Paul Mischler's Journal

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Windows 7 running tally of issues and fixes:

Juice Receiver (podcast downloader):

Getting Juice to work in Windows 7 Wasn't the complete answer, I had to change download_dir to:
C:\\Users\username\\Documents\\My Received Podcasts

Vim:

Context menu for "Edit with Vim" for Windows 7.

Palm

I'm not even going to go into the hoops I had to jump through to get the Palm HotSynch to work with Windows 7. I'll just say that it involved a bluetooth dongle, seven or eight different screens of data, the sacrifice of a peep bunny, and other unmentionables.

Follow-up from Comcast regarding my problem with Ecobill

Hi Paul,

I have confirmed you will need to login with your Comcast.net email
address to access ecobill. If you wish to receive at another email
address, email forwarding, will need to be turned on. We are working to
add this feature at a later date.

Thank you,

George [Redacted]
Comcast Corporate Office

(Obviously, edited to remove the last name of the representative)

Thanks for the quick reply.

Didn't help me much, this was a service you used to offer.

Current Mood: annoyed

Many thanks to

horvendile for pointing me to this evening's minor rant.

The scene: Acme Markets in Medford, NJ.

A tired

misch is getting groceries on Tuesday night. He needs milk. Fark. It's $3.79 a gallon. But

misch is tired, and the thought of going to another store after his workout makes him all stabby.

misch sees the Lehigh Valley Dairy Fat Free milk on the shelf. In big letters, it reads "Lehigh Valley Fat Free Skim Milk" Right next to it on the shelf is the Acme brand milk, with a "Hey, this price is cheaper!" tag. It's also got a light blue label.

So,

misch grabbed the Acme brand milk with the blue label.

When

misch got home,

misch noticed he bought 2% milk.

misch was a little bit annoyed.

Okay, Acme. Pro tip: Either group your milk by brand, or group your milk by type. Don't group it by color, since your colors do not have the same meaning.

I'm not the only person to notice this. That certainly looks like Lehigh Valley milk on the left, and Acme brand milk in the back.

Lehigh Valley:
Red: Whole milk
Blue: Fat free

Acme Brand:
Red: Whole milk
Blue: 2%

Now, the picture is great, I like how their milk is laid out in the picture. Lehigh Valley is in the left bay, Acme is in the bays to the right. At the Medford Acme, the gallon milk containers are grouped by color. Lehigh Valley light blue next to the Acme brand 2%.

Perhaps they could fix this?

Thanks,

misch

Dear Comcast:

Thanks for making your "ecobill" systemp pretty useless to me. Up until my move this past September, I was happily using your ecobill to receive electronic notification of my Comcast bill. I was very pleased with the system, I could download my bill on demande, and print it out on my own if I wanted a hard copy.

Then I moved.

I had a new account set up at my new address.

Then I discovered a new annoyance: You cannot set up ecobill to use an e-mail address other than the comcast.net address associated with your account.

Since I never use an ISP provided e-mail address, I find this to be rather annoying. I really don't want to go through the hassle of setting up a new account in my mail reader to get one message a month. I don't want to forward all e-mails from the one account to my personal addresses. comcast.net is too vulnerable to dictionary attacks, and I don't want to deal with the spam.

I wasted an hour waiting for a customer service representative on Tuesday morning trying to figure out what my username and password for comcast.net are. The foreign representative couldn't help me, and I had to be transferred to a stateside supervisor who informed me that they couldn't change the e-mail address that the ecobill notice was sent to.

The last Ecobill e-mail notice I received was dated 9/21/09.

Bad service? That's Comcastic!

Current Mood: annoyed

via Ellis Paul's latest e-mail:

For the photo on the inside cover of the album... did Ellis Paul REALLY jump in a lake, with a guitar?

Answer here

There is also a code for a free download of the song "The Day After Everything Changed" included in the video.

also, via FatWallet:$10 gift card by mail when you change $40 in coins into a certificate at coinstar machines. From what I understand, Coinstar does not charge a fee when converting coins into a gift card for a number of different stores, so if you're going to be spending $40 anyway, it's a free $10 gift card for later. Stop by a bank and get $40 in coins.

Dear CourierPostOnline.com:

I am one of the people who read your RSS feed nearly daily.

For about the past two weeks, your RSS feed has been unusable. For some reason, your RSS feed puts the address "moc.go4f" at the front of the address. The moc.go4f.courierpostonline.com subdomain is not visible to the world.

