As much as I love WordPress, I’m stunned at how some of the simplest things don’t seem to work properly, and how no third party developer has stepped up and filled the gap with a simple tool. YouTube videos for example: when I embed them directly into this blog using the code provided by YouTube, the layout breaks and the videos don’t work. I tried one plug-in, and it didn’t work at all. I tried another plug-in, and it worked, but also pulled in all of my recent videos instead of just displaying one. Finally, I looked at this one and it seemed very promising. I installed it, then discovered that my server doesn’t have Curl installed – I use Cpanel, and it’s all automated, so I’m not about to install something new on my server just to use this one plug-in. Why is this so hard? It’s the WordPress plug-in design schema so difficult that no one can create a simple, flexible tool to accomplish this one thing?
Vegas 2007: Day 2
Day two in Vegas was a busy one – here’s my write-up of the conference I was at, and here’s a video clip of what we did for dinner…time to go to sleep for me! The day starts at 7am tomorrow…
Vegas Needs a New Slogan
You know how Vegas has their “What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas” slogan? Well, I’d like humbly suggest a new slogan: “Vegas: It Would Have Been Better an Hour Ago”. So much of Vegas is buffets, and so many of them are luke warm. In fact, Vegas itself has that luke-warm, re-heated in a microwave kind of way. A bit sad, a bit soggy, a bit re-used. But if you’re drunk, you probably don’t know the difference…
Ticketmaster: What a Scam!
I ordered some tickets for Ashley and I go to see Switchfoot in February, and I was happy to see that the tickets were only $25. I’ve never seen them live, but I dig their music, so it should be a good show. When ordering the tickets, I looked at the price breakdown: the ticket price is $25, but there’s an additional $12.70 in extra charges from Ticketmaster. That’s just over 50% of the ticket price for such dubious things as “convenience charge”, “building facility charge” and “order processing charge”. What a scam. Now I grasp why Pearl Jam went to war with Ticketmaster – they’re truly the mafia of the ticketing industry. I’m all for businesses making a buck, but there’s something very wrong when a ticketing company is charging 50% of the price of the whole damn show we’re going to see. In this era of online orders, PayPal, and other fast and easy methods of transactions, why are bands still using Ticketmaster? Are they really providing that much value? I suspect not.
Vegas 2007: Day 1
Off I go! When waiting in line at security I realized that I had forgotten to leave my Swiss Army Knife USB flash drive at home – I had data on the Flash drive that I wanted to keep, but I knew I couldn’t take the knife with me. So I broke the USB drive portion off the knife, and handed the security guard the knife and asked him to throw it in the garbage. He looked a bit puzzled, and had to go ask his supervisor for instructions. Amusingly enough, the knife is what I received from the last Vista Lab – so maybe I’ll get another one this year. 😉 I initially thought the knife/flash drive combo was a silly idea, but I’ve been surprised at how much I’ve used the pocket knife portion.
I arrived in Vegas a bit later than normal (WestJet was slow tonight, but they’re fun to fly with) and the flight was rocky – when the plane was landing the rear end felt like it was fish-tailing. The airport was dead – hardly anyone was there. The Orleans, the hotel I’m booked into, is so far off the strip that none of the shuttles go there. A $45 town car ride later, I arrived (good thing Thoughts Media is paying for this). A few pictures of the outside…
The hotel is surprisingly large and the room is clean and spacious – and it’s only $100 a night! I guess there are some good deals to be had in Vegas if you’re not convinced you need to stay right on the strip. Tomorrow the Vista Lab starts, and it should be interesting!
Please Dell, Have Mercy on Me!
