Going out of town.

I’ll be visiting my mother for the next week to help her sort everything out since my father’s death.

I’ll post something when I get back.

Death in the Family.

Last night was informed by my cousin that my Father had died. I’m still a bit shocked by it all. There was so much planned and now things have changed. I have guilt and I don’t know why. I’m worried about my Mother, and how she’s taking it. I’m worried that if something happens to her how will I find out.

Maybe part of the reason I’m feeling guilty is that it was my decision to live in Europe away from my family. The consequences being that when there is a Family emergency there’s not much I can do. Some of the guilt probably comes from the fact that my Father hadn’t gotten a chance to see his youngest grandson, mostly because I was too lazy to get the pictures printed and sent in a timely manner. Also maybe I’m feeling guilty because I’m not there for my Mom, and wasn’t there for my Dad these past twelve years since I left home.

To have death hit so closely is really an eye opener. It makes me think about my own mortality and health. My father was 62 or would be this year. That is too young to die in this day of medical miracles. I know that my father wasn’t a “Healthy” man. He ate too much, he was overweight, he didn’t stay fit. Now I look at my own lifestyle and wonder if I’m healthy enough. I don’t want my children to have a surprise phone call in the middle of the night.

My wife and I are discussing our options on what we can or need to do in this case. I have no idea right now, I’m feeling kind of lost in it all.

Ultimate Santana is Ultimate Awesome!

I received a copy of “Ultimate Santana” from my wife for my birthday yesterday. I knew of one song on the album that I really liked (Into the Night with Chad Kroeger). I put it in once I got the chance and I was blown away. There is a lot of his older stuff on their like Black Magic Woman and Maria Maria (with the Fugees), and She’s Not There.

I always enjoyed Santana’s music but never really bought his albums, mostly because other music was in my head when I was at the shop. Now that I’ve got one of his albums I’m sorry I didn’t collect his other ones of the years (might have to go back and rectify that as money allows). The music was awesome, his guitar playing is superb (I’m a big fan of guitar players) as each song played I just had the urge to get up and move.

If you want a great album to sit back and listen to then get Ultimate Santana it is perfect.

Beware of Video Conversion Software that Says It Is Free.

Yeah so I learned a lesson today. You would figure a computer/internet savvy guy like me would know better but I really wanted to convert some video to the 3gp format that is used by my Nokia phone. Needless to say I was happy at first (at least I got the video I wanted converted done before this happened).

So I did a search for free 3gp conversion software and found an application at SmallVideoSoft.com. Downloaded their 3gp converter and installed it. I was able to run it right off the bat with no nag screen or anything (bells and whistles should have been going off in my head at this point). So I converted some video and closed the application and tried the video on my phone. The video transfered OK but I didn’t like the quality so I wanted to convert the files again with better video settings. So I started the application again. I got a nag screen asking me to register and that registration is free. However, I didn’t have the time to do it at that very moment. So I converted the files I wanted with better video settings. Strangely enough I couldn’t find a button or menu selection that would take me to the registration page. So I closed and the program and decided I would try again later.

So today I woke up and decided I had better register this application. I started it up and sure enough it gave me a nag screen. So I clicked the link that it had to send me to the registration web page. I registered and when I clicked the section to get my registration number it gave me this comment:

(The free registration has been closed for the huge website traffic.)

Give me a fucking break. If I want to register I have to pay (the good things in life are not free). What gets me the most is that they try to make it look like that they HAD to stop free registration like they ever really had a free registration. So I figured I would just click on the Later button and sure enough when I did the application closed and said it wouldn’t run until I registered.

So what they didn’t isn’t really illegal but it is really annoying and I refuse to do business with a company that doesn’t come right out and say “Hey our app will let you do some video conversion for about 10 or so videos and then you have to pay to do more.” or they could say “This is a trial version and it is only good for 24 hours.” But to pretend that their software is completely free and then try the old switcharoo afterwards really pisses me off.

So now I’m weighing my options:

• Crack their app (Completely illegal but probably not so difficult, nope I won’t be doing that. Got too much to lose).
• Buy their software (Nope I don’t do business with companies that play tricks on potential buyers, at least if they aren’t smart enough not to get caught.)
• Find out the 3GP requirements and build my own converter then offer it on the net completely free and really piss off these companies that charge for the software. (quite a possibility once I’ve finished off a few projects).

The Canadian Foreign Minister is a Coward.

I was shocked but also happy to see earlier this month that the United States (my home country) as added to Canada’s list of countries that torture. I was further shocked and surprised when Canada decided to back track from this statement. Now the Foreign Minister is apologizing for the “Mistake” of putting the US on the list. Even though recently the US National Intelligence Chief Mike McConnell actually said that he would consider waterboarding as torture. So I’m gathering that the Canadian FM is a coward. He changes his statement when the big bully on the block complains that Canada is pointing the finger at its wrong doing.

Personally I’m sick of what the current US Government is doing under the name of protecting our citizens. I’m surprised that the “Holier Than Thou” President we have in office doesn’t start claiming that it is written in the bible that he should torture for information. Other western nations have a responsibility to the rest of the world to stand up to the United States and keep them in line. It would be a good bet to say if the shoe were on the other foot and the US Government thought it could get something out of it they would point their finger at a close neighbor.

