Rottweilers Ate My Laptop — Rottweilers. Computers. Cameras. World Domination. Not necessarily in that order.

Wrong assumptions

May 26, 2009 by kathi

It amuses me when people make assumptions about my political leanings based upon my gender and ethnicity, because that means they will usually be wrong.

I just want to say that Sonia Sotomayor’s role in Ricci vs. New Haven colors my opinion of her far more than what some people think that I, as a minority female, should be feeling. My husband could easily face the same situation as the New Haven firefighters whose promotion exam results got thrown out because not enough blacks made the promotion list. That would be so wrong, and yeah, I would take it personal because it affects my family. And for anyone to think that it is okay because of the decision for New Haven would be even worse.

(NaBloPoMo | May ‘09: 26 of 31 | 75% Challenge: 122 of 274)

Trying to stay connected

May 25, 2009 by kathi

No, not in a human building-bridges mending-fences rediscovering-relationships kind of way. Not really wanting to do any of that at the moment, or for that matter, on most days. I’m just wanting my internet connection to remain stable for longer than an hour at a time.

I have had nearly perfect service from Comcast High-Speed Cable Internet since I switched from Earthlink DSL a few months ago. Until the last couple of weeks, which have not been quite so perfect. My husband mentioned some outages during the day, but didn’t give me too many details as to when or how many or how long. I hadn’t experienced any at all during the early morning and evening hours. I asked him to keep track, and kind of forgot about it until yesterday, when periodic outages started. Today, things were fine until early afternoon, and then the connection would go out approximately once an hour.

The customer service reps I spoke to were friendly and really did try to be helpful, but I didn’t get a sense of great knowledge either. The second one said he would need to send out a tech to the house. Oh, joy. My whole goal in doing the self-install was to prevent any Comcast tech from ever touching my network. I figured if it did not work, I’d move on to try another provider. And if it did work, it would keep working. Looks like I might have been wrong about the “keep working” part. So sad, because it was really looking good there for a while.

I’m checking around online to see if there are any known issues and fixes that don’t require me to allow a Comcast tech into my house. That is, if my connection will stay up long enough to allow me to do so!

And there is always the chance this is happening somewhere between my home and the mothership (for DSL that would be the central office but I have no idea what they would call it for cable, or if they even have the equivalent of a central office) and will go away by the time I get a chance to complain again. I would be good with that, so let’s hope maybe that is the case.

(NaBloPoMo | May ‘09: 25 of 31 | 75% Challenge: 121 of 274)

The Della debacle

May 24, 2009 by kathi

Since I replaced my own aging Dell laptop with a Sony VAIO VGN290-CSJER back at the end of February and I’m not quite ready to replace my also-aging (hmmm, guess that should be “aged,” huh?) Apple Macintosh G4 iBook, I have not been regularly checking out the latest laptop offerings.

I guess that is both a good and bad thing, because I completely missed Dell’s ill-conceived attempt at marketing their Inspiron Mini 10 netbooks specifically to women. I did not see the original incarnation of the site, no longer called “Della” (and wow, isn’t that a terrible idea from the get-go), but from the screenshots and blog posts I did see after the fact, it just reinforces in my mind what a bad idea it is to attempt gender-specific marketing of something that should be a gender-neutral product.

The stereotyping of assuming that women would mainly be computer novices and interested only in shopping, calorie counting, and finding new recipes is just laughable. Oddly enough, though, one other major criticism of the latest Dell effort is one that I didn’t personally find all that objectionable.

That would be using style as a selling point. I thought Dell had done a decent job of it up until now, too. For several of their laptop lines, cases were offered in a selection of colors, laptop skins were available, and their current Design Studio case offerings include some very stylish artwork.

Sony and Apple have always done a great job of selling style and design along with technology, and not by using insulting gender-specific verbiage either. I didn’t choose my laptops solely because of their look, but honestly. If the technical specs are similar and either one will do the jobs you need them to do, do you want the ugly one or the sharp-looking one? Be honest.

Dell lost my business entirely due to concerns that are not gender-specific at all: outsourced customer service and tech support, uneven quality control on the low- and mid-end laptops, and issues regarding timely fulfillment on some purchases made for my business. Perhaps they should concentrate more on improving areas that are of concern to everyone, rather than a poorly-planned gender-specific marketing push.

(NaBloPoMo | May ‘09: 24 of 31 | 75% Challenge: 120 of 274)

Dog days

May 22, 2009 by kathi

I enjoy watching almost all sports occasionally, but I’m not a real fan of any Chicago sports teams. I really don’t care for baseball at all. So it’s no surprise that once again I missed the White Sox Dog Days on Wednesday, May 20. I’ve always thought I might like to go once, just so one of my dogs can walk on the field. And I have always had at least one South Side or south suburban born dog, so I suppose they would not have objected too strenuously to being dressed in Sox garb. Well, maybe a bandana or cap at least. Axel was born in the south suburbs and Freya in the northwest suburbs, so there would actually be a cute Sox-Cubs rivalry dress-up thing we could do there if they’d put up with clothing.

Maybe next year!

I want to take a second to look back to another Sox Dog Day, though: the one ten years ago when they almost banned Rottweilers and Pit Bulls from attending. It was one of many times I’ve seen the power of the Internet at work. The listmembers of Rottie-L, a Rottweiler e-mail discussion list, went into action at the urging of one of the Chicago area listmembers. Hundreds of emails and faxes went to the promotions manager of the White Sox. Rottweiler and Pit Bull people were also lucky to have radio host Steve Dale’s support. When he found out that the Sox were planning to discriminate against these breeds, he informed them he would not be participating should they go that route. The Chicago Veterinary Medical Association also pulled their support of the event. Ultimately, the Sox admitted their error, and the event has been open to all breeds ever since. As it should be. It really is the responsibility of dog owners to determine whether their dog, of any breed, is well trained and of suitable temperament to attend and enjoy a large group event like Dog Days.

(NaBloPoMo | May ‘09: 22 of 31 | 75% Challenge: 118 of 274)