Brendan Gates

Almost all websites are, actually. When you visit a site, a little snippet of information about you is sent to that site’s log files. Same for clicking just about any link, be it a website, an ad, or a picture. So what information are you giving up?

Your IP Address
For most people your IP address is dynamic and isn’t going to give up much more than you who your ISP is (Charter, AT&T, Comcast, etc), but it will give your high-level location. ISPs have big blocks of IP addresses that they allocate to different regions where they provide service, and those will usually indicate a city or at least a state.

Your Referrer
Did you use Google to find my site? My logs will tell me that, including the search terms you used. Or if you clicked on the link to me from Jim’s blog, I may know that too. In practice, logs for this site almost never grab the referrer – probably something related to WordPress that I just haven’t gotten around to checking out. However, logs for my Aplastic Anemia site almost always do grab the referrer, so I get to see that “cyclosporine stinks” or “aplastic anemia blog” are common Google searches to find that site.

Your Browser
Firefox, Chrome, Opera, etc. This one is pretty self-explanatory. In case you’re wondering, most of my visitors use Firefox, followed by Internet Explorer (booo IE users… care to upgrade?).

Your Operating System
Windows, OS X, Linux, Solaris, whatever. This will probably also tell me if you’re visiting my site from a phone. Most of my visitors use Windows, followed by OS X, then by Linux. Still waiting for my first Solaris visitor.

Scared? You shouldn’t be. This isn’t any nefarious trick to try and trap you in some way. It’s just how the HTTP protocol works, and every website you’ve ever been to has been offered this info (whether they accepted it or not). It’s not unlike how if you roll up to my drive-through window at Wendy’s, I don’t know your name or who you specifically are, but I do know that you are male, you drive a Pontiac, and you like Frostys with your chili. It’s not really personal info so much as it is profile data about you.

Take my blog, for example. I don’t get much traffic, and the traffic I do get is mostly all from either Oregon or from Missouri. Does that help me know who you are? Not really. Most of the people I know that would visit my site, are located in Oregon or Missouri. So that’s kind of “no duh” info for me, and it doesn’t get me any closer to personally identifying my visitors. Besides, the goal of Web Analytics isn’t really to personally track individual users, so much as it is to identify characteristics of groups of users. I know that many of my visitors are from the Lou, so they’ll probably identify with a reference to the Cardinals or Mizzou. And if I want to recommend a new program, I know that it should probably be a Windows (or Mac) program, since most of my visitors would have no use for the latest Ubuntu utility. Not that I’m interested in pandering to my readership, but I probably would if I was selling ad space on my site and more visitors meant more dollars in my pocket.

What if you don’t want to have any of your data sent to me, or to any of the sites you visit? Well, that’s tough, and also probably not something the average internet user is realistically going to achieve. One thing you can do is to use a proxy to anonymize your traffic, though you’re not anonymous to the proxy itself. Tor is anonymous, but very slow. And IE, Chrome, or Firefox users can install this plugin from Google to block their data from being collected by sites that use Google Analytics (like my site).

For the record, I don’t use the GA plugin. Nor do I use Tor on my home computer (though I do use it on my phone, just because I don’t trust those fools at T-Mo). I do proxy my traffic when I’m on my laptop away from home, but not otherwise. When it comes down to it, I’m okay with sites collecting little bits of non-personal info on me. But I do understand how the web works, so I’m making a conscious choice to visit the site and allow my info to be sent. And now you also know, and you too can make your choice.

Thomas Bangalter (of Daft Punk fame) has a great remix of Signatune, a track by another French artist named DJ Mehdi. It’s an awesome song. I could listen to it on repeat and it would just get me more and more amped up. You know how Rocky has Gonna Fly Now? Well, I have Signatune. And until yesterday, I didn’t know there was a Signatune video. It tells a story that manages to be both ridiculous and (almost) inspiring at the same time. Bask in its repetitive electronic glory:

I found this while looking for the new Born Free video from M.I.A., directed by the same guy who did the Signatune video.

