Proposition 56-10; computer competency usage legislation!

Ok, let me first start by saying that I'm not angry person and I love my job and for the most part the people that I help on a fairly consistent basis. Having said that I think I'm going to write my congressman to adapt into legislation a bill that will subject users to a standard dumbness test for computer use. A breathalyzer test of sorts. In my line of work I deal with people that use their computer to make a living for themselves by using the software we provide to trade stocks and follow the stock market, which is what makes my daily findings so disturbing. Its in this realm that I have found that the people who I deal with have way to much time and money and not enough smarts to even operate the very thing that has allowed them to do what they do. I feel that if you are able to write a 3 line code which will tell you when a price is crossing up or down through its 50 day moving average and has a stochastics movement of more the 10% should be able to change the mutha flipping wallpaper on the desktop or at the very least tell you what internet browser he is using. This legislation would basically weed out the the people that in essence are to dumb to get the help to use the computer properly and thus quit making my job difficult and extending my Excedrin migraine moments. Case in point, Mr. Omar Espinoza. Mr. Espinoza trades on 3 different markets for stocks, commodities, and other overseas options which would leave you to believe he is somewhat of a competent individual on a basic level yet when during a recent help desk session made the comment and I quote "I don't have period key on my keyboard". This is the type of lunacy that finds me far to often in my line of work. My legislation would basically eliminate these types of people from using the computer all together or a the very least have a DU designated user. Why are people who depend on the computer for everything they do such as making sure the lights, house note, car note and other bills get paid properly as well as just for everyday use, always the ones that are "not very good with computers!"!!!! When did not being able to use something well make you wanna go out and base your whole life around it? In any event, Proposition 560 will introduce standardized testing to all users that require more than a certain number of hours on the computer or will be using the computer for more than just web surfing and music downloads. This testing would also apply to those in the technical field as well. If one is or wants to be a tech or help desk agent, you should be able to configure a firewall or at least know where the dad gum exceptions list is and how to navigate to it. Also, if a help desk agent calls in to another help desk agent which is perfectly ok, the former should be able to accurately do a ping test or tell you if their own system is able to ping servers at all. I mean that's I.T. 101! Are you connected? Yes. Are you using a router? Yes. What IP are you getting? I don't know? WTF?!!!!! You don't know? Ok, go to the command prompt and run a ping test on this server address for me. How do I do that? WTF?!!!!! Are you freaking kidding me?? But I digress, hopefully my congressman won't let me down or at the very least help me bring light to a subject that haunts us dedicated tech agents to this very day. We can not continue to let this travesty go unwarranted any longer for I feel that I may actually jump through the phone and/or monitor and physically mame and injure someone!

End User Roundup Part 2

Item 1 Description of the type of End User's that drive me insane
continued from: http://digitaldiscontent.blogspot.com/2010/02/end-user-roundup-part-1.html

The constant "Victim":
This is the guy that keeps getting "hacked."
Pinky: Wow... that's a lot of porn on there.
User: Um, no, no I don't look at that stuff, I must... I must have been HACKED!!!!
Pinky: Um, ok.
User: Yeah, they keep trying to get to me.
Pinky: Um, ok, that's why its in a hidden folder called "User's Stash?"
User: ... Those dastardly miscreants!!!
Pinky: Indeed.

I once knew a lady in the days of dialup whose phone bill was double what it should be because of a dialer connecting to Zimbabwe. She claimed she had been hacked until I pointed out that she had three teenage boys in the house, and it was at least a bit more their fault.

Oh, and one quick question asker:
This is a cousin to the ones who like to watch that I covered in the first part. They sit and watch you fix their internet connection for the fiftieth time and always have "one quick question" that turns into a "Why don't you take Computers 101 class" type deal. I don't mind simple stuff that makes sense, like "How often should I run a backup," or "How do I start the virus scan," but stuff like "Can you tell me how to run PhotoShop real quick?" No. "My cousin says I can download movies with this napster thing." No. "What's that little moving thing on the screen?" NOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!

My friend told me its the flux capacitor:
At some point this user has spoken to someone that may or may not be familiar with the qualities of a hole within the ground and their own anus. This user however has presented them with about two minutes of description of the issue, and the psychic tech in front of them has told them to check something. At this point, no matter what you say, no matter how simply you put it, the user will not deviate from that being the problem.
Pinky: No, the power supply would not explain why all your money was transferred from your account to Australia.
User: But, So-and-so said...
Pinky: ARRGHHHHH!!!!!

