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Check your facts

Another letter to the editor….

In your article titled “DeMaio seeks break for sole proprietors on license code”, the author needs to check his facts. He talks about a business “license” in the City of San Diego. A license is defined as “formal permission from a governmental or other constituted authority to do something, as to carry on some business or profession.” The City of San Diego does not issue business licenses, it issues business tax certificates which are completely different from licenses. In fact, the “Certificate of Payment of Business Tax” states “This is not a License to do business within the City of San Diego…”.

The business tax certificate only means that you’ve paid the city money and nothing more. While they may sound like the same thing, they are not.

I’ve had a business tax certificate for many years and it means squat. In fact, I had a disagreement with Washington Mutual years ago where they wouldn’t let me open a business checking account because I didn’t have a “business license”. As far as I know, I don’t need a business license to do software development (nothing I do is health or safety related). I ended up going to Bank of America as they accepted by fictitious business name filing as proof of my company.

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In search of the ideal drill (for me)

A few months ago, my Makita Cordless Drill started to die. The NiCad batteries were basically at the end of their useful life. This drill has served me well over the course of the last decade (yes, the batteries have continued to work for over 10 years). I started looking at replacing the batteries and the cost was about $35-$40 a piece which almost didn’t make sense to just replace the batteries when I could get a brand new drill with 2 batteries for a similar cost or I could upgrade my drill.

I started looking at new drills and asked my dad for some advice. He recommended one with a Lithium Ion battery, 18V (or higher) and one that could use the battery in different tools. That all made sense, but when I looked at cost, it made me sit back and do nothing as combo kits (drill, saw, etc.) were about $300. We were in Home Depot on New Year’s Day and I saw the Ryobi 12V Lithium Ion drill for about $80 and it looked compact and seemed liked it was all I needed. My Makita was only 9.6V, so this should have had more power. I looked across the aisle and saw the combo kit with circular saw, hybrid saw, and worklight for $119. I knew the limitations on 12V for a saw, but decided to give it a try. I’ve had the kit for about a week now and like all the components. The saws work for me needs and the drill seemed to work well. If I had bought the kit a day before, I would have gotten a $20 rebate. Oh well.

It wasn’t until yesterday that I figured out what was wrong with the kit. The drill didn’t have a clutch to change the torque. While this sounds like something I really didn’t need, I’ve used the clutch setting on my Makita lots of times. So I pondered what to do and decided to get the Factory Reconditioned Ryobi 18V combo kit. The cost is about $200 with no sales tax putting it about $70 more than what I already had (I have a few more weeks to return the kit to Home Depot). While this kit isn’t the newest (it doesn’t have the auto-shift drill), the Ryobi 18V setup works with over 35 of Ryobi’s tools. I’m sure that this kit will be more than adequate for my simple needs.

I’m looking forward to receiving this (I’m actually bidding on it on eBay to save a few more bucks, but if I don’t get the auction, I can still get it for $200).

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How not to run a web site

Today I went to view my insurance bill online and when I went to view it or save it, I got the standard Apache Internal Server Error message. That’s pretty bad for an insurance company that seems to be beefing up its online presence. If that wasn’t bad enough, they neglected to change the default administrator email address (you@your.address). Should I be afraid that if they didn’t change that default value that they haven’t properly secure their server?

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(I’m sure that one of my sites does something stupid like that, but I don’t have a staff that maintains my sites.)

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Overly cautious customer?

The other day a potential ReceiptWallet user asked if we stored credit card numbers when people purchase ReceiptWallet. That is a completely legitimate question and I replied that we only keep the last 4 digits of the number (which is appropriate per credit card industry standards) and that our credit card processor (PayPal) keeps the number for 60 days (in case we need to issue a refund). I’ve never had that question before and never thought to ask it of a vendor probably because I know it really doesn’t matter. Why do I say this? Look at the major losses of credit card numbers and they are big merchants like TJ Maxx. If I asked every vendor big and small about their storage policies, I’d never buy anything. Also, as a consumer, I’m protected against fraudulent purchases (identity theft is a different story). While it is a pain to have to get a new card and deal with a stolen number, I’ve had to do this 3 times in the last 7 years (once I have no idea how they got the number, the second time my wife’s card was stolen and the third time, CitiBank told me that they had to close the account for security reasons).

