A Tale of Two Remotes

Remember the Dr. Seuss book "Old Hat, New Hat?  I don't want to be a spoiler but I probably should have named this entry Old Remote, New Remote.

Champagne Clicker

There have been so many times when I've been working outside and both the side door and front door were locked.  The cars were all safely locked in the garage. And I needed to get in.  So when we saw the display at we thought this might be a good Fathers Day gift.

I was concerned about compatibility but it clearly named the brand of garage opener we have as one of the brands this switch was compatible with.

It wasn't!  Even a trip to the Internet yielded only disappointing news.  Several people had responded to this product and the overall scoring was high except for a couple having to do with our brand.  They were not happy campers, indeed.

LiftMaster control unit

When I tried to install the new remote it refused to take the new codes.  Nothing we saw on the Internet comforted or enlightened us.  Carolyn thought we should try the old unit that has been sitting on the side of the garage since we bought the house.  I had thought it was broken.  And we had no clue how to program it;

The battery was certainly dead and it was one of those kind that is carried no where but Radio Shack.  And we had no idea how we would program it.  Fortunately I was able quickly to identify the unit and find instructions for it on the Web.  So we ended up with the remote control we wanted. 

Net result, we have a remote unit that does what we need and we got it for the price of a battery, not the price of a new unit.  Old Hat,  New Hat, New Remote, Old Remote.

New gadget on the block

Some people will do just about anything to get their hands on another piece of hardware if only to play around with it. My latest adventure is the Nielsen Homescan scanner. Nielsen (of the well-known Nielsen Ratings for broadcast statistics) has enlisted a panel of thousands of American families to help them develop marketing patterns and trends. To monitor people's watching and listening habits, Nielson had to attach recording devices to radios and TVs and the people who were involved were pretty much only passively involved.

To measure consumer products purchasing the user (that would be me in this case) is equipped with a hand-held scanner to scan the products purchased. This information as well as where the products were purchased is uploaded through their handy little base/modem. From time to time we're also asked to participate in surveys although it looks like they will be strictly voluntary. What as I saying? The whole thing is voluntary. I can choose at any time to stop participating although they do want to their equipment back in that casee.

I was a little surprised to see that they're still relying on land based telephone connections to upload the information. I really expected them to connect through a USB port on a computer. I guess they'd lose a large segment of their target audience if they do that. Actually, there was a note to people who only have cell phones so maybe that is the group they'll be having use the USB connection.

Black screen of death

I suppose I could say I deserved it since I did what a person should never do. But I still feel sorry for myself.

Last Sunday, I came home from church, hung up my suit coat in the closet in the computer room, then glanced over at the computer. Under normal circumstances, the screen would be blank, having cycled through the screen saver to the power saver. But it wasn't blank. Far from it. It was black with white letters like the old DOS boot programs. And close to the top of the screen the words fairly yelled out, "There is no FAT on your hard drive. Data is inaccessible."

I sat down in front of the screen trying to take in what had happened. When I had left the computer it was operating fine. In fact it was in the process of ripping a tape of the Chronicles of Narnia. Had I overloaded the computer somehow?

Then it hit me. I reached down to the computer, popped out the floppy disk, and restarted the system. I was pretty sure I knew then what had happened but I still held my breath until the system came up with no glitches whatsoever.

Earlier that morning, I had found a floppy disk that appeared to be important but wasn't labeled properly. I stuck it in the computer to see what was on it. That's normally a fairly safe thing to do. But then I got distracted and forgot about doing that, forgot all about the disk. Sometime while I was away at church, Windows downloaded a system update, asked if it could restart my system, and after a 5 minute wait period when I hadn't answered, the computer restarted itself. Only problem was, this time there was a disk in the floppy drive slot and not just any old data disk/ It was a boot disk (for Windows 98). So, of course the system tried to start from that disk and found the system on the hard drive (Windows XP) highly incompatible. Crash. Or at least STOP!!

Moral of the story - never leave a floppy drive in your computer when you walk away from it. You just may get the scare of your life.

Bonus story: Since the computer had been recording the Chronicles of Narnia, I assumed the recorded file was lost when the computer restarted. I looked all over the drive for a temporary file assuming that as soon as I started the program again, it would be deleted or written over. I finally gave up, resigned to recording the whole thing again. As soon as I did, the program Polterbits said I had left the program without saving the file. Would I like to use that file or start another one? the program asked me. Turns out we have a program smart enough to keep an old file even when the program is summarily aborted. I wish Outlook were that smart. Thank you Polterbits.

Innovage MP3 players

I wasn't the only one to get an MP3 player for Christmas. Our grandson Tim also got one. They're pictured above with my Apple iPod on the left and Tim's Innovage Shift3 on the right. As you can see, both have the capability of showing pictures. Both also have the capability of playing MP3 files of music or the spoken word. Neither came with a useful user's manual and neither is exactly what I would call "intuitive". It was only by studying a 200 page, independently produced user's manual for the iPod that I have become somewhat comfortable using the iPod. And half the iPod's functionality is the PC based program iTunes which handles the inputting, cataloging, and syncing of music between the PC and the player.

On the other hand, Tim's Innovage MP3 player was virtually untouched since he got it. I don't know if it came with a users manual or whether it just wasn't helpful. There doesn't appear to be a PC resident companion program to help in getting music from CDs or the Internet into the Innovage. More out of curiosity than anything else, I borrowed Tim's player and played around with it to see if I could "break the code" and make something of it.

First of all I tried to find a company website where I might be able to download a users manual. No luck. So after a lot of trial and error I have been able to load the Innovage with pictures, music, and Storyteller tapes. Although I was originally confused about how it handles folders, it does handle them well and it makes a big difference in finding photos and songs.

One thing the Innovage has that the iPod does not is a recorder that uses a built-in microphone. According to the screen, with about half the storage filled with files, there is still room for 16 hours of dictation. The dictation sessions are named with the date and time making each one unique. They are also recorded as wav files making them playable on a PC.

The street price on the Innovage Shift 3 is about $25 or half the price of the iPod Shuffle or about 1/15th the price of the iPod Classic 160 gb pictured above. But you still would think they could include an understandable manual. If you're interested in looking at what I've put together so far it is available as a pdf file here. I would welcome comments, additions, or corrections here at this blog.