Tech trauma of various kinds

[stephbg]

Today Yesterday I had the kind of day that pretty much demands a blog post, if only for the purposes of propping up my indeed quite dodgy memory. There were thrills and spills, new toys, broken toys, technical trickery, rather too much time on the phone to all the wrong people, and something else that escapes me, but may yet return in the process of writing this post. In which case I'll probably come back and edit that last bit and you'll never know about the lapse.

Or not.

ETA: Now I remember. I discovered that one of the cats had vomited on one of my favourite books. A paperback.

And now it's the next day and I'm lost and rambling. This is a bit long.



Power cut and hunting answers

Wednesday we were supposed to be experiencing a power cut for maintenance purposes, of unknown duration anywhere between 7:30am and 4:30pm. It didn't happen, but the weather had been bad so it wasn't an enormous surprise. I assumed it would happen on Thursday but by mid-afternoon it still hadn't happened. I got tired of being on the verge of power cut - I couldn't exactly do laundry, put something in the oven, or upload enormous files, could I? So I was very brave and picked up the phone and discovered that the job in question had been cancelled. One could now proceed as before, and plug everything back in. Again. It was a bad day for cabling.


Taking a fall

I was asleep when the courier came with my new camera. I wasn't expecting it to arrive so soon, but I'm conditioned to respond with alacrity to deliveries so I launched myself out of bed. At first I headed for the wardrobe to grab my dressing gown but decided that I couldn't afford the precious seconds. I turned and started to run for the door. It was a good turn; that wasn't the problem. The problem was that I'm in no condition to attempt a sprint from a sleeping start. I'm in no condition to attempt a sprint from a thoroughly awake start, so the unconscious part was just a bonus.

I flew from the blocks. My legs declined to join in with the momentum of my upper body. I snagged a toe on the carpet and went down. I remember taking most of the fall on my right knee but I'm a bit vague as to what happened to the rest of me. I was already scrambling away. I caught that courier. I caught him in my pajamas. What he was doing in my pajamas I'll never know.


The camera!

My new microscope-attachment digital camera had arrived! Yay! I was too tired to play with it then but thought I could at least read the manual. There was no manual. I was just too tired to play and I didn't want to waste the happy playtime so I let it go for the time being.


Changing network providers

There was another tech job that I'd been putting off, but I had a deadline and decided to give it a go. It should have been trivial, but I was right to fear it. My ISP 3 has been swallowed by Vodafone, so I had to change network settings on the modem. No big deal, right?

Step 1: Plug modem into laptop to reprogram network settings. Repeat, reboot, repeat until at some some undertermined signal, the driver software decides to acknowledge the modem.

Step 2: Change connection setting from Automatic to Manual.

Step 3: Select any one of several network options featuring various permutations of the Vodafone name, the scariest of which is "If you see two entries both labelled 3G, select the second one." Classy.

This actually worked, and internet connection was established.

Step 4: Plug modem back into router and observe that the settings have reverted to Automatic and are again pointing to the wrong i.e. soon-to-be-discontinued, service.

Step 5: Make multiple attempts to reprogram the modem remotely. Fail.

Step 6: Call the designated switchover helpline. Waste time implementing various pre-recorded troubleshooting ideas. Chase geese of a distinctly undomesticated persuasion.

Step 6: Call helpline again and stubbornly wade through menus to reach a human. A very nice lady human with an Irish accent. Makes a nice change, but sadly just as unintelligible as the average call centre worker. Establish that my problem was beyond her remit. Get bumped up the line. Eventually. Explain that the problem lies with remote programming the modem through the router. The 3 branded modem. And the 3-friendly router.

Step 7: Hunt for model number that does not exist, because the make and model number I'd already reported were apparently not correct.

Step 8: Establish that the router I'd bought specifically from a 3 phone shop as a 3-compatible router designed to work with my 3 modem and my 3 account, was not a 3-supported model, and there was no way around that. I would need to buy a 3 (or rather Vodphone) -compatible router.

