“SWAT team responds to man barricaded in home”

Screenshot of what I saw at the top of the screen here:

I scrolled down, and see attached screen shot of what I saw, the ad at the bottom.

Funny yet not eh?

Suddenly, it stopped working.

First, I went in, changed code around, took some code out, to make sure it’s working, ran phpinfo on the server to which version and if there were any reported bugs, can’t find any, I read through some how-tos online to double check, make sure I’m doing it right including reading the manual itself. http://php.net/manual/en/function.mail.php

So, no answers, I will post my solution here when I figure this out.

I bought an HP Tablet, AMD 64 bit processor, 4 gigs of RAM, Windows Vista, WACOM screen, bio-metric, DVD burner with Lightscribe (can flip and etch on the disc, a name, graphics, etc.), you name it.

I also bought a warranty, two year warranty to be exact when I purchased it from Fry’s Electronics in Las Vegas, Nevada in 2008.

It’s been close to two years since I bought it, but not close yet.

Last few weeks, the tablet started acting funny, I’d turn it on, then it’d turn off, it did this a few times. I thought maybe it was overheating, it wasn’t, had a separate cooling house beneath it, I normally don’t run it at high-performance setting anyways.

So, next thing that goes wrong…

My tablet has a small 15.5″ monitor. So I normally plug in a large monitor and use that as I’m working.

Well, I’m working one day, and all the sudden my monitor colors go bright bluish green. I unplug monitor, turn it off, let it rest, plug it back in, everything fine.

It happens again a few days later, I repeat, goes back to normal. Then in that same hour, it goes bluish green and stays. First, I think okay, change resolutions around, try 16-bit instead of 32-bit, tried 800×600 instead of 1440×900, no difference. Maybe it’s the monitor?

I plug the monitor into one of my desktops nearby, everything is fine.

Okay, so I dig up my warranty, I still have three weeks left! Yes!

I’ll take it to Fry’s, it’s some distance from the high desert of Southern California, so I go!

I get there, a bit rushed, I go to the counter, an Asian woman behind the service counter, I tell her all that’s going wrong, video card, maybe the motherboard, she looks at my warranty first,

She says with a serious face all loud, “Oh your warranty is almost expired!”

I’m thinking, huh, so what? I paid for it, it’s still in the green, so look at my machine.

She calls her supervisor over.

She says like she just solved a CSI case, “Look, he brought this in, and look his warranty is almost expired!”

Okay, now this is awkward, I’m thinking are they accusing me of being dishonest or waiting to the last minute?

I should mention, I was there once before in March of this year 2010, because my power cable wasn’t working right, they gave me a new one right away. So I thought the service was something like that! Right? First impressions good, therefore…

So, the Supervisor asks:  “What’s wrong with it?”

I tell him what’s going on, they plug it into a nearby monitor…

Woman says like she just watched the end of a good movie: “Look, it works, it’s fine.”

I replied, “No it’s not! Look it’s all blue green! It’s not supposed to be like that. It wasn’t like that before.”

Supervisor: “Sir, it’s Windows colors, it’s supposed to look like that.” <<—– WTF???

I said: “No it’s not! here, look at the main monitor, the colors are normal.”

Supervisor: “Hmmm. Looks the same to me.”

And either he was a poker player or serious, or I don’t know.

I said: “Well, I’m going to insist you inspect it, that is not normal.” I went further: “I’m a web designer, I do photography, videography, graphic design, linux administrator, currently studying for the A+ exam…look, grab any other laptop (I pointed to some) with Windows Vista, plug in this monitor I betcha it won’t look the same.”
P.S.–they have a huge “all our service team are A+ certified banner on the back wall!”

Supervisor mutters to woman: “Start the paperwork on this.”

And he walks away.

Woman: “If we find nothing wrong you pay $69.99, okay?”

I said, “No. I’m not going to pay it, because it’s not working right, something’s wrong.”

She goes to get the Supervisor!

He comes over, guess what, like an owl, repeats the same thing! Should I type it again? Sure. Here you go:

Supervisor: “Sir, if we find nothing wrong you have to pay $69.99 still for us inspecting it.”

I said, “Well, if it comes to that, I will dispute that, because something is very wrong with it.”

