Car Troubles...

So yesterday started off great, I woke up to 12" of snow on the ground and what amounts to a 3 hour delay. On the way down the mountain, I noticed after about 2 minutes of driving, an engine temperature of 190 degrees (normal engine temp) but no heat from the inside blowers. Well, about half way down Camelback road I stopped at the Village store with an engine temp of 240 degrees. I checked to find a low coolant resivoir. No sooner than that did the dashboard "light up like a christmas tree." The dash beeped with 2 warning lights. Good design VW. A red Water Temp light blinked and the yellow check-engine light came on and stayed. Now this car's temp stays at 190 like clockwork. Never has deviated from that reading the entire time owning the car. I know when it was high something serious was going on. I put some water in the coolant resivoir hoping it was just low but wasn't expecting much with all the sensor wizardry going on my dash. I would like to have those go on at about 210 - 230 degrees only because I think the car could give a little sooner warning. Also for a car with a washer fluid level light should have a (better) engine coolant level light.

After a little more driving, about 2 miles I pulled into my friend Dave's gas station, the Road Runner Sunaco. A call to AAA and 1:15h later I was on a flatbed to Halterman's VW in East Stroudsburg. This was the begining of the unpleasant portion of my experience. I already do not like their service center b/c I think they are overpriced in terms of hourly rate. However I think that is concistant at all VW's. They have an $85/hr labor rate. Compared to my Nissan, that's $20/hr. higher. They had 6 cars in front of me upon my arrival. Now I have no problem with them working on cars of other customers that are waiting. However, for cars dropped off I certainly expect to be bumped in front of them. Espically since I was a tow in emergency service they should have giving me a high priority. If you goto a hospital (excluding the shitty PMC) they don't put the heat attack behind the 6 paper-cuts who where there sooner. The more severe situations get helped sooner.

So thats bitch #1 with Haltermans VW in East Stroudsburg. My other bitch is they have only, only 2 VW mechanics working with a lot FULL of cars. Now, for those of you who have not been there, their service center is huge and georgous. A dual, High bay auto-garage door checkin lanes where you talk to a car-service rep/case worker. Here is an abobination of business efficency. They have 4 people on stools near wall mounted comptuers litteraly glorified secretaries sitting on their ass all day doing jack shit. That is in addition to a "garage foremen" who also sits on his ass at a much larger bar like desk. Those 5 people watched 4 (2 VW 2 Toyota) mechanics. WTF, no wonder their labor rates are sky high. That doesn't even begin to include the parts receptionist, parts "getter" and cashier. This isn't fucking wawa people. There wasn't a line to pay them. Why this gross excess of manpower. Who runs this place, do they have a college degree!

So back to my service. They said they probably couldn't get to it today and after a little talking with the "case worker" then the "garage forman" we agreed to revisit those chances in an hour. Working on the story I was stuck there I was hoping my physical presence would push them to get me infront of someone. Also I had nowhere to go. My wife's at home 10 months preggers and due 2 days prior. I had my laptop b/c I was on my way to work with some DVD's. So I watched iRobot. I was probably going to do that at home anyway so doing it there was no skin off my back.

After the movie, I went to hunt down some answers on the car. They were pretty stubborn not moving me in front of anyone, even people who dropped off their car. Now as a customer who often drops-off my car. I kind of expect my car to be worked on after in-store customers b/c thats the reason for dropping it off. So they can work on it at their convenience. But not this joint. So I had an idea, I called Young VW in Easton to see if they could look at it. Good news, it was their late night and would probably get to it. Now with that secure it was time to see if AAA would tow it down there. I was close but since I was at a shop, they didn't consider it within the scope of their towing services. Now if Halterman's was unable to do the repairs they would have towed it. Now I don't have a problem with AAA's answer. I did try and work them, 1. both tows within 100 miles 2. haltermans couldn't fix it today, Young could, 3. Wife's 10-months preggers but that was a stretch.

Now if it didn't cost so much to tow or it wasn't an overheat condition where its engine critical, I would have gone down there but Haltermans had me by the balls. So I left it and got a ride home from my sister who was done work mid afternoon. So for now on, I think I will go right to Young VW in Easton. They need to be more compeditive with a few VW's in the area unlike the Halterman's in East Stroudsburg who is "the only game in town."

Oh and the car, well they DID end up looking at it that day after all that shit. Broken water pump, under warrenty. Will be ready today at 16:30.

Snow Rant...

[RANT]

Fuck You weathermen!! Every last one of you. I love how 2-3" of wet snow has turned into 12" of heavy-wet-road-crippling-car-skidding SNOW! I know the weathermen don't order or create the weather but at least they could semi-predict it somewhere close.

Also to the asshole driving the $50,000 Range Rover Land Rover. Your vehicle can fucking tranverse the worst off-road condiditons of the Austrailian outback. Go faster than 10 MPH in the snow. And turn your flashers off, I can fucking see you.

