Quality Is Job One

The picture is from Nightmare Central, a cluttered desk reflective of the clutteredmind behind this blog. Here sits grandson of screaming box in all it's wide screen, high definition glory. The problem is my new PC is already exhibiting some very strange behavior. Suddenly the audio coming out of it is very distorted. I've worked in the audio field for a long time, and have ruled out anything wrong from the line out jack forward. They don't even put real Sound or Video card in most machines any more. Everything is contained in chip sets on the mother board, unless you build your own machine of have one custom built. The other odd quirk is that sometimes when I boot up I get a warning that firmware has detected a decrease in main memory, from 1 GIG down to 512 Meg. I have run every diagnostic I can think of, all of which return normal results. I have ruled out any sort of virus or other cyber terrorism.I've had this machine for just over a month and it's a bit early for it to be going belly up. I had purchased son of screaming box, a Gateway media center machine (of which grandson is a direct replacement) and it bit the big one less than a week after I got it home. After spending a few hours on the phone with Gateway tech support, they determined either the mother board and/or the hard drive had failed and to ship it back for repairs. I instead returned it to Costco where I was given fresh new one, and it seems to be having some sort of hardware problems.Screaming box, my old faithful 3.1 GHZ 2 P4 with GIG of RAM Power Spec machine that was purchased almost 4 years ago died after 5 days. The hard drive failed and Micro Center did fix it in 48 hours. That had been my third Power Spec PC, the prior two lasting well into old age and obsolescence.The tech guy said that quality control of individual components was not what it used to be. As much punishment as hard drives take, they are supposed to have a very high mean time between failure rate, in other words they should keep cranking along year after year with few problems. I wonder how much of the current QC problem is due to the fact that most electronic devices are now made in third world countries, using slave labor perhaps?I've worked in the electronics industry since my teens and from my own past personal experience, ususally a device will either die "infant mortality" (out of the box) or live to a ripe old age, at which point you can't even give it away because it's now so woefully obsolete. I'm finding more and more tech toys are crapping out in their youth. This is probably (besides being rent poor) one reason I am not about to shell out a few thousand for a BIG screen digital plasma TV or a new stereo system.Then there's the case of the bumblebee, my new Ford Focus. I wish they would leave some things manual, like door locks. Every system, including vehicle entry is tied into one of the black boxes. Even the key is special and has an embedded microchip. Yesterday after shutting the engine off and exiting the car, the doors would not lock either with the key or remote keyless entry button. I restarted the car and turned it off. After a few tries the doors locked. Another weird thing is that Ford only put a door key on the driver's side. I assume if I ever wake up to a dead battery, I won't even be able to get into the car.I also wonder about the quality of the firmware code that's blasted into the read only memory chips that just about every device and gadget has these days. Maybe I should have broken down, spent a couple of thousand more and bought another Toyota Corolla. I do have to say that Toyota seems to live up to it's quality claims. So far I love the Focus, although it guzzles gas compared to my old Corolla. I just hope it's internal technology is more reliable than my latest PC purchase.If you stop and think about the mind boggling complexity that's designed into the average home electronic toy, it's amazing they even work at all. But don't mind me, I was born and raised in the age of vaccuum tubes and the licorice pizza.Actually I was born in the same year as the transistor and the alleged UFO crash in Roswell.Here's a production run of articles that I have not had time to run through quality control. * 50 Most Loathsome People in America * Blacks and the Border AlterNet * Our State of Disunity AlterNet * The Friendster Effect AlterNet * Become a Republican * Brokeback Understanding Propaganda * Powwow With God * Less Than Satisfying Encounters With Humanity * Looniest Of All 911 Conspiracy Theories * Many Americans are Dumber Than Bush * One Sided Class War * Overthrowing the New Slavery * Satan for President in 2008 * Mark Morford Archive SF Gate * Veteran's Mother's State of Our Family Address * US plans to 'fight the net' revealed * The Decline And Fall Of America * The Pleasure of Doing Nothing Useful * The reading crisis * The State Of The Union * The war within * US love affair with cars * Voice of the White House * Dead Man Talking * State of the Union sliced and diced. * The secret history of television.