If you are a user of VPNs, check the fine print ... Especially if you consider PIA

 I am a dupe with a preference to using Windows 7 despite it ending being supported by Microsoft in January. Since I employ both a firewall and a decent anti-virus, I continue to use a system I have setup to my preferences a decade ago. It's a familiar piece of equipment that keeps me contributing to the companies I'm involved with. I  understand Microsoft feels that Windows 10 is sooooo superior that they were willing to sunset the most popular desktop computing operating system in the world. 

And I DO have a Win10 box that was built to my specs. I originally tried to buy a fan-less system out of Israel that was more than three times the price of any computer I've ever bought. Turns out the pandemic got in the way of that deal, so I had Patrick build a system that will eventually be something I'm happy to be using. 

Some day.

I have to find time to spend seven weeks (roughly) to customize the new machine so that I can transfer my day to day work over to it. SEVEN WEEKS.  That makes Microsoft's gunpoint assault on my Windows 7 system more costly to me than the hardware. So, a raspberry to Microsoft.

Now, let me introduce you to Personal Internet Access, aka PIA. It's a VPN. And in case you don't have your three-letter dictionary handy, that's a Virtual Private Network. While a number of critics would point at a VPN user as a person with elicit secret activities to hide, the truth is that bad guys are getting better and better at finding innocent bystanders at home and invading their privacy. For the cost of a cup of coffee, it's possible to have another layer of protection.

And yes, if I want to watch a US-only video on YouTube, it's nice to be able to do that. I have to remember to switch it off when looking at SportsNet and TSN videos here because if I don't, I get that same off-putting notice about the video not being available in 'your' country. 

I did the due diligence and found PIA was a mid-level performer at the lower end of the pricing tiers. The decider in my matrix was the fact that the service supported up to 10 devices. Given that I have six eligible devices within my sight at this moment, having 10 covered seemed like a good idea. So, in the middle of the year, I bought a year's subscription to the service. It cost a few coffees, but that's not the point. I paid for a year for ALL of my devices, not the least being the main machine, which was running Win 7 then as it does now. 

There was some growing pains. The Win 10 machine had a tumble over the Hosts file on the computer. I asked for some help from PIA to help get by that problem. The response was the usual boilerplate pablum. I eventually resolved the issue by wiping the machine and restoring a two-week old machine image backup. This time I found what program was diddling with Hosts as I re-installed and upgraded programs.  All of that without PIA's help. Was it their responsibility to solve the problem?? No. But help, hell yeah!!

Then, in September, PIA decided unilaterally with no notice to me that it would no longer support Win 7, which was within their rights, given the weasel words in the fine print. These Licence Agreements don't hold up all that well when challenged by well-heeled victims of bad software or bad management of good software. The managers at PIA decided to pull the plug on Windows 7 support, hiding behind the sunsetting of the OS by Microsoft. 

But here's the gigantic hole in their fig leaf defence. I bought this product FIVE months after end of life and I used it for more than three months WITH PIA's continued support of the non-supported operating system. Then PIA decided manpower in a pandemic dictated that they throw the Win7 Users overboard. But they did something still worse than selling me a product they wouldn't support after I'd used the product for more than a month. They cancelled the support WITH NO NOTICE to me and the others in my situation. And the service worked intermittently for weeks after. All it took was cycling through servers all over the world, to occasionally get a connection. That was until this month when no amount of fiddling made things worked.

That's when I went to the website and found the now two-month old notice. I contacted support. All I wanted was the half-year I wasn't going to be using the service (I certainly couldn't trust a devious organization, moving forward). The support person politely pointed out the refund policy was specific about when it expired and that she'd be happy to put a stop on my automatic renewal. You can imagine the words that crossed my mind, especially after the legal eagles pointed out that I'd win the case (worth 20 bucks) here in town, but travelling elsewhere might result in a loss (lawyer's fees to be included) and the travel costs. And in a different jurisdiction, their crappy, one-sided licence could be upheld. Even though they no longer offered the service they sold me! 

So, the best I could do is to cost PIA future sales. I hope readers, however few they might be here, will share and, of course, avoid PIA like the plague (a joke that is immediately stale, but true nonetheless). I'm telling all my friends and family. Somebody, somewhere, will believe me and will shop for a VPN elsewhere. And I whole-heartedly recommend VPNs. I know some of you are either current or will be future users of NordVPN.. Not the worst choice, but I urge you to do your due diligence.. Heck, you might even be a non-Windows 7 user and think the dreadful support from PIA is worth the price savings. YMMV.

