Probably not the most techy news I have done here but I got a new job working for a company called “HiTech” Fire detection.

A fire alarm and sprinkler company from out in Houston area. The guys here are great and very relaxed. Kinda strange to me because I have never been this comfortable in a work environment.

Well forget all the intros let’s get to the bone. I seem to have been assigned a task of building a website. See this guy Eein that I am working with built a site straight from css and tables and stuff which of course i think is fine and runs circles around the current site . But the owner saw me messing around with some flash ap and just jacking around with my desktop and a web template . Now see, I didn’t really want the task of building the site, simply because if it looks lame to me I will rebuild it , and rebuild it and it will never be finished. I have scrapped it like five times now already.

Well if a site is what they want then a site is what they get. You see though, I like the site that Eein built. It just looks better and is more sound and can be easily updated when needed, and it can be crawled at any time by any search bot. The owners of the site want a flash intro and a flash ap on the page , a flash ap that I really do not want to get buried in. They want a room to navigate in with a fire extinguisher and a sprinkler and a horn strobe and a lighted exit sign above the door in the back. I am sure I can do it, but man I would hate to have to edit it. I can edit it but dang .

You guys tell me what looks better. I really like Eein’s site I have said that from the start and am really against a bloated flash site. The current site is done in mostly Iframes and I really cannot see a bot crawling that which really is not a helpfull thing, ya know? See I know that they are going to be expanding to Austin Dallas and San Antonio real soon, like before the end of 2008. They surely will be wanting an update to the site telling people in those areas that it would not take long for us to get our guys on the site. Now that is becoming bigger work. I am still learning the ropes of the job and if I spend all my time on the clock building a site, when my evaluation period ends and I don’t know anything……. dude I will be screwed.

Looking at hours of photoshop and adobe flash cs3 man,!!!!

The dell machine and adobe flash cs3 and if you could zoom way in, you would see photoshop somewhere in the taskbar. This sad little machine is a trooper though, it is doing all that with only 512 mb ram, minimum for flash install. The 3.2g pentium is the life saver there though.

looks like houston.com has them in the forefront

I ordered a cell phone from Wal-Mart because the advertisement showed that if I signed a contract i would get the phone plus $100. That is what it would take to get me to drop my current carrier, because of the fees they jam you with when you close an account, and all that.

Okay, great deal, right? I mean it isn’t the best phone on the market and the color is a little jacked but hell, I get 100 back. Fine. and they have it in stock. I can get it in a couple days.

Okay, I see they added the tax to the end like they said they would. but now the thing is out of stock.

After all was said and done, I got charged $100 from my checking account and after I got charged from my bank account on something that was supposed to be free + 100 more back. The damn thing is out of stock. Okay, If I am paying $100 up front then since I am supposed to “make $100″ then I should get $200 cash back because $100 is outta my pocket for picking basic stuff.

Now the funny part is, you have to print out a pdf for your mail in rebate. I mean come on guys . You mean to tell me they can’t spit out the cash it takes to ship the rebates with the dang phone? wtf!

when I went back to the site after the guy from the complaint line told me to look,it had changed to say something along the lines of how it ends today and had a link that said “only with family share plans” what kinda shit is that?

December25

december 26th

Just a heads up you guys.

Have you ever noticed that the same people keep getting the highest diggs?

Have you wondered why? or how they always do? have you wondered why your submissions never even get noticed? I know that I have. On a few occasions I have submitted stuff beforeanyone else and only got like one digg, then flamed to hell and noticed that someone else submitted the same story after me and pulled well over 1000 diggs. Why is that? Do you do follow up later to see what is going on?

See I go to the photos sections.

And, well, I notice something. That only certain people get butt loads of diggs. Is it that people will only digg something from someone if they see they already have a bunch of diggs? is it that people will only digg something if they know that everyone else already thinks it is cool? I mean is that what it takes to be cooler? is to be cool already?

I just wonder if this is a simple advertisement scam. I mean not all of it has to be a direct advertisement, but I would bet that more than 90% are in some shape or form, just a scam to advertise either the content directly mentioned in the post, or something within the page that is linked from the digg post. If a post is dugg 2000+ times, do you know everyone that has dugg that post? do any of the names look familiar? Have you read the responses in there? Are the posts automated? What percentage of the voted actually posts?

I am sure we have all come into this situation, well I know I have at least five times in the past ten years.

