Well, another year is almost done, we’re just about to curl up in front of the fire to watch A Christmas Carol. The gifts are wrapped and tucked under the tree. The house is warm, we have lots to eat and good friends comming over for supper tomorrow. A very good Christmas already and I haven’t even opened any gifts.
I hope you all hava a healthy, safe and rewarding holiday, however you mark this time of year.
Early in September I bought a Sony PRS-600 eBook reader. I love it, especially the touch screen interface. About two weeks ago I noticed that the gesture for making a book mark wasn’t working as well as I thought it was when new. My initial thoughts were that I was getting too sloppy. Then the day before yesterday some parts of the touch screen stopped responding to input at all. This made it difficult to navigate the User Interface. Eventually I could not get into books at all. I tried both a soft and a hard reset. Neither worked. So, disappointed my wife and I gathered up the receipts and box. I packed everything back up for the return trip to the store for warranty service. When my wife came to bed, I had been reading on the iPad (not anywhere near as nice an experience as the PRS-600), she asked me if anyone else on the Web had reported similar problems. So into the iPad browser for a quick Google search, and sure enough I found a posting by someone with a similar problem. People had advised her that dirt can get lodged between the frame and the display stimulating the touch screen. They suggested a piece of paper, canned air or a brush to get the dirt out. That seemed worth a try, so I unpacked the reader, used a thin piece of paper and canned air to gently coax the dirt out. It worked! My reader is as good as new.
So, if your Sony eReader touch display seems to be acting up it could be getting dirty. A little house cleaning could save you some trouble down the road.
When we bought our house, 18 years ago, it had a built in dishwasher. There were only two of us so it only got used on special occasions when there were lots of dishes to do. The house was 6 years old when we bought it so the dishwasher is about 24. Old enough I guess. It is a yellow colour that doesn’t go with the current decor and all the other white appliances; the door spring is gone so it isn’t really safe for the mother-in-law to use; it is looking quite ratty; and probably isn’t as efficient as a new model. So last night, with some head scratching and consternation we removed it and took it out to the driveway. We expect delivery of a brand new Whirlpool this afternoon and the company will take away the old one for recycling.
I’ve been poking around the Whirlpool site looking at dishwasher installation manuals (I don’t know what model we’re getting) to get a feel for what I need to do the installation this evening. Since it is a simple replacement it should not be too difficult, but one never knows for sure. More later after the job is done.
Just bought one of these for home. I was impressed with it’s reviews, price and performance even before I knew it runs Linux and is extensible. For example, it is relatively easy to add NFS support to it.
Since I won’t be flying tonight. I decided to tinker with the PVR. A few weeks ago I bought a PVR Plus 9242 for our Bell TV (formerly ExprssVu) satellite TV system. That is a bit of a long story, but one of the reasons I wanted the 9242 was that Bell had announced they were going to roll out storage expansion for the PVR through external USB drives. Apparently around about August 7th they pushed out the firmware upgrade. So a rainy day is a good time to check it out.
The official way to get expanded storage capacity is to buy a LaCie 750GByte drive from Bell. The list price (as I write this) is $199.00, which isn’t horrible, but Future Shop had a stack of them for $129.00 (also as I write this). I picked one up for the better half’s computer, but I have disk drives and USB enclosures around my office so I decided to see if the system was Bell specific, LaCie specific or open.
Good news it is open. I used a 120GByte Seagate Barracuda IDE drive with a USB 2.0 adapter. Followed the instruction from the Bell site above, wait for the PVR to format the drive, reboot and hey presto I have an external hard drive. Archiving shows is straight forward if not blindingly fast. One hour of HD takes nearly 20 minutes to copy over. The system is fast enough to watch shows from the external drive, and I don’t see any reason why one can’t buy as many external drives as one’s piggy bank will support to archive favorite shows.
