that geeky dude

What I’m going to say might get me blacklisted by a lot of people.

Ron Paul is a silver tongued maniac.

He talks very well. He says a lot of things that a lot of people want to believe. He says he’ll do things that sound great, but they are things that the President does not have the power to do without a supportive Congress. He’s running a really good scam on his supporters, and for that I commend him, but he doesn’t have a real chance at President.

From his membership in StormFront, to his sexism/racism, to his outright “Libertarian Crazy”, he’s just bad news. Please god, do deeper digging than his PR people would have you do.

So, Sandisk got back to me regarding my previous message to them. Their final decision, it seems, is to have me return it to Amazon.

I have begun the process to return it, even though I think the response is completely and totally unacceptable.

I can say for sure I’m boycotting their products from now on.

So, I did order the SanDisk Sansa Express I spoke about in my last post, and I was quite pleased with it for a couple of hours. I plugged it in, Vista saw it as a “music device” with both internal and external storage available in my computer. I dragged a couple songs to it, unplugged it, and jammed for a few hours. That’s when the drama began…

Being a good little bleeding edge technology dude, I downloaded the Sandisk Firmware Updater from Sandisk’s website, and I was told that firmware version 1.01.01A was available. However, there were no details about this update on their website. Figuring it was a bugfix, I told the updater to go ahead and install it. The upgrade went smoothly, or so I thought. The player was now sluggish to start, and the songs I had put on the microSD card weren’t showing up in the list. I plugged it back in, and now only 2gb of “internal storage” was available from the player.

I did some checking on the Sansa Express Forums on sandisk.com, and apparently this has bitten a lot of people who didn’t buy Sandisk MicroSD cards. Considering the major price difference between Sandisk cards and the Kingston card I bought, I found this exceedingly unacceptable. This Kingston card has worked without an issue in my digital camera, my cell phone, and in my card reader on my PC. It even worked in the player before I did the firmware update! If this was an accident, it should never have made it out of quality control in the Sandisk development center. If it was intentional, then this is an even worse case of vendor lock-in than Apple is trying to accomplish.

I have contacted Sandisk support, and they have advised that I update the firmware. My latest response to them follows. (if you’re reading the blog directly, please use the “More” link)
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What’s really stupid about working the weekend day shift is that nothing around work is open on Sunday. The KFC, Taco Bell, Moe’s and Subway on Broad Street close on Sundays, which completely screws over not only me, but people who live around here. I guess the people who aren’t working can go out and get something else, or cook at home, but when I’m stuck at work from 8am to 8pm, the only thing I can do on Sunday is pack a lunch (which I’m far too tired to do at 6:30am) or order a pizza.

As much as I like pizza, there’s only so much you can eat before you start getting sick of it. I guess I could hop in my car and drive up to Northside Drive or Moreland Avenue and hit up a fast food join there, but meh, that gets me out of the office too long and if the crap hits the fan while I’m gone, I have to deal with the inevitable bitching.

That’s also a complaint I had when I worked overnights. The only place that was open was Landmark Diner, and they’re both too expensive and the food is crappy.

I may have to start stocking up on cans of soup and keep them in a cubby somewhere around here.