electrical-taped the cables together to avoid some of the twisting, but it didn't help. No matter how carefully I wrapped the cords up and stored them in my briefcase, 10 minutes later I'd pull them out and they'd look like a tornado hit.

Today I plugged them in and the left cup was sputtering and hissing in its death rattle. I immediately put the headphones on life support and performed emergency surgery, but the left wire snapped in my hands. You can only twist copper so many times before it gives. What followed was a good 45 minutes of hacking away at the plastic Y-splitter to get to the wires. But it was no good. I think something broke in the cup too, and that thing is impossible to get apart no matter how much force I applied. I tried heating it up to melt the glue but that didn't work either. I made it hot enough that the working parts are probably a puddle in there.

I'm almost glad this DIDN'T work, because then I'd be wearing that mess on my head for another year. Now at least I can justify possibly buying a replacement.

I absolutely need music while writing code. Depending on my mood, either angry German music or cheerful Japanese music. Foreign-language music seems to be just the right mix of brain-stimulation without the distraction of needing to pay attention to the lyrics. So yeah, I'm now in dire need a of replacement. I have backups but they're the in-ear bud sort and aren't the comfiest thing for an 8-hour session. Plus they cancel noise too well and I can't hear my boss talking to me.

It took me MONTHS of research to find these, but I can't justify buying another set after these broke in a few short years of heavy daily use. I need something sturdy and comfy that sounds really good. I need good bass in particular. Back to the drawing board I guess.

EDIT: Crap, I fixed them. :(

Westingouse: Victory

Sat, 04 Oct 2008 15:51:33 -0700

It only took seven months, a report to the BBB, 30 phone calls, a half dozen emails, and threats of reporting Westinghouse to the FTC and CA Attorney General, but they finally sent me back my monitor. It's the one on the right there (with the very slightly crappier picture quality).

I must say, 3840x1200 resolution is pretty much a dream come true. I can have Firefox and Vim/Emacs open and nice and big, and still have room for lots of terminals, and maybe even a file manager or two. Multiple that by eight virtual desktops.

As near I can tell, it appears to e a new unit, not refurbished. If it is refurbished, it's refurbished well enough that I can't tell one way or the other, which is fine. However I'm still expecting this one to die too. My first monitor died in such a way that it wouldn't power on at all. This one is running very very hot, which scares me. I give it 3 months tops.

It makes me sad every time another person posts to my blog that Westinghouse is giving them the same horrible treatment. But hang in there. Lessons learned:

Don't buy a crappy brand just because it's cheap. I saved $75 or $100 on this monitor compared to a better brand, but it cost me over seven months of anguish (and $25 in shipping fees to send it back to the factory, and I had to buy a replacement!) Cheap things are cheap for a reason: The company isn't paying anyone to support their customers, or it's cutting corners in the quality of the merchandise, or something similar. Is it worth the gamble?
Don't buy anything expensive online unless you have a very clear method of getting it replaced if it breaks. Manufacturer standard warranties are evil. Is the time savings of shopping online rather than going to the local big box electronics store really worth it, if you have to pack up and mail your stuff to Zimbabwe for seven months?
UPS sucks. Hey UPS, how about if you don't drop off $500 pieces of electronics on a random person's front porch without a signature next time? I hope whoever ended up with my first monitor is enjoying it. (Actually I hope they die in a fire.)

(Read the whole crappy story of Westinghouse's dishonesty and horrible customer service: The beginning, Update 1, Update 2, Update 3, Update 4, Update 5, Update 6, Update 7, Update 8, Update 9, VICTORY, aftermath.)

Westinghouse, the saga continues

Mon, 16 Jun 2008 23:56:52 -0700

Friday a guy on the phone said he'd call me back Monday or Tuesday to give me an update on when / whether they're ever going to send me my monitor. Monday came and went with no call. Not really surprising.

I filed a complaint with the BBB today. We'll see how that goes. At the BBB Westinghouse has around 150 complaints in the past 36 months, but 133 of them were supposedly solved "satisfactorily" and Westinghouse somehow still has the highest possible rating at the BBB. I've read some things about the BBB not being an entirely neutral entity itself, but who knows. I'll start filing complaints with other consumer groups if I need to.

A good handful of people have left comments here at my blog saying they aren't going to buy anything from Westinghouse themselves, which is great to hear. I may mention my blog to Westinghouse next time I call them, if there is a next time. Is not sending me the monitor I paid for really worth losing a bunch of customers?

