You know what would be a great present to put in someone's stocking this Christmas? Tickets to a show on May 5. That's May 5, 2012. I think whoever wrote this ad needs to figure out when people stuff stockings with things like show tickets. I'm pretty sure most people wait until November or December to think about this sort of thing.
I've been noticing a trend lately. Facebook has found a way to get rid fo the stream that everyone hates and benefit themselves in the process. Now, the stream is hidden, and the ads are expanded. Since there are more ads shown, there is more opportunity to really find things that make you scratch your head an wonder. Let's get started.
Until today, I didn't know that the Detroit Red Wings had been eliminated from the playoffs. My excuse is that I watch the games online and have to wait 48 hours for the blackout restrictions to end. On the other hand, what's the excuse for the advertisers? The team's been out of it for almost 48 hours. I guess it IS the weekend. Maybe this one will be gone tomorrow.
About a month ago, I posted a bit of a rant about how Bank of America compromised the security of my credit card by sending an activated card in the mail without my knowledge.
The saga continues.
About 10 days after the fiasco started, I cancelled my account. I can no longer access the online banking system, so I'm pretty sure the account is dead. However, that may not necessarily be true. Shortly after closing my account, I did receive something in the mail from Bank of America. Looking at the postmark, it was close enough to the day when I cancelled, that I can understand it slipping by.
However, I have received something else in the mail at the end of last week. I also received the same offer in my email yesterday. While I was willing to allow some flexibility on the mailed material, the emailed material is unacceptable. Bulk mail is a slow and unwieldy process. Email is far more dynamic. How long should I be expecting to get marketing material for an account that (I hope) no longer exists?
So here's my question for Bank of America: Is my account actually closed or are you just that bad at your job?
I don't often post about video games. This is mostly because I don't really play all that many. I have a few here and there, and I'm mostly an RTS type of person. Still, I was reading my webcomics and came across this.
Now, I miss games that were long and immersive. I loved the almost impossible difficulty of the first two Descent games. I remember spending 8 hours (in multiple sittings) on a Command & Conquer map at one point. In fact, I even thought that MMO's were so popular because of the expansive, dynamic, unplanned content that made them interesting for so long.
So, never having heard of Kingdoms of Amalur, I searched and found this article. The designer claims that a speed run by their QA team yielded a 200-hour game. I don't want to sound completely ignorant, but isn't that a good thing? If memory serves (and it may not), Myst was a 40-hour average solve time, and Riven was about 200 hours on average. I understand that a speed run versus average solve time is a bit like comparing apples and rocket-powered super apples, but it has also been almost 15 years. Our apples should be rocket-powered by now, just like our backpacks.
In any case, I don't really go for RPG's for the exact reason that the comic linked above indicates. Many involve repetitive tasks interrupted by brief interesting parts. Still, I feel I can express my shock and annoyance that games are getting shorter every day when all I want is a game I can really sink my teeth into without having to start losing continuously to people online.
The last time I wrote about financial software was over 9 months ago. I was using jGnash2 at that point and grudgingly accepting. I soon lost interest in the manual pain it caused and got rid of it.
In my initial experiments, I had actually gone so far as to purchase Moneydance. I didn't like it initally, but most of that came from not being able to properly connect to my bank accounts due to some sort of certificate validation issue. Updates were issued, and I tried it again a few months ago.
As usual, connecting to financial institutions, getting everything categorized correctly, and dealing with different history lengths for each account was a pain. I spent a solid weekend working through all the backlog to get the accounts into some sort of understandable order.
The only problem I encountered when I started was that one of my credit cards was at FIA Card Services which did not provide any direct download options or any option to download anything but a completed statement. That credit card was sold to Bank of America, which delivers statements on stone tablets by carrier pigeon in Washington State. Since it was going through all these changes, I was going to be using it less, so I could stand a few transactions a week that were manually entered.
For investment accounts, it works pretty well. Even Quicken had problems with my 401k rounding the number of shares. Moneydance is about the same in that respect.
