Why you shouldn't ask a technical question on debate night
The drive with the question marks in my last post
38 hours uptime without the benefit of caffiene – the story of my weekend
A description of my weekend.
Voters Registration, Telcodata by Phone, Car crap
If you're in the state of Michigan, you should click here to verify your voters registration information is correct.
If it is not, proceed to the Secretary of State office and correct it, or bring your proper voters registration card to the polls. You have until October 2 to register.
In other news, I've got a beta version of "Telcodata by phone" going at 248-724-DATA. It's free, so have fun. There's also an open conference bridge at 248-724-2600 to play with for any purpose, any time. Let me know if you have ideas for improvement, or find any issues. You can email me at paul@telcodata.us, or just comment to this post.
And
And today, I ran out of gas and got pulled over twice for an out headlight and a loud muffler. ugh. Some days are better than others.
As of 00:59 livejournal is stupidly broken in incredibly cool ways.
drivel
I've made an NMU (Non Maintainer Upload) version of drivel (a linux livejournal client for gnome by
http://www.telcodata.us/debian/unstable/drivel_1.2.0-1.1_i386.deb
If you don't know what this is, don't worry about it. I've updated Debian bug 229090 with the information the maintainer needs to make it happen in the distro, so hopefully sarge will be able to go out with a recent version.
I only had to make minor changes to package it, least of which being that scrollkeeper-update was being run in 'make install' in the package tree, causing bizarre scrollkeeper stuff to litter the package in strange directories. It's supposed to be run during configuration in postinst of the package.
The other change is to recreate livejournal.xpm as a 32×32 pixel icon. Debian needs an xpm for the "Debian" systemwide menus in X. It's a cosmetic thing.
I wish autogen.sh was included in the tarball, it would have saved me a needless CVS pull. 🙂
Mexico's exciting array of new area codes! ole!
[paul] did you all know that mexico now has an exciting array of new area codes?
[paul] which used to be single digit numbers covering regional areas, are now 3 digit city codes?
[paul] how cool is that?!?!
[paul] I could squeal with happiness
[slash] yeah — i'm sure there's a demand now with all those factories being moved down there
[slash] I must be going. College awaits.
[paul] well, this kind gentleman informed me in french on the one working number I figured out that he couldn't transfer me from his extension
[paul] have fun
* slash twirls his finger
T-Mobile hotspots
T-Mobile hotspots are pretty cool. $6.99/hour isn't a bad way to spend a layover.
Protected:
Why businesspeople on a budget shouldn't use Nextel – Don't pay any bill you can't afford to pay twi
I just wanted to publically say this.
I'm absolutely sick of nextel's billing system. I like their network, I like their phones, and their services. I'm tired of their inability to bill me properly.
So I would personally recommend that if you are not a nextel user, you don't become one. And not only that, you call Nextel's media relations at 703-433-4700, or write an email at media.relations@nextel.com and tell them why. Tell them that when they repeatedly double bill people, you'd never use their service.
Mention this post.
Now, I'll be able to do this like I've done several times in the past, and getting my bank and nextel on the phone to fix the double billing. I'm just sick of doing it. I'd leave but I'm on contract for another year and a half, and I otherwise like their service, especially direct connect.
I guess this is a call to arms, of sorts.
08/16/2004 VISA CHECKCARD DB-POINT OF SALE Debit $306.00 08/16/2004 VISA CHECKCARD DB-POINT OF SALE Debit $306.00 Current Balance: -$5.55 Available Balance: -$5.55
I'm in the red right now, and monday morning, I won't be able to use my debit card to get gas, food, lunch, or anything else, because nextel's system, where they claimed to have declined my card because my CVV2 didn't match, decided to later re-submit the charge without requiring the CVV2 to match, causing a double billing. This after I resubmitted a charge, when they claimed it didn't go through.
And if something else comes through, like all the checks I wrote for my other bills, they'll bounce, at $30 each, and each company expecting my checks to be worth the paper they're printed on will find it to be untrue through no fault of my own.
And it has the potential to affect my upcoming business trip. Hard to travel without money…..
This is absolutely unacceptable behavior from a corporation, and I refuse to tolerate it.
Dear Nextel Customer:
Thank you for using MyNextel to pay your bill. Your payment has been posted to your account.
Please keep this information for your records.
Nextel account number:: xxxxxxxxx
Date: Fri, 13 Aug, 2004 19:22:42 EST
Payment amount: $306.00
Payment method:: Credit Card
Confirmation number: xxxxxxxx
For more information about this transaction, call 1-800-639-6111.
Nextel, once this is rectified, and I don't just mean that my account is refunded, but that I am also properly compensated for my trouble (any bounced checks that might occur, etc), and the problem is fixed, and recieve an apology, I'd be happy to remove it.
Anyway, if you're with me, just click on the hyperlinked email address on this post and shoot off a quick email mentioning this post, preferably by linking to it (http://www.livejournal.com/users/noweb4u/242771.html), and saying that you've read it and think this is something they should be focusing their time on fixing. I'm not the only one this occurs to, but I'm in a good position to ask others to take action. I'm now looking into other business phone and internet providers (try it now) since I don't want this to affect my business. Could you?