The sad thing is that I really do need a monitor with component and composite inputs, and they are somewhat rare (the local store had none except Westingcrap brand). However I have found a Gateway model that has them, so maybe that'll work out. I'd gladly take a refund from Westinghouse rather than a monitor at this point.

Westinghouse still sucks

Tue, 10 Jun 2008 18:55:28 -0700

Way back in March I sent in my L2410NM monitor for RMA to Westinghouse. This is June and I don't have it back yet. Last I heard they sent my case to their corporate office. I called again this week, call #16 or 17, I lost count, and I was told that they put in a request for a "status update", but having heard any update on it. I'm always promised a return call, but I've yet to receive even one of those. As of now they've promised to send me a new monitor and have given up hope of ever recovering my legendary lost monitor, and supposedly they even created the order in their system that will initiate the monitor-sending process, complete with a long string of letters and numbers representing my fates.

I almost wish they would say "Ha ha, just kidding, screw you customer, you're not getting anything from us" so that I'd feel justified in filing a complaint with the BBB. But no, they keep the carrot dangling in front of my nose, inching closer and closer to resolving this issue. Likely I'm going to do so soon though. Not sure if it'll actually help anyways.

I've already ensured that my friends and family will never buy anything from them, nor will my place of employment, and hopefully some people reading this will also refrain. The real problem is, what company is any better? I keep a mental list of companies that have screwed me over, but that list is becoming so large that I'm running out of companies I can actually buy things from. I can at least prioritize according to the level of suckiness. Westinghouse tops the list at the moment.

Hello again, world

Sun, 04 May 2008 20:04:07 -0700

Computers are a love/hate thing for me. I love all things digital, but I desperately need to get away from it sometimes too. So I had a nice vacation away from my computer last week. I couldn't keep myself from reading some mailing lists and hitting Slashdot once a day, but I didn't write a single line of code and didn't give my websites or work projects or anything much thought.

But now my vacation is over, and it's so easy to fall back into old habits, endlessly looking at webcomics and reading articles about Common Lisp unit testing suites and cringing at the latest drama amongst Gentoo devs and minding my message board like a crusty old beat cop making his rounds. It's the life I've chosen, and I do like it, but I do like getting away sometimes too.

I fulfilled one of my dreams last week when I finally caved and ordered a solid glass mousepad. They're pretty cheap on newegg.com, depending on the color you want. I happened to want green, and it happened to be the cheapest, so all is well. It looks very nice, and it's big and hopefully the surface won't degrade over time; I tend to eat through mousepads via a slow yet inexorable process of erosion.

Unfortunately my laser mouse doesn't work on it. However, I have learned that if I upgrade my mouse's firmware, it will magically be able to work on a solid glass mousepad. Who would've thought my mouse had updateable firmware, let alone that updating the firmware would allow it to work on new surfaces? Not I.

The bad thing is that I need freaking Windows XP to upgrade the firmware on my mouse. I don't have any computer that has XP on it and I'm afraid to try anything in a virtual machine that involves something as dangerous as fiddling with the innards of connected peripherals. So I tried to install XP on my laptop, desperate times calling for desperate measures. But of course the install failed because my XP install CD is so old (pre-SP1, received free from my college 7 years ago) that it didn't recognize most of my hardware. In fact, the XP install CD blue-screened, which set a new record for how low Windows could sink in my opinion.

So I tried slipstreaming SP2 into my install CD. But it failed because, get this, the filenames of some drivers on the CD, namely usbehci.sys, ended up in lower case rather than uppercase and the CD's install program couldn't locate them. I kid you not. Since when is anything in Windows case-sensitive? Is it running Linux? I had to burn another CD after renaming all the files into uppercase. Then the CD worked, but it couldn't find my hard drive, probably due to missing SATA drivers. At that point I gave up, and plan to take my mouse to work tomorrow to upgrade the firmware on a work machine that has XP on it.

And so the score up to this point in my life is Windows: 947, Brian: 0. Windows remains undefeated.

Thanks go out to Logitech for not letting me use Vista (or, say, LINUX) to upgrade my mouse's firmware, and of course to Microsoft, for yet another gloriously broken and frustrating computing experience.

Westinghouse: the saga continues

Mon, 14 Apr 2008 15:31:08 -0700

I'm up to eight phone calls to Westinghouse now (about my RMA). (Previous Westinghouse enjoyment can be read here.) It's been almost a month, and no one seems to know where my monitor is, other than reassuring me that "they received it". I don't think I should be kept waiting in the dark this long.

