Now mind you, she (yes, I have seen the driver of this car many a morning as we typically arive around the same time of day) pulled into the spot some time AFTER I had already parked. Granted, my front bumper is in line with the white line, but like tennis, the line is in. I suspect this person would rear end someone and blame the person she hit. Just going out on a limb here. Either way, it’s another one of those instances where the checks and balances fall back to the world is full of idiots. Sorry society you just lost a point from the NOT IDIOTS column.

Please enjoy the rest of the photos, also notice the way in which the car is parked in the spot, all the way to the right. I returned the note, asking the person not to park in spots in the future they feel they can not park in, they could potentially damage a colleague’s car. No need to call the police, there was no damage done to my car. I did pull my car back in the likely event that this car should leave before me for fear of my bumper, license plate and anything else the person might rip from my car when they back out, of course, all my fault.

So lets think back to what brought this blog to life. . .

Oh thats right, those damn raccoons. They’re still around, in fact I had great fun, ehr, I mean I was left no other option, then to shoot one a couple weeks ago with my paintball gun while I had the electric fence repurposed on the garden for the summer.

But of course, I wouldn’t be here with such an audience if it wasn’t for my peeps. Those folks that both read my insane ramblings, and those that link to my blog. So since I can’t thank every single one of you by name, I’ll be certain to report out what WordPress tells me are the good folks linking to my site.

Thanks!

• Notes to Marquis
• Wii Sixty: File under – Suck it Sony
• Strong Kids, Safe Kids
• Moldy Snack
• mandymag.com
• Users Suck!
• spiralbound.net

A long time ago, there once was a good, helpful, and inexpensive way to register domain names at cheap prices. It was an era when folks were jumping on the HTML band wagon. This is before the myspace kids, the youtube phenomenon and well, before google was as big as it is now. In that time, registerfly was a good choice for getting your site, proudly written in notepad, out on the web. THOSE DAYS ARE GONE.

About two years ago, without my knowledge or consent my .com business domain was silently expired. When I discovered this it was too late, despite my contact info being up to date, Registerfly had expired the domain without notifying me. My choices were slim. I could pay hundreds of dollars to the scumbag that snapped up the domain and parked it or I could make my primary address the .biz derivation. I chose the later, got my client’s sites running again and set up godaddy to snatch the name back when it could.

Here we are later, I’ve never really been able to transfer the .biz because of Registerfly’s constantly changing UI, iron grip on the domain, and archaic tools. My domain came up for renewal on Feb 6th and I began receiving the renewal notices. So On 1/31/07 I once again endured the, yet again changed UI, and attempt to renew my domain. Everything seemed to go smoothly, and I thought I was all set. The renewal messages went away and all was good with the world.

Until I began receiving expiration notices again. I once again logged into the poorly designed UI (notice a theme here?) and found that the money I had applied to the domain was sitting as a balance and not actually applied. Yes I received an email specifically stating I had RENEWED my domain. I applied the money to the domain again.

Here we sit on the 16th of February and my domain is in an expired status. I have submitted trouble tickets and emails and not heard from them. We’re going on a week and a half or so since the first ticket was submitted with NO RESPONSE.

Now the address continues to resolve correctly, but every time I log in to the craptacular ever morphing UI of this 2-bit company I find that my domain sits in the expired bin, and my money is gone. It’s just a bit concerning. What’s the true status of the domain? Why won’t anyone get back to me?

What’s funny, is in the midst of this whole thing I received an email from a company called eNom. Apparently Registerfly was nothing more then a domain reseller. Due to various customer complaints and not fulfilling quality standards, eNom has severed their ties with Registerfly.

Stay tuned to see what happens. I’ve contacted Registerfly yet again, eNom to see if there is some issue there, and the better business bureau. It seems the fox guards the chicken coupe. When your domain expires, Registerfly buys it, then will sell it to you for several hundred dollars.

My word of advice if your looking to register a domain? GoDaddy all the way.

BTW, why don’t I name the domain? With my luck it will be expired and point to something I don’t want advertised. I’ll most likely have to re brand my business, which might not be bad, and continue from there. It’s true I’ve been out of the consulting gig for a yr or two now. I enjoy spending time with my family and friends, and I can live comfortably working as a cubical pilot. In fact, I’ve had the opportunity to work on some very interesting projects that way.