So, other guy comes up, name is Julis, and he was cool, one of the technicians. We actually chatted a bit, I wrote out the issues on paper, I made a backup before I left of course. Whew.

I ask, “So will you guys take a look, I have to meet with a client, and you call me later, or I call, how does this work?”

Julis: “No, we won’t look at until 3-5 days from now.”

SHOCK. I said nothing, instead of being a belligerent customer, I turned the other cheek.

Me: “Okay, so then it’ll be fixed?”

Julis: “No, once we determine what’s wrong, then we fix it, the 3-5 is when we assess what’s going on.”

Me: “Okay, so what if it is the video card?”

Supervisor walks back over.

Supervisor: “Then because it’s the motherboard, we most likely would have to order one from the manufacture, ship it, install it, test it. For that is six to eight weeks.”

UPDATE, I called today, I talked to the same supervisor, to find out, it’s been 5-6 days now since I left it there. He said they shipped it off to repair it, found multiple things wrong with it.

So, does that make me want to ever have something serviced there again? No. SIX TO EIGHT WEEKS!!!! MAY AS WELL BE ETERNITY!

Yeah, I’m an angry consumer now. I’ll never look at Fry’s the same (and neither should you). I’ve bought tens of thousands of dollars in hardware, software, movies, gadgets, trinkets over a decade from them, this is just awful.

I remember some years ago, Best Buy, if you had a computer under warranty and it was toast or it would take this long to repair, they’d swap you for the current market equivalent (following an inspection, etc.) Frys didn’t even offer such a thing, I would of taken a refurbished version (as an IT friend of mine mentioned). What are the expecting, to tell me it’s broke, my warranty expired, here sir, go spend $2,500 on a new one, the one we sold you is a P.O.S.?

Too much. Now my work product gets out slower, it’s like having a license and I can’t drive my car, thanks guys, thanks Frys. Blah.

If you have no budget and nothing better to do, maybe it’s for you. Having examined wix a bit closer, I really felt like I just crawled into a box. Let me point out, there are people out there that call themselves web designers (when they’re really a graphic artist) that can slice up an image in photoshop (often using pirated versions, which is why they charge $100 for a site, the real deal, we have licenses to pay, hardware, electricity, etc.), export, add some funcionality to it (by links), install a widget (like a flash gallery for $25 which does it everything for you, and you’ve seen it before because everybody else bought the same one), and call it a site, maybe they’ll forward a domain name there, but wait, this is different! It’s a mass cookie cutter with flash! Huh? It means, makes it a, what?

Firstly, web design is more than that. Wix.com is like a Totinos microwavable version of web design.

Personally I won’t stay at a site that runs on any freebie system, it’s like trying to focus on one beautiful thing surrounded by disaster, you can only hold your food down for so long, something about you just know it’s unprofessional and it’s going to be corny. Especially! When you see a flash animation below the corny page telling you to sign up too! It’s Free!

Gimme a break.

Free cool flash that looks similar to the next guy’s cause people pick similar looks when there’s a limited amount to choose from, oh well, it’s still free, wait, it’s not, I want to do more, I know ads scare people away, can I dump them? Yes, starting at $60 per year. Huh?

Sure! But there’s a catch! Yes. Ads on your pages and their stupid logo. To get rid of them, you have to upgrade, or pay to remove them (show of hands, who likes to pay to not have something???). Hmmm.

Plus you suddenly have endless amounts of people creating pages with bad navigation, mis-spellings, pixelated images, the whole 9 yards.

They offer e-commerce pages starting at $210.00 per year which isn’t that bad, right? You have no control over the data transferred, who sees it, security, hackers, breaches, nothing. If something goes wrong, you’re stuck. Would I buy from a wix page? Probably not. As soon as I see the logo, I’d hit CTRL+W, ALT-F4, name your combo keys, I’m outta there. Plus, most people who’ve been on the web awhile still don’t trust e-commerce sites that run on flash, I’m even hesitant.

Food for thought, while I was browsing around on the web, found a guy who did a pretty nice piece on it back when it was in its beta stage two years ago called: “Wix: When Flash Throws Up”. http://r3fresh.com/2008/04/23/wixcom-when-flash-throws-up/

Nuf said.