One of my favorite adages comes from some old accountants I used to work with. They would have a customer come in and say, "My cousin says I can do this." The accountant would calmly ask them, "How much did you pay him for that information?" "Nothing." "Well that's what its worth."

The Miracle Seeker:
"Can I put a Geforce GTX in my 386 and play Crysis?"
... and lo the Pinky did say "GET THEE HENCE!!!!" and beateth him about the head. And there was much rejoicing.

The Lingo Impersonator
These users have picked up on a bit of the language, but haven't really mastered it yet.
"I don't have a mac address, I run a PC!!!!"

Item 2 List of Offenders:
Too many to list.

Item 3 Suggested Course of Action:
facepalm

Technician Heal Thyself Part I

Item 1: Being the first in a series of collections of actions taken by computer techs that make me ashamed to bear the name:

Its late, you're happily surfing the web, clicking from link to link in your own little private nirvana. A youtube video here, a cracked article there... some... "research." Suddenly disaster strikes, some nefarious link has given you the digital equivalent of herpes. You try running your scanners, you call your cousin who "knows" computers, but in the end you know its coming, the horror of horror's, going to see the geek.

Now I'd like to think most people have a nice, reliable, able computer guy in their town. I'd like to believe that most people go to him, but in my experience, there's always one or two shops that apparently survive on one time, screw your customer over for as much as you can because they're not coming back business. I think its why I live in a very small town that is full of do-it-yourself-ers.

There is always the alternative of going to one of the big stores and trusting your machine to the pimply-faced brat with a hamster voice that will simply check to see if you have any good porn, and then send it back to you in worse condition than it left, but that would, and probably will, take up an entirely separate post. We will focus on the small businesses for this post.


Saying "It's not worth fixing":
I hate these words. I have had to use them once or twice, usually in a business scenario, but the brazenness of how some techs throw it around is appalling. It is neither mine, nor any other tech's place to make that determination.

These words are usually followed by, "I've got a machine in the back though that I can give you a deal on." That's your best indicator that they haven't even examined your computer and just want to make a sale.

Many years ago a friend of mine brought me an old machine he had. It was long in the teeth, but it ran ok, and he was using a very strange setup that required the use of an extremely pricey ISA HAM radio card. His machine wouldn't boot so he took it in to one of our local shops. They carefully examined the faceplate, and proclaimed that it was not worth fixing. Angered my friend brought it to me. Five minutes of taking the cards out and re-seating them, and it was up and running. I didn't charge, since it was two second fix, and he had already been ripped off that day, but if the first tech had taken a few moments out of his day, he could have made some good money for basically just opening the case.

Scorching the Earth without Approval:
Ok, from a tech's point of view, what is usually the easiest way to fix a computer with software errors and or malicious items on it? Reformat. Scorch the earth, kill em all, let God sort them out. And yes its quick and it works, but, if you're jumped the gun, you may have just erased someone's dearest memories.

I know, the oldest wisdom in the computing world, back up, back up, back up. Store in three different places on the earth and one on the moon and maybe you won't lose your stuff. But, the eighty year old grandmother that only keeps in touch with her grandkids via email isn't going to understand a word you say about it. Much as you may have trouble understanding why she hells 23 skidoo at random, you come from two different worlds. I always ask, at least three times "Is there anything you want off your computer?" At least once they will say no, but when you deliver the machine, they'll be asking, "Where are my vacation photos?" Ok, I've had a few that said, "You didn't look at my vacation photos did you?" Those situations were awkward.

Jury Rigging:
Duct tape is an amazing invention. It has saved my life many times. It is not, however, something you use on a customers machine and then hand it back to them... Unless they have bumper nuts, then its ok.

One of my cousins runs a shop, and was wanting a remote installed so she could work from home at times. I walk in and go around the counter she had set up and look down. The tech that had been contracted to come in and get her computers hooked up to the internet had run a cat 5e along the base of the counter and affixed it with small pieces of duct tape... (insert facepalm picture later)

Blatant Ignorance:
I don't know everything there is to know about computer issues, no one does, but I also don't put myself in a position to be handling things outside of my realm of expertise. Few things irk me more than asking a question of another tech and either I can tell they don't know what they're talking about by their expression, or I know enough about the issue to be able to determine my time would be be spent better elsewhere.

