htc inspires this one

the phone, HTC Inspire, continues to be annoying by having a very short battery life (compared to others with other brand phones) and it seems to be in part due to the fact that there are more than a dozen apps (most i do not use ever and have not even activated) constantly turning themselves on... i have Advanced Task Killer and every time i open is it shows apps running... i can kill all the apps and close the phone and open it fifteen seconds later and there are a half dozen or more apps running... within two minutes more than a dozen are running again... this not only reduces battery life but makes it a longer charging process... the most annoying thing is i not only have not activated most of the apps, but i cannot delete the apps from the phone... so whether through deliberate corporate decisions to SPAM other corporate apps (like facebook, youtube, blockbuster, and various news and social media apps {adobe, asphalt 5, blockbuster, facebook, gmail, live tv, mail, news, news & weather, stocks, teeter, youtube - i never use on the phone and many others i rarely use and never show up on the "frequent" screen and are not apps i downloaded and have a greyed out delete button, so why should they be running and draining battery if i am not using them?)

wtf facebook?

after midnight i hear my phone and wonder who is texting me after midnight... few friends stay up this late and they are welcome to call or text anytime and any meaningful messages are almost always welcome, but facebook corporate SPAMMING is not... it's a text from facebook corporate, a PUSH message (corporate-speak for SPAM), an automatic text from facebook telling me my friends have updated their statuses something like 1600 times this week and urging me to update my status by responding to the text... what the fuck, facebook?... i have text messages turned off after midnight, did facebook change my preferences without asking me?... facebook has my password so it can control my account, but as with every site, i trust facebook not to manipulate my account for any purposes... not being on facebook for a week or two and not posting a status for a few weeks appears to give facebook the gall to SPAM me after midnight... that better not continue... so i posted a status update basically telling them this is the text message status update you requested: fuck off facebook... i reset my notification times again and changed my password and found out that i need to install the facebook app on my phone... i don't want the facebook app on my phone... so i caught up on my notifications in fifteen minutes and that'll be enough facebook for me for today... dang commercial corporations spoil everything in this consumer addicted culture...

espn, the sports soap opera station

espn dropped the ball... the concept and even the content was great for a while and some of it is still good, but sports center has turned into sports soap opera and maybe, as they claim, "that's what fans want" but not me and not anyone with a true love of the games... maybe wrestling fans want scripted drama, soap opera and reality tv fans apparently do... but sports fans, real sports fans?... i don't think so... maybe couch potato fans who never played a competitive sport want the hyped-up drama or something other than a well played game (and those are few and far between in recent years, but that's another story as much about players as the media)... sports fans are watching, first and foremost, for the love of the skill and art of the sport... espn has become as ridiculously distracted by fake drama as fox and the rest of the media... they've gone the way of mtv, who puts fake drama (reality tv) ahead of music for a long time now... mtv lost their primary audience, music lovers... espn is on the way toward the same end...

kaspersky yet again

this time after updated windows (because windows has to fix it's flaws once a week or so and it's come to be expected from microsoft which is of course ridiculous, but whatever, for now), kaspersky has a pop up saying the application did not start properly and wants to collect information from my computer... so i click ok and send... and wait... again...

kaspersky itself is acting very much live a phishing trojan or virus and kaspersky support will not respond to my requests for reassurance that the latest version of Pure (3.0) was not infiltrated by some malicious software... so for five minutes so far kaspersky has been collecting files and now it is "packing" files to be sent to kaspersky... at least i hope it is being sent to kaspersky... meanwhile, i opened a notepad and there was a pop-up that there was not enough resources to complete the action and advised me to close other programs... nothing else is open except the kaspersky box that it opened automatically... and after packing for five more minutes, the support box asked me to send the data and i clicked send and it's collecting and packing again... no thank you for sending, just the same warning box asking me to send the data... and we wonder why i don't feel protected by my kaspersky security program...

now what was it i came to my computer to do again?...

kaspersky again

yes, again, it is a daily thing, but today it is a ten minutes and counting thing... coming out of hibernation this time and the kaspersky console won't even open... it is running every scan it can and the update of the databases simultaneously (no wonder it is freezing up) and it is preventing me from opening browsers or doing anything else with this computer other than typing into a notepad... the kaspersky console would not come up and the kaspersky program shut down on it's own then reopened and is running crazy on it's own... once the console finally did open, the scan would not stop... kaspersky is losing a customer this month since they will not respond to the support request and their product has prevented me from doing things with my computer when i want to do things with my computer for several weeks now... i can't even get on their website or check email when i want to...

do not use kaspersky products... as a long time user i am done with kaspersky...

