CapitalOne Bank: I use a CapitalOne Visa Card when I go overseas, as perhaps uniquely among credit cards, it doesn't charge a 3% currency conversion fee. Calling them to talk about a future trip resulted in my discovering that they now have most of their VISA call centers in India. One day soon that fact that may do as much for them as paying bonuses did for AIG. Luckily they have a (formerly) secret number that only reaches stateside VISA call center(s) 800-819-2222; and if you need to call from outside the United States the unadvertised number for that is 800-847-2911

ATT / DirecTv combined billing: Allegedly one gets a monthly credit if one allows ATT to bill them for their DirecTv.

Seems like the biggest scam going. AT&T just wants to get customers on the phone to try and upsell them to a Wireless Unity Plan, or a Wireline Long Distance Plan, or even U-Verse.

Then they'll find some reason why you don't qualify for a combined billing discount, which a quick Google of ATT Combined Billing shows can cause more grief than you can imagine, as the combined billing makes it near impossible to correct billing errors in the individual ATT components as what ever rep you talk to wont have access to whatever database you need them to connect to.

DirecTv screws up: The night of March 21, 2009, it "told" DVRs that it was July 14, 2009, which of course screwed scheduled recordings. First news report here.

Waiting now to see what compensation they give out for that. So far nothing.

Whither Q-Tips - Unilever sells Q-Tips in the refillable plastic Vanity Pack - .





One minor issue. They have stopped making and selling the refill packs. So is it false advertising and a deceptive trade practice to still call it refillable?

I don't have this kind of trouble on a Macintosh : Went to scan a 60 year old letter to a PDF while in Windows XP, and my HP 5280 wouldn't let me, saying it needed the missing scan.msi file. So I searched my Hard Drive in both the XP Install and Vista Install with no luck, so I had to uninstall all the HP software for the 5280, and reinstall it (making sure to use the "Advanced/Manual" setting so it didn't install Bloatware of Yahoo Toolbar or HP Store), about an hour's task to get everything working as it should. I should mention that HP will send you a replacement of the 2007 version of the Install CD for free, but doesn't have an Install CD with the most current drivers. That I went and created myself last year.

Bye - bye eBay and Paypal - I was selling my old laptop, an Apple Powerbook Pismo, that I had blogged about upgrading almost exactly a year ago (my February 26, 2008 Post). Someone won the bidding, and instantly shot me a payment via Paypal. Paypal put a 21 day hold on the funds "to protect the buyer?", more likely so they can earn interest on the float IMHO. For a $3000 computer from a new seller, a hold might make sense, but for an under $300 computer sold by a seller with a 100% eBay record with 63 feedbacks over 9 years??? I objected, Paypal was arrogant, so I refunded the buyers' money and quit Paypal and eBay. Paypal already charges a service fee for handling one's money, and makes no effort to pay you back the Interest they earn while holding your money.

Norton misses one: I must have been to a bad web site, as my computer's Windows XP got infected, and Norton Internet Security 2008 never saw it. Even their online database still today doesn't contain svchostw.exe. Luckily, using Malwarebytes Anti-Malware the problem was found. It reported:

Registry Data Items Infected:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Winlogon\Shell (Hijack.Shell) -> Bad: (Explorer.exe svchostw.exe) Good: (Explorer.exe) -> Quarantined and deleted successfully.

The Registry was fixed, and the offending file (svchostw.exe) deleted. Then I had to reapply Windows XP Service Pack 3 to my Windows XP to get Windows to start the Desktop on Bootup (rather than my manually starting it every time from the Task Manager (C:\Windows\explorer.exe)). Then a couple of Windows Security patches from Microsoft update to apply as SP3 had apparently undone them. All seems well now?

MS Windows Vista : Service Pack 2 Release Candidate is available for download now. HERE

Solving Windows Grief: I like the Intel CPU in the current generation of Macintosh computers as it allows one to also run Windows on those devices. I was having grief with Windows XP in one such scenario. It wasn't allowing Windows Security updates to download and install. I vaguely recall reading someone suggesting it had to do with installing Windows Service Pack 3 before allowing some other updates to occur to a Windows XP SP2 installation. In any event I finally tracked down instructions for fixing the problem here: Not exactly easy or intuitive, but it solved the problem, and now I don't have to manually install every patch one at a time from Microsoft, when sometimes even knowing you wanted the patch for KB951847 wasn't good enough to find the download.

