Language support in Windows 7 and Mac OS X

I've been studying languages again (human languages, not programming ones...) and having a good time with them. In a past life I was a linguist in the Army. I had taken German and Russian at the university and joined the Army so I could attend the Defense Language Institute. I studied Russian there for a year, but when I got to Germany in 1994 the Russians were pretty much gone. They took all the slavic linguists and put us in Serbo-Croatian courses because of the war that was going on in Bosnia at the time. I got out in 1998 and haven't spoken much except a little Russian to coworkers since then (can't believe it's been 12 years!). Now that I have two little boys, though, I figure it's time to dust off my language skills and teach them something at least. The last couple months I've been having fun setting Mac OS X to my different languages and learning the vocabulary you need for day to day computer activities. I've done it on my iPhone as well. I love how easy it is to switch keyboards on the iPhone in particular. Makes it so easy to look words up in online dictionaries! Particularly with Russian due to their Cyrillic alphabet. I'm looking forward to getting my hands on an iPad for this. I'm telling you, studying a language today isn't what it used to be! When I was in high school and college you'd sit there with a big old dictionary and flip through pages constantly. Reading one page of a book was a miserable affair if the author used a lot of vocabulary... To hear it I'd drive all over the Portland metropolitan area to video stores scouring them for German or Russian videos I hadn't seen yet. Slim pickings back then... Well, now that I'm getting back into studying them it's completely different. There are numerous apps on my iPhone that stream German, Russian or Serbo-Croatian programming any time I feel like hearing it. My Verizon FiOS now gets the Russian, German, Serbo-Croatian and French packages so I can watch German TV anytime (well, anytime my wife isn't in the room...). Just got a region free DVD player for the boys TV in the playroom and they're now watching German DVD's of Thomas the Train, Pinky Dinky Doo, Winnie the Pooh and a couple others that I ordered off of the German Amazon website. Our four year old is already building a nice little German vocabulary. It's amazing how much things have changed in such a short time! Well, getting myself back on topic, the other day I booted into Windows 7 and wanted to set it to German like my regular desktop was. Turns out that you can only do that with the "Ultimate" version. Needless to say I don't have Windows 7 Ultimate... That sucks. Just another item to add to the list of irritations when I periodically have to use Microsoft Windows. Hmmmm... Looks like my wife has gone to bed. Time to go see if anything good is on my new channels! :-)


About The Author

Ron Grove draws on over ten years of training, network administration and development experience. He loves to work with new technology and see how that technology can be best utilized by his clients. You can find him through his company Evanoah, LLC or through his LinkedIn profile.

Debt Collectors and New Cell Phones

Got a new cell phone a while ago for my office manager (aka "my better half") and it's been bombarded with debt collectors calling since day one. The 8:00 AM calls are particularly nice. One of the lovely benefits that comes with a lousy economy I suppose. Most have stopped calling after I called their companies back, but some are clearly blowing me off. Joy. So I get to spend the afternoon looking at State Attorney General's Offices websites to see what options I have if they continue to ignore my requests. I could just request a new number I suppose, but that one could have the same problem and I'll have just screwed over some unlucky person who would eventually get this number. If they keep calling next week I'll get to waste more hours acting on whatever I find out from the Attorney General's offices this afternoon. Or perhaps I'll get lucky and they'll finally stop. If you get a new phone number, I pray you don't get one awash with debt collectors. They're frequently less than pleasant to speak to...


About The Author

Ron Grove draws on over ten years of training, network administration and development experience. He loves to work with new technology and see how that technology can be best utilized by his clients. You can find him through his company Evanoah, LLC or through his LinkedIn profile.

Verizon's FiOS TV Central website is abysmal

I've been dusting off some of my language skills lately and Verizon FiOS offers a number of packages in different languages. A while back I went to FiOS TV Central to sign up for the German package. I've been enjoying it, though I wish they had some other channel as the second one besides Deutsche Welle. I'd like more regular programming like ProSieben Welt has, not so much news. In any case, I thought I'd go back and sign up for the Russian package. I've been trying for several days now and can't get the site to work. I've used every browser under the sun on three different computers and they all choke on the webpage with a useless error message that tells me nothing. I've tried to use the feedback link on the page to let them know there's a problem, but they never respond. I've tried to go to the support pages, but get the message:

We're sorry....
We are not able to process your request. To continue, please select one of the following options:

Return to the previous page.
View the verizon.com site map.
Go to the verizon.com home page.

Very helpful. Other links there seem to have the same problem. I've tried finding phone numbers that might get me to where I want to go, but they have a million of them for a million different things. I have no idea really what one might get me to a person. They have a phone option to order the packages which I'll probably use, but I figured they'd fix the pages by now. Besides, it's automated so you don't talk to a person. I'd like to report the problem on this website. Can't report it to a machine... I'm sure they have no idea because even if you want to report the problems with the website you just get more error messages. Seriously, if you can't get anything else right on the website, at least get the "Contact Us" page working properly...


About The Author

Ron Grove draws on over ten years of training, network administration and development experience. He loves to work with new technology and see how that technology can be best utilized by his clients. You can find him through his company Evanoah, LLC or through his LinkedIn profile.