Saturday wrap-up

[mdlbear]

This morning after my walk I went to Fry's and found that the drives they have on sale were Seagate rather than the Maxtors they had piled up yesterday. Those were still $160, and had a 3-year warranty instead of Seagate's 5-year. Then I made the interesting discovery that the Maxtor's and some of the Seagates were made in Thailand, while the otherwise-identical Seagates in the big piles were made in China.

Hmm.

A quick trip home confirmed that the flaky Seagate drive I removed a couple of months ago was Chinese, and I seemed to recall that the failing one is, too. The Maxtor I've been using as the mirror drive is Thai. Drove back to Fry's and bought a Thai Seagate.

After that, we went to Dave and Joyce's to bring them lunch: barbecued chicken, cole slaw, and baked beans from Emil Villa's. Much appreciated; Joyce isn't especially mobile due to health problems (which, however, should be fixed fairly soon). From there we went to Kathy Mar's bash. Good stone soup.

I did a little singing at Kathy's: "Ship of Stone", "Cicero in the 21st Century", "Desolation -- Oh, No!", and "Lily, Rosemary, and the Jack of Hearts". I'm impressed with how much nose-watering has helped my voice: singing is less painful and doesn't dry me out nearly as quickly as it used to.

Comments

[technoshaman.livejournal.com]

You know, anyone who thinks we're not at war with China should look at the quality of product they've been dumping on us since.... about 1994. I remember in early 1994 buying a... certain product from a well-known Chinese vendor, a copy of a well-known American product. It functioned like a charm, never failed me. By late 1994 I remember the community I ran in then complaining bitterly that the new shipments were Not Scottish (i.e. crrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrap!).... and everything else Chinese that I've seen since has had very low quality, to the point where I won't buy it if I have a choice.

Now, I don't know for sure whether this is a total breakdown in the Chinese manufacturing system, or a deliberate plot against the evil Capitalista Yankee Menace, but given the uniformity of the breakdown, my money's on economic warfare.

Oh, and I'll trade you fair warning for fair warning: If you ever run across an IBM drive made in Hungary? Use it for a doorstop. Apparently the Hungarian cleanrooms where those were made had some real Issues (nay, Subscriptions) with their environmental plant.... they tended to develop the Click O'Death after not all that long. No word on whether the refurb units were any better (i.e. the ones made in Hungary but sent back to the fixit shop in Singapore...) There was a reason they called those things DeathStars...

And yay for good singing! Looking forward to more of it in a few weeks!

[mdlbear]

Hard to tell whether the current quality of crap coming out of China is due to economic warfare or (more likely, in my opinion) their having adopted the Current Administration's philosophy of "no regulation is good regulation" and taken it to its ultimate conclusion.