The Dave

Princess Gracie

thedave — Fri, 11 Jun 2010 19:30:41 +0000

I recently mentioned we got a toad, Prince Al but how happy can a Prince be without a Princess?

Introducing Princess Gracie:

Selling my laptop: Toshiba A205 15″ T5300 SOLD

thedave — Mon, 17 May 2010 19:05:27 +0000

(This laptop is now sold, thanks!)

This laptop was my baby for the last couple years, I bought it for dual work and personal use while traveling, but recently work tossed me a new Lenovo and I just can’t bring myself to drag around this powerful a personal laptop too, so I’ve switched to carrying a little Netbook for my personal needs.

Included with the laptop is the power adapter, freshly installed copy of Windows Vista Ultimate, installation media, and an APC external battery that has nearly double the capacity of the internal battery. It’s a bit of extra weight to carry around, but you can work 8 hours without a recharge.

Laptop specs are as follows:

Genuine Windows Vista? Ultimate(32-bit version)
Intel® Core? 2 Duo Processor T5300 (1.73GHz, 2MB L2, 533MHz FSB with 64-bit C1)
Intel® Wireless WiFi Link 4965AGN (802.11a/g/n)
Configured with 2048MB PC5300 DDR2 SDRAM
280GB using two Serial ATA hard disk drives, Primary + Secondary drive: 120GB + 160GB
DVD SuperMulti (+/-R double layer) with Labelflash? drive
Maximum speed and compatibility: CD-ROM (24x), CD-R (24x),
CD-RW (16x), DVD-ROM (8x), DVD-R (Single Layer, (8x)),
DVD-R (Double Layer, (4x)), DVD-RW (6x), DVD+R (Single
Layer, (8x)), DVD+R (Double Layer, (4x)), DVD+RW (8x), DVDRAM
(5x)
15.4? diagonal widescreen TruBrite? TFT LCD display at 1280×800
native resolution (WXGA)
Native support for 720p content
NVIDIA® GeForce? Go7300 with 128MB DDR2 discrete graphics memory
Built-in harman/kardon® stereo speakers – Amazing sound for a laptop
ExpressCard? slot (ExpressCard/34 and ExpressCard/54)
Secure Digital, SDIO, Memory Stick?, Memory Stick PRO?, Multi
Media Card, xD Picture Card
Fingerprint reader
4000mAh Lithium Ion battery pack

Hoping for $395 but if you’re interested, feel free to make me an offer on my contact page or in the comments.

Tango sez hi

thedave — Fri, 23 Apr 2010 19:33:58 +0000

With the recent demise of my photo gallery (possibly to return, if I find a gallery system that isn’t horribly nasty), I thought I’d post a recent photo or too. Not my dog, but it is my photo, so that’s good enough for me.

Santrex.net – Worst hosting company on the planet?

thedave — Wed, 21 Apr 2010 19:17:13 +0000

Is Santrex.net a bad choice for hosting, or the worst choice for hosting?

And yes, this is just my side of the story. If you want to read their side of the story, well… Their website doesn’t seem to mention this little outage yet, nor does their public forums. Weird.

Anyway, here’s what happened: around noon April 12th, one of my VPS servers goes down. I open a ticket, then a few minutes later notice the system status indicates a possible hardware problem and some services are offline. No problem, we all have hardware failures once in a while.

4pm, “we’re currently experiencing major issues… in all locations”

April 13th the system status is updated with a (Resolved) tag, but I’m still down. File an update to my ticket, they’re still having issues and are documenting things in another location. Fair enough, although the “resolved” was a wee bit misleading.

April 14th/15th We’re still down, absolutely no sign of things returning, I move my services elsewhere and request a refund. Technical support says to contact billing.

April 17th I get a new “account activation” message, apparently Santrex.net threw out all of their customer data and started over after being down for 5 days.

Over the next few days I’ve exchanged several emails with their billing department, and apparently this is an acceptable level of service, and they’re standing behind their “we might not actually provide the service we sell, and we don’t offer refunds” clauses in their terms of service.

Seriously? A week of downtime plus 100% data loss, and a refund is too much to ask?

It was also nice that they took the time to yell at me for opening a second ticket formally request cancellation, after I followed their instructions to cancel service. Thanks for that guys.

Luckily, this is why god invented credit card chargebacks, Visa will stand behind a consumer when they purchase something and the seller doesn’t bother to deliver.

Prince Al

thedave — Sun, 18 Apr 2010 06:32:56 +0000

I’d like to introduce you to the newest member of our family, Prince Al.

He only eats live food, so he is a ton of fun to feed. We’ve already managed to lose one cricket into our kitchen, luckily the cricket was never seen or heard from again, hopefully being smart enough to avoid venturing out where our killer cats could not quite manage to kill him. Luckily crickets don’t live long…

We’re hoping he’s actually Prince Al-Waleed bin Talal bin Abdul Aziz Al Saud (from Saudi Arabia), and that he’ll be grateful when someone finally kisses him, but honestly the odds seem pretty low at this point.

Opening wine without a corkscrew?

thedave — Thu, 31 Dec 2009 19:35:52 +0000

Here’s the scene: It’s New Year’s Eve. Or any “time to drink” event really… You’re trying to pretend you’re classy by drinking wine, but the guy who was supposed to bring a corkscrew made the mistake of eating at Taco Bell earlier that day, and he’s stuck in a bathroom somewhere.

Or maybe you’re on a plane, where corkscrews aren’t allowed, although a bit breakable glass bottle that could furnish dozens of useful weapons is just fine as long as you buy it at duty-free.

Either way, you’re thirsty, sober, and need to resolve both of those problems. You take stock of what you have: Wine. Clothes. Glasses. Angry people to please. What do you do?

I don’t drink, but I also don’t drive so I’m useless as a designated dork. Oh well. Have fun, stay safe, and if you do drive drunk, try to not kill anyone else when you kill yourself ‘eh?

(Thanks to Carlos Miller for pointing this out)

Ziploc brand gravy

thedave — Sun, 27 Dec 2009 09:59:42 +0000

Mmmm… Gravy! For the record, this is last night’s leftover gravy with the lid removed.

Oh, and it was delicious!

Pedestrian struck on Butt

thedave — Wed, 16 Dec 2009 02:12:19 +0000

I know someone was injured, but this is still funny, at least to me.

No related posts.

Christmas decorations

thedave — Fri, 04 Dec 2009 19:32:08 +0000

Who knows if this is real or not, but either way, it’s a beautiful story…

Good news is that I truly out did myself this year with my Christmas decorations. The bad news is that I had to take him down after two days. I had more people come screaming up to my house than ever. Great stories. But two things made me take it down.

First, the cops advised me that it would cause traffic accidents as they almost wrecked when they drove by.

Second, a 55 year old lady grabbed the 75 pound ladder almost killed herself putting it against my house and didn’t realize that it was fake until she climbed to the top (she was not happy). By the way, she was one of the many people who attempted to do that. My yard couldn’t take it either. I have more than a few tire tracks where people literally drove up my yard

(Shamelessly stolen from wtfcalls.net)

Feedburner – Attempt two

thedave — Sun, 29 Nov 2009 09:39:47 +0000

I am once again attempting to use Feedburner to distribute my feed. Oh, and I’ve completely sold out and enabled AdSense advertising too. Sorry!

Please contact me immediately if you notice any problems?

Note sure what a “feed” is? Wikipedia has a longwinded article that seems to sum it up, or check out this video for a very quick introduction to what Google Reader does (and know that “feeds” are the technical term for how Google Reader pulls information)