I know that vendors do keep the entire credit card number (Home Depot must in order to process returns and all you have to do is present your credit card without the receipt). When I moved my office and cleaned out my files, I found merchant reconciliation statements from when I directly took credit cards for NotifyMail years ago. These statements had credit card numbers and expiration dates for several years worth of transactions. I even had a few credit card numbers belonging to NASA as they were a customer of mine! The credit card numbers were always in my possession and I shredded all the information (OK, years late, but I did it). How many other vendors have done the same thing? It’s scary just thinking about it.

Maybe I should be more cautious about which vendors get my credit card number like this potential customer, but what will that do for me? Basically I’d never be able to purchase anything on the Internet!

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Wacky Chinese Packaging

For Hanukkah this year, my wife decided to get me some little things that I could put on my desk. The things she got me were definitely not on my wish list (OK, I don’t have a wish list as I just buy what I want within reason). One of the items she bought me was a flashing coaster. My son seems to enjoy it and it is kind of entertaining. What was even more entertaining for me was to read the package.

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I thought that people only saw this stuff on The Tonight Show, but I can now say that I’ve seen bad Chinese translations myself!

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Stumped by poor user interface

On and off I’ve had some difficulty with hearing people with iChat when I used a headset. I always attributed this to my PlayStation 2 USB headset which is a rebranded Logitech model (it cost $15, but it worked). I finally got a new Plantronics M214i headset as it had a USB adapter and let me use it with one of my cell phones (I have 3, one personal which doesn’t have a 2.5 mm plug, an iPhone, and a Sanyo, the latter two being for work). I needed a wired headset as I have yet to have good luck with Bluetooth headsets. This option was excellent as I could use it with iChat and my cell phone.

I had an audio chat with someone today and had a little trouble hearing and attributed it to the headset even though it was brand new. I had a hard time believing this, so I poked around the system. First I checked out iChat’s preferences.

Nothing there to change the output volume, just select the USB adapter (the DSP55 Adapter shown in the picture).

Then I poked around the System Preferences in the Sound section and saw the following:

Since I want the normal output to goto the headphone jack, I didn’t change anything and played with the slider, but that didn’t help. I happened to click on the DSP55 Adapter and saw the output volume slider change. Bingo! The Output volume at the bottom of the pane is tied to the output device selected above. However, if you select Headphones again, the volume for the USB adapter remains the same. I tested this against an iChat test account and low and behold I was able to jack up the volume in iChat without changing the system volume.

This interface really confused me as I had no reason to change the “device for sound output” and would logically wouldn’t change it, set the volume and then change it back. iChat sound have the Output (and Input) settings right there in the iChat preferences. It isn’t that weird for one part of the OS to change a setting in another; for instance hitting the volume keys on the keyboard changes the Output volume in this dialog or using the volume Menu item. This is really a simple thing for Apple to fix in iChat.

(I don’t regret buying the headset even though my old one probably works fine as I needed one with a 2.5 mm plug on it; I’m on more conference calls these days than ever before and my Bluetooth headset didn’t cut it.)

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The day without the Internet

OK, maybe it was just a few hours without the Internet, but that isn’t as catchy a title.

To continue my story from yesterday, a tech came out today to swap out my cable modem and remove the filters from my cable so cable TV worked again. The tech came out and I thought everything would go smoothly. He said he’d remove the filters and call in to have the modem reset as that modem could be used for residential customers (learn something new everyday as I didn’t think it could). So the TV got fixed quickly and then when it came time to get the cable modem working, things went down hill. The tech quickly realized that I knew far more than him about networking, so he put me on speakerphone to talk to the guy at the office. The guy at the office was pretty good at following the script, but didn’t have a clue. When he asked what version of Windows I was running, I knew there was trouble. So the tech did all the troubleshooting of checking the cables, asked about splitters, etc. I, of course, knew this was a waste of time as the same cable modem (he didn’t swap it out, yet) worked 30 minutes before…the only difference is that I turned my router to DHCP; I even plugged my machine directly into the cable modem and only got a self-assigned address. The tech said that he could come back and replace the cables and I told him that it would be a waste of time to do that. Some miracle happened and the modem started working a little while later before the tech left, so I thought all was good.