To me, PIA represents the worst of the pandemic responses. They can't support the work for a key section of their customer base and just cast the workers AND the customers adrift, without returning money taken WHILE IN THE PANDEMIC, thus without the ability to claim they didn't know. The company made no effort to contact me that they were doing that. And when contacted, they didn't respond with a decent effort to split amicably. They said your money is ours and we'll do the right thing and not automatically try to take your money again NEXT year. 

Not good enough. Not close. Not part of my life moving forward.

And not a single creative slur in the whole rant. Mom, I AM mellowing.

Be safe, Even you PIA folks.

IF My Last Name Was Bettman ...

I'm going to give the new Blogger interface a whirl today with some meanderings about the NHL Draft lottery last night. Although it means my beloved Montreal Canadiens will PROBABLY have a 12.5 percent chance of winning the lottery (aka Alexis Lafreniere), I'm in the camp with Brian Burke thinking my namesake from the Bettman branch of the United Gary's of the World, screwed this up.

Burke believes in the lottery. The worst should draft first. Or close to it. He thinks a lottery is okay ... providing there are no outside interlopers. Like the mystery team, still to be determined after the play-in round of the playoffs, commencing some time between now and the end of everything. Might be the worst of those teams, my Habs, or the best of those teams, the Pittsburgh Penguins. Heck, it could even be the horrible local team around these parts, the Toronto Maple Leafs. Ugh! No, make that QUADRUPLE UGH!!!!

I'm hardly an Ottawa Senators fan. Still think the idea that they wear a centurion on their chest is REALLY STUPID. But I grew up in a family that grammatically didn't shudder supporting the Maple Leafs. Took me till grade TWO before I realized what a bobo that was. But I would have liked the Senators to draft one-two, take Lafreniere and Tim Stutzle, leaving Detroit, hopefully, with Quinton Byfield. Keep all the studs in Montreal's division cuz I like watching great hockey players. Except in the Blue of the Maple Leafs. And really, not that fond of the other blue team, the Tampa Bay Lightning. Or the Rangers. They wear blue too. Hmmmmm, a journey of self discovery just found a profound place. Yep, no blues in hockey. Although, I have to admit, sorta liked the St. Louis Blues ever since their inception.. Glenn Hall, three Plagers and the best uniform not worn in Chicago. Montreal's third, if you are wondering.

Where was I? Meandering, that's right. Back to the lottery.

All pro sports leagues are struggling with the lottery. You have to do things to prevent squads tanking in the hopes of landing the Next Great Hope. Thus was born the lottery. The lotteries used to be one ball/envelope/whatever, but have mostly become three chances at the winning ticket. And in the time of Covid19, it's become two lotteries in one, an NHL invention. And it is a bad scheme made very much worse by the fact that the worst fears were realized. NOW, we have eight to TWELVE teams potentially thinking of TANKING. You know, the idea the lotteries were invented to STOP!!! Habs stars were already thinking of not playing. If the squad gets down two, where's the strength of resolve for them to go for a triple upset and win three straight elimination games in a row??? Just to play Boston and face the shame of losing to the Black and Gold. Hold on, maybe it's blue AND black? Have to add that to the pondering list.

Here's two ideas for my fellow Gary to ponder for the next NHL Lottery season. Let the losers EARN the top pick. Think of it as an in-season tournament of equals. On the day AFTER the team is eliminated from the playoffs, the team gets to start earning points in the Draft Tournament. Obviously, the worse teams will start accumulating points earlier than say, the Habs, who rated to finish as the ninth team to enter the pool, maybe with only two or three games left on the schedule. Might even finish the Draft Tournament with ZERO points. Tied with, say, Carolina. But Ottawa and Detroit might have a dozen points, having started earning them a month before. If two or more teams tie in the Draft Tournament, you break the tie in reverse order of where they would have finished in the overall standings. And the Draft Tournament ONLY dictates the order of the first round of the upcoming Draft of Eligible Juniors. After the first round, strict adherence to the reverse Regular Season standings.

