Product Review: Meep! Tablet

Two words: Epic Fail

Nutshell version: the Meep! tablet by Oregon Scientific is an unmitigated piece of crap.

A better option would be buying some off-brand tablet you’ve never heard of, running an older version of Android on an outdated processor, on sale from some outlet online. Really, you’ll be happier.

Or let them play Tetris on your old flip phone you haven’t yet recycled. It’ll keep them just as occupied.

A brief rundown:

• Battery life: none. My old, dead 3rd gen iPod has more battery life.
• Parental controls: none. Registration portal is unreachable most of the time, and when it is, it’s non-functional.
• Apps: basic, pre-installed, freebie games. You can enable the Google Play App Store—if you could register the unit on the Parental Portal (see above). Most of the other features—like text chat—are also hobbled until you can enable it.
• Customer Support: none. Their customer support phone number, like their parent portal, is also unreachable. If you do manage to get through, expect to be disconnected while waiting for someone to pick up.
• Screen: soft plastic. If you’re old enough to remember Space Fidgets [https://www.google.com/search?q=space+fidget+toy], those liquid crystal-filled disks that changed colors when you ran your finger over the back, you’ll recognize the color distortion around your finger as you jab it into the unresponsive screen. If you drag your finger around it leaves trails. The laptop I’m writing this on has a more rigid screen. (And in case no one told you, never poke your LCD screen.)

Opening the box, following the Quick Start guide, the first step is setting up Wi-Fi. That’s a no-brainer—no issues.

Step 2, according to the instructions, is connecting to their Parental Portal. But first, you need to perform two system updates. That it requires system updates right out of the box is (almost) to be expected—most computers do. But you can’t do anything with it apart from playing the pre-installed games until you do. Did I mention we purchased this as an Xmas present? Because that’s what every kid who’s just opened presents wants to do—wait for updates to install.

It doesn’t come with any games you can’t find (near equivalents of) in the App Store. Considering its biggest selling point is complete parental control of content, some might consider it odd three of the games intended for school-aged children involve shooting, and one blowing things up.

Most of the features are hobbled, until you can register a parental account through their portal. Only you can’t register through their portal, because it’s non-functional—even when it’s reachable. (And for two days now it has been consistently unreachable.) The portal doesn’t work with most browsers, including—get this—the tablet itself! That’s right, their tablet can’t access its own portal.

They claim this is by design. (I did get a reply to my initial irate e-mail.) They say this is to keep the kids from accessing the parental controls. Because any kid who could get past the password wouldn’t be able to get onto their parent’s computer, right? Or their iPad. Because they have an Apple iOS app for parental control—of their Android tablet. (No, they’ve yet to develop an Android app to control their custom Android interface.)

They do not explain why they only let Google Chrome or Apple Safari access their site. They claim it’s because their site uses HTML5 (ooh, you mean like most other modern websites?), and doesn’t function (well) with “some older browsers.” Instead of letting the user be responsible for their own experience, or simply upgrading their Internet Explorer or Firefox, the browser check on the front page won’t let any other browsers in. The three HTML5-compatible browsers I have on my phone didn’t work.

Oh, but that’s assuming you can get onto their site. In their reply they claim their site is “undergoing some maintenance.” During Xmas. No, it’s not completely overloaded by every parent who bought one trying to register it at the same time. They decided to bring their developers in, over a holiday, when a bunch of kids might all be opening them at the same time, to do “maintenance.” Right.

So when you do get onto the site, you watch the little video that shows you all of the things you’re about to do. Then, assuming you don’t want to see it every time you visit, you check the box that says, “Don’t show this again.” And that disables the login screen on the following page. What the check box should say is, “Don’t show me this, or any other of that other fancy-pants HTML5 code, including the login screen, again. Ever.” So you go get another computer and try again. You go to create a new account and enter the serial number and... that’s it. The portal doesn’t go any further. The buttons do nothing. Must be that “maintenance.”

I put the thing down around 1 AM with what looked like ⅔ of battery left. The next morning it was dead. We plugged it in to charge overnight. I unplugged it at 8 AM, set up Wi-Fi again, then turned the screen off and set it down. By lunch time we picked it up again, and it was dead again. Seriously. It was off and it didn’t last 5 hours.

I won’t take (too much) issue with the forward-facing camera, as most other child-oriented tablets don’t have a rear-facing camera, so, y’know, the kid can actually take pictures with it. Except the camera quality is crap, too. In anything other than bright sunlight the pictures are too dark, and they’re extremely jagged and pixelated. The camera in your old flip phone has better resolution.

