Tale of Woe Part 2

Tale of Woe Part 2...

I opened up the Netflix "Watch Now" videos and tried to see if there was anything to watch. Nothing looked good to Beth or me. I felt it best to simply attempt to salvage the soon-to-be wreck of the download instead. Beth quietly turned over and closed her eyes.

I went downstairs, plugged my old router into my new router and set that up. Only that didn't work either. So after marching up and down the steps a few times I took the laptop downstairs, disabled the wireless and plugged the network cable into the back of the thing.

Finally! Speed! The download was going to complete in 20 minutes! Remember that. It's an important number.

I stood around for about 10 or 15 minutes, holding the laptop because the network cable was too short to set it down. The download kept getting faster and I was thinking about finally watching this movie. But when the download said "you can now watch this movie" it wasn't fully downloaded. No, it was just buffered.

"If I disconnect this cable and go back to the wireless it may never complete!" I thought. And sure enough, I was right (probably for the first time this night!). Going back to the flaky wireless dropped the download rate again and it was all over. I felt the cold grip of defeat.

I took the laptop back upstairs, connected it to the TV again, woke up Beth and confidently said, "Alright, we're ready." It was now 10:40. Though I was, We were, in fact, not ready anymore. Beth was tired and asleep and as I write this (now 12:40 AM) I am still amazed at how calmly she responded to me waking her up. She said, "you can watch it if you like, but I can't. I'm sleeping."

Rightly so. I had discovered that the movie was only 20% downloaded, but "ready to watch," and the remaining 80% would download in 1 hour 20 minutes and climbing. Had we turned it on, we would have come to the end of that which was downloaded probably 40 minutes into the movie and we would have had to complete the rest of the movie at another time. Oh, but you only have 24 hours to watch it after pressing "play." I couldn't bring myself to tell her that the light comedy she wanted to watch just wasn't going to happen.

I laughed a bit more. Then I left the room and went down to my ubuntu install (which is working nicely, thanks). To obtain some level of satisfaction through this evening of mis-steps and poor judgment, I shall now pass on to you the morals of the story...


Obligatory Morals to the Tale of Woe

1. iTunes rentals do not play on iPods created before September 2007 (or some say 5th Generation). I did very little reading on the matter, but there is much discussion and speculation. None of it is worth reading (okay, it is, but not at this hour!), but I shall soon write a post on it nevertheless. Until then, just heed this word of warning.

2. Invest in high-speed, stable wireless. Yes, STABLE. You'll thank yourself (and maybe me) someday. If your wireless router isn't working well... Get a new one. If that's not an option (as it is not for me, for reasons left unspoken), buy a wireless access point or extender, or build a wifi extender yourself. I could make a clearer point through clever use of time-value calculations, but just take the advice - after all, you read this far! I will be taking my self-advice in the morning.

Lastly...

3. Never, never, never, never, never, never, never experiment with unproven methodologies on production systems. That's sort of a universal moral with direct application to tonight. I should have driven to the movie store and obtained the movie. That's what I should have done. It's a proven system - practically guaranteed to work. What I should not have done was what I did do, which I'm sure you also fully appreciate now.

Tale of Woe Part 1

I seldom have a need to "vent." Those of you who do, and you know who you are, will certainly share in my pain. I know that I am among friends. What began innocently enough about 8:30 this evening has turned into an all-evening adventure. My opportunity to sit and watch a movie before beginning the work week has been lost along with my wife's desire to unwind with some light comedy. As you know, I'm somewhat of a geek and overly patient with technology, but I arrived quickly at my wits end tonight. Without further adieu, I present to you my Tale of Woe.

Jason's Tale of Woe Part 1.
(Moral may be found at the end of the story)


(music queue)

"Turn back, turn back, turn back...." came the soft cooing of wisdom sneaking into my seemingly well-thought-out plan of not having to go to the movie store.
I should have known better than to have silenced that voice.

It began innocently enough. Beth said, "Let's watch a movie. Go to the store and get a comedy" to which I replied, "let's see if we can rent it on iTunes so I don't have to leave." I was playing around with my new ubuntu install, attempting to raise my geek to an entirely new level.

"Okay, I found it - can you download it to your iPod so we can take it upstairs?" she asked. "Sure, one minute, I need to re-boot."

A few minutes later I was re-booted back into Windows and had No Reservations ordered from iTunes (after updating my credit card). "Is it ready?" she asked, not knowing that the time table had been extended an additional 20 minutes due to the 1 GB high-definition download. "Uh, it'll be ready in 20 minutes - it's downloading."

In my brain I had done the math already. By the time I went to the video store and got the movie, came home and put it in, it would have been 20 minutes anyhow. So, I was still good. Just in case this was going to take longer I asked Beth to look on Netflix for the "Watch Now" feature - perhaps we could get it there? After a brief look, nope.