A while back our internet connection at the office went down. We were using a modem that to this day, I've yet to find english documentation on (it was bought from the duct work tech's shop before I got here.) After a few reboots and checking the line going in I finally called tech support to see if there was an outage.

Now, I know in this field age isn't always a good indicator of ability. I've met very young techs that were really good at what they do, and some older ones that have no business operating electric toothbrushes. The guy I got on the phone though, demanded, while not in words, that I henceforth refer to him as Skippy the Wonder Hamster. Skippy was a happy little soul, safe and comfortable in his little den with his scripts and database. Our conversation went something like this:

Pinky: Hey, just wanting to check if I've got an outage in this area.
Skippy: Have you tried turning your computer off, letting it sit for a minute then turning it back on?
Pinky: Um, I've got ten computers in here and none of them are connecting, won't even ping an outside address.
Skippy: So you haven't tried turning them off and then back on?
Pinky: Hold on
*Two seconds pass*
Pinky: Ok, they're back up
Skippy: Hmm, can you see your modem?
Pinky: Um, no its in the server room, I have already rebooted it twice, and am now looking at the web interface for it, its showing I have dsl sync.
Skippy: What do the lights look like? Do you have two lights or three?
Pinky: Well they're real pretty and I have a bunch of them.
Skippy: Hmmmm
*I hang up*

I called back a little while later and got another tech, took two seconds to check the settings and determine the modem was bad. I kept it in a drawer to spit on from time to time.

Item 2: List of Offenders:
I'm not naming names, some of these guys know where I live

Item 3: Suggest course of action:
Look for signs, talk to friends, at least one person you know probably knows a good tech that won't rip you off or screw up your box.

To be continued...

Wire Monkeys from Hell

Item 1: Description of an old network situation that causes me ulcers to this day:

A small company I work for in the evenings decided to setup a real time data share between two of their offices. I had repeatedly informed them that sharing Quickbooks over a 1.5 meg DSL connection wasn't going to work very well, or at all. Those who have tangled with the beast from Inuit know, their software is bloated, and quirky and loves to spit in your face and the face of reason on a regular basis... and it requires at least a 10 meg connection. Now to be fair they do have an online version, but the client wasn't really interested in that for various reasons, one being the internet service in the area at the time wasn't known as being reliable.

A somewhat local networking outfit was contacted to come in and set up the connection as I had refused on the basis that spitting in the wind will come back in ways you don't want. My first indication that there would be trouble was the brand spanking new Dell computer the techs brought in to replace the old server. Being a small company without the means to afford a huge machine, this company had contracted me to build them a file server, running XP about five years before this incident. It wasn't a powerhouse exactly, but it had run flawlessly up to this point, and only gave up the ghost a few months ago when the motherboard finally bit the big one. All in all old Betsy, as I called her lasted about 7 years, at a cost of about $500. The new Dell was a lowend $700 model with about 256megs of ram, a maybe 30 gig hard drive, and a low end celeron. I giggled a bit to myself as I saw them hooking it up. Sure enough within an hour of loading up the company's Quickbooks files, I was hearing sounds of regret. The new machine couldn't even support one other computer accessing it, Quickbooks was taking upwards of ten minutes to open from the server, if it opened at all.

My second indication came quickly afterwards. The geniuses decided to set up a vpn between the hobbled server they had installed and another, identical machine at the other office. After a few hours of tinkering they came to the astonishing conclusion that the bandwidth necessary exceeded what was available. So they called the local ISP, a small independent setup and politely asked them to bump up the speed. They were politely laughed at and told to indulge in some personal activities that usually involve two or more consenting adults. I stayed in the background, again, giggling to myself.

The third indication actually slightly angered me. I had taken part in the wiring of the building, and to be fair had done a pretty decent job of running the line and terminating it. The new company took it upon themselves to rerun some of the cable claiming it was necessary, and not in any way trying to pad their bill or anything. I walked in and noticed one of the guys terminating a cat5e. The picture below should illustrate, beyond any words, my opinion on his skills:

Now I don't know what school of network wiring teaches that you need a quarter inch of breathing room between the sheath and the RJ45, or why they tell their students to use a fingernail clipper to strip the wire, but I'm guessing their credentials are suspect.