When I first called today (call number 7), a fellow answered, then put me on hold for a while, then said "Please call back in 10 minutes, our computers aren't working!". This isn't what I like to hear from a supposed electronics company that's supposedly going to fix my huge complicated LCD monitor. When I called back in a half hour (call number 8) their computers apparently were working again, and they put me on hold for a while longer and then said essentially "Dunno. Call back tomorrow between nine and noon and we'll have more information for you." At this rate the number of calls I've made will hit double-digits by Friday.

I can now safely conclude that Westinghouse = suck. The next rank beyond "suck" is "shyster". I'm hesitantly confident they can achieve that lofty status, given their track record so far.

(P.S. it's still a Westinghouse L2410NM 24" LCD monitor.)

Westinghouse: Closer to sucking every day

Tue, 08 Apr 2008 23:36:13 -0700

After my monitor's sudden death, I sent it off to Westinghouse to get it fixed. Westinghouse got my monitor on March 20th. I called them last week to see how it was doing, but after a good 10+ minutes listening to hold music I hung up without ever having spoken to anyone. I called them back the next day in the morning and asked them if they got my monitor. The nice lady on the phone said that she couldn't tell me that unless I gave her the UPS tracking number I used when I sent it.

(As per my first entry on this subject, if I hadn't Googled extensively before I sent my monitor, I'd never have known to send it UPS to begin with. My first plan was to send it via US Postal Service. But I've read at least one website that indicates Westinghouse rejects shipments by the postal service; God only knows where it would've ended up then. Similar to Nate who recently commented on the above entry, Westinghouse claimed they emailed me RMA instructions, but I never got them and had to call back. They blamed my "spam filter" just like they apparently did for Nate. When I called back originally to get the RMA instructions, no one ever mentioned that I needed to use UPS.)

In any case, I dug up the UPS tracking number and called back Westinghouse yet again. That would be the sixth time I called Westinghouse about my monitor. The lady I spoke to this time wasn't so nice as the first, but she tried to be helpful. She confirmed that they did get my monitor, but could give me no update on its status. She said it "must be still in processing". I don't know what "processing" means, but I hope it means they're fixing it and not that it's sitting in a box in the back of a warehouse under a pile of mouse droppings. She also said she'd put in a "request for information" at the RMA department, and that someone will call me when there's an update, to let me know the monitor has been shipped back to me. If I actually get that phone call, honestly I will be pretty amazed.

So this makes four weeks without my monitor, three weeks of which I have solid proof that the monitor has been in the hands of Westinghouse. Even if they shipped it today, I won't get it for another week. For some reason I have this funny feeling that I'm going to get it back and it's either going to be still broken, or break again in another week or two.

Why couldn't they immediately send me a new or refurbished monitor of the same model to replace my broken one? Many companies do this. Instead I've been without a monitor for nearly a month now. I don't own a TV, so that monitor was my only interface to digital entertainment of any sort. This does not a satisfied customer make.

I'm already certainly never buying another Westinghouse product. In another week or so, Westinghouse will officially cross the threshhold into massive suck territory, if they haven't already. As I planned, googling for "Westinghouse RMA" now shows my blog on the first page of results. Having a blog does come in handy sometimes.

(P.S. it's a Westinghouse L2410NM 24" LCD monitor. Hi GoogleBot.)

Blah blah blah

Sat, 22 Mar 2008 09:25:47 -0700

My Westinghouse L2410NM LCD monitor arrived at Westinghouse's factory, according to UPS tracking, on Thursday at 10AM. Thus the clock starts. In one week I'll begin periodic phone calls to Westinghouse requesting updates on the status of my RMA. I know that every phone call you make to a call center costs the company money; it's in Westinghouse's best interests as well as my own to give me good information and satisfy my curiosity.
Yet another reason Vista sucks: trying to get VPN to work. Took me a week and the help of many people from my company's IT dept. before I even got close. The Control Panel UI philosophy of Vista seems to have been to take the XP Control Panel and scatter the options to the four winds; then build an insultingly dumbed-down GUI that has lots and lots of links to all those scattered pieces. Any kind of network configuration takes twice as long and twice as much navigation through a maze of windows and tabs and icons and links than it did in XP. And XP wasn't all that great to begin with.
My Ruby on Rails project for work is turning out well. Deploying Rails is a bit easier than the last time I had to do it over a year ago. Apache's mod_proxy + Mongrel makes things pretty easy. Getting it to work with SSL is also doable; as per these lengthy instructions you have to put
```
RequestHeader set X_FORWARDED_PROTO 'https'
```
in your Apache config (this line requires Apache's mod_headers).
Ruby on Ubuntu / Debian still sucks. I don't like how they break standard Ruby up into many parts and different packages. You kind of expect Ruby to come with rdoc and ri, not to have to install them separately.