The movie downloaded from iTunes and I tried to get it on my iPod to no avail. A cursory look through Google results quickly informed me that it was not going to happen. Did you know that iTunes rentals don't play on iPods made before September 2007 (or thereabouts). You didn't??? Geez - everybody knows that!

Right... That didn't go so well. No matter, it was still a bit after 9 and I had time to pull this stalled plane out of its dive. Time would tell.

I thought to myself, "Self... Copy the file to your iTunes folder on your laptop and bring that upstairs and run the TV through the video out." So I tried to do that. Only, my wireless network was flaky and the copying was not going well.

(queue Motorola wireless router, stage left)
(crowd: boo, hiss, show no mercy!)

Yes, that's right, the wireless network was running somewhere between 1 Mb and 5.5 Mb, spiking to 48 Mb and then dropping back down. That never happened with my old Netgear router, but I was not going to change that out. Or was I? Not yet, anyhow.

So copying across the network was not going to work - but that was okay. I had options: Burn to a DVD and for backup, copy to a USB flash. And it was so.

Seven minutes later the deed was done. Files had been written and transported upstairs to the waiting laptop. The files were copied over and with a right-click "play in iTunes" the prompt came up, "Would you like to play this rental? You will have 24 hours to complete it." I clicked "Ok" and bam!

"This file has been authorized to be played on a different machine or device."

So there I stood... Laptop connected, playing on the 13" TV upstairs. And I laughed. I apologized, too, for taking so long. I said something like "I didn't think it would be this much trouble." Beth said that she knew it would. And I remembered the still, small voice, "turn back, turn back, turn back." But I laughed as well.

The end.


I wished. Um actually, no, it doesn't end there. This tale had just begun. Perhaps now you know my need to vent. Join me, will you?

So in my great understanding, I thought, "I'll get this on Amazon Unbox." Then we can begin watching this in a few minutes while the rest downloads in the background. At this point I did not totally recall the slow network issue that was sure to plague any downloading. I took the mental steps necessary to plan my attack and I clicked the "watch" or "rent" or "click here" or whatever it said button - and I had to download the Unbox player.

I downloaded the player and installed it, at which point the video displayed as "queued for download" with no way to move it out to the "download now or else!" group that I so desperately wanted it in. A minute or two later it began downloading... at 336k. My connection was jumping between 1 and 5.5, up to 48, back down to 1. It was crazy.

For the non-geeks among us, 336k is slow. It's much slower than this sort of thing should take. Yes, this Unbox download was going to complete in... drum roll... 15 hours. I laughed more. What else was I going to do?

Beth had already given up. It was now 10 PM - an hour and a half past the beginning of this idea and now almost to the point that a rented movie from down the street would have already been completed! My hole that I dug was now quite large and I was preparing to jump in. My task was not yet complete, though! If I could only find one more thing to try! March on, friend, I was not deterred!

Stay tuned for Part 2.

I do accept free promotional items

It won't sway me one way or another, but I do accept promotional products to test out. If I like it, I'll tell the world. If I don't I'll be quiet about it and no one will be any the wiser.

If you have something cool to test out, I'd like to hear about it.

Why FunWithButter.com ?

That's a great question.
It's actually one that I don't have a good answer for. The simple explanation is that my mind works in weird ways and once in a while I give in to strange impulses such as buying a particularly odd URL.

The long answer is that I was standing in my kitchen one day and I was spreading some butter on a piece of toast. To preface this, however, you must understand that I usually have ideas like little marbles rolling around in my head. The best ideas seem to come when some of these marbles hit each other, which is what happened that fine day. I must have moved suddenly and as these marbles crashed together, I thought of the domain name, "FunWithButter" and frantically ran to my computer to see if it was available. To my great surprise it was - and I purchased it on the spot.

What to do with a domain name like this?
Well, even better was that I had no idea what to do with a domain name like this. But, being an upstanding individual I shunned the potentially bad connotations that arose and decided that it could, perhaps, be a butter related web site.

I'm not so sure anymore...
I have good ideas, I think. I like my ideas and people ask me what I think of certain products, ideas, etc. So, the new concept is that I'll share my ideas - the things I like - the things I dream of - here on FunWithButter.com. You're free to disagree with my ideas, add to them, sculpt them into something great, something butter better. Take them and run with them, make them um.... yours...

If you make it big-time with some of my ideas, or you're just thrilled by what you read, consider donating something to the cause. Help a brother out, eh?

You never know what'll come next. Be assured, though, that it's sufficiently valuable to me and might be to you as well. Don't miss the fun...