DANDASKA! After a little deliberation, I decided that it if I did not replace my stolen Christmas ornaments, I would be in essence letting the turd rockets win. So here is the first of the replacements. It arrived on the doorstep sometime yesterday. I ordered it through my Amazon Store As my wife put it, “I was like a kid in a toy store.” I opened it up and started it up, but it looks like it needs a little assembly. Uh-oh, better read the directions. As we are currently preparing for a big weekend I didn’t have time to assemble it with all the other duties I needed to take care of. Hopefully tonight I will get a chance to put it together and get an action shot, if you will.

As a side-note, it appears the software had not even shipped until after the holiday break, which is great. Hopefully it will arrive soon, safe and sound. When I get it, I hope it will be good fodder for discussion.

Update Thanks again to Cliff for making me aware of a better way to remove spam. You no longer need to register to comment. I didn’t like the idea to begin with, bur I didn’t want to end up spending all my time cleaning spam.

This Thanksgiving, we finally moved my parents on to a ‘high-speed’ cable connection. The only option available in Maine is Time-Warner, which uses Roadrunner (rr.com).

Now for a long time, I always thought that Comcast was a miserable company to deal with, at times with questionable practices. I was wrong, or rather, Comcast turns out could be worse.

The night before Thanksgiving, the self install kit arrived. With excitement, my brother and I planned on setting up Dad’s brand new Shiny Dell to get online the following day, when we could break away from dinner prep. Now my brother Tom, had called to get the self-install kit, and was led to believe that a cable modem would be included. No such luck. So with a quick drive to Brunswick, we pick up the only cable modem available at staples. Thursday morning, I go into the office with the kit, pop in the cd to set up Dad’s computer. What followed was absolutely baffling. All the CD did was bring up the MAC Address of the cable modem we had purchased the night before, and gave me a non 800, long-distance number to call.

With growing frustration, I proceed to call the number, where I navigate too many menu choices to remember, and sit on hold. To add insult to injury, during the 40 or so minutes of sitting on hold, I was reminded by the annoyingly friendly voice on the phone, that I should sign up for Road Runner High speed Internet service. ARGH!

Just about the time, I had thought about giving up, I finally got a hold of a human, maybe. My RR associate took my MAC address and told me that he would submit the work order to MIS to activate the modem, and that it could take up to an hour. I asked him if I could get some confirmation number to reference if I needed to call back. . . “Sorry, I don’t have anything to give you” was the reply. “O.k., whats your name?” I ask. I get his name and write it down, at which point he realizes he can give me the ticket # from submitting the work-order to MIS. I take the number, and we say our good days.

Now, to their credit, and the only positive experience with this two-bit hack service provider, in 30 minutes, we’re up and running on the interWeb on the Computer machine. We get a call from the associate that I spoke with earlier. Signal quality on all 3 measurements for the modem are in the red. I immediately assume it’s the internal wiring for the house. In case however, we schedule a service appointment.

Later that day, we decide that it doesn’t make sense to have a tech come out until we rewire the house with RG-6, so I get back on the phone to cancel the appointment. . . 25 minutes later I give up and hang up to go see family that came to say hi.

Now here we are The following Tuesday, and my brother is working from home and tries to cancel the appointment. He found email contacts on the RR site, and sends an email to the two addresses listed explaining we would like to cancel the appointment. Great, we should be set, right? No both address, which he got from the site remember, fail. 34 minutes of hold music that as he put it “will put a caffeine addict to sleep!” he finally got a human.

All of this for their high speed connection, which by the way is 256k Up/256k down. Yeah, you read that right. WTF?!

From my understanding from friends that have had this service for some time, Time Warner cut the speed of basic service to this speed, then turned around and offered the original speed as a premium service, for more.

This folks, is today’s Qual-i-Tee award winner.

You see the Po has just installed brand-spanking new self-checkouts. For some reason, on outstanding individual felt it was a good idea to go through said checkouts with 2 outdoor trash cans, and a package of fiberglass insulation, to name a few of the poorly sized items for purchase. This individual took a very long time trying to mash, shove, and otherwise persuade these items to be scanned by the register. As his attempts continued to fail, his anger prevailed releasing these words: “I hate these god damn things.” Lets stop right here and review. . . Trash cans and Insulation. A self-scan register made for small purchases. 2 perfectly good, normal registers open, under the usual load, and he hates the registers. Well done Somersworth, well done. Yet another visit that surprised me, when I thought there was nothing left to surprise me with. But back on track. The fence is set, the cameras and lights are on. Now we just have to rely on the repeat offenders. Meanwhile, here are some pictures of the set up to tide us all over till the shocking moment of truth. Let me tell, you, they’re in for a BIG surprise, I can speak to that, but more on that later. . .