NBA follies

you may remember all the meaningless complaints i vented about last year when the nba referees decided to play for miami... yeah, well, i almost forgot i wrote a bit about it last year, but it didn't take long for the nbc to remind me... the bias is so obvious it is unavoidable and i didn't even watch the game... protect miami at all costs, that's the name of the game... miami must win, period... how many technicals?... how many players ejected?... and we let miami grab chicago around the neck but that's a no call... make sure you call all the light stuff chicago does to miami... announcers were biting their tongues as the edited video was showed...

obviously the nba got scared when miami was embarrassed by chicago in game one and the referees got the message that their prime product, currently miami, must be protected and must win... obviously the referees do not know the meaning of the word subtle and the chicago players were provoked into reacting to the imbalance in the calls...

as far as i am concerned, miami won last year with the referee's help and miami may be the best team money can buy, but until they win the big games without biased calls from the refs, they don't earn any real respect from anyone who knows the real court experience of the any highly competitive game... professional basketball has turned into a very sad show of biased refs, overpaid prima donna stars, high paid thugs and and bad actors...

brighthouse... wow

watching the double overtime game as the san antonio spurs make an amazing comeback to win was not interrupted by brighthouse, thankfully, but the post game show, just as the san antonio coach was about to speak, brighthouse decides i cannot watch it... no, brighthouse decides that is the moment to shut down my enjoyment of the nba playoffs and send a firmware upgrade to my box... they don't ask like any user-friendly considerate software would ask if it is a good time... they don't give any options at all... just go away, it is not your tv or cable box, you are a sucker for paying us $130 a month, we own you and your tv viewing pleasure so bug off customer, we are brighthouse and we don't give a fuck...

bullshit commercials about being a friend?... somebody give me a better option than brighthouse - please... but before you call with sales calls - match the internet speed...

damn brighthouse, hire some quality control and costumer service professionals...

UPDATE: the firmware update somehow removed ESPN and ESPN2 from my channel lineup... ESPN and ESPN2 are just blank screens... so i will have to call and waste my time fixing they screw up once again...

UPDATE: the only solution brighthouse offered is to waste more of my time without compensation by sending yet another technician out to pretend to fix the problem like that last dozen technicians did over the last few years...

the brighthouse service has never worked properly and the brighthouse service techs have never been able to fix it in dozens of attempts... i've spend dozens of hours a year working for brighthouse on my time... it is always reboot the box and/or we will send out a technician to fix it, which has been a lie more than a dozen times...

don't trust brighthouse, they lie constantly...

i will just turn off the service, unplug the box, disconnect everything and reconnect tomorrow and see if that changes anything... that is the most i will give brighthouse now... i will pay $10 less this month and see if they cancel my service or allow that compensation for my time..

UPDATE THE NEXT DAY: it worked sort of... so i lose a day of service and put in a half hour of my time to service brighthouse equipment and we are back to the unsatisfactory service we had before the rude interruption of service caused by their firmware update...

i thought there were laws against monopolies...

dang Kaspersky

the Pure 3.0 protection program is trying to take over my computer (first complaint here) and it is becoming more than a nuisance as it is preventing me from using the computer when and as i want to... the triple scan plus database update happens simultaneously any time i come out of sleep mode or turn on the computer even when i turned the settings to OFF... the scans happen automatically and slow the computer almost to a freeze the computer until i can finally get the console open to stop it... the console is slow to open, then shuts down, the systray icon disappears, and then returns a couple of minutes later... and it seems to be getting worse, not better, as the Pure 3.0 is running more often and therefore interrupting my computer usage more often...