Even worse, your current RSS Feed Listing returns 404 errors on all the listed RSS feeds. (Like this one)

I've tried to use your contact form for New Media Editor Mark Correa to let him know about the problem.

After clicking on "Send Message" on the form, I get this error message:

Initiating new verification scheme
  Key verification is enabled - initiating
    Validation key found - starting decode
    Validation key life time set to 15 minutes
    Invalid verification key provided!
  Key verification FAILED
Verification FAILED

Luckily a google search turned up a contact point for their New Media editor. Hopefully direct contact will work better.

We have blinds! We have a bed!

ningeek and I were very hands on DIY today. We put up the blinds, and discovered that we were about an inch too low in installing them. Instead of moving the bracket up, we cut the blinds down. They came out great, and now we have some privacy in the dining room.

It's actually starting to look like a home.

Now to figure out this "how to live together" thing.

Do you know that we are 8 days away from International Talk Like A Pirate Day?

Damn Verizon Wireless.

Recently I got a new phone ("new every 2" upgrade.)

I asked for them to transfer my contacts. The guy said he'd do it. He did it. Then he said "I also downloaded Verizon Navigator for you"

He told me it was some amount of money per month, and I can cancel at any time.

I never asked him to download it.

I was charged $9.99 for the data download.

I have a GPS. I don't need another one.

EDIT: Double screw up. The $9.99 data charge for the VZ Navigator was actually refunded. I missed that. The other data charge came from the Verizon Wireless store rep downloading music to my phone. How nice.

That charge has also been refunded, and my bill is back to the amount I expect it to be for my plan.

RIT isn't all bricks, classes, and hockey games...

There's music too.

Peter Mulvey on tour, September 9-26 "The Long Haul Tour 2009", Peter will be traveling by bike from show to show, an estimated 1100 miles, starting in Grand Rapids, Michigan and ending in Northampton, MA.

For

ningeek: linky, and this graph jam

And, for everyone else: Ring ring! Bananaphone!

Thanks, StumbleUpon!

Protip: The U-Haul dish saver kit doesn't actually include the box in the kit (despite the label insisting that it does)

If you buy one, be sure to ask for the box.

via Facebook: David Hein's musical "My Mother's Lesbian Jewish Wiccan Wedding" is going to be produced by Mirvish Productions and will be at the Panasonic Theatre on November 7th.

(Hint: Mirvish Productions is responsible for REALLY BIG productions in Toronto... like "The Phantom Of The Opera"... "Mamma Mia!"... "The Lion King", they have also developed other shows from the Fringe Festival. Mirvish Productions says:

"It doesn't often happen that a show leaps straight from its fringe beginnings and lands in the mainstream. The last time it happened was 10 years ago with a little show we discovered (also at the Toronto Fringe) called THE DROWSY CHAPERONE, which we helped to develop over a workshop and several productions. And everyone knows what eventually happened with that show."

via StumbleUpon: Virtual Shackles, webcomic. Not a lot of strips in its history, but it made me laugh.

via Kotaku - Gaming as a part of going through chemotherapy, and a reminder that Child's Play continues its mission of helping childrens hospitals throughout the country.

Carsie Blanton's new album Buoy is now available on CD Baby.

Special deal: Buy one copy at regular price, and extra copies are $9.60. This is good today (August 3rd) and tomorrow (August 4th).

1 dead, 15 injured after a storm and stage collapse at a country music festival in Edmonton, Alberta.

"Lightning, hail, thunder . . . it looked like a tornado," she said. "Debris was flying everywhere."

It keeps reminding me that Sunday afternoon at Falcon Ridge could have been far far far far far worse.

Budgiedome 2009 Sessions
Thanks everyone for coming up to the Budgiedome despite the rain.

Here is a list of everyone who played at The Budgiedome in our late-night sessions.

( Cut for length )
Cross-posted to:

falconridge

Budgiedome 2009 Schedule posted here

I listened to NPR's Hearing Voices on Sunday while I was driving from place to place. The theme of the episode was "Outer Space" in honor of today's 40th Anniversary of putting a man on the moon.

I was kinda surprised to hear a familar voice during the program... it was a recording of Christine Lavin performing her song "Planet X"

Also, flipping through Christine Lavin's press photo listing, I wonder if Gordon or I took this photo. Didn't Betsy Franco give one of us a camera to take a picture with?