In my continuing monitor saga, I needed to order two more monitors – earlier in the evening I checked Dell.ca and confirmed that they were still being offered for $699 CAD. At 10:17pm last night, after trying to get that pixel un-stuck and packing up the two defective monitors, I went to order two more. Guess what? The price had jumped back up to $899 CAD! I actually burst out laughing, because it was so comical that after all my efforts that night to salvage one more of the three monitors, I was rewarded with a price jump. It turns out the Dell Web site is on Eastern time (I should have known that, Ontario being the center of the universe in Canada after all) – so 10:17pm my local time was 12:17am Dell time, and the $200 discount was over. Of course, I won’t be defeated that easily! This morning I called Dell to arrange the return of the two defective units – zero hassle. Dell is really great about accepting things back when you’re within those first 15 days. Then I called Dell Online Sales, which is their call centre in India. I spoke to a fell named Abdul, who listened to the basic story (nine monitors ordered in five months, only one good one found) and said he would review my case and phone me back. So I sit here, waiting, hoping that Dell Online Sales will have mercy on me, a poor fool who didn’t realize that on Dell’s Canadian Web site, when it hits midnight at their headquarters in Ontario, that’s the end of the day all across Canada. 😉 I’ll update this after I hear back. Even if Abdul says no, I’ll ask to speak to his manager and continue escalating this.
And for those that are wondering why I haven’t just gone elsewhere for my monitors, the main reason is that I like Dell monitors. I have four Dell monitors in my house now, and with the exception of this ridiculous experience, I’ve had really good results from Dell with their monitors. The $699 price point is also tough to beat – at my local computer store they only have one other 24″ monitor that’s close in price, an Acer that’s $799 CAD. The BenQ is $869 CAD. So for $699, these monitors are impossible to beat. Lastly, at this point my desire to get three perfect Dell 2407WFP’s has attained the status of a holy quest – it’s just something I have to do. And the cynical side of me wants to see how many monitors I have to go through to get three of them that are flawless.
UPDATE: After waiting four hours, I decided to call Abdul back. Turns out he was busy with incoming calls, and when they have a lot of incoming calls, they’re not supposed to call people back. A bit strange. At any rate, he honoured the price of $699 per monitor, I just had to also pay $15 in shipping per monitor. Not a big deal – I’ll pay $15 to learn my lesson of ordering things the second I think I should. Now I wait and see if, when the two monitors show up, they’re actually any better than the others. Come on lucky #10 and #11!
SWAGWATCH: Wine and Dash
Today I received two packages: one was a couriered bottle of wine from my friends at Vaja (that’s a twist tie stopping it from rolling off my desk if you’re curious). Yes, they really are that friendly – they sponsor contests for us all the time, give us anything we want for review, and are amazingly supportive partners all around. And as a Happy New Year gift, they sent me some wine. This particular swag will be opened and consumed at a dinner with friends.
Next we have something on the other end of the scale: it’s not food related, and it’s all gadget goodness. This is a T-Mobile Dash from a press release event that Janak Parekh went to in New York – I was invited, but I wasn’t about to fly down for one event, so Janak went instead. They gave him a Dash to keep, but he didn’t want to use it and switch back to GSM, so he reviewed it for Smartphone Thoughts then sent it to me. Janak doesn’t like lines, so it took him a couple of months to get it in the mail to me. 😉 But now that I have it, I’m pretty excited because I haven’t used one extensively before – and it’s also my first Smartphone with a keyboard (that’s right, I’ve never owned a Motorola Q, Samsung i320, etc.). It’s SIM-locked to T-Mobile’s network though, so I have to get it unlocked – and all before Friday night when I leave for CES.
The Moment of Truth: The Next Three Dell 2407FPW Monitors
My heart is pounding, my throat is dry, my palms are sweaty…no, I’m not looking at one of those Web sites. I’m setting up and testing out the three Dell 24″ LCD monitors that showed up today. For those keeping score, I just went through this last week, so I’m feeling a bit pessimistic about whether or not this is going to work out. Drummer, start that drum roll…
- Monitor 1: Ashley unpacked the box, no missing parts, looks like it’s brand new. No cracked LCD. Plugged it in over VGA (connected to the Fujitsu 17″ laptop). Ran the colour gradient test, no banding – sweet. Ran it through the solid colours…what’s that speck? Augh! NO! Wait…oh, it’s a piece of dust. Checks monitor, nearly blind now from examining it so closely. 100% perfect – no dead or stuck pixels. We have a winner!
