Great Customer Service from Ergotron with my Samsung Monitor

This post is a bit long (really?  A long post from Cromely?! I’m shocked) so I’ll start with the summary:
To sum up:

• Samsung Mount Design: FAIL
• Ergotron Monitor Arm: WIN
• Ergotron Customer Service: EPIC WIN

Read on to learn about my adventures with a Samsung 24” 2490HM monitor and a VESA compliant monitor arm.  It’s a story of technology, customer service, and making stuff work.  Here are the sections in this post:

1. Introduction to Extended Desktop
2. My Samsung monitor
3. Introduction to VESA
4. Problem with the Samsung 2490HM and Ergotron LX
5. Contacting Ergotron
6. How the Fix Works
7. Wrap Up

Introduction to Extended Desktop

One of the best kept secrets of Windows (besides System Restore) is that fact that Extended Desktop support has been available in the OS since at least Windows 98.  It’s easy to see this on a laptop.  Simply go into your monitor setting and on the screen where you can adjust the resolution, you will likely see two displays, though one may be disabled.

Extended desktop means that I can have two monitors connected to one computer and see different things on different screens.  For example, I can have Tweetdeck and instant messaging apps on one display while I have my email program and web browser open on another screen.  When I move my mouse off the left hand side of one screen, the pointer shows up on the right hand side of the other one.  It’s a fantastic productivity tool, and, let’s face it, having multiple operating displays just looks cool.  Who doesn’t want their desk to look like some sort of command center?

My Samsung monitor

Some months back, I bought a second, bigger monitor for my desk.  I got a decent deal on it at Costco.  It’s the Samsung 2490HM.  I like the size, and for a monitor, the quality is OK.  There’s a band in the middle that appears to be slightly fuzzier than the rest of  the screen, but it works.  I already had an older Samsung 19” monitor attached to an Ergotron monitor arm on the desk.

The monitor arm means I don’t lose physical desk space to the monitor, and that it’s easier to position it exactly where I want it.  I recently picked up a new Ergotron arm for my new Samsung monitor.  That’s when the trouble started.

Introduction to VESA

There’s an industry standard, called VESA, that describes (among other things) where the holes go in the back of a monitor so you can attach arms and other mounts.  The same standard applies to TVs which is why you can get most anyone’s flat panel TV, and any vendor’s wall mount, and, as long the weight is right, they’ll work together. 

Problem with the Samsung 2490HM and Ergotron MX

Unfortunately, the Samsung 2490HM does not appear to be fully VESA compliant.  The holes don’t match up with the Ergotron mount and there is a weird rectangular depression in the monitor that keeps the brackets from fitting.

Because of where the screw holes are, even if the brackets did fit in the depression, the washers for the display will not. And even if the washers fit, the holes are too small for the screws.

 

I don’t know why Samsung would choose such an odd design.  It’s not like they sell their own competing monitor arm.

In fact, my first attempt to fix this issue was to shop for an adapter from Samsung or someone else who might make an appropriate one, but I had not luck.

Contacting Ergotron

I next contacted Ergotron through their website live chat.  While I was doing this, I also Tweeted my frustration.  On the live chat, I spoke with (or typed with) Laura S who was awesome.  She asked about my problem, asked appropriate questions about the issue, and didn’t type down to me. 

She had not heard about the issue before and said she would forward it on to her engineers.  I offered to send pictures of the issue to make it more clear, and she gladly accepted the offer.  She gave me an  email address and I sent over the above images, plus a few more.

A couple days later, I heard back from her that their engineers found a solution involving some spacers, and she promised to send out a kit.  She followed through and sent me the additional hardware, at no cost.

How the Fix Works

There are a few components to the fix.  They include screws, plastic spacers, and a metal plate.

The goal is to attach the monitor to this plate on the arm.

(Yes, that is a Nancy Pearl action figure in the background.  And Rafiki)

First I add the spacers into the holes on the metal brackets that originally came with the arm.