What else would change in this system??? Glad you asked. No more selling off of players that might help YOUR TEAM be competitive in the Draft Tournament. If it's a good deal, go ahead. But no more fourth to sixth defenceman suddenly becoming eighth defencemen on playoff-bound teams. No more getting sixth and seventh round picks in the future for them. If a team comes around and offers you a boatload for your soon-to-be free agent centre, you weigh what that guy could help you with in the Draft Tournament and what the boatload could do for the GM that gets hired after you're fired after the season. And if you think it's a good HOCKEY trade, you take the boatload and wish your successor well, having done him a solid. (I HATE, REALLY, REALLY, REALLY HATE the buyout crap that goes on in the NBA. I'd want this Draft Tournament for the NBA more than any sports league.)

Yeah, Trade Deadline Day might be a REAL downer with all the semi-unknown names no longer switching around to give the two hundred commentators something to yak about. But the real movements would be dissected with much more intensity merely for the fact that it's impact on TWO events would be that much more to talk about. Less chaff and more wheat. And imagine a late-season game between Detroit and Ottawa NOT being a tank fest, but a playoff-intesity match to see who drafts first ... and lands Lafreniere!!! You want the WHOLE season to mean something. The WHOLE season to have value with NO meaningless games. The WHOLE season to consider when moving players. NO MORE letting players BLACKMAIL you into buyouts on their terms, maybe for a savings of a few thousand dollars in savings. The players would play for SOMETHING. Maybe not a title (of which one or two of the moving players would earn, the rest WILL FAIL). But SOMETHING.

By the way, the idea is not original to me. Just repeating it since it seems to have faded from view over the last little while.

My other idea is not original either. It has it's origins in the long gone early years of the ... NHL Lottery. One ball, one team, one chance to move up by as many as three spots. If, say the tenth place team wins, it gets draft slot seven. Lottery done. Or at least that was HOW IT USED TO BE.

So, revive the same idea. But with the understanding there's three numbers coming out of the magic ball machine now. Place the Too Good to Luck Into Top Spot bar where ever you want. I think Burke wants it at five, with NO CHANCE for teams higher than that. I say, put the bar at five, to resolve Burke's biggest complaints and allow the first number to move up three spots or less, the second one two spots and the last one, well, you guessed it, one spot.

So, let's go through the repercussions this would have on this year's bifurcated snafu. The To Be Lucky team that sits above the bar at five, gets to move up THREE spots from nine to six. Los Angeles with the second number goes from four to two and Ottawa goes from two forward to ONE, leapfrogging Detroit in doing so (with their San Jose pick). The draft now goes Ottawa, Los Angeles, Detroit, Ottawa ... with the Lucky team getting six. The rest of the draft fills in around the lottery winners. That's ONE way to look at the results of the lottery.

Maybe, we stick with the ABSOLUTE top picks in play. Mystery team still only does the nine to six move because of the bar rule, limiting teams HIGHER than that to a three-spot jump. (And let's say the winner IS the nine pick originally, regardless of whether they were the nine going into the lottery). But give LA the top pick thanks to getting the next most golden number. And Ottawa gets two, cuz that's the best of what's left. Hmmm, LA, Ottawa, Detroit, Ottawa. Better than the actual lottery. Not as good as the play-in Draft Tournament.

Last refinement that will bug Burkie but might appease the lords of the NHL in my imaginary turning back of the clock to before my fellow Gary hatched this plan. Give the mystery team OR teams, the slots STARTING right behind the bar. Sixth through eighth would be the best available starter spots, but the three-spot jump would come from their position POST bar. In my scenario with only ONE golden number to a mystery team AND that golden number being triple gold, the draft order in my scenario would be LA, Ottawa, Mystery team, Detroit, Ottawa. Burke would HATE, absolutely HATE a team like Pittsburgh lucking into a Byfield or a Stutzle after choking against Montreal, but c'est la vie. Maybe moving the bar back to six works well enough for Burke. SOOOOOO many drafts are top three drafts when it comes to franchise altering players, that I think six is the right number. Negotiations start on the left.

An adjunct to why the draft lottery has failed in this wacko pandemic-driven year is that the mystery team is going to be one of the play-in series' losers with EACH team getting equal odds, supposedly to stop tanking. Every team has an equal shot. And in a five-game series, a hot goalie means a good team might very well 'earn' the one and eight shot at Lafreniere. Ridiculous. It's why Carey Price is such a pivotal player in making this Lottery scheme fraught with danger. Imagine Pittsburgh with Lafreniere on a rookie-scale contract for the next three years???? Or just as bad, the scheme could very well hand Les Habitants the next great French Canadian player. Think some fans will yell "FIX!!!" Ummm, sure. But a man can dream, can't I??

