retroblog.net » personal

just purchased an Acer Aspire at Staples for cheap

retroDan — Wed, 25 Aug 2010 13:57:40 +0000

Hey, guess what? Staples is offering a great deal on a laptop this week and since my defective HP Pavilion Dv7 is no longer any use to me, I quickly snagged one before it went out of stock. Actually it was “out of stock” online all day yesterday but surprisingly the laptop became available first thing this morning. I’m not that familiar with the way the Staples website inventory works but I’m glad I got in on the deal.

Here’s what I got:

it’s the Acer® Aspire AS5741Z-5433 for $399 (sale ending 8/28).
it features -
Intel® Pentium® Dual-Core P6000 Processor (1.86GHz)
4GB installed memory
320GB hard drive
8X DVD-Super Multi Double-Layer Drive
15.6″ HD Widescreen CineCrystal™ LCD Display (1366 x 768)
Built-in HD Webcam (1.3 megapixel)
Multi-in-1 Digital Media Card Reader
1 – HDMI™ Port
6-cell Li-ion Battery (4400 mAh)
Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit
1 year warranty

So what do you think? yeah, I know it’s on the low end in terms of tech but after what happened to my 17″ HP, I’m a bit gun-shy about spending more money than I should on a laptop that may or may not last two years. Hopefully this little Acer won’t let me down. At the least, it’s a bit reassuring to know that the Acer is PC Magazine’s Editors’ Choice for budget laptops.

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Thanks for the defective laptop, HP!

retroDan — Tue, 24 Aug 2010 16:16:21 +0000

well, I finally got a call from the local PC repair shop about my laptop. They simply confirmed what I already knew. It’s the motherboard and there’s no cheap fix for it. The motherboard can be replaced for $400 but as all of us know, you can easily get a new laptop for that price.

So, does anyone want my HP Pavilion DV7 for parts? I might as well put it up on ebay to get something out of this piece of crap. It’s only a year and a half old and now it’s just a paper weight. lovely.

Thanks for nothing HP.

issues with the laptop

retroDan — Wed, 18 Aug 2010 14:30:29 +0000

hey all!

I’ve got lots of updates for the blog including a review of last night’s Asia concert but my personal laptop died on me. Well, I’m still hoping and praying that it’ll come back to life so we’ll see. There’s tons of important stuff on the hard drive that I don’t want to lose so hopefully I’ll be able to get it back up on running.

Anyway, just thought I’d post this notice for those waiting for new posts here.

stay tuned…

a message to the old man in the Silver Toyota Venza

retroDan — Wed, 11 Aug 2010 01:39:59 +0000

Look, I see that you’re old and wanted to hurry to show your granddaughter the beach and all but that doesn’t entitle you to forcefully swing your door into my car.

First of all, you’re the one that parked extremely close to me. You should have either corrected your shitty parking job or just parked somewhere else if you found the space too tight.

Also, you should have known that those large Venza doors swing out wide and parked your car accordingly. But NO. you just HAD to park in that space next to mine. It’s not like the parking lot was full. it wasn’t. There were plenty of spaces in the parking lot. You probably could taken up TWO spaces elsewhere and no one would have cared. BUT YOU STILL CHOSE to park in that narrow space next to mine! And then you give ME the attitude that it was somehow MY FAULT that my car got dinged??? the nerve of some people.

Did it even occur to you in that old shriveled up brain of yours that maybe you should be mindful of other people’s property??? Come on. there are other folks trying to enjoy their vacation besides YOU and YOUR FAMILY. How inconsiderate of you, old man. You basically ruined what otherwise would have been a perfect day for me, asshole.

So, old man in the silver Venza, I hope you’re happy with yourself. I hope you go right ahead and enjoy what little is left of your pathetic life of yours. Yeah, apparently the world revolves around you and you alone. No need to care about others around you. go ahead with your inconsiderate ways, old man. you may have gotten away with it this time. Next time, you might not be so lucky.

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thanks for the wild goose chase, Walmart

retroDan — Fri, 16 Jul 2010 15:06:59 +0000

so, it seems that I wasted the whole evening last night thanks to Walmart. yup, good ol’ wally world. Apparently you can’t trust their “in-store availability” info on their website. I know, I know, what do I expect from a place like walmart where customer service is virtually nil. But against my better judgement I believed what the site was telling me. And it was telling me that a store way out in the boonies (approximately 40 minutes away from my house) had an item that I’ve been searching for the last couple days. yeah, I know, why am I even purchasing anything of value at wally world anyway. groceries and mundane stuff, yes. more expensive stuff, no. anyway, the website indicated that one store out of a dozen in my area had this one item in stock and it was in a place I’ve never driven to before.