A few days of non-functionality was enough, finally for the company to decide they no longer wished to contract with these yahoos. I was called in to fix their mistakes, putting Old Betsy back into service and rerunning lines. It took about eight hours altogether to remedy a week of damage, and those were well paid hours.

Item 2: List of Offenders:

I'm throwing Quickbooks in here because I hate them with a passion (there will be a follow up on them later) Unnamed company X, I'll be nice enough not to post them on the net.

Item 3: Suggested Course of Action

If you have a good tech, and he tells you something isn't feasible, its probably not because he's lazy, and yes he probably is lazy, some of the best techs are, its because it probably can't be done reasonably financially, or with existing technology. Any good tech that sees the opportunity to set up something really cool like a VPN, or a VOIP network is going to jump on it, just because we find it FUN. We may have a hard time explaining things in a manner that you can easily understand, but, if a surgeon told you that an operation was necessary, you would listen to them, even if they don't go through all the details of what can and can't be done.

My cup runneth over, and onto my keyboard

Item 1 Description of my Adventure into Acquiring Windows 7:

Windows 7 is out. Yay. Finally, microsoft is making up for the ill begotten ME 2... I mean Vista. It's supposed to run faster, leap over tall buildings, make you toast, and rearrange your sock drawer by color shape and wear. So I'm debating running out to my local software retailer and grab a copy. Scanning over the meager offerings that Wal-Mart and the like offer in their software section these days, I finally spy my target. Windows 7... Windows 7 Starter, Home Premium, Professional, Enterprise, Klingon, NIV, Lego, Moosetracks... WTH???

Why, why do they need so many different versions? I know they like to rip off linux from time to time, but having a hundred different versions isn't one of the items I was really wanting ported. Why not save time and money on marketing and different labeling and lower the price of the Ultimate to a decent price, you'd probably sell more.

Lets examine the low end shall we? Windows 7 Starter. An appropriate name as it will basically just do what a boot disc does and START your computer. You probably have more functionality in your cell phone than this version of the OS. I mean who would ever want to run more than three applications at a time, only hackers that's who, and we don't want you using our OS you miscreant!!!!

Home Premium... with compiz/beryl... I mean Aero goodness. Yes I will pay the extra for that...

Now Professional looks a bit better than the other options, I can run in XP mode. Or... I can "upgrade" to XP Professional, decisions, decisions...

I could go on, by my caffeine is wearing out... Point to be taken I guess is most marketing departments, and I place blame for this hogwash squarely on their shoulders, should be shot. Hobbling your product to sell different versions is just silly.

Item 2 List of Offenders:

Microsoft, again, Bill Gates, I'm sure Ballmer had something to do with this

Item 3 Suggested Course of Action:

And lo they did smaketh the marketers upside the head, and did scatter their pie-charts and shove their projections back from whence they came

No Love for the Crackers

Item 1 Description of the Annoying Script Kiddies and Black Hat Hackers that ruin my day:

Somewhere he's laughing at me. Across town, or across the world there is a kid sitting in front of his dad's computer that just cobbled together a jumble of codes he found on different websites designed to infect and reformat some poor bastards machine. Why is he laughing at me? For much like Paris Hilton's chihuahua, he gets to crap wherever he wants and I get to clean up the mess.

Now, I can almost understand the guys that hack for a living (and let me be clear I've no hate for the White Hats) at least there is some sort of payoff for the work they do, and a clear understandable motive, but the destruction for destruction's sake type of people just enrage me. I never though Chaotic Evil was a real world alignment.

Now to be sure, everyone with a computer at some point wants to be a hacker of some sort, being like Keanu Reeve... no, um, like that movie Hackers.... Oh God no, um, like Lain, no one will get that but anime geeks, but its still more respectable than the first two. Hell I even wanted to become a Certified Ethical Hacker at one point. Nothing would be more fun than testing people's security, actually to broaden that, its always fun to do something legally and get paid for it when anyone else without that position would go to jail. Now so far I haven't gone that route, but I also haven't gone rogue and started trying to knock down people's firewalls, steal their credit card numbers etc, etc. Unless you've got mafia ties and are making millions it just ain't worth it, and besides, if 80's action movies taught me anything, I'd be the guy that asked for his money and got paid in lead deposited locally.