I’ve convinced my kid to give it up so he can get a better one (a feat in itself). This is going back in the box and back to the store.

Hershey's Packaging Perfectly Contradicts Itself - mediabistro.com: AgencySpy

From the post: "It's bad enough that Hershey's has the audacity to make health-benefit claims on a bottle containing chocolate syrup. But by some oddity of logic, the nutrition facts lists the daily calcium percentage at "0%". During a recession, flat is the new up?"

via: Hershey's Packaging Perfectly Contradicts Itself - mediabistro.com: AgencySpy

Tip: "emergency" buttons on smart phones

You may or may not have taught your youngsters how (and why) to dial 9-1-1 (and to not practice it - sorry, local PD). It's a very good idea to do so. However it's one thing to teach 2-4-yr-olds how to operate a push-button phone (assuming they know which buttons are which). It's quite another to get them to navigate multiple touch screens on the newest smartphones to even get to the dialer window. A lot of adults I know can't manage this.

The Lock Screen (and eventually, an ambulance) to the rescue.

My phone, a T-Mobile G-1 (not an endorsement of their product or service), has a lock screen - a privacy/security feature whereby you have to input a pattern or code to be able to access the phone. (I'm told the iPhone has this as well.) In case of emergency - when you can't, in a panic, remember the pattern, or you're incapacitated and some samaritan is trying to call help on your phone - there is a single button to get to the dialer, where it only connects to emergency numbers.

We were recently reinforcing to our 3-yr-old son the hows and whys of calling for help. My wife got one of those new phones that has a full QWERTY keyboard instead of a dedicated number pad. We're still working on 6 vs. 9, so throwing a bunch of letter keys on top of everything didn't clear up any confusion. We turned to my phone, and realized that, "press the green button with the phone picture," doesn't always open to the dial pad - sometimes contacts, sometimes call log.

I had turned my lock screen off, because I felt it too much of a bother to use each time I wanted to access the phone. When I first enabled it, allowing my son to entertain himself with the new "game" of drawing lines between the dots on the screen, I was sure to instruct him to never press "the white button with the red cross" (at least not any more) - that it was for calling for help, if someone was hurt, or there was a fire. I've since turned the lock back on, for this very reason. It's one button that my son can access and enables him to dial 9-1-1 in an emergency.

Tip: Cell phone as stand-in travel night light

We frequently do overnights at Grandma & Grandpa's house, but we often neglect to take a night light.

Solution: mobile phone.

It occurred to me one day as I was leaving my phone charging, powered on, that it emitted enough light to illuminate the room, just barely.

Our son simply cannot go to sleep in total darkness - plus, as a grown up, it helps to see where you're going when navigating the luggage and toys in the spare room, plus navigate to the bathroom in the middle of the night.

Many phones have advanced features, such as being able to power themselves off after a set time (if you only want it while the little ones fall asleep, but not all night), besides doubling as an alarm clock.

Lost Generation

You simply must see this video. I came across it through friends on Facebook.

While listening to the message, it's easy to be blown away by the way in which it's presented. Technical and editorial feats aside, go back and listen to the message.



Reminiscent of "Wear Sunscreen," ("Advice, like youth, probably just wasted on the young" written by Mary Schmich and published in the Chicago Tribune as a column in 1997, not Kurt Vonnegut) I suspect it'll be the subject of more than one graduation ceremony.

Insert tab A into slot B

Well, I guess it's time for what's getting to be my monthly posting about trips to Wisconsin - or as I like to call it, Chez Cheese. I know, I know, I haven't posted in two months. I actually wrote this one last month, but I never got around to finishing it. I didn't have anything to say about the month before because, frankly, it was uneventful (well, from a travel standpoint, anyway).

I did have the multiple gate-change, 4-hour layover fiasco in Chicago's O'Hare. (I was going to call the post, "O'Harried" or "O'Harrowing." Perhaps fortunately the post never happened.) While I was walking to my gate at one end of the terminal - the end of the terminal - they changed my gate to one in a completely different terminal. Let me say it again - changed while I was walking there. I lugged my 40 lb. shoulder bag (because who needs wheels?) and my backpack with laptop and accouterments (is that were luggage comes from, or is it the other way?) around the football stadium that is O'Hare for 4 hours. I had time to kill, and what was I supposed to do, buy a book and sit and read it?

They changed my gate 3 more times while I waited. Others told me that it was par for "No'Fare." So, while arduous, I didn't feel it particularly interesting enough to write about. Except that, well, I just did.