The other strange thing about Moneydance is that it will not do online accounts for loans. It's not a huge issue, but my mortgage took some tweaking to get it to the right place. Once it is set up correctly, it'll just keep scheduling payments and allocating interest/principal/escrow as expected.
I've been using this for about 3 months now without hating it, so that's something. Technically, the stock quotes are an extension, but that's not hard to install and use. They allowed 2010 users to upgrade to 2011 for free, others at a 50% discount. The license currently costs about $50. Hopefully, that's a one-time expense.
In the modern world of the Internet, we have all become too familiar with the "system errors" that plague our virtual existence. These are usually not a major issue, but I find our willingness to accept them a bit absurd at times. Sure, some of those issue have to do with scaling or minor bugs, but I often feel that they are used to cover up human error or just because no one is watching.
The story starts a few years ago when I signed up for a credit card from Schwab. Shortly after I got the credit card, they said they had some sort of major issue and had to reissue a lot of cards. I got a new card with a new number and had to move all my auto-payments over again. They were always vague about why they had to this, which didn't make me comfortable. Still, they detected and fixed it without any real effort on my part. I can live with that, even though I was a bit worried. Months later, they sold the entire card over to FIA Card Services, the transition was smooth, but FIA offered very poor online banking options.
In mid-2011, it was announced that another change was coming. I was not happy as the wonderful 2% card was becoming much worse, not to mention that it was going to Bank of America. I got another card to try to keep the bulk of my purchases at or above the 2% reward level and figured it was good enough. The transition was rocky and included me not having any online access to information about my account for 20 days. I suffered through that to find Bank of America had worse online banking options than FIA. Still, I was only going to use the new card for gas and groceries, so it wouldn't be that bad.
Today, I received another copy of my card in the mail. I opened it and immediately wondered why Bank of America was increasing the odds of my card getting stolen. I have a card. I didn't ask for another one. Since I have just gotten back from vacation, I think about how scary it would have been if it was put in another resident's mailbox (a common occurrence) and left out in the open in our entry-way (another common occurrence) for some random person to take. This was an ACTIVE card. It's exactly the same as the card I'm using now, so it is already active without any verification of identity.
I called Bank of America immediately. I was told by a nice recording that I would have to wait "over 5 minutes" to talk to a representative. Yes, I suppose 20 minutes is more than 5, but I still hadn't talked to anyone yet. I tried online and was met with a 32 minute wait for an online chat representative. I tried later and made it through to someone almost immediately. Upon asking why another card was sent, she simply replied that she had no clue. It doesn't instill confidence, but I appreciate her honesty. I asked if there was any way to find out. She dug for a while. Well, it was a "system error" that the new card was sent. Apparently, there was a problem with the Schwab card replacements. She was sorry, but the card was sent in error. I registered my complaint about the security of my account, she said she agreed and would pass it to her management, and I thanked her before hanging up.
My question is this: who on Earth is QA-ing this crap? Heck, who's managing the project? I've charged over $600 to my new card in the past 2 months. It's pretty obvious that I got the original. I think they should learn from this and use it as an interview question. The people who don't say a word about checking for customers who have activated and used their card will not get a job. Just send them home right away. Banking software is complex with its security rules, pains of government regulation (people who've moved accounts to Washington State know what I mean), and strict need for complete accuracy. If someone can't come up with something as basic as "only send new cards to people who might actually need them" doesn't come up, I don't trust anything else they've done. I am not going to stand for yet another "system error" in my credit card account.
In conclusion, it was a fun 2 months with Bank of America. I will be paying off my card and closing the account as quickly as I can.
Recently, several pieces of electronic equipment have met their demise in my home. It started with my HTPC about a month ago. I went on vacation and came back to find it making strange noises and not producing a display signal. Last week, I ended up having to convert my linux box to fulfill the task by installing Windows 7 Ultimate. Finally, my receiver blew up (almost literally) the next night.
