Year: 2005

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Finally, a local bank.

imageAfter seven years I finally switched to a local bank. TD Waterhouse was good to me but recently I ran into a few glitches that made it time to switch. One of those glitches was a 10 day wait for a deposit of $678 to post. Another thing I didn’t like was their on-line banking. When looking at transactions they only say something like: Visa 00562432353543 – $20.00.

That doesn’t tell me anything. Most banks websites convert the transaction to the exact location where the money was spent. Like Starbucks, Target, Exxon etc. including the address. I asked several times why TD Waterhouse didn’t incorporate this over the last couple of years and I never got an answer. Worst of all was I had to mail in deposits because there are no local branches in NC. Oh well, Bank of America has the best on-line banking and the account is completly free. Bye, bye TD Waterhouse.

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Williamsburg, VA in February

imageAmy and I spent last weekend in Williamsburg. It was actually pretty cool because I found out a lot of things about how Virginia played into the revolution. Here’s a couple of interesting things about the area:

  • The Virgina Declaration of Rights preceded the Bill of Rights after the signing of the Constitution.
  • imageThe Virginia colonies were the first to declared independence from Britain at the Fifth Virginia convention and told the Virginia delegates to propose total colonial independence before the Continental Congress in Boston.
  • Thomas Jefferson attended the College of William and Mary here which still has the oldest building of higher education in North America standing at it’s entrance.

    • imageBasically Virginia always revolted first from the Williamsburg Capital. Therefore they had a large armory where the powder kegs to the right were stored.

    Amy wasn’t happy that I didn’t take her on a ride in a horse drawn carriage. image

    Instead I took her on a tour of North America’s first insane asylum now called the DeWitt Wallace Public Hospital. Nice accomodations.image

    That’s when she had me put in the stock for the rest of the day.

    So I was right in the middle of Duke of Gloucester St. ready for everyone to throw rotten cabbage at me.

    Turns out that one week ago I was right where the revolution really started and tomorrow I’m leaving for Charleston where it all ended.image

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    Backup Exec V9.1

    image Today I went into grunt mode, I had to upgrade Dillon’s Veritas Backup Exec to Version 9.1 build 4691. I ran into a common problem where all the jobs want to go into a “queued” status instead of running. Seems to be the result of BEDB database corruption as far as I can determine. Hopefully this upgrade will help otherwise I may have to get Veritas involved.

    Also, this morning I had to detach and re-attach a production database for our Business Objects reporting website “Infoview”. The drive that the database and it’s corresponding log file sits on were full. I simply did a sp_detach_db in query analyzer, deleted the corresponding log file and reattached the database so that a new, empty log file would be created. Note to self: Remember to rebuild the full text catalog for the Dillon Custom Application any time the Dillon database on DSCSQL1 is detached, otherwise the “filter” in the Telemarketing module will not work. – If I type it, I won’t forget it.

    Sorry ’bout the boring techno entry – look for pics of our trip to Williamsburg shortly!

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    2001 F150 Supercab

    imageHere’s the insurance settlement for the Mustang. I’m starting out with 34,545 miles on the ODO (I don’t buy new cars – I despise the immediate depreciation). I found this and several trucks on autotrader.com. Then I started calling around and emailing the dealers. I finally bought this one at University Ford in Durham. They were extremely easy to work with. From the time I got to the dealership until the time I left with the truck was less than 2 hours.

    imageI’m pretty happy with the deal I got including an extended 3 year 36K mile warrenty and gap insurance for an extra $495.00. I never have to worry about the possibility of being upside down in an insurance settlement again. Only bad thing is that it already needs an oil change and I just drove it off the lot a week ago. Oh well, that’s nothing compared to how I’ve been screwed on ebay deals recently.

    The Coolscan scanner is proving to be bear to install under XP because of the SCSI drivers. And I won a used Minolta X370 from some guy for $27.00 and he shipped me an old Maxxum 3000i with a broken lens instead. I’m trying to stay civil to get it resolved because I think it’s pointless to argue with people via email.

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    Sony-Ericson T237

    Sony-Ericson T237Update 02-20-05: I cancelled this order with Cingular. I’ll be staying with Alltel and my cell number will remain the same.