[/RANT]

Some humor...

Ever wonder about store clerks and cashiers not even glancing at your signature when purchasing with Credit Cards. Well a gentleman did and we bring you the Credit Card Prank II.

So fucking left they are off the earth...

I am talking about CBS News. There is a very good reason the rest of the liberal press and the fair and balanced Foxnews pounced on Dan Rather for "memo-gate". Tonight I watched a piece on 60 Minutes (SUN) about an Albanian buying .50 Barrett Sniper rifles and "smuggling" them to his home country. Mind you he bought them legally and took them to Albania legally, CBS News, 60 Minutes and Ed Bradly placed a fantastic amount of biased liberal spin as this should be some kind of outrage. Lets review the facts, not the spin, of this news article. 1. US Citizen legally buys US weapons. 2. US Citizen legally flew with weapons to home country. 3. US Citizen legally bought .50 cal ammo. I spend a lot of time b/t NBC News (central to liberal) and Foxnews (central to right) and am very satisified with their reporting. This CBS trash just astounded me.

Digital Music Revolution...

So, almost since their inception I have been fascinated with digital music. It began in early to late 1998 as a frosh at The Pennsylvania State University. The MP3 file format had been release launching the ability to put your CD music on your computer in a compact file size. I was the first to hook up my stereo's aux in to my PC. Coupled with Winamp MP3 music player and a homemade jukebox was born.

It was later in that time frame that a small company called RIO release the first, commercial, MP3 player. Basic in features and memory it was a mild success; the focus of geeks. There were problems, the computer power and space needed to rip cd's to MP3's was high end. The CD burner was new, expensive and a slow 2x. No buffer under-run and a crappy windows 98 OS you needed to kill everything but easy cd creator.

So why the nostalgia? Well, it is time to fast forward to today. The landscape has changed. We are transitioning from peer-to-peer file sharing of music which bypassed buying music from artists and essentially created an illegal stealing service to now several pay for download music services. The debate and cause for the illegal P2P music swaping is old, we will omit that here. Music for sale online, competition among services and the illegal P2P services has reduced the overpriced (argueably) cost of CD's.

Today I make a case against iPod as a music player and iTunes as a service. First, if you are rich, money is not a real concern get an iPod and use iTunes. However if you have any any shred of value for your heard earned money, there are much better choices in terms of digital audio players and music services. I recommend players from Dell, Creative, and iRiver. I also love Wal-mart and online stores such as newegg.com, buy.com and pcmall.com for low prices of these products. For 5GB and lower sized digital music players, i suggest Napster To Go. Check out a good article here.

Front of the Barefoot Resort card. 

This was Myrtle Beach Summer 2003 and a round at one of the newer tracks, Barefoot Golf Club. The Smiths are fun golfer. Gabe is cool. 

Great Golf Experiences...

So I have a ton of golf score cards and I decided that what better place to share than in my Blog. I will also start with the best course I ever played, Commonwealth National Golf Club. Phenomenal track in Horsham, PA. This round is of great importance to me. I played with my best friends on my wedding day, 28 May 2004. Life does not get any better than that. Scorecard forthcomming.

Yardage Book Front Commonwealth National Golf Club
 

Yardage Book holes 1 - 9 Commonwealth National Golf Club
 

Yardage Book holes 10 - 18 Commonwealth National Golf Club
 

Yardage Book Layout Commonwealth National Golf Club 

Xbox recall and "I love being right"

Two items of interest this evening. First, Microsoft Corp. is recalling Xbox Power Cords. Check out the recall website here. Second, after being accused of misplacing a Target giftcard I used to purchase a lamp, it was determined the one in my lovely wife's wallet was the card I used as I told her. Howerver it took checking the balance on target.com to reveal that I was right. I love being right. :-)

Spoofing and Phishing...

Some or all of you may have heard of Spoofing or Phishing. It is an attempt by a rogue email and website to get you to send them confidential financial information. Credit card and account numbers, pins, etc. Very personal information. Un-educated (Dumb, maybe) peole fall for the prank. Below is a image of paypal Phish, the email wants me to think I need to do what it says. However the link in the message does not take me to paypal.com but to this address http://www.carina.sorescu.go.ro/ that is clearly someone in a foreign country trying to steal my shit. Beaware. Bastards.

PayPal Spoofing email...

Thanks to ABCNews and Down with Spyware

Hello,

I know it has been a lengthy bit of time since my last posting. I need to add a calendar reminder to my outlook I think. Anyway, I would first like to thank ABCNews for recognizing "Bloggers" (whatever that means) as their person of the year. It is a major achievement for ABCNews to recognize an internet group with such an honor.

Next I would like to expand on my latest experiences with Spyware. There is a fundamental flaw with peoples perception of safe internet usage and wise decisions. I would like to go over a few problems with the way we "surf the 'net." First we make certain assumptions about what is bad and what is good on the internet. One of the major problems is the assumption that when we are prompted to install a piece of software or need to click yes to approve a dialog box to make a certain web site work, that the software is safe and necessary for the site to work.