Now that I have nothing connected to my TV except my HTPC and my Wii (which I barely use), I really don't have a need for more than one remote to turn the TV on and adjust volume. I've been using my old Logitech wireless desktop, but the keyboard and mouse really get in the way.
I decided to look around a bit over the weekend and found a gem. I picked up a Rii Mini Wireless Keyboard. This thing is pretty cool so far. It's better than the full wireless keyboard and mouse in a few ways. First, it works across the room. Don't laugh. My Logitech products can't work half way across the room. Second, it's smaller than a remote. Third, it's got a laser pointer!
Ok, that last one isn't really all that cool anymore. I'm not going to be typing any essays on this thing (people with shorter fingers may not be able to type as well). The touchpad is responsive and handles taps pretty well.
I do have two minor complaints. The first one isn't a surprise since the pictures are clear, and the reviews mentioned it. The keyboard is in columns, unlike a regular keyboard. I have this problem on my Kindle, as well. I keep hitting "m" instead of "n" because of the column placement. The other complaint is that (unlike most thumb-oriented keyboards), the shift, ctrl, and alt keys have to be held down. This is completely normal for a keyboard, but it can be a bit difficult when you're using your thumbs.
Finally, I'll leave you with a few fun things. The USB receiver is stored in a small compartment in the keyboard itself. There is a backlight that you can turn on, that is very nice and bright. Last, but not least, Fn + Enter does a ctrl+alt+del. They certainly know who's going to be using their keyboard!
I was recently on vacation and checked into a hotel that did not have free wifi. At this point, I am basically enough of an internet addict to pay the absurd amounts of money for the wifi. I can usually mitigate some of this cost by just using my Motorola Atrix
However, my strategy was foiled this time. I have had an almost complete cell phone blackout in my hotel. I'm not talking about my room here. I'm talking about the entire building. Granted, I don't have a great signal when I walk outside, but I have only looked at my phone a few times to see a single bar on it.
Well, this isn't really too bad. I mean, I have my netbook, and I can pay to get on the wifi. Of course, that's per client. I guess my phone is just an expensive little brick. There are things I want to do on my phone, though. It's a source of entertainment as well as a device for calling people and looking up restaurants.
I did a little searching around. I found several forums about how to get an android phone to connect to the internet through a computer. I was pretty happy with that since most people want to do it the other way. I finally found a forum that gave me what I needed.
The software that has saved a bit of my sanity (if there is actually any left) is called Connectify. It's pretty simple to set up. I only needed the free version. It will actually let you use the wireless interface to act as an access point as well as the way the laptop gets on the internet. I was able to set it up in a few minutes and get my phone on the internet through my laptop.
I honestly wonder if I could get rid of my wireless access point and just use Connectify...
If I give that a try, I will post the results.
I recently found out that Philip K. Dick wrote a trilogy of books centered around God and various interpretations and concepts around it. I realized that I actually own the middle book of the trilogy in real, physical form. Realizing that the first and third books were available on my Kindle
I read Valis
Here's the problem, though. I finished Valis. I'm moving on to The Divine Invasion
The last book, is The Transmigration of Timothy Archer
I've had a couple people ask me about my logic in deciding to move this site. I guess I can provide a little more insight into what I was thinking. The best way to do this is probably with pros and cons for each option.
First, we should consider where I was running before, a rented server from esecuredata.
Pros:
Cons:
Clearly, there are cons for my use case that were mostly financial. If the host had been free (or considerably cheaper), I probably would have sucked it up and continued to pay.
The next option I considered was a static blog generator. There are literally dozens out there. They provide a piece of software you run on your computer. You manage the blog on your computer and publish it to a hosting system. I was considering doing this with some sort of cloud-based storage.
Pros:
Cons:
Finally, we get to something familiar with Wordpress.
Pros:
Cons:
The last one on the list is Posterous.
Pros:
Cons:
There you have it. That basically covers my decision. I did also toy around with other pieces of software running on cheaper (virtual) hardware. Nothing really beats 80% of what you want for free, though.