- Monitor 2: Looks ok coming out of the box, hooked it up…display comes up. Looking good so far. Fire up the gradient test….AUGH! Stuck pixel in the bottom right corner. Damn damn damn. Fire up Jscreenfix and run it by placing the pop-up window under the dead pixel – not sure if this is an elaborate hoax or prank (I’ve never seen these things be successful before), but it can’t hurt to try. Play with the positions on the monitor a bit while it’s Jscreenfix’n (reminds me of Rubberneckin’), monitor goes down to lowest position, snaps into place – now can’t get it back up. Button on back of monitor is supposed to release it to move up, it’s locked. Press harder. It’s locked. Move monitor down a little more, button releases, monitor is free to move again. Still Jscreenfix’n. [leaves it for 60 minutes] Jscreenfix didn’t do a damn thing, like I thought. Maybe there’s some real science behind it, but it didn’t work for me. Curses.
- Monitor 3: Unpacking it, the monitor looks new, not a re-pack. Good stuff. Hook it all up, power it on. No obvious dead pixels – wait, what’s that in the bottom left corner? It’s a…scratch?
It’s not on the upper layer of the monitor, it’s on a layer beneath, so it looks like the actual LCD is damaged. I didn’t even think LCDs could scratch. Well, whatever it is, it’s huge and nasty and not staying in my office.
So there you have it folks: one out of three monitors is good, the other two are going back. Now it doesn’t seem so crazy that I ordered three monitors in three separate orders, does it? For those keeping score, I’ve now had nine of the 2407WFP monitors since I first started buying them in August of 2006, and I’ve just now found my first one that is actually worth keeping. This has now reached comical proportions, so I’m going to keep going down this crazy trail. The price is still $699 CAD, so I’ll be ordering two more and returning these two defective monitors. But at least I have one good one – so even in the pixellated darkness, there is hope…(but Dell, your quality control SUCKS).
SWAGWATCH: Oakley Laptop Bag from AMD
Given how sensitive some people are in the blogosphere, I thought it might be a fun experiment to keep track of all the swag, review gear, and other assorted sundries that come my way over the next couple of months. It might be enlightening for some people if they saw how much, and what sort of things, come the way of an online reviewer type such as myself.
Above we have a package that appeared out of the blue from AMD – likely related to the Velocity Micro MCE promotion. The bag is quite nice – very high quality, and it stores a laptop vertically, which is one type of bag I actually don’t have (I own around 20 laptop bags/pouches). They also sent along a combo four port USB hub that has an integrated ethernet cable, along with a separate four port travel hub. Both look pretty cheap, but I’ll keep ’em for spares or give them away on Digital Media Thoughts.
Which Superhero Are You?
I always swore that I’d never use this blog for posting every random lame survey I did (or was asked to do), but being a former comic book geek I felt this was appropriate. How much of a comic book geek am I? On New Years Eve we had three other couples over and we were discussing the trailer for Spiderman 3 and how cool it looked. Someone said that Venom was in it, and I patiently explained (without rolling my eyes even!) that the black “costume” is really an alien symbiote and Venom is created when said symbiote bonds with Eddie Brock, who’s name they dropped in the first Spiderman movie…thus setting up Spiderman 4 for a possible Venom storyline (depending on how Spiderman 3 ends of course). Yes, I’m a coming book geek. So who was I when I took the test?
You are Superman
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You are mild-mannered, good, strong and you love to help others.  |
Also, through no advance coordination, when my wife Ashley took the test, guess who she was? Supergirl! We’re sooo cool. 😉
They also have super-villain test, which of course I didn’t take because I’m super-hero minded, and Superman after all. Ok, ok, I know my friend Mitch would want me to take the test, so here’s who I am as a super-villain…
You are Lex Luthor
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A brilliant businessman on a quest for world domination and the self-proclaimed greatest criminal mind of our time! |
Isn’t it interesting that my “hero” side and my “villain” side are the arch-nemesis of each other? I’m not sure I want to think too hard about what that means… 😉