Category: News

We just got back from dinner, and turned on the TV to wind down a bit. That “Lost” special was recording on the DVR, which I left on while I hit the can. When I came back, Carlton Cuse (I had to Google his name to figure out which one was which) was on, describing some shit about Kate. When it pulled back to the two of them in the studio, it looked like Cuse had some sort of deranged herpes breakout all over his face. I don’t know if it’s the same in standard def, but he is a hideous vision in high definition. Every time they cut back to him in that little talking head box, I want to keep my eyes on the computer screen, but tragically I cannot. It’s like we’re midway between normal vision and the view from the sunglasses in They Live.

…is he wearing lipstick?

After 6 support calls, including calls to the vendor who no longer deals with Symantec because their support sucks, I was transferred back to the guy from the previous post.

…Good one God.

Maybe it was my diminished spirit, or maybe it was a “wait until they call you twice before helping” policy that I am unaware of, but he actually had a helpful suggestion. Apparently if you take out your license information, the software goes into full-fledged evaluation mode for sixty days. I don’t know how eight fucking representatives (including the genius who needed to hear it twice) could listen to me explain that I needed a backup today, and that their solutions took many days to accomplish, could not realize that taking out the Goddamned license keys would solve my problem and get me off of the phone.

By the way… the vendor told me that they no longer dealt with Backup Exec products after Veritas was bought out by Symantec because they had too many complaints about Symantec’s support. I’ll have to sit patiently until tomorrow to hear from their “sister” company who likes to deal with this shit. I can’t wait.

Customer asks me if I’ll check out why their backups aren’t working anymore. Sure, why not. They recently upgraded to the latest version of Backup Exec, and the whole thing has been failing ever since. I take a quick look, seems that it gives an error message every time it tries to back up a database. After a quick support search, it turns out that the license for the SQL extension wasn’t included with the upgrade, so that little addition was never installed.

No problem, right? Let’s just log into their online system and figure this out. Yeah, after 20 minutes of searching around, I could find no way to get this damned update like the others. So I send off a support ticket and then try the last bastion of hope… the support number from the license manager inside the Backup Exec software. Here now is a transcript of the ensuing hatred, for posterity:

*Standard Support Welcome*

*Presses Appropriate Department Keys*

*Waits 41 FUCKING MINUTES*

Woman: “Symantec Support, how may I help you?”
Me: “I have a problem. We upgraded to 11d on Backup Exec, and now the SQL Agent isn’t running anymore.”
Woman: “Oh… well that’s for our legacy license support products. See, that’s a Veritas product and we’re strictly Symantec support.”
Me: “Then why is this phone number listed inside of your software?”
Woman: “Must be outdated.”
Me: “You mean the software that was just installed, and no longer works the way it did before the update screwed everything up? The one that I ran Liveupdate on this morning?”
Woman: “Why don’t I forward you over to the other department. They’ll be able to help you out.
Me: “Not unless you can guarantee me that I won’t wait 40 minutes for an answer just like I did while waiting for you.”
Woman: “Oh no… they’re far less busy. Here’s the direct line number just in case we get disconnected.”

*Scribbles down number*

*Waits 10 minutes, gets curious, calls “direct line” from another phone. Direct line is a direct line to the exact same wait*

*Waits 20 minutes*

Guy: “Symantec Licensing, how can I help you?”
Me: “Tell me you have an actual answer to my problem, instead of another hour long wait.”
Guy: “Oh geez, I’m sorry. How can I assist you?”
Me: *explains story*
Guy: “Well I’m sorry, but based on the customer number here, it doesnt look like you have the license for the SQL Agent.”
Me: “I have the box in my hands right here.” *Tells Guy the number*
Guy: “OK… that’s a boxed product it says.”
Me: “It is in a box, which I am holding. Nothing has changed.”
Guy: “Well you purchased all of your software, other than that, through our digital distribution service.”
Me: “And?”
Guy: “Well we don’t offer upgrades for anything from a box. You’d need to buy that license from us. Unfortunately that serial number won’t carry over, so you’d need to buy a whole new license from scratch.”
Me: “So… I can’t import this serial number along with the digital products we bought, so you won’t allow us to upgrade. So we’d have to buy the full, much more expensive install?”
Guy: “Yep. Or you could call the vendor you went through to purchase that, and have them buy you the upgrade.”
Me: “….. call the vendor, get them to buy an upgrade through you… that for some reason I can’t?”
Guy: “Well we don’t offer support for boxed…”
Me: “Yeah, I got that. What are my other options?”
Guy: “Install 10d, and run that instead.”
Me: “You mean downgrade. That’s what you mean.”
Guy: “Well we don’t really support downgrading. You can install, then delete your 11d installation.”
Me: “Well I can’t access my 10d download for some reason right now.”
Guy: “Right. You upgraded your license to 11d, so we don’t offer you 10d anymore.”
Me: “So… what am I supposed to do to install 10d?”
Guy: “You don’t have it?”
Me: “You mean a copy on CD? No. They don’t. Too bad they didn’t buy the boxed version, right?”
Guy: “Well if they had the boxed version sir, they wouldn’t be running the 11d upgrade.”
Me: “Right… and there’d be no problems.”
Guy: “….”
Me: “So you guys probably have this sort of thing happen a lot, right?”
Guy: “It does happen quite a bit, yes.”
Me: “So maybe it’d be a good idea when you send those upgrade notices to small companies who don’t have an in-house tech… maybe there should be something along the way that says that you might lose some of your critical extensions when you install it?”
Guy: *like im an idiot* “Sir, how would we know that you have those installed?”
Me: “I don’t mean you, you argumentative prick. But the software knows what extensions are installed, yes?”
Guy: “M-hmm.”
Me: “Maybe along the way it should say ‘You have these extensions installed… the upgrade will eradicate these extensions’. Just a thought.”
Guy: “Do you want me to forward you to sales, or our customer feedback department?”
Me: “No smartass, I want you to actually help me. How about this: what is my best option for getting a SQL backup off of this network today?”
Guy: “Install 10d.”
Me: *click*