so, after dinner I dragged my wife and kids in the van and searched for the holy grail, somewhere out in the great beyond. first problem was google maps. OK, scratch that. the first problem was of course trusting walmart. enough said. second problem was google maps. it gave me misleading directions to this place. apparently google isn’t that familiar with the boonies either. So, I overshot my destination by ten miles or so and by that time, I was extremely low on gas. so there we were in the middle of nowhere at night searching for a gas station. I was literally riding on fumes by the time I found a station in a small no-name town. I swear I heard dueling banjos ala “Deliverance” playing in the background as I tried to fill up the tank as quickly and as unobtrusively as possible so that I wouldn’t disturb the natives. and just my luck the automatic trigger to stop the pump when full was busted so I spewed gas over the van and my shoes. great!!

anyway, after cussing at myself for getting all of us into this mess, I got back on the road and restarted the search for this godforsaken walmart. after a few turns here and there on dark, lonely roads and with a little help from “The Force”, we eventually stumbled onto the damn place. It was getting pretty late in the evening at this point and I just wanted to grab what I was there for and get the hell home.

And you guessed it!! after all that driving and me smelling of gas, Walmart did not even have the damn thing even though the website says it does. nice!

Thank you for a lovely evening Walmart. never again, my friend. never again.

follow retroblog on twitter

retroDan — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 19:00:03 +0000

Well, after all this time desperately trying NOT to jump on the twitter bandwagon, I caved and finally signed up. Yeah, I know, it’s old hat for most people but back when the service first started up, I REALLY didn’t think “micro-blogging” would take-off like it did.

It’s interesting to see the evolution of the service. What was once thought of as a platform for the self-absorbed, it has become a useful tool to get late-breaking news, to give feedback to major corporations and even to promote your music blog. With such a large user-base, there’s no denying that twitter has become an indispensible online tool.

So, if you’re on twitter, you can follow me @retroblog. you can also follow me the “old-fashioned way” via my RSS feed.

as the old saying goes – it’s better late than never!

solid, no more

retroDan — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 17:09:15 +0000

here’s an update on my ongoing struggle with my former webhost. They still haven’t responded to my emails, support tickets or my formal request to cancel my account via their client area. can it get any worse than this? they should at least have the decency to address their paying clients on what’s going on? Apparently I’m lucky to have been able to get my websites off their servers.

and I’m NOT alone in this situation. there are others in the same boat. check out some of the comments left in various discussion forums about this company –

from webhostingtalk –
pkingtom: I have been a client of SolidInternet for exactly 7 years back since they were Myacen. I was able to deal with the fact that their customer service was less than desirable. It was a little better as Myacen but SolidInternet seemed to adopt the philosophy that customer service was less needed.
I was never able to access their forums because it would not allow me to register. For months ever since they changed their site I have not been able to access my account page. So they started to automatic bill me. I did not make a big deal of it because for the most part my site was staying up.
NOW, there is a BIG problem. My site has been down since early Monday evening. TWO of their servers (server 4 and server 8 ) were down in red on their server status page when I checked up until Tuesday night. Since then, they have removed their support page (and server status page) and replaced it with a page that says “Back Soon.” They have also removed their live chat which didn’t work once you entered it anyway.

Ribenagirl:I have two accounts with SolidInternet, on different servers. I have had numerous issues with Server 4, so when it went down I decided to move.
So as their Kangaroo server was still going, I prepared to move by finding a new host. This server is now dead.
Quickest way to stop your customers leaving – unplug the servers.
dnlofcourse: What has happened has been completely outrageous. I had two accounts since quite some many years. I was in generally satisfied with them although occasional problems were never serious enough to push through the laziness of changing host and also face the uncertainty of how the new host would perform.
This year things started become dramatic. Around July (I think) Server6 was down for about 30 hours. Support tickets were unanswered, live support was not there, phone was not answered. The server finally went up but the explanation given was completely false since times and facts did not match with the log I had kept. The company was trying to cheat and I knew it.
Server4 then (with my other account) was the one to go down about a month ago. It had a two day downtime in September (again with no answer of any kind) which was enough for me to urgently switch host for that account. I fortunately had backups of everything. I never know how long the downtime lasted (at least two days) because after that I left from server4.
Then, I knew I had to also move my account from server6 sooner or later but this account was of many gigs and didn’t have the time. I was taking backups often, though. Then server6 crashes too for a whole day a few days later. I realize that the company is very fast going down and I urgently moved this account as well to a different company. Of course there was no reply to any tickets all this time.
Once I did this, I happened to see someone on livesupport after a very long time. I think it was someone called “Jeff”. I connected to live support, asked what the problems were about. I received lame answers that made me smile.
Finally, I decided to ask a last question to them. I had already decided to move and taken most of my data from them but I somehow wanted an honest reply to my answer. My question was this.
“Listen, I have decided to leave from you anyway and gotten accounts to other hosts already. I would appreciate an honest reply to this. Is this company having financial difficulties or going down? There have been some issues that can’t be explained otherwise”.
And the answer I got was:
“Not at all, on the contrary. The company is in a phase of growth with new servers and packages and everything is running great!”
WHAT A LAME WAY TO END A MULTI-YEAR BUSINESS RELATIONSHIP. SHAME ON THEM.