My message to Canada and other nations: DON’T BE A COWARD! DON’T LET THE UNITED STATES DICTATE YOUR NATIONAL OR INTERNATIONAL POLICY. TELL THE UNITED STATES IT IS ABOUT TIME THAT THEY TOE THE FUCKING LINE!!!

Cox Communications Inc. Obviously Doesn’t Care About Abuse of Their Network!

So today I finally got fed up with the all the spam bots that have been appearing on my forum and started going through and contacting the ISP to have them blocked as well as doing the blocking locally.  Actually I don’t have that many bots visiting but there are enough and they like to try to do this type of posting http://www.mysite.com/index.php?topic=http://somepornsite.com/lookatme?. Which of course doesn’t work on my website but adds crap into my error log. I’ve never really heard of Error Log spamming but apparently it is happening quite often.

Now normally when I contact an ISP I find under ARIN or some other Who Is type site the email address for abuse reporting. However when I looked up Cox Communications because of this IP 68.103.150.86 I find that they have no way of reporting abuse on their network. I even went to their website and still found nothing. Honestly, they really need to do something about this. I’m actually tempted to ban the entire COX network from my site. I might do it still if the number of bots on their network increases.

Persian Gulf – Arabic Gulf What’s so Damned Important About a Name?

Since my company does a lot of work in THE Gulf region (you know the one where the US is always meddling in), I wanted to make sure I got the names correct of the countries that we do most of our business with. So I did a search for the Arabic Gulf since that is what most of the countries on the Arabic Peninsula call it and I find this mock 404 page. Which basically says that the Arabic Gulf doesn’t exist and that you should try looking for the Persian Gulf, as well as suggesting that you really need to read history books. There is also a link to a site called Legofish (which makes me wonder if a certain toy company in Denmark will be very happy to know that this guy uses their trademark), which apparently discusses that the mock 404 page was created as a Google Bomb because Iranian bloggers weren’t happy with National Geographic using the name Arabic Gulf instead of Persian Gulf. So it makes me wonder what is so damned important about a name?

Here’s my reasoning on this and not in any particular order:

1. Everyone on the other side of this body of water usually prefer to refer to it as the Arabic Gulf.
2. Although at one time the Persians were a very powerful people in the area around this body of water, how many people living in the area are still Persian.
3. If my history is correct the Persians were led by the Shah who was ousted when the people of Iran decided to follow the religion of the Arabic people.

Since no one can really decide which is the proper name for this body of water I have a suggestion that should please everyone. How about we call it the “Black Gold Gulf” or “Oil Gulf” or “Gulf of Oil Tankers”.

Diskeeper to Fix Exchange Rate Problem.

So if you actually read my post about Diskeeper’s European website not having accurate exchange rates. So I got an email today about it from their Public Relations Department with an apology as well as a little surpise:

Diskeeper Corporation Has No Concept of Exchange Rates!

Ok this irks the hell out of me.

In the past I’ve used the trial version of Diskeeper and was really happy with how well it kept my hard drive in order. However, I wasn’t sure if I really needed it so after the trial I removed it from my computer.

Fast forward to today when I realized that my hard drive is more fragmented than china plates dropped from the Empire State Building. So I decided maybe I should give another check on the costs for buying a license for Diskeeper since I was pretty happy with it. So I look their website up and they offer a European website for buying their product, and since I live in Europe I figured I should look their. The first thing came up was the British costs for the software which for a single home license was 28.56 British Pounds which converts to about $56.13. Ok but I don’t live in England but in Germany so I click on the German flag and get the price there. The price in Euros is 40.91 which converts to approximately $60.12. Wow so it costs about 4 dollars more to buy it in Germany than in England. So out of curiosity I decided to look at the original United States site where the price for a full version cost $29.95!

WTF, FTW Have the people at Diskeeper Corporation ever heard of a conversion rate? Why are we in Europe paying approximately 1.5 to 2 times more than the United States? Do they think people are really that stupid? Is it any wonder why people pirate software like this when they add such a high markup on it?

Of course nothing would stop me from actually buying the software from the US Site where with the exchange rate it would charge my credit card for 20.37 Euros which is much better than the rate they are offering as mentioned above.

I’m going to attempt to contact the company to see what they think about this problem. I would like to hear how they justify charging so much just because people live outside the United States! I’ll keep you posted.

P.S. So you can see the pricing yourself here are the websites that I’m referring to in this post:
Diskeeper Corporation US
Diskeeper Corporation Europe

Really Unhappy Teen Looses Car Because Booze Found Inside.

He didn’t loose it because the police found it either. Worse he got caught by his Mom. So she’s sold the car. Love the way she wrote the ad in the newspaper too.

OLDS 1999 Intrigue. Totally uncool parents who obviously don’t love teenage son, selling his car. Only driven for three weeks before snoopy mom who needs to get a life found booze under front seat. $3,700/offer. Call meanest mom on the planet.

Why can’t more parents be this responsible.

Article Here