I found the old digital distrbution download of 10d on the network (thank God) and installed it.

Guess what didn’t work.

Kotaku	Egotastic
Digg	Destructoid

They may as well call it Harry Potter and the Way Too Old to Pretend We’re 16 or Sober while she’s at it. Not like the title matters much, it’ll net her another half a billion dollars and even more once the movie finally makes its way to the screen. But for now, an official July 21st, 2007 release date for the final book in the series will just have to do for the rest of you.

Sorry, I’ll wait for the poorly adapted movie.

castlevania: rondo of blood being ported to the psp

Went down to the local Best Buy the other day, hoping to spend a Christmas gift card and some of my disposable income on something sexy, useful, or a reasonable combination of the two.

Truth be told, I was really looking for a wifi bridge or a wifi gaming adapter (for multiple systems) to finally get our 360/Xbox/PS2 consoles online, since the cable modem and wifi router are stuck in the back of the house. I meandered around the store for a few minutes, being assaulted every ten feet by a blue shirted retard with an overly helpful look of “buy or leave” on his face. I eventually found myself in the networking department, and saw empty shelves where the gaming adapters once belonged. This was fine by me, as they seemed ridiculously overpriced for something as simple as a glorified bridge. I pondered the other selections possible while a blue shirt lumbered his way over to my personal space.

Blue Shirt: “How are you doin’ today? Can I help you find anything?”

Me: “Nah, just…” *thinks better of the canned brushoff, as this might be his one chance to shine* “…actualy yeah. Looks like you guys are out of wireless gaming adapters… I guess I’m just looking for a wifi bridge or something comparable. Do you have anything like that here?”

Blue Shirt: “Oh dude, I gotta say… Linksys is totally the way you should go. Top quality all the way.”

Me: “…..Right. So I’m looking for a wifi bridge.”

Blue Shirt: “Yup.” *beams with excitement*

Me: “……… …….. there aren’t any here.”

Blue Shirt: “OH… OK. Allow me.” *smug look plasters across his large, blue-clad visage* “…… Ah… ok….”

*we wait in silence, for at least 30 seconds*

Blue Shirt: “Aha! Yes, OK, here you go.” *hands me a Linksys Wireless Next Router*

Me: “…. and this helps me how?”

Blue Shirt: “This is totally what you need. This spreads your cable modem signal like… throughout the house. Just what I needed.”

Me: “OK but I have one of these… and it just spreads the signal around to any wireless devices. The game systems can’t reach it, and they aren’t wireless. Hence the need for a bridge.”

Blue Shirt: “Yeah dude. There you go.”

Me: “Alright, I’ll trust you here. So I use the wifi router as a bridge for the systems and have it use the other router as a gateway, right? Is that the gist of it? I’ve never done this before.”

Blue Shirt: “Just plug this into your cable modem and turn it on bro. You got it. Any other questions?”

Me: “…. no. I’m good. Thanks.”

This conversation was actually the highlight of my trip, as I spent the next 40 minutes or so (the gf was shopping at a clothes store across the strip mall) wandering around hoping for something worth my gift card non-currency. No Wii grips or controllers, they were all out of Rayman Wii and Brain Age DS. No good looking games that I don’t already own for the PSP, PS2, 360, or anything else for that matter. Shit, I couldn’t even find a good DVD worth wagering part of my gift card on… what a tragic fucking day this was. Not only was I deprived yet another opportunity to hop online with Rainbow Six: Vegas and dominate friends and the like… but there was nothing left to satisfy my consumer lust (and any surplus in my wallet) until that mission is succesful. What kind of fucking country are we becoming?

Boston got duped by the mooninites

I was at lunch across the street, and behind my girlfriend’s head was a tv with some sort of bomb threat in Boston. It was too far away to read the fine print, so I wondered just what was going down in Beantown.

“Aqua Teen Hunger Force” Stunt Forces Bomb Scare In Boston

Electronic light boards featuring an adult-cartoon character triggered bomb scares around Boston on Wednesday, spurring authorities to close two bridges and a stretch of the Charles River before determining the devices were harmless.

Turner Broadcasting Co., the parent company of CNN, said the devices contained harmless magnetic lights aimed at promoting the late-night Adult Swim cartoon “Aqua Teen Hunger Force.” Law enforcement sources said the devices displayed one of the Mooninites, outer-space delinquents who appear frequently on the show, greeting visitors with a raised middle finger.

Best. Payoff. Ever.

Thank you for this, Boston.

Woot-Off. (Thanks Jill)