The other day I was thinking how quickly this year has gone. I mean, I have sworn that Halloween was like a week or two ago. Christmas will be here before I know it. Next thing you know, Christmas is here and we are running around like chickens with our heads cut off. And then there are the times when we plan too far ahead and buy a gift MONTHS ahead of Christmas...only to forget about it when Christmas time rolls around. Don't worry though, we "find" it in January. Hahaha! But luckily we did something a bit different this year. Meg & I sat down and worked on the family Christmas list BEFORE we went shopping. The result? It was the best "black Friday" shopping experience ever. Did we get everything we needed? Nope. But it went smoothly. I guess it does pay to plan ahead sometimes. =)

I like the new google chrome. It's different. It's fast. Really fast. But up until now I would not use it. Why? Because Google couldn't quite get the scroll wheel to work. If you look online you will see hundreds of sites talking about how it doesn't work and that some have gotten it to work through some trickery. Well I was finally able to work my own magic on the IBM / Lenovo hardware - and it works. Through various websites that offer tips on how to overcome this very annoying problem in Chrome, the basics is this... You need to upgrade the mouse driver's and add an exception to the application Chrome.

Here's how you do it for an IBM / Lenovo mouse...

1. Go get ScrollPoint (available here). Most websites that the Microsoft IntelliMouse software will work. Well, it won't...unless you have a MS mouse. I tried for an hour to get it to work. It just doesn't.

2. Once you have the ScrollPoint installed, open up the mouse properties. START -> CONTROL PANEL -> SETTINGS -> MOUSE

3. Click on the "wheel" tab (btw, you'll notice you have a fancy mouse setup now).

4. At the top of that dialog, make sure universal scrolling is selected.

5. Click on "Exceptions". Another dialog will appear. Click "Add" & add Google Chrome to the list. You will need to know the full path to where Google Chrome is installed.

Hope this information will be useful to somebody being plagued with this same situation...

I'm not going to get into WHY I am paying Verizon for a service that I was supposed to get free (see previous post). But now I am trying to get the bill cleared off of my name. See I decided to pay the bill. I scheduled it with my bank. My bank transferred the money. Verizon received my money. My account was debited. My bill, although, has not been credited. I've called twice in a week and a half (though the 2nd person seemed genuinely interested in seeing my problem resolved). They have no idea where the money went to when they received it.

All I know is that I'm out of $60 and Verizon still wants their money. The kicker is that Verizon wants proof that I paid it. Wish I could but since Verizon is connected electronically with banks, they took the money as an electronic transfer - no paper. None. Does that phase Verizon? Nope. They still want to be paid. I've had calls from them asking me to call them about an "urgent" matter. Yeah. Right. I'll get riiiiiight back to you. About as urgent as a Verizon employee to find out where my money went to.

UPDATE: I just called today, Thursday, 6-Nov-2008. It seems they finally figured out where my money went to & credited my account. After talking with the rep, she told me it was credited sometime in the afternoon on 29-Oct-2008. What a coincidence - I had just logged my 2nd complaint with them that morning. Still, I received no word from their "crack" team of investigators. Verizon is just terrible, in my opinion. UGH

So I recently purchased a Dell laptop that came with an embedded wireless broadband modem in it (READ: stripped down cell phone). It also came with a 7-day free trial. So a few weeks back, I decided I would give it a spin. Well I tried for several days to get the thing activated and I never could get it. So I broke down and called the number that the software told me to call. I spent a good 20 minutes with Verizon's customer service getting the service established. In the end I was out of 20 minutes on my cell phone and still no service.

Surely this can't be that hard to do, right? Well I tried the next day and I explained to the Verizon rep all the stuff that the previous guys did. I explained to them that I had a 7 day trial with Dell. The rep told me they had a better deal than Dell's. They had a 30 day trial and if I didn't like to call back and cancel. Well this rep was good, because she was able to do what the others couldn't....get my laptop setup. I was pretty excited.

Now forward to the almost present time (last Friday, 5-Sep-2008). After evaluating their service, it was just downright too expensive for what I used it for (mostly on the weekends and only IF I was out with my laptop). So I called and cancelled. The kind (read with sarcasm) rep told me that she would be happy to cancel my service. And since I called within 30 days, she'd be happy to credit my account $175 since I'm terminating my contract early (how nice of her). She would also credit my account for $35 for the activation fee (my will the acts of kindness stop???). The remaining bill, including taxes, would be my responsibility to pay (obviously, I've reached the end).

I went round and round with her about the idea behind a 30 day trial. She offered me to speak with her supervisor so that he could explain any part of our conversation. I even asked her point blank about the possibility of the supervisor making any bit of difference. Her response was "not likely". Nice. She said that since I was covered by the Worry-Free Guarantee, I would not have to pay activation or the early termination fee. And here I was worried that I would have to pay this overinflated price for internet - oh wait - I do. It's $60 for about 4 days worth of use...

I really thought I was going to get a call from my son's school yesterday. Why do you ask? Because I punched him. And he was telling everyone about it.

YOU PUNCHED HIM?!?

Well not exactly. We were playing around in the car on Monday (Labor Day). He was hitting my arm and leg. So I did my usual trick of putting my fist next to face while he is turned away. I then call his name and HIS FACE hits my FIST. See?! That seems innocent enough, right? How was I supposed to know his tooth would be knocked out.

WHAT?! HIS TOOTH WAS KNOCKED OUT?!?

