“Chance favors the prepared mind. Never forget it.” - Howard Dean
It seems useful features like online updating of your account register is disabled when Intuit decides to sunset you, whether you want to upgrade to the latest version or not. Apparently this is routine, so Intuit has everyone upgrading at least once every three years in droves. That’s just evil.
Read the rest of “I bet Microsoft wishes it owned people like Intuit does!” »
First, boot with a kernel commandline of ydebug to attempt a recovery. In the following example, the device name for a md based RAID 1 device has shifted, resulting in a boot failure. When the underlying block device name changes, a Yaird image will fail as it hardcodes device names.
Read the rest of “Recovering yaird at boot, or where’s my root?” »
Arbitron really sucks. Yes, that’s still true. However, six months after I posted that and to my amusement, my statement was included in a blog entry by Dave Paulus, GM of Saga in the Norfolk market, who referred to my post when blogging in support of Arbitron’s PPM device.
Read the rest of “Arbitron, PPMs, and annoying Christmas music” »
I really hate FedEx. That company drives me nuts. They will never just leave a package. Just leave it. No, really. Leave it. No, I don’t want to sign for it in person, I have a freaking job and no one is here to sign for it.
I went to the CompUSA in Tampa, Florida, on Hillsborough Ave to find the store mostly deserted. None the less, I had to wait five minutes while the manager held up the only open line to explain the difference between DVD-R and DVD+RW to a customer. Eventually, it was turn and the sales associate has no idea if she could price match an item or not, but to ask the woman at the service counter, who had wandered off. I waited for a few minutes and she returns. I explained I wanted to price match a 160GB Segate PATA drive to Walmart’s lower price. She snarls that the items must be the same. I tell her they are. She then opens up the phone book to look up the Walmart phone number, then vanishes again for five minutes.
Read the rest of “Now I know why CompUSA is oft called CrapUSA” »
If you’ve been trying to run VMWare v4.5 on the latest Linux release candidate kernels, you may be having trouble compiling it. Fortunately, a few quick fixes and you should be able to compile again.
Read the rest of “Running VMWare Workstation v4.5.2 on Linux 2.6.16″ »
Having experienced some earlier joy from my favorite company Verizon, I wasn’t expecting to receive a call from a Toshiba confused Toshiba RMA center employee pertaining to my RMA transaction with Toshiba and their PCS, Inc. warranty department in California. Having twice failed, I had only recently received my third MK2018GAS 20GB 2.5″ laptop disk from Toshiba. Apparently, Toshiba received my original drive — a previous replacement under a similar RMA — and realized their mistake. The Toshiba representative claimed my warranty had expired and he insisted I send my already received replacement back on my dime.
I finally, after three activation dates, managed to get online with Verizon DSL. To make things more challenging, I brought my Bellsouth Westell Wirespeed which I thought I’d repatriate to Verizon’s network. However, there are two very important items to be aware of when signing up for Verizon DSL in Tampa, Florida with respect to modem and email configuration.