The current girlfriend walks in while you are booting up the game that you have been wanting to play all week. This is your first day off in a week and you have been wanting to play this game, you have set today aside for this game. The girlfriend when she walks in says “come on let’s go I have to buy some lotion for my mom and my sister and I have to go pay my cell phone bill and I was hoping we could go have lunch at Outback”. You tell her in your whiny boyfriend voice ” but I wanna play a game”. You see the vein shoot up in her forehead because some clown she used to date blah blah blah or her brother blah blah blah. Now mind you I have broken up with at least four girls because of this situation and am about to do it again.

She tells you that what you are doing is unproductive and what she wants to do is actually productive. You have no response that would keep your relationship good, but many that would piss her off pretty bad. So you say nothing and hit the pause button while your brain scrambles to make her see what you want her to see. Does not matter she will not understand. You are truly with the wrong person.

Here, watch this.

Well go with the flow. Have fun, good luck.

hfgl

Logging into my myspace account today I saw an advertisement that made me kinda have a shock of reality.

I looked at the advertisement , even though it is not like me to do this, I clicked the advertisement , it was grand theft auto direct to hard drive.

here

Looks liek games direct to your hard drive, My question is, do you have to use daemon tools to spin up the iso? (if you use anything  for your iso’s you clearly are a newb). Or does this come in an exe file that uses someone’s game crack?. Do you have to pay with credit card and watch your bank account/checking account for suspiciouse activity for the next year or so ?

I really have no idea because I am not balzy enough to do it. I think the day I make that step is the day I decide I will make one last purchase with current checking account before I close it. I am in no way phoebic, I am wise.

So if you are doing something similar, tell me how it whent.

I really think that if video game companies really wanted to make any money off of illegal downloads and such, they would make their own exe cracks  and sell them with some sort serial key, and then add a small fee if the gamer wants a cover. Something like “the plus pack” means they get the key and and cracked exe and a week later they get a blank cd and a full blown game case in the mail.

Hell I dunno  I just think these people could make money off of the people ripping them off, if they would just offer faster bandwidth than p2p, and more features.

Tags: games, pc, action, racing, gta, grand theft auto, vice city, san andreas, gtaiii, gta3, p2p, torrent, new games, serial keys

I just got noticed that my web host and domain host and storage host 50 megs.com finally got someone creative on their server’s team.

What it seems they have done is allow me 1 gig of storage for quick file sharing of files up to 10 megs each. I am not certain as to if it will cost me from my monthly bandwidth, if that is the case then , BLAH.. heck I could do it anyway with out. but if it does not reflect upon my monthly bandwidth limit, then it is a great deal.

Here is what it looks like

I have yet to have found a site that accepts the code or can use it in any shape or form, so it is kinda useless as of right now. That is of course as a widget it is useless on networks. I may try it on facebook and myspace, but as of right now, it is a server so I can get work stuff to and from home. Well actually I have nothing on it but I can see a need for it. **added ** works well on myspace, kinda…. but pops out all clumsy and covers some of my information myspace.com/truxter **added**

I will probably comment at the end of the month about how much bandwidth it drains from my web hosting service.

ok see for yourself that the uploads and downloads are fricken raging fast. This has to be the fastest way to share a small file.

Someone comment on this . please? i wanna know if you see it, or even if you see it useful.

Tags: bandwdith, code, file share, file sharing, html, leeche, p2p, server, swap, trade, widget

I signed up to Washington mutual after a friend of mine suggested I give the online regestration a try. I was really impressed with how easy it was to set up my account. My friend did not have a current back account for some reason or another so he had to go to a wamu in person and do his first deposit in person. I on the other hand have an account at another bank and it was a snap to use routing numbers blah blah yadda, and transfer funds to the wamu account. If I would have used a credit card, the least I could have transfered would have been $50. Since this is something I am “trying out” I do not want to flop around fifty freakin bucks. Ya know? really that is no issue at all, I completely (almost) understand .

So I go to my local Washington mutual and swing by to set up my atm card and deposit a little bit of money into my checking account, I did have a couple bills to pay and they where kinda on my way so I was going to just make a few rounds and get some stuff done. I handed the little blinky eyed dude my check and he suddenly bloated up on my and before I could say how much I wanted deposited and how much cash I needed he informed me they would be hanging on to my check for a week to verify that it is a legit check. I tell him and assure him that it is not a personal and point the difference… lol that ticked him off.

Well after a little bit of huffing we decided it would be in my best interest if I just went to my current bank and cash my check there and come back to wamu deposit what ever I want to, in cash. Ok he decided he was not going to help me and I suggested that I come back with cash for his ghetto bank.

What ever.

So that is what I did. I put a little in the free online checking and a little in the free online savings.

Now we all have seen teh commercials with a skinny dude and the butt load of snotty bankers who want to charge atm fees and check fees and all of that, right ?