Westinghouse: Do they suck?

Sat, 15 Mar 2008 19:27:28 -0700

Does Westinghouse suck? Time will tell. As I recently pined, my beloved 24" monitor died. Since then I've been going through the deeply unsettling process of getting it RMAed.

I've had to call Westinghouse three times already, just to get a number to write on the box before I mailed it to them (at my own expense). The first time I called them, the guy on the phone said I needed to troubleshoot it with him before he could do anything for me, even though I told him I'd already done all the troubleshooting myself. How much troubleshooting does it take to determine that the power light won't come on, and the monitor won't light up? I took it to three rooms in my house, tried different power cords, etc. I'm not an idiot, and I wouldn't send my monitor away in the mail if there was any chance I could get it working myself. But I was at work, and he was insistent that troubleshooting was necessary, so I had to call back later.

The second time I called, this time from home, the new guy on the phone didn't actually bother having me do any troubleshooting, he just took my word that it was broken after I explained the problem, and put me on hold while he tried to set up an RMA for me. (I saw that one coming from a mile away.)

Apparently the RMA department wasn't available at that time, and the gentleman said someone would email me the RMA number in a day or two once it was set up. Note: This gentleman was the most depressed-sounding person I've ever spoken to. Having worked at a call center myself for a few months, I understand totally.

Two days passed with no emails, so I called for a third time, and had them give me the RMA number and some instructions for sending it back. Then I did some web searches just in case the instructions were wrong. I did read that Westinghouse only accepts UPS, not US mail, which the lady on the phone failed to mention. Correct or not, I went with UPS just to be safe.

(One good thing I can say about Westinghouse phone support is that they all spoke fluent English, and they were all friendly and helpful. I know firsthand that poor tech support is often the fault of management, who set ridiculous standards (e.g. mandatory troubleshooting) and demand that their CSRs read scripts rather than use their brains, and actually punish workers who value customer service more than getting through X calls per minute. Whether Westinghouse does this or not I don't know, but it's been common in my experience and my three calls lead me to believe it's likely the case here. But becoming angry with the people on the phones is counter-productive and is only hurting people who are already working one of the worst jobs imaginable.)

So in any case today I sent my monitor off to California (at my own expense). I wrote down the serial number from the bar code on the monitor so I'll know if I get the same one back or not. Then I wrote the RMA number on every side of the box, then wrapped the box in brown mailing paper, then wrote the RMA number on every side of the outside again. I put multiple copies of all my contact info and my receipt in the box, and taped a copy of each directly to the monitor just in case.

Yet I can't shake this feeling that I'm never going to get a working monitor back again. I hope Westinghouse proves me wrong. Google around for "Westinghouse RMA" and you'll see nothing but horror stories. This may not indicate a problem; people who rant about customer service self-select themselves, so all you hear are the bad stories, never the good. Nevertheless I'm worried. I'm tracking the package by UPS. It should be there Thursday; then the clock starts.

One good thing about having a website is that if anyone happens to search for Westinghouse L2410NM LCD monitor purchased from newegg.com, they may eventually read this post (and the many, many other posts I'm going to make on this topic until I get a working monitor back.) Whether this story has a happy ending or not is up to Westinghouse.

When good hardware goes bad

Mon, 10 Mar 2008 17:28:34 -0700

"Goes bad" meaning "breaks". My beloved 22" monitor has died on me. I've gone from 1920x1200 pixels of widescreen goodness to an old 1024x768 CRT that they were going to throw in the trash at work.

The good thing is that now I can see for sure whether all of my web sites look OK in 1024x768 resolution. The bad thing is EVERYTHING ELSE. Oh god it burns. I can feel a headache coming on from squinting. Already I miss having 3 terminal windows right beside my Gvim. My conky display runs 2 feet off the bottom of my screen. Short of my HD exploding and losing all my files, this is my worst nightmare.

I'm debating whether I should format my laptop and dual-boot some Linux distro on there or something. Vista is such a dog. The only time I touch Vista is when I have to do something for work or when I want to play a game, which is very seldom, and I feel so unclean afterwards.