1. I close the browser (I have my browsers set to automatically clear cache upon exit).

or

2. Clear browser cache manually.

But! If I do that, and I’m logged in as an administrator in another tab for that site. I lose my login status on a site as as administrator (or if I’m logged into my email account, when that browser cache is deleted, I get dumped out of that and now have to login).

Yes, I know I can press F5 or click refresh but 95% of the time, that still does not work!

If I have to shut down a browser, restart a browser or clear cache manually a couple hundreds times a day, very annoying!

Here’s a solution. Create a browser feature where you can clear cache for a particular browser Tab!

Any takers?

Now that I’ve thought about this, I can’t believe nobody else has, yet.

Check My Brain

Went to Marine Corps base at Yermo, CA at noon today to see the United States Marines Corps Color Guard & Band from Washington D.C., great performance, I’d seen the second half of it a few years back, got to see the full show this time, amazing, they march and play into spirals, everything, amazing, in sync, great tempo, then the silent color guard, affix bayonets onto their M-1 rifles and spin them nearby each other, throw them in the air, catch them, great to see, I highly recommend it. See attached photos. I was sitting in the stands, maybe 100 feet away on the left side, got some good shots, see below.

Maybe it’s easier in CS4 than CS3, but here’s how it’s done easily.

Before you draw your line, box, that’s supposed to be dotted or dashed, go to ‘Stroke’ as shown here:

Click on the blue word ‘Stroke’ it will open the stroke options box.

Click to Check the box next to Dashed Line.

Then you can specify the length of the dash and spaces between, that’s it!

Now select your line or box you want to draw and draw it! Dotted lines! That was easy!
Easy.

Finally I got to the last remedy where you have to copy a script that resets all your registry permissions. I did that, the script ran lik crazy, took a long time, not sure how long but at 3:45 AM, I went to bed, let it do its thing. This morning, I ran the Service Pack 3 install, it worked! I was thrilled now I can reboot, get to work, wait, what’s this…

To free up disk space, Outlook Express can compact messages. This may take up to a few minutes.

I don’t use outlook, so being web safe and smart, I click the red X instead of OK in case it’s spyware or a virus, to be sure, I downloaded Spybot Search and Destory, ran it, found nothing, I’m clean, awesome. Message pops up in like 15 second intervals, very annoying.

I look around on the web, tons of forums on this error, turns out it’s Windows XP, if you have search indexing turned on your hard drive, this sucker keeps showing up. There were lots of remedies to correct it, I found an easy fix. Here’s the most helpful link I found http://office-outlook.com/outlook-forum/index.php/m/602653/

1. I clicked OK once on the dumb message, then I right clicked on my start button (I had my start menu in Start Menu mode ‘not’ Classic Start Menu by the way).

2. Clicked on ‘Customize’

3. Unchecked the box that says ‘E-Mail’ under ‘Show on Start Menu’

4. That’s it, haven’t seen that message since!

Alright, this sort of thing, makes me stop, and say “Come on!” and “What the heck?”

Now, I’ve never had a Workers Compensation case in the wonderful sunny state of California, but know some people who have, in case you don’t know, the way it works, with Workers Compensation Insurance, it’s required for any employer having employees in case the people that work for them, if they happen to get hurt on the job, and if your employer has insurance, usually it’s fine, unless your employer is a jerk and or if you need surgery, anything extra-ordinary in the medical field, they can send you to a doctor (hand-picked and frequently used by that workers comp insurance company), who says there’s nothing wrong with you, you’re a big baby, your arm will grow back, it’s all in your head, or hey, you’ll recover, stick it out, be your own placebo etc.

Occasionally, people go to a RIGHTEOUS doctor who sees something is wrong, wants to preserve and protect life, abide by their solemn oath, wow, Doc says to the insurance carrier, “This guy is messed up bad, needs to have surgery ASAP”, then the workers compensation insurance carrier will deny it, say it’s not authorized (the surgery, etc.), not needed, they refuse to accept it! We need a second opinion, a third, deny deny deny.

They usually get away with it, people suffer needlessly, sometimes die, yeah you can fight it in court, but it can take years (and still lose!!!).

So, long story short, this one guy, had a doctor that was kind enough to do something free, give somebody a break, said don’t worry about the money, marked it as paid, had to send it to the workers comp insurance carrier. They sent, yes, they did, they sent a denial letter for a BALANCE OF ZERO!!!

