Posted by Jed Lewison on Tue Jul 29, 2008 at 7:39 PM Pacific

The Blue Screen of Death

Well, I just spent more than two hours wrestling with Microsoft customer service over the most inane issue: my computer crashed BSD-style just before Countdown, and when it came back to life, it claimed that my Vista license key needed reactivation. But it wouldn't reactivate, and it wouldn't even let me reenter my product key.

Finally, after a phone call that spanned the life of two cordless phone batteries, a guy in technical support walked me through the steps that I needed to take to regain control of my computer (basically, I had to delete and reinstall the license key authentication software).

What a complete and total hassle. Making things more annoying, I record most of my TV on this particular computer, so I don't have Countdown saved. Fortunately, I can watch it online, which'll be a nice way to unwind.

Anyway, there is a political point to this post: I just checked HuffPo, and they featured this most glorious of articles from Politico. It turns out that the AP's bureau chief, Ron "Keep up the fight" Fournier, considered taking a job with John McCain's presidential campaign. I guess he ultimately decided he could do more good from the AP than inside the campaign.

Update: I've gotten several e-mails and seen several comments suggesting that I switch to a Mac. I will concede that Macs are better than PCs. And back when I was at a software company, I used linux a bunch. (DOS sucks so bad for parsing through text, it needs sed and grep and awk so badly.) But I'm stubborn. I like building my own computers, and Windows Media Center (the best product Microsoft has ever made) is truly awesome. Plus, I've figured out enough hacks to make my Vista experience pleasant. The only problem is marginal stability. Of course, that's kind of a huge problem. Anyway, as soon as Apple comes out with a good DVR software package and I have the time to install MacOS on one of my DIY machines, I'll seriously consider making the switch. Until then, let inertia reign!

As for platform wars, flame away. I love 'em!

The Blue Screen of Death

Well, I just spent more than two hours wrestling with Microsoft customer service over the most inane issue: my computer crashed BSD-style just before Countdown, and when it came back to life, it claimed that my Vista license key needed reactivation. But it wouldn't reactivate, and it wouldn't even let me reenter my product key.

Finally, after a phone call that spanned the life of two cordless phone batteries, a guy in technical support walked me through the steps that I needed to take to regain control of my computer (basically, I had to delete and reinstall the license key authentication software).

What a complete and total hassle. Making things more annoying, I record most of my TV on this particular computer, so I don't have Countdown saved. Fortunately, I can watch it online, which'll be a nice way to unwind.

Anyway, there is a political point to this post: I just checked HuffPo, and they featured this most glorious of articles from Politico. It turns out that the AP's bureau chief, Ron "Keep up the fight" Fournier, considered taking a job with John McCain's presidential campaign. I guess he ultimately decided he could do more good from the AP than inside the campaign.

The Jed Report Home Page

© Jed Lewison