I knew what my topic was going to be last month, however, very soon after I landed. There is the unsung villain, perhaps villainous sidekick, rather, to air travel - car rental.

First off, there is the possibly illegal, though certainly unethical practice of tricking you into an upgrade. You reserve a small to midsize car, and when you show up to collect your reservation they say, "I have a monster SUV, or a fancy, high-end sport sedan available...?" Oh, they have plenty of smaller cars, too. But they're making you say, "OK" to the bigger car by presenting them, and only them, as options, usually without telling you they'll cost more.

Last month I switched to Avis from Enterprise, because I didn't like the later's practice of being a mere $10 cheaper, but offering a car so stripped down I was lucky to have automatic windows. (Does anyone have manual, roll-down windows anymore? But then what motion do you use when you want to talk to the person in the car next to you?) They (Enterprise) told me that for a "modest upgrade" I could get things like a stereo radio, cruise control (essential to keeping to the speed limit in a foreign state) and a key fob, so I don't have to fumble with gloves on in the snow and rain to get a key in and unlock one door then reach over and manually unlock the others to let in my passengers who're still standing outside. You know, the stuff we never had when we were kids. I know the corporate bean counters back home would balk at the word "upgrade" on my receipt, so I opted for the one who gave you all that stuff in the base rate.

If only they would give you the base rate. Booking the car through my corporate travel site, there's a price quoted for a midsize sedan of $48/day. Last month, when I got to the counter, the helpful woman at the counter said, "I have a Saturn Vue...?" Knowing as much about cars as I do economic foreign policy, I say, "m'OK," and am surprised to see a sporty little SUV waiting for me. And here I am thinking, wow, how nice of Avis to have such nice cars - worth the extra $10. There was some monster snow that weekend, so it turned out to be fortuitous.

So this time at the counter I'm told, "I have a [some brand I forget], which is a midsize SUV." Then, as I pause for a moment to consider what could be "midsize" for a monster truck that's far too huge for most people to get around in, and how it still qualifies as one, "it's $89 on your corporate rate." It's late at night and I'm tired, so my mental gears aren't completely greased.

"No," I say, "I certainly don't need anything that big," remembering the seats-6-with-all-their-luggage-and-a-kiddie-pool Vue.

"I have a Dodge Magnum...?"

"m'OK," I relent. She could have said, "I have Gursis Baba Friggle Bibby...?" and I would have said the same thing, because the only thing I could picture with the word "magnum" was condoms.


I'm not sure how I would classify the Dodge Magnum. It's got the look of a car for people who like to collect speeding tickets, but it's got a cargo area in the back. It's too short to be a van, but can you really call it a hatch-back? My van technically has a hatch on the back, but "hatch-back" brings other cars to mind. The Ford Pinto is a hatch-back. So is the AMC Gremlin. Back in my day, the name we used for cars that had a cargo area connected to the cab instead of a trunk was "Station Wagon." So, yeah, the Magnum is a fancy, sporty station wagon, albeit one in which you might actually be able to pick up a date.

Now the gears in my mind catch. Is this car, also $89 "on my corporate rate?" They didn't quote me a price, but is that what I paid last time? It's still bigger than I need, certainly not "blah," and I don't recall explicitly saying, "no, I want something cheaper." "No, not that big," should mean, to most people, "don't try to upsale me, just give me what I asked for."

This is decidedly dishonest for their use of the words, "on your corporate rate." They know I made the reservation trough a corporate travel agency. "Your corporate rate" is meant to imply that your company has agreed to the price. They haven't. That's the price Avis is offering to charge your company, and not necessarily discounted.

They handed me the barely discernible, used-up ink ribboned, dot matrix printout with, "initial here, here, here and here and sign here," but I didn't notice anything about a rate. It certainly wasn't told to me. I assumed, perhaps naively, that when my travel preferences explicitly state, "small to midsize" and quote a specific price when I make a reservation, that's what I'll get. No one at the airport asks me, "I have a first class seat available...?" when I get my boarding pass.

Yes, yes, caveat emptor, and I should check what I'm paying before I sign, but I already agreed to one price, so unless someone specifically says, "this is more," then that's all I should pay. They did say (this time) a particular car was more, but to that option I said, no. Without being told, upfront, before I say, OK, what the price of the other option is, I have to assume it's what I agreed to.

Not that I'm paying for it. I'm expensing the car. I just don't want the people whose corporate pockets the cost is coming out of coming by my office, jabbing their finger at my credit card statement, going, "explain this!" I'm sure I can manage a good, "b'wah...?" and reiterate the above. They've been letting me slide on my two beers with dinner (expensing alcohol is verboten) so I'm hoping they'll let this go, too.