To tell ya the truth, that tooth was ready - and it was asking for it!!! And besides this was a pretty good week for Tim because he had already lost two others earlier in the week - why stop now, right??? So not only does he get to tell everyone at school that I punched him (thanks Tim!) but he gets all this money from the tooth fairy.

Perhaps he can bail me out of jail with some of that "tooth" money.

=)

Okay so twitter has been down for a few hours... doesn't it know that I have valuable (not really) information to share to my "followers"???? As I was waiting for their service to come back online just in time to save the world -- and my productivity...or lack thereof. I remembered a while back that they had a "status" page. So I pondered (but not for very long) if the Twitter-Gods knew that their service was down. So I hopped on over to their Twitter Status Page. Apparently for the last couple of hours they have known it's down. They've even posted updates saying that it should be back up... so then why is my twhirl down?! HMMMM?!

Oh and did you notice that the status home page of twitter is hosted by tumblr.com

Oh well................. back to work.

So FF3 is better in a lot of ways than FF2. Better memory handling and error recovery (because it does crash a bit more than FF2 - haha!). But one thing that really bothers me is that a bunch of my addons are not supported under FF3. The biggest one that I miss is TinyURL Creator (I will call it TUC for short). How hard could it be to "trick" FF3 to run this this addon? Well...actually... Not too hard. Here's how!

DISCLAIMER: I will not be held responsible for any damage that may come to you or your computer or anyone else and their computer. You mess with your setup and it stops working, don't come to me. Please read all the sources that I have attached at the bottom of this post. Read them and make sure you understand what you are doing. Thanks! =)

1. Obtain TUC - Get a copy of the TinyURL.xpi file. If you don't want to modify the file yourself, there is a link here and at the bottom that you can get a modified XPI file. The XPI file is really a ZIP file that you can drop into WinZip or any other zip application. The ONLY file that is modified is the RDF file....the JAR file is not touched. If you download the modified XPI file, then go to step #3. Otherwise, get cracking on step #2. =)




2. Modify RDF file - Open the XPI file with a zip application. Inside the zip file is an RDF file. The RDF file contains what versions of FF can run TUC. I modified the 2.0.0.* setting to be 3.0.0.*. This should be sufficient until Jeremy (the author) can update the application. Update the XPI/ZIP file with the new RDF file. Rename .zip back to .xpi (if necessary).




3. "Hack" FF3 - Modify FF3 so it doesn't check your addons for update security. To do this, open FF3 and enter about:config in your address bar. Read the disclaimer that the FF3 will give you. If you agree to continue and disregard all safety of your machine, then continue reading my instructions. You will more than likely not have an extensions.checkUpdateSecurity setting, but feel free to check. If you do have it, set it to false. If you don't, right click on the page and select New->boolean. The preference name will be extensions.checkUpdateSecurity -- then press ENTER. Find the newly created entry and make sure it is set to false




4. Install modified XPI - Open up the addons dialog Tools->Addons. Drag the modified TinyURL.xpi from your desktop onto the addons dialog.




5. Install and enjoy!

Sources

TUC with modified RDF file for FF3

Download here (opens in new window)

TinyURL Creator author's website (Jeremy Gillick)

http://mozmonkey.com/

TinyURL Addon Homepage

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/126

TinyURL.xpi (version 1.0.4; current as of this writing)

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/downloads/file/539/tinyurl_creator-1.0.4-fx+mz.xpi

HOWTO on fixing addons

http://kb.mozillazine.org/Unable_to_install_themes_or_extensions_-_Firefox

Description of how to fix update security errors

http://kb.mozillazine.org/Extensions.checkUpdateSecurity

Okay so I've been testing out Woopra analytics program. My first impression was "It's pretty". It has a lot of "visual" appeal. It's like google analytics, but nice graphics. After using it for the last couple of weeks, I feel that it is comparable to the google anaytics product. The main difference I see is that Woopra has "live" stats. With Google's product, you have to wait for the data to received and processed in batch. With Woopra's, you can see someone actually a user on your site AND chat with them if needed.

So you want to try it out? Go on over to Woopra and sign up for their beta. Once you have created your account, you need to ask the gods above (Woopra Rep) if you can monitor your website. I'm assuming this has something to do with capacity issues on their end, but you'd think once you have an account created, you'd be able to add a website without a Woopra rep. A domain can be monitored automatically if you have an invite -- which I don't have.

In conclusion, I think Woopra is great if you have a person who is specifically hired to watch the incoming users on a website. There is a "neato" factor that you can watch it in real-time. But is there really a need? Not really. But it's still pretty cool......

The wife just got back from Chicago recently (see previous post) and I really want to go on vacation. Either Chicago or Las Vegas or somewhere with some activities. The wife wants to do the eastern border states. I wanted a guys weekend, but then I got a brochure from my lawyer yesterday (Yes, I have a lawyer - that sounds weird saying that!) stating that they are having a customer appreciation cruises. One is in late October 2008 and the other is in February 2009. And it just pretty much hit me....

F*ck Chicago! I've been there and done that.

Piss on Vegas - see one casino, you've seen them all.

I have been on a cruise, but not to these destinations that are being offered.

I guess this means I need to get my passport. Hopefully the long waits are gone. =)

My wife, Meg, went to Chicago this weekend with her girlfriends. It was for a much needed break from everyday life (if that's even possible). She left on a Wednesday and she will return on Mother's day. Regardless of who does what in a household, you can definitely tell the difference when one half of the parental unit is missing. It seems to take longer no matter what you are doing. While I hope she is enjoying her time "off" (can that be really done?!?), I really wish she would hurry and get home.