Then I place the black plate in the center of the indentation.  This is important, because ultimately the silver plate on the arm will screw into the black plate in the monitor.

The spacers now mean the long silver brackets don’t need to go in the indentation.  They can firmly attach to the monitor and sit between the silver and black plates.

And it’s fixed all I had to do was attach it to the arm, and now my control center is in place.

Wrap Up

One more thing.  Remember how I mentioned Tweeting about my frustration? While I was in chat with Laura, I got an @ reply from Ergotron offering assistance.  I responded that we seemed to be on track and @Ergotron followed up again a few days later just to make sure.

To sum up:
Samsung Mount Design: FAIL
Ergotron Monitor Arm: WIN
Ergotron Customer Service: EPIC WIN

Next time I need a monitor arm, I'll look at Ergotron first.

Jason Alexander for the McDLT

I was at work event with some college students last month. I made joke about the McDLT and they just stared at me. It was one of those moments that made me feel old. So of course I felt the need to discuss it on Facebook. In that discussion, Brian from Q'ner Industries sent me this link:



It's a mid-80, thin, pre-Costanza Jason Alexander singing and dancing while extolling the virtues of this awesome and too short lived McDonald's sandwich.

And I think, "Keep the hot side hot, and cool side cool" is one of the best tips for living your life to come out of a fast food commercial.

Happy 4th!

I hope everyone had a safe and happy holiday.




(Link found on Fark.com)

Dr. Horrible is profitable

The Dr. Horrible DVD is now available for pre-order on Amazon.Com. Previously, I commented on the awesomeness of Dr. Horrible and on Jon's application for the Evil League of Evil.

To recap, Dr. Horrible is Joss Whedon's what-I-did-over-writer-strike-vacation project. It's a web based musical about super villains and super heroes. You can watch it here.

The DVD has extras, inlcuding fans applications for the League.

So how has this experiment in new media done financially? Joss Whedon included this comment on his blog, Whedonesque

Finally, I just want to say "thank you" to everybody who has supported this venture. We've been able to pay our crew and all our bills, which means a lot. What means more is proving that completely independent ventures can muscle their way through the blizzard of big-budget behemoths. (A blizzard of behemoths? Back to writing school, alliteration-junkie!) All that rhetoric about the future of entertainment that flew about during the Strike is still entirely true. We need to find our own way of producing entertainment. A lot of people are watching Dr. Horrible to see if it's any kind of model -- way more people than I expected -- and it means everything to me to help pave the way for artists to start working and making a living from the ground up. There are a couple of real pioneers in this that I know personally: Felicia Day, I'm thrilled to say, and choreographer Chris Elam are both looking far ahead in terms of monetization and interactivity. Me, I'm more like Jimmy Stewart in "The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance", but at least I'm out there. Thanks, he finally summed up, to you.

You can find his comment, and others, here.

The TV, music, and movie industries are facing incredible challenges from web resources (both legal and illegal). As the cost of production and distribution have plummeted, creating new content is within the realm of the average web user. The Lonely Island made its transition to SNL this way, and one day, perhaps Play Cole will experience something similar.

At the same time, cheap tools and easy distribution are no substitute for talent. Joss Whedon's project suceeds because it brings together a number of key elements, including Whedon's talent, Whedon's name, talented actors, great choreography, impressive musicians, low production costs, and a solid fan base.

In 15 years the landscape of personal entertainment will be radically different from what we've gotten used to over the past years. We are starting to see the new directions now. Dr. Horrible is one example of it.

Congratulations to Whedon and crew. You've done great work with this project, and I look forward to whatever comes next -- both from Whedon, and in the rest of the new media frontier.

For additional updates, you can follow Dr. Horrible on Twitter, which is how I first found Whedon's comment.

Joss Whedon's Dr Horrible is Awesome

Any dolt with half a brain

Can see that humankind has gone insane

To the point where I don’t know

If I’ll upset the status quo

If I throw poison in the water main

Sure, I'm a few months late getting on the Dr. Horrible band wagon, but that doesn't change the fact that this is very cool.