It is occasionally true that a web site may need a some software to work properly. Moreso, websites the are offering "FREE" stuff are trying to abuse your trust. Free search toolbars are the number one culprit for being and allowing spyware to enter your computers. Other problem software are free games and other add-ons that are pushed you internet surfers. So what can you do to thwrart these invaders of your computer? There are 3 main tools that you can put on your computer to remove, block and protect against spyware.

First, always have an up-to-date Antivirus program installed and working. This is an active defense to viruses and spyware. I suggest you look at getting one of the following:
Norton Antivirus
Mcafee Antivirus
Trend-Micro Antivirus

Second, install and regularly run a spyware removal tool. There are two really good ones and it is suggested that you update and run both weekly. Here are the links:
Spybot
Ad-aware

Third, and finally STOP!! using Microsoft Internet Explorer. It has a long and poor history with security vulnerabilities that not only can let spyware in but also let hackers take over your whole computer. You can get a really good browser from the folks at the Mozilla foundation, they took over the old Netscape browser code. http://www.getfirefox.com/

Copiers; Expensive and Flaky

My latest pain to deal with is a copier. Now these new copiers do it all. First we are talking full color, high speed behometh. Our unit is a $12,000 Xerox Workcentre M24. Now would you expect support and assistance with the install, setup and operations of your new twelve-thousand dollar copier? Well my experience wasn't so obvious. First some details....

Our organization moved into some new real-estate in our offices and are together with another group and part of our startup funding we decided on a shared multi-function device. We needed a medium sized color print and scan capabilitie + copying. We settled on this Xerox unit b/c it provided all that functionality and has great scanning functions. The scan to email feature will scan multi page documents and email a PDF file very much like the HP Digital Senders will do.

So what's our problem, undocumented error codes. Turns out this is a huge shake-down. A shake-down for Xerox to secure maintenance fees or technican charges. Our error was Fault Code 016-503. Turns out it is SMTP server not resolved error. A change of smtp server addressing fixed the problem but it took an email to the VP of Marketing to get some asses moving on this. Now its fixed, were happy and its a great unit.

Slowwww Lately...

So I have been very busy with a myriad of work, school, and home tasks. So what can a techie post about home projects...quite a bit actually. I have been finishing my basement and have framed out the walls and not working on the electricty. First let me comment that I Hate Electricians. What a dumb group of lazy F's. I was working down there this summer and tripped the circuit breaker. To my suprise I discovered that on one circuit was my basement outlet, 4 ceiling lights, living room outlets (3), living room lights, front-outside deck lights and front outside spot-lights!! What a idiot. All that stuff on one circuit!! More to come including pictures a little later...

Some minor things to report...

This will be brief.

Google's Desktop search (http://desktop.google.com/) kicks ass!! So go get it.

Google's text messaging search is also cool: http://sms.google.com/

A blast from my past occurred this week as our division manager needed assistance reconnecting a Windows 98 PC to his home network. The usual checks were made ensuring the NIC was installed right. Those checks are to run WINIPCFG and make sure you have a listing for your network card, and hopefully an IP that is valid. A good check is to set your NIC's IP and try and ping it. If you get replies, its installed right. Next make sure you can ping your gateway. And finally make sure your cable is well connected. Also make sure the cable you are using is a CAT 5, 5e or CAT 6 cable. One error had someone switch from a Windows ICS setup with 2 PC's and using a crossover cable. Upon their upgrade to a router that cable will only work in the uplink port so be aware of your cabling.

Its the little ones you have to watch out for...

What started out as a simple re-build job for a Gateway solo 1200 laptop turned out to be a bit of a chore. It started with the laptop struggling to copy the Windows 2K or XP setup files during the DOS portion of the install. In fact, I was getting various bluescreens during install with both OS's. I thought since both CD's were in good shape that there was an issue with the CD-ROM drive, a fair conclusion. However, after the install of a new CD-ROM I was still having issues. I broke out some old schoold Win 9x boot disks, loaded SMARTDRV read-cacheing tool and copied the i386 folder to the HD (fast and w/o issue). The install from the HD lead to the same blue screens. A new BIOS flash later I was making no progress until a different blue screen thanks to windows 2000 and stop error 0x00000067. That lead to 2 KB articles, one of which suggest bad RAM and to test and replace. NO! it could be bad chips? YES it was. Bootable memory check from http://www.memtest86.com/ confirmed bad memory from about 20 - 35MB segments on the computer. I just realized that that laptop has 64 MB on-board the motherboard and 64 MB in an add-in card. I will have to go back and check if its the on-board memory or the add-in SODIMM. Today's lesson, check those stop errors completely and run all tests before assuming.

Update: Well, I pulled the add-in RAM and the on-board soldered to the MB RAM is dead. Damn. Laptop is now only good for parts.