At this point, my network was kind of a mess as I unplugged stuff to get things going and had only hooked my MacBook Pro into the cable modem. When I unplugged it and plugged in my Airport Extreme, it failed to get an IP address so I power cycled the modem as I thought it had grabbed the MAC address of my MacBook Pro and only wanted to dole out one IP address. The cable modem didn’t come back online. OK, I power cycled it again and called the cable company. Of course, I got no where and they put in a call to have the tech call me back. In the meantime, I unplug and plug stuff in and even put the cable modem at the first point where cable comes into my house to eliminate splitters (yes, I knew that wasn’t the problem, but wanted to have ammunition when the tech called back). No luck. I then plugged the cable modem back into my setup and moved the power cord and somehow it came back online. Perfect, so I unplug it and put the wire back and the modem didn’t come back online.

My wife got quite frustrated as she saw what I was going through and how I wasn’t working (which I don’t like to do), so she called the cable company back (now almost 5 pm) and got connected back to a local help desk person (the national help desk people are utterly useless). This person, Mike, really started digging into the problem. I explained that it wasn’t the tech’s fault, it wasn’t the wiring, and that it was a provisioning problem. He said that, yes they were having provisioning problems for the past 2 days and he’d try to send stuff to the modem. He managed to login to the modem, but it still wouldn’t provision (I learned that the modem re-provisions every time it power cycles and at other times when it re-syncs). He wasn’t all that familiar with the modem I had and I come to learn that it is only used in residential for people that pay $9.95 per month more for the home networking option. This option is for the completely clueless people that can’t setup a basic router even though just about all routers today are idiot proof. So while Mike is off researching something, the cable modem comes back online. Mike gets back on the phone and said that the tech that was out today was a television tech and didn’t know the data side so that kind of explains why he appeared clueless when it came to computers. Mike said that I could swap out the modem by going to their office or they could have a tech come out again. I told him that it was online and he was pretty shocked as he had never heard of that before.

So as long as I don’t unplug my cable modem, I should be good to go. However, I’m going to go down to their office on Friday (if they’re open) and swap out my cable modem so that the next time I have a problem, the support folks don’t scratch their heads trying to figure out why I have this modem/router without the home networking option.

I hope that I’m almost done with this fiasco; I thought a simple request could be handled quickly, but throw a comedy of errors, I ended up wasting a ton of time and getting quite frustrated. Up until yesterday, I had nothing, but good things to say about Time Warner Cable.

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Breakdown in customer service

Three years ago, I signed a contract for my business class cable modem service. I was quite pleased with the service, but over a year ago I stopped hosting my own websites and my own email, so while the extra bandwidth was nice, I didn’t need the static IP addresses nor the priority service for my cable modem (once they said that they’d come out within a few hours to replace the modem, but it turns out they were able to fix the problem remotely). The switch will save me about $55 per month. This may not be a lot, but I rather it in my pocket than theirs.