Dr. Horrible is a web base musical Created by Joss Whedon. Neil Patrick Harris plays the lead role of the villain trying to get into the Evil League of Evil, pull off a major heist, and figure out how to talk to girls.

Each of the three parts runs about 15 minutes and you can watch it for free at Hulu.com or at DrHorrible.com. You can also purchase it on iTunes and watch it on your iPod.

I expected something mildly entertaining, with Whedon's trademark wit. It exceeded my expectations. The story starts out simply enough, but quickly develops additional layers about the nature of good & evil, socio-economic problems, what it means to be heroic, the nature of achieving one's dreams, nerd shyness, and bullies. And the end (both plot and flavor) came as a complete surprise to me. Yet is couldn't end any other way.

This is not just a rehash of Once More with Feeling. Whedon's style has evolved and grown as he's gained more experience with alternative media.

While Firefly was awesome, Whedon sometimes lost the flavor of the show and a chunk of text better sutied to Buffy or Angel would slip in. That doesn't happen with Dr. Horrible.

Dr. Horrible is also a great experiment in the world of new media. As TV and movie artists start experimenting with web as a primary medium instead of just striking over it as a supporting medium, there will be quite a learning curve. Whedon is already attacking that curve.

One top of that, Dr. Horrible is just plain fun to listen to. Now I have to get the soundtrack.

If you you like musicals, web media, comic books, or Joss Whedon, you owe it yourself to checkout Dr. Horrible.

And then sing along.

SpaceX Reaches Orbit

The coolest thing to happen to you US government and a US corporations this week had nothing to do with the Treasurey Department.

It had nothing to do with the FDIC.
It had nothing to do with the SEC.
It had nothing to do with the bailout.
It had nothing to do with the Jim Lehrer hosted debate between Obama and McCain.

It didn't happen in Washington or New York.

On a sunny island on the Pacific Ocean, SpaceX made history on 2008-09-28. It became the first private company in the history of the world to put a vehicle in orbit around the Earth.

This is a game changer.

A successful private space industry has the potential to lower costs and make space more accessible to people and corporations. It has the potential to help NASA bridge the gap between the retirement of the space shuttle and the launch of its successor. It has the potential to free NASA from the business of taking short trips to Earth orbit and enable it to dream big with planetary and deep space exploration.

A new era in space travel starts...now.

From Wired:

SpaceX has made history. Its privately developed rocket has made it into space.

After three failed launches, the company founded by Elon Musk worked all of the bugs out of their Falcon 1 launch vehicles.

...

Eight minutes after leaving the ground, Falcon 1 reached a speed of 5200 meters per second and passed above the International Space Station.
...

With Flight 4 under its belt, SpaceX is gearing up for additional launches in 2009. Flight 5 could fly as soon as January, Flight 6 parts are on order and Flight 7 production will begin in early 2009.

...

In addition to Falcon 1, SpaceX is planning a second model two-stage, Merlin-powered rocket known as Falcon 9. It is expected to cost $35 million USD, and is designed to boost 9,900 kg to low earth orbit, and 4,900 kg to geostationary transfer orbit. SpaceX is also planning a Falcon 9 Heavy model capable of carrying bigger payloads, and also a space craft with a pressurized cabin unit known as Dragon.

... More

Broken glass

For the past 7 weeks, my deck has been under construction. This was supposed to be a 5 day job, the weather hasn't been cooperating. They couldn't very well rip up the roof while it was raining, and we've had an odd Spring.

Last weekend they had the opportunity to get some work done. There was a little accident with a nail gun, however, and they shattered the glass on my deck door. It took 1.5 hours to shatter, and all the glass stayed in the frame. This was originally a solid pane of glass.

I know it has to be fixed, but I really like the pattern.

Shatner-Palooza: "Hey, Shatner! How do I hurl bolts of lightening?"

