Author Archives: David

Dell Support

Yeah … Dell Support again.

A few days ago I ordered a new laptop … Inspiron 600m. It’s very similar to my current Inspiron 8600, but has a smaller display (I don’t like the wide display on the 8600), and it has wireless a, b, & g.

I placed the order on July 28th … and the order status hasn’t changed since going to “In Production”.

I just wanted to make sure there wasn’t a problem with the order, so I went to the Dell website and navigated to “Chat with order support”.

The order support rep I chatted with had a very very tenuous grasp of english … and didn’t really understand the concept of ‘shipping date’ and ‘delivery date’.

The rep I chatted with told me that the system was going to “SHIP” sometime between August 16th and 18th. The online order status page indicated that the system would ship on the 11th.

We went back and forth a few times … he couldn’t figure out where I was getting a shipping date of the 11th. I couldn’t find a status page that indicated anything other than the 11th.

Turns out, when he was referring to the word “SHIP”, he meant “DELIVERY”.

The system would still SHIP on the 11th … and would probably be delivered sometime between the 16th and 18th.

I sure wish Dell would bring their customer service and support back to the states. Problems like this would probably go away.

Update a litte later:

I found a useful site that provided a better way of getting order status. If you call 1-800-433-9014 and “speak” your order number, you can get a more up-to-date status. In my case, even though the official order status is “In Production”, the phone system indicates that my order is in the “Build” phase.

Oh, did I mention that I hate VRU’s that require that you speak and do not accept input from the telephone keypad?

[tags]Dell, Support[/tags]

Generic Listname Identification

As you might suspect, I’m subscribed to a large number of mailing lists (most of which I host myself).

One of the problems with mailing lists is that, if you use a singe email address for all your list subscriptions, there isn’t an easy way to file individual list messages based on the list name.

The other day, however, I found a rather handy procmail recipe that helps with that work…
Continue reading →

No Card!

Another entry in the ‘Things to remember’ category:

When going on a photo safari, make sure you have a memory card in the digital camera.

Ginny and I went out to the Morton Arboretum today to wander around and take some pictures.

After walking about 3/4’s of a mile on one of the paths, I wondered why my camera didn’t have the normal ‘number of shots left’ display.

I tried to preview the shots I had taken and I got the disheartening message “NO CF CARD”.

<sigh>

I had thought I had taken about 30 pictures already … some of which I had high hopes for. Sadly, the camera transfered them to /dev/null.

Luckily Ginny had a spare 256mb card with her … so I was able to get SOME shots.

Half Blood Prince

I’m about halfway through ::amazon(“0439784549”, “Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince”):: and I must say it’s better than the last book. Much more readable and, at least in my opinion, on par with Ms. Rowling’s previous books.

I recommend it.

[tags]Harry Potter[/tags]

Don’t Smile(y)

… or Microsoft will sue you 🙂

United States Patent Application: 20050156873

Methods and devices for creating and transferring custom emoticons allow a user to adopt an arbitrary image as an emoticon, which can then be represented by a character sequence in real-time communication. In one implementation, custom emoticons can be included in a message and transmitted to a receiver in the message. In another implementation, character sequences representing the custom emoticons can be transmitted in the message instead of the custom emoticons in order to preserve performance of text messaging. At the receiving end, the character sequences are replaced by their corresponding custom emoticons, which can be retrieved locally if they have been previously received, or can be retrieved from the sender in a separate communication from the text message if they have not been previously received.

Ok, there have been some pretty silly patent applications in the past … Amazon’s One-click, etc … but this borders on the ridiculous.

via: Grocklaw

[tags]Microsoft, patent, smiley[/tags]

Scotty has been “Beamed Up”

James Doohan, who played chief engineer Montgomery “Scotty” Scott in the original Star Trek and subsequent films, died early July 20 at his Redmond, Wash., home, the Associated Press reported. He was 85.

– Sci Fi Wire — The News Service of the Sci Fi Channel

Although he really didn’t do much other than Star Trek … I, for one, shall miss him.

Ginny and I were recently watching “Trekies”, which is a documentary on the Star Trek fan phenomenon, and there was a wonderful story that Mr. Doohan related … it was about a letter he received from a very despondent woman who was considering suicide … he told her that he was going to be in their city in a few weeks … and that she should come to the convention.

This continued for many years … each time, Mr. Doohan told her that she should come to the next convention.

For a while Mr. Doohan didn’t hear from her … but then, out of the blue, he got a letter from her indicating that she had just graduated from college with a degree in engineering.

Pretty cool.

Warp speed James … warp speed.

[tags]Scotty[/tags]

My plan to make a million

Here’s my plan to make a million bucks …

  • First, I’m going to take midrange.com public
  • Then do some good juicy corporate fraud
  • Go to court on a SOX violation
  • Get it overturned on a technicality
  • Retire to Maui on a big golden parachute and some book deals
  • I’ll also do some high level, ‘concept’ consulting, the kind of consulting where companies pay me big bucks and I give them reports that are abstract and obscure … they sound really really good, but are essentially meaningless

Good plan, eh?

I’m Hurt

Some idiot tried to add a link to his gambling website on the midrange resources website.

Obviously I rejected it … but after I rejected it, I got this reply…

The link to your web site has also been deleted
Hate you
Jim
—– Original Message —–
From: <_____@midrange.com>
To: <_____@moneyballinsider.com>
Sent: Wednesday, July 13, 2005 4:10 AM
Subject: Your link has been rejected.

> Your link:
>
> http://www.moneyballinsider.com
>
> that was submitted on 13-Jul-2005 has been rejected
> for one of the following reasons:
>
> 1. Unsuitable content.
> 2. Duplicate URL.
>
> If you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to ask.
>
> David Gibbs
> _____@midrange.com
>

I sure hope this guy realizes how devastating this message was on my ego and psyche?

NOT!

[tags]Idiots[/tags]