If you have an interest in the good old days of hacking or phreaking, when it wasn't as nasty in my opinion as today, check out Kevin Mitnick, and Captain Crunch, sure they ripped off phones companies, and are not really heroes, but still kind of cool guys in a Robin Hood type way.

Item 2 List of Offenders:
... too many to list here

Item 3 Suggested Course of Action
Unplug the internet, now

End User Roundup Part 1

Item 1 Description of the type of End User's that drive me insane
This will be an ongoing work in progress.

The Overpowered Novice:
It pains me to see a $3000 machine in the hands of someone that uses their 33inch plasma screen only for reading their email.

The Wunderkind:
The kid that knows everything there is to know about computers, because his buddy in yahoo chat taught him "hacking." What DevilDDDawg666 didn't tell him is he only showed him how to open up every port in their firewall so he could access the wunderkind's dad's credit card transactions.

The ones that like to watch:
These are the people that insist on sitting and watching you work, no matter how many times you tell them that "This will be boring and take forever, see I wasn't even planning on sitting here while this thing does a full surface scan, why do you want to?" Yet they insist that they want to "learn." No, you're watching me to either make sure I don't mess anything up, which you won't be able to discern, or watching me to see how I do what I do, which probably won't apply to your next issue anyway.

The Save a Penny-o-matic:
"What?!?!?! Why am I paying you fifty dollars for something that just took ten minutes???"
Um, because you don't know how to do it? Strangely, businessmen that charge a hundred an hour for their own services (two hour minimum) seem to be the most notorious for this attitude.

The Box Slayer:
These are the people that no matter how many times you work on their machine, no matter what instructions you give them, no matter how many automated safeguards you put in their way, they will bring their machine back in within a week of you sending it out in worse and worse condition. After a while you are actually tempted to rig the thing to self destruct in the hopes that it can finally seek some rest, but the thought of another computer finding its way into the hands of this creature is more than you can bear.

Item 2 List of Offenders:
Too many to list.

Item 3 Suggested Course of Action:
... if you don't smoke I guess demerol would work...

I Will Compile No More Forever

Item 1 A description of my attempt at being, hardcore:
I'm a big linux fan. I love the concept of an open source environment, free software, stability and being able to tell Steve Ballmer to suck it.

I started to say linux geek in the first paragraph, but I'm not up to that level yet. I've been trying to develop my chops as I go I've tinkered with the Ubuntu spin offs, Debain, Fedora, Suse, etc etc, each had something different to like and dislike and in the end taught me something new. I have learned the most I think though from my foray into Gentoo Linux. I have learned that I hate compiling from source.

Techs judge themselves by their skills, I have seen a phenomena several times where two techs meet. Like the samurai of old, there is always a showdown. One, usually the older tech will try to ascertain the younger ones level, and decide from there if he is worthy of their time. It can be scary to outsiders, but it is the natural order of things, much like the alpha male in a dog pack. So we seek to better ourselves so that when we run into an old master, we are not left lying on the ground with the other guys teeth at our throat... that only happened once... and I swear never again...

So to test my mettle, I dove headfirst into the Gentoo minimal install.

The beginning wasn't so bad, I jumped in made my partitions, formatted them, I was feeling good, halfway giddy... oh poor naive me. The horrors started when I read the next bit of instruction on compiling the base. YAY, I'd never actually compiled anything before this was going to be great, I'll be all hacking and stuff, hardcore style yo.

One command. Pretty much one command starts the entire process... This is about the same experience as double clicking the setup.exe in windows... To be sure it looks cooler, with all the text streaming on the screen, makes you want to bring some geek chicks in and say "Hey, check this out, yeah, I'm not doing anything right now, but I put the command in to start it." Now yeah, I understand the guys that say they want to make everything from source, so they know exactly what is inside the program, but honestly WHO THE HELL WOULD READ ALL THAT CODE???? I might run a search for "fubar this guys box lolzers" but other than that, eh.

So the compile began and ran for a while... a while being about ten hours altogether. It was slightly late when I started so I had the bright idea, hey I'll let it run overnight. I awake refreshed the next morning, ok, that's a lie, I wake my cranky morning self, look at the screen and nearly punch it. Apparently at random intervals I have to input whether I want the system to use gl support, or version 123.1234 versus 123.1235 (now with flouride.) At this point I realize, I really am expected to sit in front of the machine for hours, watching text stream by until the computer decides it needs me... aw hell naw.