At this point I believe my voice raised in both amplitude and pitch as I said "But I already DID BUY..." before I cut myself off abruptly, apologised to the person on the phone, thanked them for their time, and hung up.

Step 9: Sigh.

Step 10: Remember that when I last renewed my contract (and what fun that was) they sent me a complimentary PocketWifi device I've never used. Retrieve boxed device and proceed to transfer SIM from old modem to new.

Step 11: Discover that during manufacture of the old modem, the SIM was GLUED into place.

Step 12: Free SIM from its sticky prison without breaking any bits off the old modem or the SIM because it was extremely likely that I'd need it again.

Step 13: Configure new modem/wireless network. I was quite pleased with this bit.

Step 14: Discover that I could access the new wireless network to connect to the internet, and the old wireless network to talk to the printer, but not both. Attempt to remedy this with cabling, network settings dialogs, and copious amounts of swearing.

I think that's about as far as I got, which took about two hours. I took a break.


A call

I took a phone call from my dentist's receptionist regarding my most recent invoice. She was confused because I'd just sent her a cheque from Medibank Private, after I'd already paid the account by credit card because I'd been told that the money had been transferred to my bank account. There's more - some four different versions of events, but the two most wrong came from people at Medibank. I do so hate unreliable humans.

The issue was sorted out mainly because I was prepared to pay $60 or so of my own money for a several-hundred dollar procedure, when the dentist had tried very nicely to make sure that he charged only the rebate amount so I would get the service for free. He ended up with $120 or so, and a shattered accounts system.


Caterpillar

I saw a caterpillar on the wall outside the front door and decided to take some macro shots. I did profile and full face, only to discover that the end I thought was the face was not the face. On the bright side, I have some exquisitely detailed pictures of farm-fresh caterpillar poo. The furry bits look cute too.


Uneventful trip to the shops

I *had* to go to the shops. Apparently I got myself there and back, although the bruising from the fall was making itself felt.


Hanging of laundry with bonus muttering

At my request as soon as I knew the power would stay on I asked Husband to put a load of laundry on. When I got back from the shops he was asleep so I took it out to hang. This is not a problem; laundry is generally a collaborative task in which either of us may perform any role.

But oh lord had he overloaded the machine :-(

//insert insightful and witty description and justification of my feelings of drama at this point//


The camera :-(

As a glutton for punishment and because I could bear the suspense no more, I took out the camera and took abouut the tasks of disassembly, integration, cabling, and reassembly required to make camera marry microscope. And in this I succeeded, up to a point. The drivers and management software were by no means commerically friendly, but I got everything up, running, and talking to each other. When the final lens cap came off (there were 4 in all) a bright blur of appropriate hue appeared on my screen. I was even able to capture a still image of said blur. Things were going well.

And then I tried to make the blur look less blurry.

Many things were tried. I was puzzled. Focus was the role of the microscope, not the camera.

In a fit of desperation I hunted down and read the only manual I had, which was for the camera control software. For manual focus it directed me to a dialog accessed by a button I couldn't see. Further reading revealed that the button was probably missing because I didn't have certain drivers installed - for the stepper motor that's supposed to manage focus adjustments.

There was no stepper motor, nor rail. The microscope was also missing half its optics, because the camera adaptor replaced an eyepiece, rather than being added in series as I'd believed and inferred from the pictures. To make it work in any sane sense I would have needed to buy a decent adaptor piece at least as good as/to the same spec as the current eyepiece, and the missing stepper motor and rail. It miffs me that the poor quality of the adaptor was actually marketed as a feature (possibly - I recall something about a reduction lens being touted as a good thing for viewing on the PC screen). And I'd also need a few other bits to string it all together. This I found out after some googling for support forums. Silly me hadn't realised in advance that "stepper motor" was the key search term to find the dirty laundry and sufferings of others.