Now we come to the little exercise I like to call, "Insert tab A into slot B." When was the last time you got into a car that came with instructions? OK, technically they all come with instructions, but when have you ever felt it necessary to read them? These are the keys that were in the car (broken ring hole, tape and all):


First, why do car rental agencies feel it necessary to give you two keys, then insist on bolting them together? What am I supposed to do with the second key? Use it when some distempered valet snaps the other one off in the lock?

Turns out, I don't know what to do with either key. They slide into the ignition, but that appears to be all they do. They slide so far into the ignition, with the head of the key so small, that I can just barely get my fingers in there to try to turn them. I don't try to twist too hard for fear of snapping them off or lacerating my fingers on the edges.

To that point, I've seen keys like this before - small, hideaway ones that slide into the remote fob. I've assumed they were there in case the remote battery died, so you could still open the door. These slide into the ignition, but so far that you can't turn them, so now I'm looking all over the interior for a start button, something other than the familiar turning key that's so much a given they're on my son's baby toys.

I shine a light into the ignition socket, and then I take another look at the key fob. That's when I remember that the point of most technological "innovation" is to be capricious and unnecessary. (Technology for its own sake, adding complication to simplicity because it's kewl.) And it dawns on me - the plug-shaped fob is the key. I jam it into the socket and twist and voilá, it starts up.

If two keys is mockingly unnecessary, then two keys that don't work, bolted onto something that doesn't look like a key but is, is just fucking with me.

For this I paid extra.

Quiznos can suck my ass

"Mmmm, mmmm, mmmm, mmmm, zzzzzzz....."

Right through the security screening at Chicago O'Hare (which I got through with one of those dangerous, deadly bottles of water in my bag - forgot it was there, but noticed my bags on the x-ray screen as the screener's back was turned to it to talk to the "security" person behind him - your tax dullards at work, don't you feel safe now?) is tiny Quiznos sub stand.

Long story short: the timestamp on my reciept is 1:19PM, my order number is 86. I realize how much of an error I've made when, waiting in a crowd of other people still waiting for their sandwiches, they're still calling numbers in the 70's.

There's three people working behind the counter - one person ringing up sales as fast as people queue up on line, one person making sandwiches as fast as she cares to make them, and another handing them out as fast as they roll out of the oven (i.e. not very).

Some 15 minutes later, and they're calling numbers in the low 80's, and I think I might actually get to eat something before my flight. "84!" Soon, very soon. "85!" OK, any minute now.

Except now there's a shift change for the person pulling the subs out of the oven. She leaves, and is out of sight before her replacement waddles (and I do mean waddles) into view. The replacement doesn't look like she's in a hurry to breathe (and appears to be using most of her mental capacity to remain doing so). There's an empty wire rack from the last sub at the end of the oven conveyor, and it's keeping the current sub from leaving the oven completely. So while the relief wrapper is punching in and slowly (I don't think she bent her knees once) squeezing her oompa-loompa frame between the sandwich maker and the oven, I'm watching what I assume to be my sandwich (read on) approach cumbustion.

"87!"

"What about 86!" I bark, and am sumarily ignored.

It's now more than 20 minutes past the time on my receipt. "90!" (they failed to call 88 or 89 as well) 20 minutes - this is lousy service on the season opener of Hell's Kitchen. How long should I be expected to wait for a god-damned sandwich? They only have 4 or 5 kinds on the menu, so it's not like I confused anyone with something unusual. It's not like they do anything else.

I decided I wasn't going to stand for such [dis]service and went back to the cashier and waited on line again to demand a refund. Of course there's a form that had to be filled out. I'm asked to sign at the bottom, then, "sorry about that." On the bottom it's noted, "customer said they waited too long," as the reason. (The man behind me asked, "what's good here?" I told him another place down the terminal. When he laughed, I related the above and he heeded my advice.) She handed me back my original receipt, and that was it. I paid with a credit card, so there wasn't anything necessarily to physically give me, but there was no button pushing on the register, either. We'll see if it shows up on my statement in a week.

[Disclaimer: I do realize that the quality of service (or lack thereof) of this particular, possibly franchised, establishment may not be indicative of the level of service of the entire chain. I can recall eating at at least two other Quiznos before, and getting my food in a timely enough manner. I've also worked for a number of years in the retail food business, so please don't try to tell me I should have been more respectful of the people who're only taking whatever jobs are available to them and/or that perhaps I don't understand the strains of the job.]