About twenty four hours later, due to work, etc, I finally get the base finished. Excited I look through the next steps, ok now compile the kernel... Alright that can't be too hard, once again, type in my ONE COMMAND, I am so hardcore, walk away for a bit and it should be done... I miss my naivete. So yeah at this point I end up waiting a few more hours, least they could do is put a built in youtube streamer so I can watch something while compiling, but nooooo.

So eventually, after having wasted way more time than I would have preferred, I finally get the system installed and reboot. I was honestly surprised at the speed of the boot, until I realized, I hadn't installed the xserver yet, and was running in cli only. I won't share my experiences with the xserver, lets just say I'd had enough and ended up reinstalling xubuntu. Bring on the simplicity, bring on the packages, knock me down a peg on the tech scale, but, I will compile no more forever.

Item 2 list of offenders:
Gentoo Linux

Item 3 Suggested course of action:
Um, I'm still liking that Steve Ballmer line, I'll go with that.

Vae Victus Vista

Item 1 Description of situation that makes you want to throw your laptop out the window:

Local only. If you have never seen this, give thanks to the Lord. It pops up at the most inopportune time. You've just gotten to the coffee shop, or you've ran into the house to try to pay your online bills, or check your latest viagra spam. You bring your trusted machine out of hibernate, open up your browser and... nothing.

You check your hard switch on your wireless, make sure its enabled in network connections, and then you notice the tiny icon in the lower right, the one that usually has the nice little globe on it, proclaiming that you, tiny mortal have access to the world and all its online treasures... but what's this? No globe. Confused you move your mouse slowly down to the tiny little monitors, and up pops the dreaded words, "Local Only."

You jump into your terminal, run ipconfig and watch as the uncanny number of network adapters (you can only see two physical on the dang thing) looking for answers. Yes you have a valid ip, yet nothing pings outside the local network. Cursing, you reboot, to no avail, you delete the wireless profile, nothing, you reload drivers, you do a rain dance, you sacrifice a chicken (by the way the coffee shop frowns on this) nothing. Finally you grab a patch cord and connect directly, crisis averted... or is it...

I have had this happen on secure networks, wide open ones, with every authentication you can think of. Somehow the problem has always fixed itself within a day or two, but I've had to hardwire several times. Strangely, I can run xubuntu on this same machine and never have a lick of trouble out of it.

Item 2 List of Offenders:
Microsoft, specifically Vista, specifically wireless

Item 3 Suggested course of action:
I have read a few dozen articles on this, yet to find a solution, um, kick Bill Gates in the head

Item 4 Other thoughts:
Why do they fix what isn't broken? Why put all the network options in ten different places? From what I've heard windows 7 doesn't even have classic view in the control panel anymore????

The First Foray

Welcome to Digital Discontent.

I'm starting this blog to rant, essentially, about the little annoyances I run into on a daily basis as a computer tech. Consider it therapy perhaps.

Item 1 Description of Situation in which our Blood Pressure Rises:
You decide you want to grab a new shiny program, you navigate the sites half-assed attempt at a design. Halfway down the page, between ads for their $400 version that only differs from the free version by way of a talking dog that assists you, you finally find gold. A nice big beautiful download link... You click in anticipation, binary goodness is nearly yours.

You notice, as the download starts, that it finishes a bit too quickly. Sure you've got broadband, but that was just a little too fast, oh its only 800k, well maybe they're good at compression, or really good coders that don't waste space, who knows, you've got what you came for, mission accomplished!!!.

So you click the exe to install. A beautiful new interface comes up on your screen... and proceeds to start downloading the program you thought you just downloaded.

WTH

Who gets my size 13 steel toe to the head? WHY DO YOU THINK I NEED TO DOWNLOAD A PROGRAM TO DOWNLOAD A PROGRAM!!!!!! Just give me the whole thing at the beginning, sure I live in BFE, but I have about 6 meg down on my dsl connection, I can handle it, its ok. And to top it off, if the downloader actually has a speed indicator, its usually running at about 1/2 to 1/4 of the speed I can get from any other server.

In short, you're wasting my time, and throttling my download, unless you have some sort of resume option, or can speed up my download, just give me the dang setup file.

Item 2 List of Offenders:
Avast, AVG, Yahoo, Microsoft, Adobe

Item 3 Suggested course of action:
... I'd say boycott them, but I actually like Avast. And well, most of these are free.