I think they know they have a problem with Pure 3.0, but i've received no response from the email to support... tomorrow i will call and see what they can do for me... they either need to fix it or walk me through returning to Pure 2.0 without putting my computer at risk because software preventing me from using my computer has got to go...

brighthouse is ridiculous

you can find too many complaints in this blog about brighthouse and it is only laziness, lack of use, and the knowledge that most other services are equally problematic and in terms of internet speed, a lot slower so i feel stuck with the crap brighthouse offers... the ridiculousness is that they actually made an unsolicited sales call to me today... i am on the national no-call list and have repeatedly told brighthouse directly that i am dissatisfied with their service and do not want their SPAM phone calls but they did it again... why would i pay more money for the crap they offer?...

the internet service remains about the same, it works but has intermittent lapses and is much slower than it was at the previous location (same service, same cost, just no boost in signal like they finally did at the other location after a half dozen service calls... i told them i do not want to waste my time with starting over troubleshooting here and requested they simply review my record and provide the solution of boosting the signal and they apparently don't get it - it being how to satisfy a costumer)...

the cable is about the same, the box needs rebooting weekly to keep it from locking up and the rest of the issues are listed in previous entries... there would have been no complaint if their sales department didn't annoy me today with an insulting disregard for my previous requests and documented issues, but here we are... brighthouse is ridiculous and if there was an alternative with equivalent speed/bandwidth i'd jump at it...

so how is your day?...

kaspersky pure 3.0

not so pure, since 3.0 was released... i've used kaspersky computer protection products for a long time and mostly, i am satisfied... they do drain a lot of resources but if they run on schedule, like when i am not using the computer - and when they do not start major scanning operations while i am using the computer, then they don't interfere with my using my computer... but since upgrading to Pure 3.0 recently, the scans occur simultaneously when i am using the computer, the scheduling resets to several days a week no matter what i set it for, and the multiple scans while i am already using the computer freezes the computer... the scans slow the computer to a crawl and freeze software, especially mail, and stop browsing, especially facebook and any graphic and scan intensive sites... i've had to switch to scanning manually and hope the scheduled scans don't keep resetting... i let kaspersky support know and hopefully they will get 3.0 fixed soon, but until then, anybody have any recommendations for a more reliable full scale protection software, send them to me...

virus protection should not act like a virus, ya know?...

UPDATE 5/2/13 1:30 PM...

The help ticket i put in yesterday did not appear on the Kaspersky site today so i put in another one that did appear...

the settings are set to manual scans and yet, Kaspersky Pure 3.0 automatically started all three scans (Full, Critical, and Vulnerability) and a download of updates simultaneously which is preventing the cpu from taking on any other tasks and slowing Kaspersky itself to a crawl... i ended up shutting down everything i was doing which took 20 minutes due to the non-responsiveness of the cpu... i do not appreciate a software that takes over my computer for hours (estimated time 3+ hours and that did not changed for an hour) especially when the software itself is not following it's own controls... so turning off automatic scans is not a viable solution...

i checked the website and there is no record of the support request i sent in... there's no email response from Kaspersky... so I sent another request and this time am recording the request number: 314695632... it instantly appeared on the list of "my requests" so apparently yesterday's did not go through... perhaps because the computer had to be shut down due to the Pure 3.0 locking it up... hopefully they come back with a solution quickly...

UPDATE 5/2/13 still going on...

UPDATE 5/9/13 still locking up, no response from tech support...

UPDATE 8/14/13 unsatisfied customer... unless serious fixes are released soon, I will not be renewing my 3-year contract with Kaspersky (I've been a customer for more than 8 years)... i never did get a satisfactory response to the issues and the scans still start occasionally on their own at which time i cannot use the computer and must wait while Pure 3.0 slowly allows me to stop the scans... i can no longer download email or stream music/videos without delays or time-outs and connection interruptions have increased to more than one an hour which may partly be due to the poor broadband (Brighthouse) service but it coincides with upgrading to Pure 3.0 as well...