I first saw this a couple of weeks ago. Shatner apparently plays World of Warcraft.

It's almost enough reason to go pick up my own copy.

Escalator Innovation

Were Dante alive today, he would likelyreserve the 5th ring of hell for people stop at the top or bottom of an escalator, pondering whether they want to go left, right, or straight.

In areas like malls and airports, hundreds of people may be walking perpendicular to the escalator and can cause similar problems for those just getting off (or trying to get off) the moving stairs.

At the Washington Square Mall in Tigard, OR, they came up with a solution to this problem.

This story makes me so happy.

It's from the NY Post. I really hope it's true.

Apparantly, John Lovitz beat up Andy Dick because Andy Dick mocked Phil Hartman's death.

Excluding Phil Hartman's death, there are so many wonderful things about this story.

COMIC CLOBBERS COMIC IN L.A.

July 17, 2007 -- IT was fight night at an L.A. comedy club last week when Jon Lovitz roughed up Andy Dick over the murder of their "Saturday Night Live" colleague, Phil Hartman.

Laugh Factory owner Jamie Masada, who witnessed the assault, said, "Jon picked Andy up by the head and smashed him into the bar four or five times, and blood started pouring out of his nose." Lovitz told Page Six, "All the comedians are glad I did it because this guy is a [bleep]hole."


... More

Congratulations...

...to Jon and Renee, and their newest cast member:

Benjamin Richard Clarke


For some reason I expected his middle name to be Grimm.

Once More With Feeling

Tonight I went to my first Buffy the Vampire Slayer Sing-a-long.

In the spirit of the Rocky Horror Picture Show, the crew rents out a theater and welds live action and video together.

They play the ground-breaking episode, "Once More With Feeling" on the big screen, while the crew acts it out in front of the screen. And since it's a musical episode, they encourage the audience to sing.

And that's where the real joy in this outing is. Depsite being one of the best 50 minutes of television ever, it's really the fans who make this a great event. During one scene the audience blows bubbles. During another they accompany Buffy on the kazoo. And, contradicting months of theater etiquette, they encourage the audine to pull out their cell phons during one character's song and sway left and right wiht them.

The audine was great, but the group of people I was with, including Jon and Renee seemed to be some of loudest folks there. And you could't find a better group of people to go to a show with.
*
The crew worked to rev up the audience before hand, as well. The actress playing Dawn (who bore an uncanny resemblance to Michelle Trachtenberg) got an early start. She came out while everyone was waiting on line to get into the theater and tried to drum up some Dawn support.

And now it looks like they are coming to Seattle at the end of June. I'll try looking for tickets next week.

Rather than spend a few hours going over the various details, I'll just say there's more information about the experience at the Buffy Sings site.

And go see it when it's in your area.

*I seem to have orginally left out a brilliant paragraph or two. I think this now makes a little more sense (Updated 2007-05-14)

They Go Together like Seattle and Political Cowardice

These clips are great.

Battlestar Galactica meets The Office.

A Green Light and a New Star Trek

I got my first Green Light on Fark yesterday.

I've linked to stories I've found there in the past. Fark gets throusands of submissions a day, and only a select few make it to the public pages. Over the past year I've probably submitted 10 or 15 links.

But yesterday my first submission was approved and made it to the video page.

OK, so it's not like I got a short story published in the New Yorker, but it's still kind of cool from a geek perspective.

It gets better though. It's actually a Play Cole video.

Jon took and episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation and added a laugh track. Here it is.




Because of Fark, this is the biggest launch we've had for any Play Cole video. In the first day, more than 3,300 people watched the video. It reached the top 50 comedy videos for You Tube yesterday, and it's popularity is growing.

New Retro Look

This year, Alaska Airlines celebrates 75 years in business. They are also in the middle of a fleet replenishment and are phasing out the old MD-80s and replacing them with 737-800s. They get 1 to 2 brand new planes each month.

To celebrate their aniversary, they had one of their brand new 737-800s painted in the classic 1940s-era DC3 Livery.

