Alain Fontaine’s Jabberbox

So, for Christmas I got myself a very nice Apple TV2, which I love. As we still own a pretty old Plasma TV set which features only 2 HDMI inputs, I had to get a HDMI switch to connect all of our gear. Without really paying attention, I chose a Philips 4-port automatic HDMI switch.

It worked very well for two weeks now – until this evening when it just went black and never came back. The power indicator LED doesn’t even come on anymore. Of course I tried it with everything disconnected and on various power plugs. It’s DEAD. I can surely have it replaced on warranty, but …

This put into the context of my other big Philips failure, makes me definitely now say that I will NEVER, EVER buy any of this cheap-ass Philips bullshit anymore. EVER!

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ever.

A couple of days ago, after a tough day, I had a small discussion with one of my developers at work. I asked him to show me some document on his PC, and it took an awful long time for him to open it up because he mapped a network share on his private laptop he brought to work, and his laptop somehow stopped responding. My reaction was to say that this was an unacceptable loss of time and that I would think about no longer allowing people to bring their own gear to work.

Whilst I was driving home, I couldn’t get rid of the feeling that this was an emotional decision and that it felt wrong. Now that I took some time to think it over, I am sure that this is not what I will do in the future, but rather the opposite! I will encourage people to bring their own stuff to work, and even more than that…

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