Born Free is worth checking out as well, but be warned that it is graphic, violent, and very political. The Signatune video is fun and cheeky, and by comparison the Born Free video is powerful and dark. If you still want to see what all the fuss is about, click here to watch it on Vimeo. I won’t give anything away other than to say gingerism has never been so scary.

Okay, there’s a wee bit of hyperbole in that title. I still can’t bench my own weight, explain baseball’s infield fly rule, or understand anything that happens under the hood of a car. So I might be a few skills short of getting into the Manly Man Club (where I imagine that Ted Nugent or Clint Eastwood are checking IDs at the door). But I did just successfully fix my own TV, and that’s gotta be a step towards club membership.

Me with my TV. Click here or here to see the other versions of this pic that didn’t make the cut.

The issue with the TV started several months ago. When we would press the “on” button, the TV would click like it was turning on, then click off, then turn back on. The first time it happened I thought I had accidentally pushed the on button twice. But I hadn’t, unfortunately, and the cycle continued each time the TV was turned on. Over time that cycle worsened, clicking on and off several times before eventually firing up. After only a month or two the delay between pressing “on”, and having the TV actually being on, was up to about 15 minutes.

So what did Ladyfriend and I do about it? The most logical thing we could think of; we stopped turning off the TV. If you didn’t have to turn it on anymore, then you didn’t have to suffer through that cycle, right? For over three months our TV stayed on, 24/7. When we would leave the house, or go to sleep at night, we’d just change the input over to HDMI3, which resulted in a black screen since nothing was attached to that input.

This system worked until one fateful day last week, when I accidentally turned the TV off. I was moving the remotes around to clean the coffee table, and I put something down on the off button of the TV remote. I wasn’t facing the TV when it happened, but I knew the click as soon as I heard it. And like I feared, the TV wouldn’t turn back on. Wailing and gnashing of teeth ensued, followed by a brief time spent wondering if it would help to blame the situation on the dog. My hand had been forced; it was time to fix the TV.

The warranty period had long since expired, and a quick call to Samsung confirmed that they would be no help – despite this being an obvious manufacturing defect. I went on the interwebs and found many other Samsung customers complaining of the exact same problem. Apparently a particular run of TVs assembled in Mexico had used undersized capacitors on their main boards, and as a result many of the TVs from that run were afflicted by what had been dubbed the “click of death”.

There were two ways to fix the problem. One, you could pay somebody else to do it. The other Samsung customers online all reported between $300 and $500 as what they paid, or what they were quoted, from local repair shops. I called our local shop and they didn’t know what it would cost without looking at the TV first, and that quote alone was going to be $60. The other way to fix the TV was to do it yourself.

I went with the second option. I cracked open my set to remove the main board, and sure enough, two of the capacitors had blown. I went to my local electronics store and bought 4 new 2200uF 105c 25v capacitors for 90 cents each, and a small spool of rosin-core solder. Radio Shack provided the soldering iron and desoldering vacuum. YouTube provided videos on how to solder, and even a video of a guy fixing his Samsung. Total cost was under $40, and it’s only that high because I didn’t have any of the soldering equipment to start with.

So solder I did. And it worked! Despite my lack of electronics experience, and despite my shoddy first-time soldering job, the TV actually turned on when I plugged it back in. It turned on in only one click, too, which was the best part. I was amazed, and very proud of myself. I did a few Tiger Woods style fist pumps and then ran to tell Ladyfriend the news, who was slightly less excited because I had just woken her up.

Is soldering manly? I don’t know about that specifically, but saving $300 and doing your own repair work probably is. I think I’ll head over to that club now and see if Ted or Clint let me in.

Note to Samsung: I’ve been a loyal customer of yours for years, so much so that I’ve even recommended to friends that they too invest in your products. I understand that hardware components can fail, but I’m very disappointed by your lack of response to this widespread issue. I will no longer be recommending any Samsung products to friends, and I’ll have to think long and hard before buying your products for me as well. Let me know if you ever decide to make customer service a priority, and maybe then I’ll reconsider.