The "Starliner 75" is scheduled to enter service in early March and I can't wait to fly in it. It's a beautiful aircraft.

English for New York visitors

I originally saw this on fazed.net and fark.com. since then, It has also been featured on Web Junk 2.0, The Soup, and probably a few others. If you havne't seen it, you're probably not wasting enough time on line.

These videos seem to feature all the English you need to know to visit New York.

There are two versions here. Be warned: you will get this song stuck in your head.

Studio 60 Could be a hit

The first 10 minutes of the pilot for Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip represent the best opening sequence for any new show ever.

If Aaron Sorkin can keep up the writing, this show will be on for years. It's tight. The performances are excellent. And the camera work in engaging.

The West Wing may be my favorite show of all time; but I'm not sure. When it was on the air, I would always forget how good it was. But then I would sit down in front of TiVo and watch all the accumulated episodes in a single sitting. I couldn't get away.

Studio 60 has a similar pacing, but a more claustrophobic feel. It features a similar writing style and defective characters. But the characters here are aware they are not saving the world; they're just trying to make good TV.

Matthew Perry is not Chandler in this show. Bradley Whitford is not...well, okay, he's still Josh Lyman, but it's a less forlorn Josh Lyman. And that's not so much Bradley's fault as it is Aaron Sorkin's style.

The wild card in this show is how NBC feels about the attack on Saturday Night Live. The speech that Judd Hirsch's character gives at the opening of the show is not only an attack on TV in general, but is an open assault of the quality of NBC icon Saturday Night Live. The speech is available on IMDB.

SNL used to be an edgier show. The jokes pushed the limits in a more intelligent way. The political commentary had depth. Now, even the venerable Weekend Update is little more than Bush is dumb jokes. This past season was better. I think we have the guys from The Lonely Island to thank for that. But it's been lagging for years. Perhaps the recent reshuffling of the cast will bring some growth to the show.

But Studio 60 is definitely poking SNL with a stick. Will SNL wake up and respond with actual smart humor? Or will it just whine to NBC execs to take away that stick?

Check out Jon's rave on Studio 60.

Hours are about to disapper from my life

As technology has improved and computer processors have gotten faster and smaller one of two things happens to video games. You can either make them really complex with amazing life-like graphics. Or you can make them really small.

That's what Namco has done with some classic Atari games. Games used to require huge physical space. Now, those large arcade games of the past fit in the palm of your hand.

I just picked up this 5-in-1 classic game controller at Target today. The Namco Original Arcade TV Games Video Game System plugs right into the TV and has 5 arcade games built in. These games are the original arcade games with their original code, squeezed into a small space. In short, it is awesome for anyone who grew up playing these games.

This controller has the classic Ms Pac Man (much harder than Pac Man), Pole Position (it was great to play in the arcade in the sit down console), Galaxian (Space Invader on steroids), Mappy (what the hell is this?), and Xevious.

I bought it for Xevious alone.

Xevious is one of the original scroll and shoot video games. It was also the first arcade game that had it's own TV commercial. According to Wikipedia, it was a cult favorite in Japan. It was never quite as big in the US, but the game still popped up from time to time.

It has simple, yet compelling, game play and sucks the player right in. The graphics are amazing for the early 80s, and are not bad for today.

One summer in the mid-eighties, we went to Florida for a week. On the last day, we had some time to kill. We stayed at the Days Inn in Orlando, and they had a small arcade on the first floor. And, of course, they had the full size arcade Xevious. I have no idea how long I actually played the game, or how many quarters I dropped in, but it seems like a lot. While I played all the major games, only four grapped my attention quite like this. Xevious, Dragon's Lair, Jump Bug, and the original line drawn Star Wars arcade game. That afternoon, though, it was all abut Xevious.

And, while I never knew the name of the game until today, I always remembered the game play and the zone I could slip into.

Tonight, playing it on the TV, I went right back into the zone, and 20 years just disappeared.