It's hard to screw up an idea meant to help the poor (in terms of talent) by potentially adding the Next Great Hope to a team that was in contention for a title all season long. Just after a bad two week stretch. The NHL has succeeded in failing all logic. Gary ... Bettman, you need to step up and prevent future screw-ups. Our name demands better.

You Don't Buy A Name, You Buy A Computer

This is another case of Trust being abused. Wasn't me this time. It was just a friend operating on my advice. And I failed him. And because of the circumstances on depending on a store and of the product they sold, my credentials as a computer consultant can be called into dispute.

Just because I know the phone number for my hardware guy Patrick does NOT make me a computer consultant. Knowing a bit about the hardware I buy and letting Patrick make it fast and reliable supposedly does.

Back in the summer of 2018, almost two years ago, I was asked to recommend where and what to purchase a replacement for a now-ancient Mac laptop. My friend's budget was in the low two-grand area. I snorted. I could quarter that and let him continue doing what he had been doing, which was writing, a bit of web-browsing and watching movies and TV shows on the laptop. Didn't need to bother Patrick this time at all.

Really, he was describing a low-end Windows laptop. But for him, I wanted some quality in the recommendation and maybe I wouldn't hit the quarter mark, but a third was certainly in play. I recommended a computer shop and told him to go buy a Lenovo.

Lenovo has been my go-to laptop for most of YOUR lives. I'm old, so it's less than half my life that I've been recommending Lenovo's all the way back to when IBM was making them. They had the unique j-pointer nub that served as a short, stubby and always available mousing device ACTUALLY ON the keyboard, negating the need for all those that had touchpads, which I hate with a loathing that eclipses that of the Oleaginous Orange Oaf infesting the Oval Office for a few more months. I REALLY, REALLY, REALLY hate touchpads, which are always TOO touchy or TOO inert to actually do anything. Touchpads are the last resort. Maybe, it's not worth having a computer at all if you are forced to resort to a touchpad. Surely a pencil and writing paper is better (You can scan it later and turn it into text). Touchpads are hardware non grata.

Lenovo's, even since the product line got bought by Chinese concerns and moved to Asia, are still, generally speaking, solid, reliable machines. They are not the best at all things. Far from being the best at this or that, they are the second or third choice. And at the same time, when all those other laptops with the better graphics, or sound, or chassis or ... well you get the drift ... fail badly at something other than their starring feature, the Lenovo rarely has a down side that makes them place low on the ratings of a single feature.

UNTIL that fateful day in 2018 when I recommended a Lenovo that came with Windows 10 ... and just four gigs of memory. That's right, in 2018, SEVEN long years since Microsoft stopped merely saying Windows 10 would run on a machine with just 4G of memory, but that the recommended minimum was EIGHT gigabytes of memory. The INDUSTRY STANDARD for new computers SINCE Windows came out has been 8G since Justin Trudeau wasn't yet Prime Minister.

And of course, there's a reason why the minimum is weasel-ese for "Yeah, it'll do SOME things, one at a time, as long as you are careful" while the actual WORKING minimum is twice as much so that you can write a letter, have the web-browser running to grab a picture of the internet and maybe playing some music in the background. The kind of thing EVERYBODY does with their computer. Or a variation of the same.

When you install Windows 10 on a Lenovo with it's stuff and boot it up, you can check your memory resources and you will be astonished to find it THREE-QUARTERS used up!!!!! What then happens is sort of like a busy working professional working at the desk of their elementary school child with all the deskspace he or she has, versus sitting at their desk at work where the desktop holds everything they need for their job. Instead of storing everything under the chair at school and pulling out various resources as the teacher requests them to, the professional has all the files over in one corner, pictures of their loved ones in another, the phone and computer screen somewhere else and a daily planner, notebook in front of them. Everything in easy reach quickly. No grabbing the backpack and searching through it for particular papers and textbooks. And purses?? I'll leave that topic alone.

The way the four-gigabyte computer works is that it fills up the remaining gig of working memory with program code and data until the overflow mark gets hit. Then it off loads what it thinks is currently unneeded code and data and grabs more off the hard drive. Swaps it in and out. And this swapping goes on as needed, allowing Microsoft to claim Windows 10 WILL WORK in 4G of memory. It's legally true. But it ain't practical. Not by a long shot.