Other bloggers have reported that plugging the drive into a PC once it has been formatted by the PVR will result in an automatic reformat of the drive. Since I have auto run disabled on my PC this did not happen when I connected my drive back to my PC. A quick check with PowerQuest tools shows two Linux EXT3 partitions one with about 1% of the capacity, the other with the remainder. Looking at the partitions with IFS Drive (a Windows EXT2 driver) shows the partitions unformatted, but PowerQuest indicates about 40MByte used on each, so either there is something non-standard, or it really was reformatted. Hmm, needs more investigation.
The really good news is you don’t need to buy the external drive from Bell if you don’t want to. The LaCie unit they specify should be a good one, but you may be able to get it cheaper at a big box store. Plug it in, format it, use it. It is really that simple.
A Universal Energy agent came by the other day. Margaret told him I ran the last door to door energy sales man off. He left without a fuss.
Pardon me while I vent.
We had a visit from a door to door energy salesman last night. I don’t know how successful he could be, his pitch was so sleazy I felt I needed a shower after he left. I don’t know what company he represented, even though I asked him three times. Each time he just rattled of the company name, too quickly for me to catch, while flourishing his hand under the logo on his shirt. I later went to the web sites of each company licensed in Ontario to retail energy and could not find a similar logo, it was a very small embroidery though.
Of course it was quickly apparent that he was there to get us to sign a five year contract for fixed price energy delivery. We can’t buy a five year gym membership in Ontario any more because the gyms couldn’t seem to stay in business for more than one or two, but we can be tied into a five year contract for our domestic energy needs. Does that seem right to you? The first such company to approach me is no longer licensed in Ontario (may no longer be in business), but I digress.
As the pitch goes, he had just stopped by to confirm that we were getting our price savings on our energy bill and he needed to see our statement. The conclusion that we are meant to draw is that this fine fellow from Mumble Energy is on our step appointed by our energy provider to make sure our account is in order so that we get the best price. Well, who doesn’t want that. But if he is working with our energy provider why does he need to see our bill? So I ask him that question, a couple of times, in different ways. He never confirms or denies that he is associated with our energy provider, there is much flipping about of a binder to quickly point at information that has arrived in our gas and hydro bills, and talk about deregulation and rising energy prices. Finally he offers that privacy laws prevent his company from having the details of our bill. This is the closest thing to the truth I ever get out of this man. Of course privacy, and contract laws would keep his company’s nose our of our business with our current provider because, not being a party to that business, there is absolutely no reason, legal or moral for them to have any of that information. That is why he must cajole, brow beat or swindle it out of me at the door.
I tried to get him to just tell me plainly why he was there. “Explain it to me, you’re not being clear.” His only reply to this was, “I don’t know how I can be more clear, what don’t you understand?” Finally he shows me on a sample bill what he is looking for. “Fine” I say, “I’ll check it later” and indicated that as far as I’m concerned we are finished. He stares expectantly at me. “You can go now” I say.
“Oh no, you’ll want to check it now” he replies.
“Why do I want to check it now?”
“Because if you aren’t registered you will want to fill out and sign a form to get registered.”
“I don’t think I will.”
“Oh you will want to.”
“I’m not going to be filling out any forms tonight.”
“Who said anything about forms?”
“You did, just now.”
“No, I didn’t say anything about forms.”
This was really too much. I told him to “get off my property now,” which he did.
ARRRRG!!!!
For the record, here is how he could have been more clear:
“Good evening, I’m Some Guy from Mumble Energy Retail, here is my business card. As you may be aware the energy market in Ontario has been deregulated allowing companies such as Mumble Energy to sell directly to end users. Can I have a few moments of your time to tell you about our pricing structure for gas and electricity and explain the terms of the contract we will want you to sign to take advantage of these prices? If you do decide to enter into a contract with us, I will need to see your last gas and electric statements to get your service information. At that time I can show you how to find out if you are already in a contractual agreement with another provider who may charge you a penalty for breaking the contract early.”
I still would have said no, but I wouldn’t have felt the need to banish him from my property and we could have parted on amicable grounds.
Reporting from The Star – Utility deals left lots to be desired.
Ellen Roseman – Deception at the door.