Spare Change

Thought this was funny. Visit the site, buy a shirt (or don't).

clipped from www.mikero.com

Funny condom ad

NSFW(OBA) not safe for work (or balloon animals)

the "outtakes" are pretty funny, too

clipped from www.boingboing.net

The Fed helps those who help themselves (to your money)

Why can we so readily approve giving away public funds (at a deficit, with no tax base to recover them) to banks and brokerage firms, but we have a hard time allocating money for regular Americans with genuine need?

I don't wish to debate the wisdom of helping the most wealthy out of a situation their own greed created, because they're "too big to fail." I believe business runs on access to available credit, and credit markets need to be relieved.

But if we all agree that the economy thrives when money changes hands, does it make better sense to bail out a corporation so they can cut their losses, bolster their profit, so stockholders have value in their holdings (emphasis on "holding"), or to give the money to people who will actually spend it?

I don't mean the stereotypically irresponsible things like flatscreens and Nintendo Wii's (I believe the huge corporate retail chains like Walmart will endure). But if instead of giving insurer AIG some $80 billion to keep them afloat, we floated some of those funds to people who've been most impacted by the economy, they could afford things - things like health insurance - and give companies that provide goods and services their much needed capital.

Now I'm going to speculate. (You may want to get your tinfoil hat.) Why can't we do this? You're still going to buy that flatscreen and latest-model iPod, aren't you? (if you're a good American, and do what you're told, you're going to go out and shop to help the economy.) But without available cash, you're going to buy them on credit. And for that, the banks make money, in the form of interest.

On the other hand, it's been shown that many people, with large consumer debt, given the funds would choose to lower their debit position. (e.g. pay off some of their credit cards.) This is good for consumers - it lowers their unsecured debt, lowers their interest payments, and gives them more funds to save, if only for that new iPod.

It is, however, bad news for a bank. It lowers their interest income and reduces their assets. Yes, the money you owe them is an asset. It is only "unsecured" to you, in that you don't have an asset (e.g. a house) to offset the debt. Recent changes in bankruptcy laws mean the bank will get its money, somehow. There is no risk that the poor, defenseless bank, who was only trying to help everyone it could by extending them all ridiculous amounts of credit, even to those evil cheats who lied about the stability of their employment, would get left twisting in the wind.

And if you don't get your own, personal infusion of bailout cash - if you can no longer pay your bills - even better for the bank. They now get to charge usury... I mean, the default interest rate, meaning it's going to cost you more money to not have any.

(You can take your hat off now. If the above made sense, then it was working.)

[the following text is stolen from TrueMajority.org]
The U.S. faces the most serious economic crisis since the Great Depression. Just how deep we go and how long the recession lasts depends upon how quickly we take steps to counter it.

The economy is hemorrhaging jobs at a frightful rate. For all of 2008, the economy lost a net total of 2.6 million jobs. That was the most since 1945, when nearly 2.8 million jobs were lost.
More than 300 of the country’s leading economists have called for immediate passage of a significant and broad-based jobs and economic recovery package.

A package must include investments in alternative energy technology to create millions of new jobs and generate billions in public revenue and tackle the issue of climate change and reduce our dependence on foreign oil.

We must also provide grants to state and local governments so that they will not be forced to raise taxes, layoff workers and cut services in the middle of a downturn.

Finally, we need investments in public infrastructure that will provide a crucial shot in the arm for the economy and create hundreds of thousands of good paying jobs to strengthen our middle class.

Hammer time: US citizen security threatened by insecure "secure" passports

I am so taking a hammer to mine... when I eventually get around to renewing it.

clipped from www.boingboing.net New US RFID passports manufactured offshore at a huge profit, transported by unsecured couriers After the computer chips are inserted into the back cover of the passports in Europe, the blank covers are shipped to a factory in Ayutthaya, Thailand, north of Bangkok, to be fitted with a wire Radio Frequency Identification, or RFID, antenna. The blank passports eventually are transported to Washington for final binding, according to the documents and interviews. Outsourced passports netting govt. profits, risking national security (via Beyond the Beyond)

Full of wit: if you can't think straight, then the terrorists have won

Richard Pryor said:
"Snakes make you run into trees. White people see a snake and go, 'snake!' (turns) POW! (face into outstretched hand)"

Please try to remember this when (that's right when) Bin Laden tries to get you to vote for McCain.

via BoingBoing

clipped from miscellanea.wellingtongrey.net With Barack Obama so far ahead in the polls some people are getting worried that this election cycle’s October surprise will be a terrorist attack. keep your brain running at all times. When you switch it off bad things happen.