I took the advice of long-gone microscopy experts (OK, posting in Feb 2012 so they were probably still around) and abandoned my quest. Rather than throw multiple small, medium and potentially large amounts of money at the problem for a result that was likely to be unsatisfactory (and there were horror stories aplenty) I decided to abandon the idea of this particular type of microscopy.

Oh, and the 10MP CMOS I couldn't quite believe was real, even at the theoretical full retail price for this thing? The one I viewed with suspicion having been burned this way before, so I hunted through the specs for weasel words such as "interpolated" on the resolution? The very technology I attempted to learn more about because I knew that there were CMOSes and CMOSes but didn't know how to tell them apart but was overwhelmed by physics? I'm pretty sure the numbers buried deep in the specs hold the truth, but I was distracted by the big print promises of 3664 x 2748 resolution. Worryingly I've found a spec that says Effective Pixel = 1,007K which sounds dire.

I thought pixels were pixels.


Return of the camera

Last night I commenced correspondence with the seller for the return of the camera. This included detailed instructions I'm now too tired to document, but this morning I collected all the bits and presented to the post office ready to purchase the final layer of packaging and fill in the unknown amount of documentation required to post a parcel across the world, registered and fully insured as required by the seller. (Yes, that's a horrible sentence. It's been a horrible experience; thus the sentence is perfect. Go away.)

The people at the local post office are lovely but apparently quite unprepared for such an exotic request, and I'd never done it before. It took... time. And spoons. Many many spoons. And I now have most of a roll of brown paper I was forced to buy, but they did let me borrow sticky tape.

It cost $30 to ship here (it should have been $40 but the seller made an error there aas well) and about $40 to return which actually justifies their shipping costs. It's an awkward size, and weighed --(dramatic pause) -- exactly 0.666kg. Anything over 500g attacts an extra $9 we-might-hurt-ourselves-looking-at-it security fee.

Some distratcion was afforded by observing a middle aged couple attempting to wrap a large and awkward bundle of bits and pieces. Their opinions on technique differed in many small but crucial ways. They were there when I arrived and were still going when I left. If they got through it without killing each other I'm sure it would have been a bonding experience for them.

--

So all up, assuming I get the full refund of the purchase price, I'm out of pocket about $70 for two sets of shipping. Rumour has it that I might be able to claim some of that cost back from eBay or Paypal or Visa? I should trawl through the help pages, but if anyone knows any advice would be appreciated.


What next?

Although I contemplated also sending the microscope back I decided to keep it. At worst I'll have a plaything to look at my crystalline mineral specimens. At best one day I will have to take the step up to a proper DSLR which will theoretically have a better chance of talking to the microscope via non-cheap-and-nasty adaptors. I want those pixels, damnit. I'll be getting a decent macro lens too, if I can stop the nervous laughter when I look at the prices again. I do have Dad's old one that might recover after a service.

Later.

*collapse*

Comments

[callistra.livejournal.com]

OMG woman
:(
You have my thoughts, what little they will do for you!
But OMG :(

Caterpillar

[(Anonymous)]

LOVED the description of the caterpillar. Would be interesting to see the photo(s)...

--Rhonda

[japester.livejournal.com]

A week worrhy of this commentary!

I hate shitty technology. You may be lucky, and find dslr to microscope adaptors. they exist for telescopes, I'd like to think they also exist for the other extreme. Possible diy hackery?

Good luck, and I hope your spoon collection has regrown.

[stephbg.livejournal.com]

There are definitely DSLR-microscope adaptors. That's not the problem as long as you get a good quality/expensive one. That's the plan for waaaay down the track when I can afford a DSLR.

And this wasn't a week - it was all within about 26 hours!

[huckle.livejournal.com]

Ugh. Those sorts of days involve lots and lots of tourette style swearing for me. Ugh.

[transcendancing.livejournal.com]

What a massive amount of hard and horrible :( You have my thoughts and I hope things are a little better for you now *cuddles*