So I scheduled an appointment for today to swap out the cable modem as the modem I had was not only a modem, but also a router and a 4 port switch that was for business class service only. I saw the tech in his truck outside in the appropriate window (12:30 – 2:30 pm), then get stuff from the back of his truck and expected him to ring the doorbell to come in. Well, he didn’t, and I went back to work. Awhile later I checked and he was gone. Hmmmm, that was odd. I called the cable company, (got dumped by their automated system 2 or 3 times and had to call back), spoke to someone that said the tech didn’t need to swap out the modem and he closed the trouble ticket. I was told that I could setup my router (or computer) to automatically get an IP address (DHCP). I did this and promptly lost connectivity. I called back in, spoke to the national help desk and spoke to someone that read the script quite well, but wasn’t much help; “can you check the light on your NIC? Is it red?” I played along and said no (my Macs don’t have NICs as Ethernet is on the motherboard, so it isn’t a card). I basically just got her to transfer me back to the local helpdesk to schedule a new tech to come out and swap the modem like should have been done in the first place. So another tech is scheduled to come out tomorrow. I switched my Airport Extreme Base Station back to static IP addressing (I did take a screenshot of the configuration before I switched it the first time so I didn’t have to dig through my notes if it didn’t work) and was back online. OK, that should be the end of today’s excitement. However, it isn’t.

I went to turn on the TV about 4:30 pm and saw that we had no cable signal. Ah, now I remember the first person I spoke to said that the tech just had to put filters on the line and didn’t have to come into the house. I don’t believe filters are used to change me from business class to residential service; it is a different modem and different routing on the network (the business class IP addresses are on a different subnet than the residential addresses). I spoke to someone else at the cable company who must have realized that something very bad had happened and transferred me to Thomas who I suspect is a supervisor and he apologized and called me back about 15 minutes later to say that he’d try to get another tech out earlier than my appointment tomorrow and he had no idea what the tech that came out today did.

So let’s recap. I asked to change my business class RoadRunner Internet service to residential RoadRunner service. What did I get? My cable TV got disconnected and I’m still on business class RoadRunner (I can tell as my IP address hasn’t changed). I hope that this story gets better tomorrow.

On a side note, every time I talked to a person, I was asked for my name, address, and last 4 digits of my Social Security Number or password on my account. As I didn’t immediately recall the password on my account, I used the last 4 digits of my SSN. It wasn’t until I spoke to the 4th person that I was told that my SSN wasn’t on my account and that I had to give the account password. Luckily I remembered it. Hmmm…so much for having an account password when most of the representatives don’t even care what response you give!

(When I get around to it, this post will get turned into a letter to Bob Barlow, President of Time Warner Cable-San Diego. While I should have written down everyone’s name, I didn’t, but the notes on my account should tell the story.)

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Elves working overtime

Friday evening (OK, I realize I’m late), I ordered some stuff from Amazon (my wife signed up for Amazon Prime) and low and behold, some of it arrived today, Monday. I also ordered an armband for my iPod Nano at the same time and it also arrived this morning. Of course, all of this is with free shipping. I feel kind of bad at getting free expedited shipping, but if merchants are offering it (or we’re paying a little for it with Amazon prime), I’ll take it!

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Replaced a tuner with an Ethernet switch

Last weekend I replaced our radio tuner with an Ethernet switch (a 24 port NetGear switch as I ran out of ports on my 8 port switch) as we never used the tuner and even when we did, it was hard to get a station that wasn’t fuzzy. (OK, it physically replaced it, but didn’t replace the functionality.) It almost seems that the radio tuner is on the way out, at least in our household. My wife listens to XM Radio in the car and we listen to XM Radio in the house.

The second part of replacing the tuner was to get a SqueezeBox Duet. I was looking on eBay for a SqueezeBox Classic as I already have 2 of the 2nd generation units and we wanted to be able to have music setup for me, my wife, and my son separately without having to change the music. Since our house stereo system is setup for 4 sources, the SqueezeBox was the perfect solution. (I couldn’t believe what the SqueezeBoxes were going for on eBay; Amazon had it for $237, so I wasn’t going to pay more than $200. After a little looking, I found the Duet for $270 after rebate and then Tiger Direct had a $20 credit for using PayPal which made it about the same cost.)

The SqueezeBox series of devices are perfect for us. We stream XM Radio on them and with the web interface, we can change what is playing from our laptops. The Duet adds a new dimension to our listening; I can now control all 3 SqueezeBoxes from one handheld, WiFi based remote. It is a bit costly, but in the day that I’ve had it, I can’t say enough good things about it.