v-s.net v0.6

Wednesday, 12:23 pm in Geeking

So the other weekend I finally caved in a bought myself a USB memory stick.  I’d been hanging out for a while, kind of hoping that I’d be able to scam one off work or as some promotional vendor item or something, but in the end I happened to see some in Domayne while I was feeling rich.  I ended up with a 1 gig Lexar Secure II JumpDrive.  I didn’t buy it because of the alleged password-protected vault, which is kind of neither here nor there for me.  I mean, it’s good for work I guess – one of the things we’re currently looking at is finding a supplier of secure, footprint-free, non-admin rights requiring USB keys to distribute to staff – but mostly I use it to move downloaded apps between my prod machine at work (which is connected to the internet) and my laptop and dev machines (which aren’t).  USB keys are as rare as hen’s teeth around here and as coveted as Tier 3 armour, and it was getting annoying trying to scrounge up other peoples’ all the time (a consultant left one here once, but alas he rang up and wanted us to mail it back to him, so there went my opportunity for a free one).  Anyway, I bought my stick because it was a) the cheapest 1 gig drive, b) silver to match my computers, and c) had the least obtrusive vendor branding.

So I stuck it in Vexxis, just to try it out.  I think from memory it then did… something.  Ran some kind of driver install or… whatever, which I didn’t really think anything of at the time.  All was good.

Anyway, fast-forward to two weekends ago when after much nagging and a whole spindle of blank DVDs, I finally got ~Mat [h] to burn me the first 11 episodes of Season 2 of Doctor Who.  Imagine my annoyance when I stick the DVD in the drive only to get a “could not mount media, format not recognized” type error.  Grr!  Anyway, at the time I thought it was just something about the way the DVD had been burnt, so I mounted it up in Ixxis and shared the files.  Voila!

Then last night I was trying to watch a ‘real’, movie DVD.  Again, it wouldn’t mount.  For a while I thought it was a region issue (was I locked out of Region 4?  How would I even tell?), then a boring old hardware issue (goddamnit I can’t afford a replacement drive, not to mention I couldn’t be arsed driving into the ANU to try and track down the one remaining Canberra Apple Centre).

So while I was bitching about it to Dad, he mentioned that he’d had a similar issue on his PC.  After months and months of frustration, he’d tracked the problem down to faulty drivers installed by (wait for it) a Lexar Secure II JumpDrive.

I was totally like, “Fuxx0r.”

See, it’s one of those things; if it was a PC issue, no worries.  Cause tracked down, known action (uninstall Lexar software), fix problem, no worries.  Except it’s not a PC, it’s bloody OSX, which is lovely when it’s working but shit painful when it’s not, and I don’t know enough about how OSX ‘installs’ things (it always seemed really haphazard to me; one of the few remaining things I hate about OSX) – especially drivers – to fix the problem.

Even if I did give up trying to find a ‘real’ solution and simply re-installed Tiger, it doesn’t fix the problem that the next time I stick the JumpDrive in the whole situation happens again.

How excruciatingly irritating.

Two other things irritate me this week.  The first one is the fact that, when I order a fairly recent and un-obscure DVD online from a major store on a Friday, I don’t want to be able to walk past Dymocks on a Monday, see the same DVD, go back and buy it on a Tuesday and still be able to cancel my online order because in those 5 days it has not been processed or shipped.  The internet is about buying things now and cheap, so not only did I get my DVD sooner by buying it from the bookstore, but it was $4 cheaper since there was no postage.

So, suggestions for good places to buy Region 4 DVDs online?

The second thing that annoys me this week is finding out that our ISPs monthly quota apparently includes upload data as well as download.  Fuck me; no wonder I couldn’t work out why I’ve apparently done 3 gig since getting back from Wollongong on Sunday.  Especially since Azureus only turns on in the wee hours so it doesn’t muck up dad’s WoW (a cardinal sin in our household).  We have a 10 gig shaped plan, which is limiting enough, but add uploads into that as well…  Guh!

We’re with Bigpond, and the plan is fucking expensive for what it is.  The annoying thing is I’m perfectly prepared to pay extra to get the plan upgraded, since I’m the big downloader in the house, except there’s nowhere to go.  The next biggest plan Bigpond has is 20 gig, not shaped and something like $130 a month!  Dad is reluctant to move to a different ISP.  ~Mat [h] has massive internet but he does his bandwidth in about a week and has an ideological allergy to burning DVDs (or, in fact, allowing me to burn DVDs on his computer, even when they are my DVDs; I had to trade him a whole spindle to get one disc of stuff off him last time, and I’m running out of spindles) coupled with a wireless network that I can barely maintain a connection to, so that’s not exactly practical or convenient or good for things that are small or that I want right now damnit.

[sigh]  I need to talk to Dad about getting a second phone line put in (again) and paying for my own ISP.  A decent one, like ‘Node.  That’s $100 out of my paycheck right there for something I’m going to use maybe four months out of every twelve; so much for my TPA.

On top of all that, my car still needs a service (next Friday), and I still need a haircut and a massage.  Going to a doctor has fallen right off the list; I’m not taking any more time off work unless I’m dying, which I’m not.

… I was in a fairly good mood this morning.  Now I’ve just conveniently reminded myself of everything that’s stressing me out and giving me the shits.  Fuck.

Edit:  Okay, better mood now; I managed to fix the DVD/USB thing.  It was indeed the USB Secure II drivers that were fucking up the drive.  For random Googlers that are having the same problem, simply delete the file /Library/Receipts/STUC2.pkg and, hooray, all fixed (there’s also a prefs file at ~/Library/Preferences/com.lexarmedia.JDSecureII.plist).  Sure, you can’t use the secure vault on the USB stick, but who really cares?

Edit v2:  So I emailed Lexar complaining about the driver problem and they emailed me a new set that don’t seem to muck about with the DVD drive.  Yay.

Holy crap I feel like shit; random headache where on earth did you come from?

• Tags » bad day, tech support
• Comments By » ~Mat [h]
• Mood » aggravated