Posts

Posted on

Stupid hackers

I periodically check on statistics on my server and noticed that for the last 1.5 hours, my bandwidth was constant even though I wasn’t doing anything. I started checking the traffic on my network and saw that some Chinese hacker (or script kiddy) was trying to get into my machine via SSH. I’ve seen a number of hack attempts into my server and normally write them off, but this was chewing up bandwidth, so I blocked the IP address of the attacker. I realize it is kind of pointless as hackers will use different IP addresses and there will be more later.

Why do people waste their time? My server is not very interesting. I wish people had better things to do than try to hack my server. I read yesterday that someone got convicted of a denial of service attack (DOS) last year. Maybe that will teach someone a lesson; probably not.

Posted on

English speaking customer service reps

Yesterday I called my cable company to switch the IP address of my cable modem as I now have a block of 5 addresses and in order to use them, a change had to be made. I called support, negotiated the phone tree, and spoke to a woman with a heavy accent. I explained what I wanted done (my sales rep told me to call support to get the change made) and after explaining it a few times, I thought that she got it. She said she had to transfer me to a modem person and then when the modem person got on the line, he said “I understand you are having problems connecting to the Internet.” I told him that there was a communications issue and my connection was fine. So I got my cable modem reconfigured and things were fine.

I’m a bit tired of call centers that are either outsourced overseas or have people that aren’t native speakers. I have nothing against people speaking different languages; however, when I’m trying to explain a technical issue or get a problem solved, the language barrier makes it harder to get things done.

Posted on

Ground loop isolator

I searched for the part to eliminate the hum from my stereo, but all I could find online was one for $10 + $7 shipping. So, I called my cable company to see if they’d come install one for me. They told me to Radio Shack and get a Ground Loop Isolator. I did, hooked it up, and the hum is mostly gone. It’s still there when the volume is cranked up real loud, but that could be something else. Very nice.

Posted on

Poor timing of Macworld

I’ve come to the conclusion that having Macworld Expo in January is a poor decision. Here I am at the end of the year looking to see what else I can buy for my small business to get the tax deduction. I was thinking about getting a Mac Mini to run as another server and learn about Mac OS X server, but rumors say an Intel based Mac Mini is coming at MacWorld which is in a few weeks. I don’t know if I believe the rumors, but I don’t want to take the chance. So, I lose out on getting it as a deduction for this year. If the expo was say in October/November, companies could get in purchases before the end of the year and consumers could get their gifts for the holiday season. I understand that products may not be ready that early, but shifting the development to have them ready would make a lot more sense to me.

Posted on

Audio hum

My wife and I have noticed a hum in our whole house audio system and today I finally decided to do a web search and see what came up for fixing it. I found an article which indicated that any component hooked up to cable TV could cause the problem. This sounded far fetched to me, but what do I know about audio and intereference? So, I disconnected all but the MP3 player and the hum went away. I plugged in each source until I got to the TiVo/TV. When I got to the TiVo/TV (it’s on a switch), the hum came back. So, I disconnected the cable and what do you know? The hum was almost eliminated! Now I’m off to the store to look for an isolator to fix the problem. I learn something new everyday.

Posted on

Brand loyalty

Yesterday I went to Home Depot to pick up some attachments for my Dremel to do some glass etching. The Dremel attachments were about $8 each and I needed 4 of them according to the project instructions I had; 2 were diamond tipped and 2 were tungsten carbide. I also saw a Black & Decker kit that contained 4 diamond tipped attachments, cutting wheels, grinding attachment, etc. for $10. I bought the Black & Decker kit as well as one of the Dremel tungsten carbide attachments. I got home, used the Black & Decker kit and was able to return the Dremel attachment.

So, the question is, is the Dremel name worth that much more? In this case, the diamond tipped attachments are made from diamond scrap and/or synthetic diamond and how much different can they be? Personally, I’ll buy the cheaper attachment as long as they work as well. It appears that the Black & Decker ones work fine as I had no trouble using them to etch glass.

Posted on

Sprint Bill, part 2

I looked at my Sprint bill online today as it just became available. I noticed that the balance was twice that of a normal month! Wow, what that Sprint mess up now? After pouring over the bill for about 30 minutes and checking my credit card statement, it appears that Sprint never charged my card for December. What happened was this…I ordered a phone, Sprint placed a $349.99 credit on my Sprint bill as I paid that amount by credit card. Next, when my payment was due on Dec. 17 for the previous month’s bill, I already had a credit on my account that exceeded this, so they didn’t charge me. On the December bill, there is a charge for the phone ($349.99 + sales tax) as well as the normal charges. So, it looks like they’ll catch up next month in billing me. To further complicate matters, there is a charge for $399.99 for the phone they sent me that I didn’t want as well as a credit to offset that.

What a mess! Next time I should buy a phone from an independent retailer and not Sprint itself as this billing disaster has given me a major headache.

Posted on

Japenglish and Korenglish

The Japanese and Koreans make some pretty good products these days. However, it appears that they don’t bother to have native English speeakers review text of alerts and such on their products. For instance, on my new Samsung A900 cell phone, an alert popped up that said “Connection is failed”. On the products I work on, we have native speakers of the languages we localize in localize the text so that it makes sense in those languages. You’d expect that a company like Samsung could do this, but I guess not. I’ve seen Sony does the same thing with their CLIEs and TVs.

Posted on

San Diego Weather

I just finished walking the dog and was a bit too warm with a sweatshirt on and a light jacket. We’ve had a little bit of a warming trend lately where the weather has been in the mid 70s during the day. It’s hard for me to imagine this being winter and even harder to remember what it’s like to live in the cold. Last time I lived in the cold was almost 7 years ago when I lived in Portland, OR. That was a pretty miserable time (I only lived in Portland for a year, but prior to college, I had lived in Boston for 5 years).

The weather plays such a huge factor in my happiness that I couldn’t even think of moving to somewhere cold. I love talking to people who have to shovel snow and point out how warm it is here!

Posted on

Samsung A900

I’ve been using my Samsung A900 cell phone for a few weeks now and am pretty pleased with it with one notable exception. The size is great, screens are great (internal/external), sound quality is acceptable, having a flip phone is great, being able to send contacts from my desktop is great and the phone has a good feel to it. The one huge problem with it is that Bluetooth headsets start beeping at random times. I’ve tried 3 headsets and Samsung has admitted a problem. I’m sure that this will get fixed as I’m not the only one reporting it. I did my part to report it by calling Sprint, going into a Sprint store, and calling Samsung just to make sure that I was complaining to the right people. (I see a lot of people complain about technology things, but tell the wrong people and are real mad when their problems aren’t fixed.)

In a few weeks (I hope), when the Bluetooth issue gets fixed, I’ll be pleased as punch.

Proudly powered by WordPress