and from the whirlpool.net.au forums:
OllieUK: Just thought I would let everyone know that I never got my issues resolved by SolidInternet or LiveRegistry!
It was impossible to contact SolidInternet to cancel my account, and to this day I have not been able to contact LiveRegistry regarding domain transfers. I strongly recommend getting your domains out of there. Best way is to do it directly through eNom and inform them of LiveRegistry’s lack of service.
Last week my credit card was charged automatically by LiveRegistry for the renewal of a domain which is no longer on my account! I didn’t authorise this transaction and I can’t contact anyone at LiveRegistry to rectify this so I’m forced to pursue this with my credit card company.
I can’t find where my credit card details are stored in the control panel so I can’t remove them. I’ve been through every section of the site!! I have just had a warning that another domain of mine will auto renew in a few days time – one which I no longer need. I’ve disabled auto renew but doesn’t seem to have any effect. No doubt I will get charged for that too! Thankfully I’ll be having the transaction blocked.
Not providing a service is one thing, but carrying out unauthorised transaction on my credit card is another. You bet I’ll be taking this further.
As before, Robert has the opportunity to contact me and rectify this but I have little faith he will after his attitude last time. Such a disappointment after 5 years of good service.
gbh: what a bloody nightmare. I can’t get a response from them. I lodged my first helpdesk ticket 5 days ago and have been lodging daily since then…
nothing, zero response at all. so now my dns is unable to be redirected and is pointing the the wrong place. I also tried to contact them via the contact form, looks like the captcha is broken as it won’t let you submit the enquiry.
I thought I’d give solidinternet a call, I’ve been in a hold nightmare scenario for the last 35 minutes.
I’d don’t have the domain passwords on me, if I could get them I’d immediately transfer. Am I totally screwed here?
i-think22: I’m another refugee from server4. Annoyingly my annual fee was taken out about a day before the server went offline.
As people have mentioned, calling is useless. I’ve left a message in their voice mail, but they certainly haven’t replied. I tried sending a fax, but their fax number went to another answering service. Emails and tickets seem useless, the server status page is now showing a 404. If there was an announcement on their page (which is also showing a 404) it might not be so bad. Their previous announcement was on the 23rd of September and I’m curious as to whether anyone has seen activity from them since that date.
If it wasn’t for the fact that they just took a year’s worth of hosting money I would have just figured they shut up shop. Unfortunately it’s going to be hard to convince them to bring back their servers so we can all flee with our data intact.
At this point I don’t think it could even save what is left of their tattered reputation.
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Even though I’m off their servers, I’m still concerned because my account with them is “still active” according to their records. What I don’t want is for them to charge my credit card for another year when I have no intention of being hosted with them. we’ll see at the end of the year…

site update – new webhost

retroDan — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 16:45:47 +0000

just to update those that are wondering.. retroblog.net has finally made it over to the new webhost. It would have been MUCH easier if my former host allowed cpanel backup/restores but like I mentioned before, they “conveniently” had the feature disabled. to make matters even more difficult, they disabled access to the mysql databases as well. So essentially, I had to manually transfer all my files via FTP and then transfer all my archived blog posts using the WP import/export feature. It took a lot more time and effort, but at least NOW I’m no longer hosted on that “sinking ship” of a web hosting company.

It’s absolutely bizarre. support tickets go unanswered. no replies to emails. Their client support area on their company website doesn’t properly work either. what is the deal?? I couldn’t get a straight answer from these people. weird stuff. So it was definitely THE TIME to jump ship.

I did put in a request to cancel my account but I suspect my request will go unanswered as well.

it just gets better

retroDan — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 14:18:54 +0000

well, guess what. I successfully moved two of my sites to my new host but retroblog is still stuck with the old host for the time being. apparently since I’ve got a ton of posts here, I’ve got to directly copy the mysql database and dump the info on the new server. problem is that the server application that allows me access the database on the old host is currently “down”. not only that but the customer support ticketing system is ALSO DOWN!! WTF!! and I’ve tried emailing support last week. nothing. who are these incompetent idiots AND why did I stay with these people for SO long???

..stay tuned.

the last straw

retroDan — Fri, 09 Oct 2009 15:25:11 +0000

it has been long overdue!! but I finally decided to switch webhosts. I’ve been with my current host for over seven years. They started out very reliable and had a great reputation. but in recent years customer service went to hell and downtime has become too frequent. I’ve been giving them the benefit of the doubt this past year but seeing that they’ve been unresponsive to my recent inquiries pretty much tells me that they really don’t give a crap about me and my websites.

With SO many webhost providers available, I’m very surprised that they aren’t willing to assist their long time clients.

I went ahead and purchased a new hosting plan with another host and will be transferring my websites over to the new server one at a time.

hopefully the transition will be smooth. just so that you all are aware, things might get “wonky” during the switch over.

see you on the other side!