What? Yeah, someone typed it, signed it, mailed it, denying their willingness to accept or pay for a balance of zero. Is that absurd? Yes. Any oxygen breathing human being using at least 1% of their brain should say, “Hey, we’re sending out a letter to deny them nothing???” Make a phone call, anything.

“We’re sorry, but you exist and we really don’t but here’s something you can wipe with.”

I used to have a separate AT&T cell phone account, I ended up getting a better deal in a family plan, so I paid off my bill, closed my account, I kept getting a bill for my plan, although I no longer had an account, and that I owed ZERO yes $0.00 I called AT&T twice to get them to stop sending me blank bills!!!

By the way their web site is att.com cause there is no & (ampersand), it’s a logical character–it screws up a web browser, lol), maybe that’s why Verizon is doing better, people can type it and actually get somewhere???

I thought this sort of thing would never show up in the web design world, until today. See the above image, screen shot from godaddy, I renewed some domain names for a customer, and godaddy alerts me (see the red bar) with a WARNING THAT I HAVE NO (aka ZERO) DOMAINS EXPIRING.

Nuf said.

Into the first quarter, the guy standing around unveils his Green Bay jersey, puts on a little Green Bay hat, I noticed some of the NFL players on TV were wearing pink gloves and shoes, I asked him why, the guy in the gym said, “It’s for Breast Cancer Awareness” I said, “Ah.”

I shop at a nearby Vons/Safeway usually, they started asking about breast cancer donations some months ago, I usually just brush it off, no thanks, or reply with, “You mean donate a dollar to help fight it or prevent it right? Not donate a dollar FOR it?” Hey, it’s my dollar, right. At least ask the question right, I know it’s boring, repetitive sometimes but it’s your job.

Today, I went to Vons to get something for lunch. I slide my Vons/Safeway card, I see it won’t go through until I choose “Do you want to donate a dollar to breast cancer?” I’m about to press ‘NO’ and the checker audibly asks me the same thing! I’m looking down, trying to press NO she asks, me, so I decided I’m going to explain my rationale for not donating a dollar, my rationale is simple, I used to work at a newspaper, and every quarter we published the Federal reports for charities, they have to report their purpose, amounts they spend, how much goes to cost, how much actually goes to R&D (research and development).

Turns out most of them actually spend only (this is a rough average) of 5% – 10% on the charity itself (yes, five to ten percent)! What? Where does the rest of the money go?

Cost, overheard, salaries, that’s right. Most of them are a pretty funnel in my mind to move money around. So, no, my dollar will end up paying for somebody’s corporate Beemer (BMW) instead of helping Nancy Somebody warding off the cancer.

So, long story short, I started to tell this checker today, “Everyone keeps asking for money to fund this research — ” and I was going to talk generally about it but she snaps off at me, “I have to ask it whether you want to or not! It’s my job! Okay?” I looked at her, “No, I wasn’t talking about you, I was talking about everyone all on this donate hype, it’s everywhere, been going on for a long time, most of these charities actually spend 5% to 10% on the Research and Development.”

Because she huffed and puffed at me, she ended up not scanning a coupon which caused me to spent $2 more dollars than I planned, I made a U-turn, went back to the same checker, but she was mad at me now. Whatever.

Education is expensive but so is ignorance.

First, let’s talk about breast cancer for just a moment, I personally believe three things are the leading causes that most women (and men, yes men get breast cancer too, breast doesn’t necessarily mean it’s for milk production only).

1. Antiperspirants and Deodorants
-designed to disrupt your sweat glands, dangerous, a natural process
-aluminum bi-products, very bad, you can’ sweat it out no you are putting aluminum in your pores, embedding into your skin? what?
2. Dairy Products with Hormones, ever hear of bovine leukemia? We have 90% of our cattle infected with it in the USA! Canada is 80% http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bovine_leukemia_virus <== all it takes is one cow to have it, milk mixes with 100 others, it’s in the milk!
3. Any type of Breast Augmentation, Implants, Reduction, any sort of unnatural tissue tampering, is well, unnatural right? Death is a pretty bad side effect.

And if you’re one of the, “Oh well, we all have to die from something anyways” apply another roll-on of your favorite antiperspirant because you stink.