I was having a bad day that day. I screwed up at an epic level. I let my friend, no, I GUIDED my friend into buying a computer with an inadequate amount of memory. And he ended up paying a little over a THOUSAND DOLLARS for this computer and a few gewgaws I insisted were absolutely necessary to having a laptop these days ... external storage, a powered USB hub, etc. I SAVED him a grand, but not the 1500 hard-earned dollars I sort of promised I would. I FAILED my friend now. And later.

My friend endured this slow hunk a junk for more than 18 months (long after the warranty had worn out). He asked me to take a look at it. I was confused and went down the wrong way a couple of times. Eventually I found the memory issue and had a meltdown. I was furious. I was sure there was bait and switch involved. Nope, they sold him what they said they would sell him AND WERE STILL SELLING LENOVO's with only 4G of memory IN THIS WEEK'S SALES FLYER!!!!!! In 2020!!!

They WERE doing a bait and switch with a novel twist. Sell rubes the computer and then wait for the inevitable return by the customer asking why the computer was so slow. Offer to fix if for between 70 and 140 dollars and suddenly, a computer worth MAYBE 500 bucks, being sold on sale for  759 marked down from 850, turns into a one thousand dollar sale. I had actually contacted the store chain in question (the local store wouldn't answer any of my four calls mid-afternoon on a Saturday) so I had to phone one of the other branches to ascertain the cost of adding memory to the Lenovo. Thiry bucks for the technician, 40-110 for the memory, depending on model and desires for how much memory. Off I sent him A SECOND TIME, to do one last bit of business with these crooks.

I had already canceled my account with the store chain and told Patrick that I would never pay an invoice from them ever again. HIS choice of where to buy the hardware for me, but it had to be behind my back. Yeah, it's cheating in a way, but I HONESTLY never want to see a CENT of my money ever go to these amoral, unethical, crooked, (the list of adjectives runs on for 21 more words,, which I will spare you at this point) SOBs.

And of course, feeling immensely worse, the situation actually got worse. On his way to buying more memory to cure the laptop's performance issue, he ran into two techs who figured out there was not going to be any more money in this customer. So, they told him it wasn't a MEMORY situation, he had to get a new solid-state, all memory drive to cure his problem. Only 220 dollars of his money, rather than the 95 I had figured for the fair acquisition and installation of the memory. And my friend, remembering why his old Mac ground to a halt (storage space completely consumed) and some of my ramblings when I was searching for the lack of speed on his new Lenovo, thought to himself, okay, experts all agree. Time to pull out the plastic and solve the problem right there and then.

He was robbed. Pure and simple. The rolled him like thugs in a blackened alley. Mugford's recommended shop mugged my friend. I am ashamed of myself. Of them, contempt close to Mount Mugford erupting. And my lawyer recommends against that. So do my doctors. And based on the advice of the legal eagle, I can't named this well-known chain of Computer stores in Ontario that seem to be a national brand. ALL I can do, is to warn shoppers that if a store is WILLING to sell you name-brand computers with only 4G of memory, they are willing to screw you over time and time again until you catch on.

Patrick, as slow to anger as any non-Zen Buddhist monk, got angry. Not like me, but he was upset. He hardly tried to tamp me down. 

He found that the computer with the added SSD (and the old drive stuck in a bitlocker protected case that couldn't be plugged in to the new system and all the original installation and data was missing as an old Windows 10 image is what was installed on the SSD ... crooks AND LAZY, what a wonderful combination), was about 15 percent faster than the mechanical hard drive the SSD replaced. Granted, with Windows updated, all the drivers updated and obvious settings changed to take advantage of the SSD, Patrick was able to bump up the speed benefit for the new SSD to something approaching 30 percent. He also installed two new memory strips (I gave him a hundred bucks and told him that was the budget for the memory AND HIS TIME), quadrupling the original amount of memory. And he fiddled with the drive unit he'd been given to house the old drive and turned it into something usable by my friend, meaning he now had a hardly-used 256G drive he could put into a shirt pocket. My friend will finally be well-served.

NOTE: It is accepted wisdom that users ONLY start to notice a speed increase when it passes 10 percent.

What those two techs did crossed the line I'm sure the lawyers for this bandit organization vetted as being legal. I think they committed actual fraud. But my friend is joining me in putting the store chain in the rear view mirror. It's just too bad that they old saw of buying a name brand means safety and basic levels of performance.

You aren't buying the name any more, you are buying what you get. Caveat Emptor indeed.