MacBook: I am now the proud owner of a "2009 White MacBook", which I love. I've already upgraded the memory and hard disk in it; and it's running Mac OS 10.5.6, as well as Windows XP SP3, and Windows 7 RC1 under Parallels.

More recording space on an DirecTv HD DVR.

If anyone wants more recording time available on their HR2x, just add an external SATA drive, connected by a shielded eSATA cable.

It's easy: the DirecTv unit is powered off, the SATA drive is plugged into the DVR and turned on, and the DirecTv unit is powered up. Upon powerup the DVR will "discover" the external drive, and format it if necessary. Thereafter the HR2x unit will only record on the external drive, and all "Season Pass" type settings have to be redone.

Any recordings or "season pass" type settings on the OEM internal drive, can again be accessed by powering down the DirecTv unit, powering down the external drive and unplugging it from the DVR, and repowering the DirecTv unit.
======================================================
Still don't understand why a firmware update months ago started recordings on my external HD to be problematic , (perhaps DirecTv removed some error checking during recording?) but I tried a fix recommended elsewhere in a discussion group.

I switched to a quality Shielded eSATA cable. (SIIG, purchased at buy.com, part # 202321891 :
~$12 with shipping). SIIG's part # CB-SA0111-S1. I could not find an eSATA cable at Frys or Micro Center, lots of SATA cables, not one eSATA.

And now my 1 Terabyte Seagate SATA drive in an external NexStar3 Case, purchased at Frys, records 2 HD programs simultaneously without glitches or audio synch problems. The NexStar3 supplied unshielded eSATA cable has been discarded.

Fox's u-bet Chocolate Syrup is the product you want if you desire a genuine New York City Egg Cream soda. Now I discover Fox's u-bet Sugar Free Chocolate Syrup; and best of all its sweetened with Splenda, not Sugar Alcohols (Sorbitol or Malitol) that may cause gastric distress.
It was found in the "Kosher for Passover" section of only one local supermarket. No reference to it yet through Google.

Cheeburger Cheeburger ; Discovered there is a franchise in Houston now. Not close to me, but I drove 30+ miles there (northwest of Houston) Friday evening and had a very good cheeseburger, and excellent fries, excellent onion rings, and excellent service.

Seagate Barracuda Sata Drives: They recently reported a glitch on some of their drives which required me to update the firmware on two 1 Terabyte Drives I have. One houses Windows XP SP3, and the other is an external drive for my DirecTv HR21. Story on glitch here.

I still like Seagate drives, as lately they've been reliable for me, and now come with a 5 year warranty. I just bought a 1.5 Terabyte (1.34 Terabyte formatted) Seagate drive that was on sale at Frys. It's very fast (its 32 Meg Cache helps there), and quiet. It now hosts Macintosh OS X 10.5.6

Happy 25th Birthday Macintosh:

Apple's 1984 Commercial


Especially fun to watch is Steve Jobs introducing Macintosh
to the world. HERE.
.

How Hamas generates civilian casualties They go and build a Headquarters in the middle of a development of Apartment Mid Rises. The IDF manages a pinpoint airstrike to take out that HQ and not scratch a brick on the surrounding buildings.

Prius gas mileage. If one is gassing up at 6 AM on a Sunday morning, and the roads are basically empty, and one can do some driving at under 20 mph to ensure its mostly done only on electric power, gas mileage in a Prius is better than the rated 48 mpg city. I had to take a picture to prove it.

Windows 7 fun: I now have Windows 7 running nicely on a "Virtual Drive" using Parallels Desktop v.4 Microsoft made a major booboo by releasing it when zero antivirus software was available for it. Windows pointed you to a webpage recommending such, and listing available sources for AV software. Monday there were zero listed. By Tuesday beta versions of Norton, AVG or Kaspersky were linked to.

Symantec has Norton 360 v.3 beta, which works with Windows 7. It warned that it was a beta, expiring March 27. Then one installs it and is told the software expires in 15 days. NOT GOOD.

Next I'll try a 64 bit version of Windows 7

Windows 7: I was unable to get Windows 7 beta 1 installed on my MacPro, either as a clean install or an upgrade to Windows Vista. Hopefully Apple will tweak Bootcamp soon to allow such.

Followup: Jan. 12 = Windows 7 now running on my MacPro under Parallels 4.

Easy Update to Open Office 3 on Ubuntu, My Ubuntu 8.1 comes with Open Office 2.4, but it's easy to update it to Open Office 3.0; Just add Open Office to Software Sources, and uBuntu will just about automatically update it to 3.0 using its Update Manager. Instructions here. I'm start to fall in love with Ubuntu again.