(Read the entire Westinghouse saga, if you dare: The beginning, Update 1, Update 2, Update 3, Update 4, Update 5, Update 6, Update 7, Update 8, Update 9, VICTORY, aftermath.)

Pain

Tue, 19 Feb 2008 21:52:15 -0800

My computer sounds like it's dying. Or at least in severe pain. I've narrowed down the sound to the CPU fan, which obviously isn't a good thing. Every once in a while it starts grinding. It actually sounds like it's screaming "NOOOOOOOOOOoooooooooo" at five-second intervals. It's very disturbing and it gave me a bit of a headache all of last weekend. Today I pried the heck out of the fan with a screwdriver and now it's a bit quieter for the time being.

My CPU temperature stays around 36 Celcius at idle and never higher than 52 Celcius while compiling a big package so I think the fan is actually functioning fine. But I'm still waiting for the day when I come home from work and find a smoldering puddle of metal where my CPU used to be. I'm almost hoping it happens, so I have an excuse to buy a faster CPU. I got my AMD 64 X2 3800 last summer and already it's pretty much a dinosaur.

Expert hardware reviews: worthless?

Wed, 07 Nov 2007 23:20:12 -0800

Today I got this Westinghouse L2410NM monitor delivered by UPS. It's insanely nice. 1920x1200 resolution, 24 inches. It was only $400 from newegg, or $350 if you mail away your soul for a rebate.

On one hand, the internet is invaluable when buying something. I can't imagine what people did in the olden days. Wander into a store and pick something off the shelf and buy it blind? Perish the thought. Nowadays I read hundreds of reviews written by people who already bought what I want to buy, before I even consider getting it.

On the other hand, having too much information can be a double-edged sword.

This monitor got overwhelmingly positive reviews on newegg. People like the large size, the brightness, and the berzillion inputs. It has VGA, HDMI, S-Video, RCA, and YPbPr. No DVI, but a DVI to HDMI cable is $9. I very much echo those positive sentiments (given that I've only had the monitor 3 hours). It has built-in speakers which don't sound too great, but for built-in speakers what do you expect? It looks very nice too. Glossy black, with a clear plastic base and a clear plastic strip under the monitor where the Westinghouse logo is sort of illuminated. It looks great.

Contrast this with a review I found on a hardware review site. This site gave it a 4 out of 10, i.e. a pretty poor rating. This was because the on-screen menu wasn't easy enough to use, the base wasn't adjustable enough, and it doesn't go to sleep when in HDMI mode. There are also some posted graphs which I can't understand in the slightest, describing color ranges and monitor "performance".

This second review is obviously written by someone with much more technical knowledge than the average "OMG MY XBOX360 LOOKS AWESOEM" review on newegg. On the other hand, 103 of 135 people on newegg gave it the highest rating possible and were obviously very pleased. I consider myself fairly technically savvy, but when I'm making a hardware purchasing decision, which is more important, technical concerns, or other concerns?

Which is more important: That I'm now going to have four or five 1920x1200 virtual desktops in Linux (which will be, by the way, awesome indeed), or that, to quote the expert, "The color temperature tracks very close to 6500K most of the time. It's just a bit on the cool side through most of this curve. Once you get below about 15% intensity, the color temperature goes very red indeed"? What the heck does that even mean? Which is more important, that I can have my PS2 and laptop and Gentoo box all hooked up to the same monitor, saving me from having to buy a TV, or that the OSD has difficult-to-use buttons?

Had I listened to the "expert", I may have passed this up and missed out on getting something I really enjoy. I've had the same experiences in the past. I spent a month researching which MP3 player to get. Same thing last time I bought a watch. Was it really worth that much research time? Did I end up passing up something I would've enjoyed because the technical specs weren't top-of-the-line? Did I end up with anything better than I would've gotten with much less research and review-hunting?

I saw a TV show (Penn & Teller's Bullshit!) recently about how always trying to get the BEST of everything will often result in people being very unfulfilled. That's probably very true. There's a point where expectations are simply too high, and where the cost of doing more research and putting more effort into finding the BEST of something outweighs the benefit you actually receive when you end up buying whatever you end up buying.

There's a balance to be struck. Sure, you don't want to pay money for an inferior piece of technology or something that's going to break in a week. On the other hand, enjoyment isn't something that can be entirely quantified and rationalized. Sometimes it's nice to buy something that may not be the BEST product ever made, but which brings you plenty of enjoyment, and leaves you plenty of time to enjoy it. Sometimes it's nice to buy something just because it's nice and shiny.