Never Clever

“What people forget is a journey to nowhere starts with a single step, too.”

Archive for December, 2008

"Life's Good", Indeed

Dec 17

Posted by admin in Work | No Comments

I am providing this post-mortem both as a public service and so I don't punch in the screen of my brand-new LG monitor. I picked up a new 22" monitor at Best Buy yesterday after losing a monitor to the power surges from the ice storm (what I ought to have done is replace the APC unit that's now cost me an external drive enclosure and a monitor, but that's another gripe). Almost 24 hours later, the monitor is actually running as expected. Let me preface this by saying I appreciate my setup might be a little different from what the folks at LG bothered to test on:

  • Mac hardware running Windows
  • it's a second monitor
  • NVidia and UltraMon are both fighting for control of the setup

All the same, this was a more painful hardware process than I remember going through. It's a goddamn display, not an ultrasound machine. Nothing should be more plug-and-play. And yet, when I plugged it all in with the existing VGA connection from the old monitor, none of the native resolutions were available. I installed the software and drivers, but it still couldn't figure itself out. The LG software could identify my primary monitor, but the software would not allow me to use any of the features because it could only run on an LG device. Even when it figured out there was an LG display somewhere, no dice. I'm assuming it has to be the primary display. Also, for a company that's done such a good job of becoming an international player, it's disappointing the English was as broken as the software displaying it.

I gave up on LG and updated the NVidia Control Panel, hoping newer versions would have the widescreen resolutions. Playing with the new control panel only blew things up worse: reversed the primary and the secondary and then screwed up Ultramon so badly the taskbar was displaying a box for every background process running on the box under my user account. It also saw fit to snap the resolution on both monitors to something fun. So, reboot.

My last gasp, and it included a fair bit of gasping as I've been screwing off work due to a wrenched back, was to find a DVI cable and try that. Nothing. No second monitor, no avowed knowledge of a second monitor in the control panel. For no good reason except I'm my own IT department, rebooted. Success! Sort of. Both monitors are working during bootup, both are correctly identified in the control panel, both have their proper native resolutions dialed in and programs are being popped up on the LG. Just one issue: it's power light is in orange standby mode, the screen is off and no amount of pressing the power button will convince it to turn on or off. This is when one has to say, "I can tell a convincing lie to the returns desk if need be" and show inanimate objects just who the hell runs the show around here. Out comes the power cable. The funny little capacitor manages to keep the light orange for five brave seconds before giving up the ghost. I yell, "Clear", jam the power cable back in as painfully as possible and here we are, all of us with a better understanding of the pecking order. And then I removed the startup item LG installed ("forte display manager") to keep it from doing it's infinite loop dance with NVidia for control of the display.

So, the public service announcement: if you get a new wide-screen LG monitor, get a DVI cable with it. Hook them up. Don't install the LG software (though you'll most likely need the drivers). I suppose if you just have one monitor, you'll be fine either way, but you'll only find this post if something goes wrong.

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Presented Without Comment

Dec 8

Posted by admin in Music | No Comments

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Xmas Flick Tradition Continues for Hicks in Stix

Dec 4

Posted by admin in Uncategorized | No Comments

I bought myself a couple of early Xmas/ Birthday presents this week, Going My Way and The Bells of St. Mary's. I bought those two old weepers in order to maintain the family tradition (my mother's) of watching at least TBoSM every Christmas. It won't be the same without her (and I'll probably fall apart when that dumb little kid calls Bing "faddah"), but it'll be something.

I would tell you neither movie is an Oscar winner, but Going My Way took home 7 (!), including Best Picture. Cinema has come a long way in the interim: there's more dramatic tension reading the phone book ("Will the Zs really make it at the end?"). The movies exist as frames for musical numbers, a bit of feel-good holiday cheer and not much else. All the same, I will assert (based on nothing more than hope) there are worse ways to spend 2 hours in front of the TV at Christmas.

I've seen both enough they run together, so much so I was surprised to see Barry Fitzgerald isn't in the sequel, The Bells of St. Mary's. It's a solo tour de force for Bing Crosby's Super Priest, who could kick the ass out of Ayn Rand's Architect and bed any woman he wanted, except he's so cool he's into the absitence thing decades before it became cool. The film overcomes two glaring issues:

  1. Allowing Bing Crosby anywhere near other people's children
  2. Employing Ingrid Bergman's nun as an educator, given the church could theoretically reassign her to a high school class full of pubescent males

Aside #1

To emphasize what an issue #2 is, I present a full list of all the women in the world my father ever suggested were attractive

  1. My mother (1,000,006 times)
  2. Ingrid Bergman (1 time)

. . . to get you to a conclusion that might as well appear in the opening credits. SPOILER ALERT: The school is saved! Like any holiday movie, it's not about the story but about the season and some feeling of continuity in life. Much as I'm making fun of the film, it'll be a mess 'round here when they get to singing "The Bells of St. Mary's": the last time we heard it, it was being sung by the girls' choir from St. Mary's Bay View at the funeral.

Like any good Spoil Yourself purchase on Amazon, I wound up with more than just what I set out to buy, adding a 3rd movie we used to watch together, The Grapes of Wrath after running across a post on the New York Times,

It was the kind of movie we'd watch if it was on TV on a Sunday afternoon when there was ironing to be done. The populism and underdog-nature of the story appealed to my mom, but we knew what really got her was the mom. She saw her own mother in her and, of course, I see mine (don't think the "Oh, Tom!" doesn't catch my ear). The final, famous scene ("Where ever there's a fight . . . ") always resonates. When I was young, close to my parents and just wanting to stay home, egotism made it easy to see myself as Heroic Tom Joad, leaving family and friends, purposely striding out the door to make the world A Better Place. Now that the roles are reversed, that I'm home and my mom is gone forever, the scene reminds me she's not exactly gone. She might not show up if you're getting trounced by a cop, but she's there in my relationship with Michelle, she's there in anything I do just for someone else, she's there in just about anything I do right. The idea that time is a coping mechanism, a way of perceiving ourselves in the physical world, it'd be nice to think you could step outside, take a hard right and see everyone that's left behind.

Aside #2

After a dozen viewings of Going My Way (and having seen The Quiet Man), it was disconcerting to run across Barry Fitzgerald as a bad guy in The Sea Wolf. I conveniently came across it one Saturday night on PBS and watched because Jack London's book had just been assigned in class. It was even worse than the time I saw Harry Morgan as a low-down, dirty ranchhand in Bend of the River; at least by that point I knew he was the kind of guy that would push his wife down a flight of stairs.

You can spare me the emails, I'm well aware (old movie on PBS + in high school + Saturday night) = LOSER.