Author Archives: David

Have a good voyage computer

Well, the laptop is boxed up and ready to start it’s journy to Dell’s repair depot in Tennesee.

It sounds stupid … but I really feel like a part of me is missing … I mean, hell, it’s just a stupid computer. A hunk of metal, plastic, & silicon. I’ve got more of ’em lying around here (using one of them now).

Oh well, maybe it will be good for me. 🙂 <yeah, right>

I don’t want to imagine what it would be like if Ginny’s computer malfunctioned for more than a day or so.
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Dell Service Rant or Can you be without your computer for 2 weeks?

The fans on my Dell Inspiron 8100 started acting wonky today … so I ran the diagnostics and was informed that the fans were failing.

I called Dell service. Held for 10 minutes and then found out it was the corporate support line, so I called back and waited another 10 minutes.

I described the problem to the tech (pleasant guy named John, who was definitely in America) and he said that the fans probably needed to be replaced. Unfortunately, my service contract is “Rapid Response Depot”… and the turnaround time is about 2 weeks.

Now I don’t know about you … but I certainly can’t be without my computer for 2 weeks.

The online service manual have instructions on how to replace the fans … but there’s no part number, and John couldn’t find one as a “Customer Replicable Part” … so the only option I currently have is to send it in.
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Who designed this phone?

Well, Ginny and I got new cell phones yesterday.

Ginny wanted to get a picture phone … and I thought it would be kind of cool to have one too (ref: future post about camera envy).

I’ve been less than pleased with the SprintPCS so we decided to get Verizon service. Mitch & Steve both have it and have no complaints.

We picked up the phone yesterday evening … as they were programming the phones, I heard this horrible music playing when they turned the phone on and off. I asked the guy if that could be turned off. He said: Of course … and asked if I wanted to be shown how? I replied that as long as it could be done, I could figure out how.

Got the phone home and tried to figure out the process for turning off the music … I found nothing obvious in the manual or on the phone itself.

Additionally, I wanted to figure out how to change the banner display so it would have my name instead of the words “Verizon Wireless”. Since both phones were identical, I wanted some way to clearly identify Ginny’s phone from mine.

I couldn’t figure out how to change either, so I called Verizon’s tech support.

The guy at Verizon said that there was no way to change the startup & shut down music off short of turning off all sounds and the banner text was built into the phone. Well that’s clearly unacceptable. If you’re in the theater and realize that you forgot to turn off the phone the music plays regardless.

So, we’re off to the Verizon store again to return these phones and find new ones.
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Anyone in jail?

I just received the oddest phone call from my dad … he wanted to make sure everyone was home (both Ginny and myself).

He didn’t necessarily want to talk to us about anything in particular … he just wanted to make sure we were home.

Turns out he had just received two collect calls from Cook County Jail that he had refused … and he wanted to make sure he shouldn’t have accepted them.

In all my years, I don’t think I’ve had an odder phone conversation with my dad.

Statistics?

Recently I’ve noticed that I’m becoming somewhat obsessed with statistics. Web statistics, mail statistics, computer performance statistics, stock performance statistics, etc.

I’m not exactly sure why … maybe it’s because I need proof that something I’m working on is actually doing something.

Do I have style?

Ok, now I understand a little better why Ginny keeps playing with the style sheets on her blog. It’s pretty addictive.

I think I’ve found a style that I like … had to tweak it a bit so that the Google ad doesn’t get overlayed, but no big deal.

‘course, that brings up the biggest gripe I have about CSS …
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Gotta remember to update the blog

Had a panic this morning … browsed to the weblog (you’re reading it now) and found that my main index page was empty!

Problem is: I hadn’t changed anything in the config to cause this.

I did try posting a blog entry through a new blogger interface with Gaim plugin. But that shouldn’t have caused any problems.

I checked the style sheets, templates, configuration, etc, and couldn’t figure out what was going wrong.

Well, it turns out that the MovableType configuration option for the number of days of posts to publish on the index means CALENDAR days (which I misunderstood). This basically means that if you don’t do a blog entry in x number of days, your index page goes blank.

New Cool Tivo feature

Well, it’s not really a Tivo function as such … it’s just the Tivo Home Media Option (HMO) … but I’m running a server application on the linux box called JavaHMO.

This lets me server pieces of dynamic information to the Tivo music and picture displays.

So, in addition to the standard HMO music and pictures, we have some Shoutcast auido streams, the current weather, movie schedules, games (I haven’t figured out to get the tic-tac-toe game to work yet), even screen shots of the PC desktop (although that doesn’t work, because it’s running on the linux system).
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