It was a day I hoped would never happen, but I sat down this weekend and updated my little US national debt clock to display over $10,000,000,000,000. I say it's a sad day because despite what some people say (that the further in debt our country is the more prosperous we are) I find it hard to believe we're better off because of the debt we've just taken on. The whole concept of "money as debt" just seems corrupt. Then again, I'm not an expert on economics. Maybe having our national debt increasing at the rate of $36 per millisecond is a good thing.

The debt clock started when a friend e-mailed me a years ago and asked how to do a counter like a clock that starts at a specific point. He needed it in Flash so I whipped one together and sent it to him and then realized I could maybe do something worthwhile by putting it out there for people to use. I did.. and it hit myspace and facebook.. and I'm currently seeing about 65,000 views of it each month. I encouraged people to download it and install it on their own servers (it's not sucking too much bandwidth, but they shouldn't have to wait on my server for their page to finish loading..) so I'm not sure how many views it's getting that way.. I know it's being used on quite a few political web sites (both Republicans and Democrats running for Congress for example), in articles, and on some personal web sites.

I don't fuss with the accuracy of it since I figure if they can pull a number like $700,000,000,000 out of thin air just because it's "a really large number" then there's no point in trying to be too accurate on anything based on numbers provided by the same folks. I like to think that over the last few years I've helped a tiny bit to raise awareness of our out of control spending.. I can hope it's not too late to sort things out and maybe someday I'll be able to reverse the clock.

I was working at about midnight the other night when I heard my little VPN app scream that it'd lost connection.. I noticed that I couldn't get out to my favorite site and checked my DSL modem.... the status light was off. So the next morning I got up and saw it was still off. I called the DSL provider, we went through the standard power off/on stuff and the regular checklist and the guy in India said he'd overnight a new modem (it still hasn't gotten here..). A little while later I remembered something from my CCNA 1 class - check "layer 1" first.

So I swapped out the line between the modem and the wall jack. The lights came back on. I took that phone line and tested it with a phone and it was bad... heh. Always check layer 1 first.

I've been putting off getting a mac for a year or more.. mostly waiting on Macrodobe to come out with Flash for the Intel macs. They finally did that and I went yesterday and picked up a nice new Mac Pro (dual 2.66Ghz) at the local Apple store.

Switching back isn't easy since I've spent roughly 6 years using pcs, so I'll be on the lookout for info on shortcut keys, must have apps, etc for the mac. The last FlashForward I attended had loads of people using macs and the recent release of universal binary Flash will encourage others to get off of Windows.

One of the first things I did after firing it up was download the latest Flash Player and then run a few of my old moldy ActionScript Performance tests on it. I only ran a few tests (geez I need to update those things..), but they were consistently about twice as fast on the mac pro as on my old AMD Athlon 2Ghz pc. That's pretty cool. I'm pretty certain the Flash Player is only using a single processor so getting double performance is good. I opted for for the quad processor model (rather than getting an imac or a laptop) because I don't like to switch computers very often since it's really disruptive. I like to buy good hardware, get it all sorted out, and then use it for years. I also like to edit home movies, so the quad processors will get used and it should be enough power to last a few years. The eight processor model was just way too expensive. I could justify ~$4000 for an "octo mac" if I were doing video editing for a living... but for Flash development it seemed like major overkill.

I should also say something about the buying experience.. and it was an experience.
- I thought that I'd get some good treatment going in and dropping ~$2500 in their store. Nope.. the place was packed with people buying systems. I walked out thinking I'd maybe bought an iPod.
- None of that special kool-aid was offered to me. No specially tinted glasses given to me. I wonder where people get that stuff?
- I overheard a sales person telling another guy that he got a 10% discount on hardware... wonder who he works for? I got a nice discount, but not that much.

Two years ago I got a Samsung SCD-23 for Christmas. I ran about 8 or 10 tapes through it and it did a decent job of capturing typical home movie footage. Late last Fall it started flickering while I was recording something and then the next time I used it the thing just showed a distorted black image in the viewfinder and wasn't usable. I assumed somebody had dropped it. The warranty had run out, and the cost to repair it would be more than it was worth so I moved on. I bought a new camcorder a month or so ago and just got around to listing the old one on eBay (for parts.. the battery, charger, external viewfinder, etc were all like new). Well.. what I found there was a large number of SCD-23s with the same symptoms. Some sold for over $90 (for parts??)..

So I started digging around and found quite a few folks who are very irate with Samsung over how they've handled the problems with the SCD-23. From what I can gather there was a bad batch of CCD units from Sony that were used by many different electronics companys between 2003 and 2005. Folks online are claiming that the SCD23s that were sold during that time used those bad CCDs but I'm still not 100% convinced of this since I can't find the SCD23 listed on any of the press releases about the bad CCDs. According to the reports I've read (and my personal experience) the CCD units go bad after 10-15hrs of recording. For typical home video users like myself this means we used the units for a couple of years and then *poof* they quit working.

I also found quite a few places where folks claimed that they called Samsung, gave their stories, and were told a recall was in effect and issued a replacement. They gave the name of the company handling the returns (CVE) and other details. So I called Samsung to report that I had one of the defective units. Their response?

Send us $150 and we'll send you a refurbished one.

The main reason people are upset is other major makers also bought those same CCD units and when the defects were found they promptly issued a recall and swapped out the bad cameras and camcorders for refurbs or better units. If Samsung had issued a recall when the defects were found then my camera would still have been under warranty. Now that the defects are showing up Samsung is claiming they aren't liable because the warranty period has ended. Convenient, yes?

Canon, Fujifilm, Konica Minolta, Nikon, Olympus, Pentax, Ricoh, and Sony have already agreed to repair the problem free of charge, including shipping, regardless of warranty status. Samsung is the ONLY remaining major camcorder manufacturer who has not yet issued a recall/free repair offer. (source)

The fix (for those who don't believe Samsung will every make this right) is fairly inexpensive if you're one to take stuff apart and do your own fixing. It's a $62 CCD unit (read more here).

Here's another interesting tidbit I found in one of the eBay ads for a defective unit

To address this problem, while in record mode, standby... point camera at bright light bulb at close distance ... It may take a few minutes but the camera should start working again..

I tried this.. stuck it a couple of inches from a bright halogen, zoomed in and out, turned the "Easy IQ" on and off, etc... and .. it actually worked. I'm not sure for how long it will work though.
[updated to add.. after turning my SCD-23 on/off about 6-8 times over the course of the evening it quit working again. Held it up to a bright light and it works again]