    I just ordered (yet another) new cell phone and I haven’t even told my wife yet. The good thing is that it was only $29.95 and no shipping or sales tax. It’s not the worlds greatest phone but it should work for my purposes and I’ve heard that Cingular has decent coverage in North Raleigh. We’ll see. It has an optional camera phone that goes with it for $44.00 if I feel like I need it later.

    Look for pics of my new truck tomorrow. It’s sad but I haven’t been feeling well enough lately to even go to the driveway to take the photos. I’m also going to hook up the Nikon Coolscan that finally arrived a few days ago so I can start scanning slides. I know stomach flu wreaks havoc on most people but try it with Crohn’s. It will probably take until this time next month before I completely recover. I feel pretty slack about my entries. Obviously I’ve had a lot to blog about lately, I just haven’t made the time to do it.

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    What a #*@%!! week.

    Two new employees started in the IT Dept. at Dillon Supply – 1 permanent, 1 contractor. That was enough to keep me slammed at work with everything else going on: Telecommunications carrier meetings (MPLS or Frame?), server builds, incompatible KVM switches, what else?…too much to mention.

    imageAmy didn’t get her car back until Friday. Good news: it looks and drives better than before she crashed it. Bad news: Last Monday she got rear-ended in my Mustang by a Ford F-250. No competition, the Mustang’s totaled. I got enough in the insurance settlement to take care of the loan. Now I’ve got to find something to drive. Probably a truck.image

    For now I’m driving a 2005 F-150 until Wednesday courtesy of Travelers Insurance and Enterprise. It’s a beast on the road but surprisingly it’s grown on me and the Santa Fe feels really small now. I may have to stick with a full size pickup. I just don’t know what flavor: F-150, Silverado, Dodge RAM?

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    Tax Time. e-file!

    Our Federal returns have been accepted and are being processed, the State takes 5-7 days to “accept” the electronic return. State an Fed combined we’ll get just enough back to cover Amy’s fall tuition and books. I used Turbo Tax for the web. I highly recommend it. It was easy and fast.

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    Nikon Coolscan III LS-30

    Now I’m ready. I just won a 35mm Nikon transparency scanner on ebay. This Coolscan LS-30 originally sold for $750 to $900 from 1999-2002. I paid a whopping $57.96 plus shipping. I may even dedicate an old PC to it. I happen to have a 19″ Viewsonic monitor that’s not being used. I could build a retro, late 90’s digital image processing station.

    imageThis unit’s got modern power though. It scans at up to 2700 dpi (25MB file) from a 35mm negative and uses Nikon Coolscan software – the best in the business. It doesn’t have high end things like multi-sample averaging and can’t output files with more than 8 bits per channel. To get features like those you’ve gotta spend some bucks. This is an old-school pro-tool that has fallen into my price range by technological attrition.

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    what…WEATHERBUG!?

    imageI apologize for my lack of updates lately. I’ve been slammed at work and at home. More work, more birthdays (my dads this time) and then more work again. Today Amy loaded AOL Instant Messenger on my primary PC at home so that she could chat with Katie. Innocent enough. But then to my shock, horror and embarrassment I found Weatherbug on my Start Menu tonight. I’m not sure what saved me from the stroke. Devinne intervention?

    Ad-Aware to the rescue – save me now. Sure ‘nuf, 13 data miners were found, quarantined and deleted. Whoa. I still feel violated. The machine seems healthy. Amy didn’t know any better. And like most people she doesn’t understand my concern. So for those who can’t see the “big deal” – Weatherbug is spyware. It loads cookies (files) on your PC to track where you go o the Internet. And AOL is happy to load it for you with Instant Messenger unless you specifically say no. To explain how robust and efficient it is I’ll let the fact that it made 76 connections to 13 sites for traffic reporting in the 9 hours it was on my PC stand as testament. And now I’ve done my “end user support” duties for the evening.

    In my world AOL stands for All Outta Luck. Stay away from it at all costs. If you must use IM software, please use Yahoo Messenger. Your PC will thank you. Just for the record, I let Amy keep AOL IM installed. I cleaned off the rest of the garbage it came with.