Well now the story gets really good. I decide to go a month or so and not touch that account I was already ticked off pretty good. Before I leave work one I look into my account information at an atm… Just a balance inquiry, not a withdrawal. Should be no fees if there are NO atm fees. . hmmm $2 less than what I put into my account, why is this like this on my statement ?

I go home and check my balance and low and behold, Tadda, washington mutual charged me for a balance inquiry. How do I know this? well I use that same atm who is through citibank, and not through my other bank, well I have used that atm for years on my other bank never a fee for just a balance inquiry, hell one of my friends from work uses wells Fargo and is never charged a fee. So I call Washington utual and see what the deal was, I call my wamu . The guy on the other end informs me he is not capable of helping me and that I need to call the help desk for the online. ok I call the 1800 or 188 number. after going through this endless circle of pressing one for english and two to speak to a human and getting forced into a f.a.q. section repeatedly I finally talk to a human, the lady on the other end tells me that it was the atm carrier that charged the fee.. nfw! I explain to her that I do and did my research before I do and did anything.. Ever. and she responds with ” you must be wrong” So I ask her for email address so I can send her a copy of my bank statement from the other bank. She told me that would not be necessary and I asked her “with that kind of response you do not care how right or wrong you might be, you are just certain that you are correct because you are saying what you are supposed to”. lol, she flipped out. I asked her if she was supposed to go ” all robot with pride” on me lol and she responded with “you’re an idiot’ and hung up on me. Ok maybe that was overboard of me but I was frustrated with thier whole set up.

I call my buddy back and begin to tell him about the way I got charge an inquiry fee, I got all the way up to “hey man I went to check my balance” and he jumped all over the conversation with “I know man I checked mine and got charged 14.95 to look at my balance”

Now why in the blue hell did they charge him $14.95 and me $2 ? well what ever.

Yes the fee carried over and is still there , yes it has been longer than a month and no they did not refund it after the statement and balance was complete. No there where no strange circumstances that would leave them a reason to penalize me or my friend for any activity. If I was suposed to do a chicken dance or bite the head off a bat or something I was not informed of this . I just know that the commercials are false and missleading.

Watch yourself on the fees.

The savings account is rocking though, I like the way you can just chunk your change in there and all is good in the world. that part is smooth and pretty. so if you get an account there , go for , may as well sign up for the savings, the interest is better than most bank’s c.d. accounts and does not penalize you for changing by withdrawal or deposits.

I have no idea how well they are with building business credit, business bank account, business checking account, business credit card , business money market. So good luck with that.

it’s kinda cool.

GLHF!

I did just talk to a representitive and she explaine dthat it is free checking with no atm fees….. for using atm at a wamu bank..

doesn’t every bank do that for you?

Tags: account, bank, bank account, bank checking account, chase credit card, checking account, checking bank account, citi, fee, helpdesk, interest, monthly interest, savings account, service, statement, wamu, online bank account, online cd, online credit card, online credit card processing, online money, market, online payment processing, online saving, online shopping

I was using Xandros 3.4 for over a year. I purchased my disk from Fry’s electronics for like $29.

Well I saw in all of the help forums for modding of Xandros desktops and boot screens tons of help but it was all for 4.0 so I installed 4.0 . It really looks good and comes with a blue launch button as opposed to the default red I had to use with v3.4 . Quite nice. I changed the start button to a modified that I found through the links of the Xandros forum. with 3.4 when you changed the launch button you kept getting a notice to upgrade service pack, even if you already have. When you do the service pack upgrade it changes your launch button back to default. but with 4.0 , no you do not get forced into the change. Nice addon I like this.

When I installed wine again, not a hiccup one. Not one issue. It went great. My Grand Theft Auto Vice City and San Andreas both play nicely and my III does not freeze up on the video configuration like it did with 3.4.

I am happy with 4.0 it was a very good move.

I was there at Fry’s to actually by a new motherboard and nvidia video card so I could prepare myself for Vista. Thank god I did not get into that mess. Xandros is really good. I did of course remove my Ubuntu partition. Ubuntu is not pleasant at all. Even though Ubuntu is Debian just like Xandros; it does not come close in comparison to Xandros with features. I am satisfied and I hope this helped you decide what you will do to you computer.

enjoy.

We have heard about EA bidding for Rockstar Games and Microsoft bidding as well.

What I have heard today is that Sierra is being bought out by Blizzard games. Sierra is the maker of most Blizzard expansions anyhow, and will just take on the Blizzard name. Sierra also made expansions to many first person shooters. Let’s see what happens in the future.

In the back of my mind I see it being cool to mix two companies but somehow the stupid section is making the most sense. “Hey, I will be limited in choices” if all gaming companies merged into one.