Sunday, September 29, 2013

NYC taxpayers

Interesting numbers. Would be interesting if these 1200 people chose to leave NYC (or the USA)
 
“Nearly 18 percent of all city personal income taxes were generated by this very small group of not even 1,200 taxpayers,” Ms. Lowenstein said. “That’s a huge contribution.”
- http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/28/nyregion/data-supports-bloomberg-on-disparity-with-income.html?partner=rss&emc=rss&_r=1&

Saturday, September 28, 2013

Great motivational speeches :)

Great motivational speeches section in this months Fortune magazine.....check out the one quote by General Stanley McChrystal lol shows this guy has a great sense of humor.

The living you....and the dead you

Had a thought today.....can you imagine how much of our own "body" we leave lying around eg skin cells/hair/nail clippings etc.

Can you imagine if your own body material was collected in a single place that you shed over a lifetime.

Anyone want to take a guess at calculating the volume per year? what would 40 years look like?

Friday, September 27, 2013

FreeFileSync

Played with the rest....been giving this a workout for the last week and love it.
- http://sourceforge.net/projects/freefilesync/
- http://freefilesync.sourceforge.net/

Main dialog Synchronization in progress Right-to-left layout (Hebrew), flexible interface, large icons

I've you've been using synctoy, syncbac, rsync, syncplicity, foldershare then you should check out Free File Sync and then.....relax.


Cheers,
Dean

Thursday, September 26, 2013

Orbital velocity

Click this and trust me it will be the most interesting 5 mins of your day
- http://what-if.xkcd.com/58/
Freaking neat....especially the "I would walk 500 hun dred miles and" part at the end

Saturday, September 14, 2013

Warning to any and all Cyberpower PR2200LCDRTXL2U owners (or for that matter CyberPower PR3000LCDRTXL2U and possibly other models)

I purchased a Cyberpower PR2200LCDRTXL2U ups in late 2009 (receipt below), the first non-APC unit we’ve purchased.

On Thursday the 12th of September we were moving the server rack from one room to another. Probably as far as I know the first time the UPS has ever been powered down (but cant confirm that).

When the unit was installed in its new location we tried to power it up only to find no response with the switch (but yes as it’s a mechanical switch was working fine and depressed half way etc).

Please understand prior to moving it NO INDICATION OF ANY PROBLEMS AT ALL otherwise heck I would have never powered it down and just left it running while moving it to the new physical location. It is a UPS after all.

Three very disturbing facts have become apparent to me about the CyberPower company and their products after speaking with their tech support on Thursday afternoon.

 
1/ If the battery is “unsuitable” and past its ability to hold 100% charge the runs a “smart test” and unit wont power up-however gives no indication this is the issue, design flaw on two levels but their replacement price of about $150 for batteries is reasonable (well compared to APC anyway) but I find this a major design flaw that even though the unit may have never given a “replace battery” warning a company could be left without access to a UPS if the batteries were past date and then need to wait 1-2 days for a delivery.

However after testing with a multimeter this is not the issue here.

 
2/ That although Cyberpower has a 3 year warranty their answer to what do I do with this now that I’ve found out its not a battery problem is …..”junk it”.

Even though only 4 years old their response is we carry no service parts in the USA, we provide no repair capabilities in the USA, and if the unit is newer than 36 months eg "IN WARRANTY" we’ll swap it for anew one (one way shipping covered) BUT after that their only response is only to “junk it”.

 
HOWEVER THAT ISNT THE MOST DISTURBING PART

3/ After checking the batteries were fine, and the switch was working, I thought I’d look over the rest only to find it immediately obvious what the issue is.

 

There are two capacitors located right next to the heat sink (a terrible design flaw to begin with) and these Su'scon 2200uF 63v capacitors had bulged and leaked.

So basically for the cost of 2 x 50c capacitors CyperPower is telling me to junk an $800 unit!!!

As discussed this could be a major sleeping issue. At no time was there an indication of any problems, the unit has been operating faithfully with no issues. The servers connected to this have never had any power issues. No indication at all of problems……JUST LIKE THE REST OF THE CYBERPOWER customers out there.

This model has been sold since 2008 I understand and is still the current model being sold. How many other Cyberpower PR2200LCDRTXL2U (or for that matter CyberPower PR3000LCDRTXL2U owners) have this sleeping issue waiting to bite them because

1/ Cyberpower bought cheap OR faulty capacitors not up to design specifications
Or
2/ Cyberpower designed capacitors too close to the heat sink.

As for Cyberpowers customer support saying….junk it and 4 years is reasonable lifespan for an $800 item…..I find that unacceptable considering it can be repaired with 2 x 50c capacitors.

For CyberPower customer service operator “Cal” he refused to give me his surname….. to say this capacitor leaking issue isn’t a big deal because they’ve never heard of it (possibly lying) but the fact that 4 out of 5 UPS’s probably never get powered down so wont become an issue until a customer turns the unit off and then tries to turn it back on is what I have an issue with.

Like I said….i wonder how many other Cyberpower / PC Nation customers have “passed their warranty period” blissfully ignorant their capacitors have failed as well.

So if you own a Cyberpower PR2200LCDRTXL2U  (or CyberPower PR3000LCDRTXL2U as same model different capacity and possibly other models) ....you might want to turn it off at 35 months and check you don't have a warranty issue.

Tuesday, September 10, 2013

Brppp - I think this water is hot ---Brppp

Fucking bullshit, i'm sick of this country. Shit like this is why i'm thinking of leaving and never coming back.
I feel like the frog that suddenly went hmmm....I think this water is hot!

- http://bigstory.ap.org/article/new-details-how-feds-take-laptops-border-0
 

Monday, September 09, 2013

Electrolux you suck with your obvious planned obsolescence

So I came home from walking the dog last night to my wife letting me know that the microwave door wouldn't close and it wasn't her fault she used it to make coffee and just no longer worked.....arghforgetaboutit screw it lets watch the movie and worry about it tomorrow.

So after lunch today I finally went all right lets see if this is repair guy time/throw it out the window time/or easy fix time.

Hey Electrolux....you suck!!!

We spent over 8k on 4 different appliances (stove/fridge/dishwasher/microwave all because I happened to like your stove top design) and after only 4 years this "obvious planned obsolescence" that finally gave way is what you want me to replace my entire unit for.

Basically as you can see here, these "hooks" are meant to be spring loaded and close down when you push the door shut.
 
But because of this shitty little piece of plastic which held the tension spring in place the spring was rattling around inside of the door.

To be honest I cant believe it lasted this long its so thin and obviously prone to breaking.



I called PC Richards and yes of course this unit is now out of warranty so I would be up for a call out fee AND of course any parts (read probably replace the entire door) that needed replacing.

Yeh hold that appointment thanks.

15 minutes later and 6 screws had the door apart I could see where the plastic had snapped (seriously cant believe it lasted 3 years and is obviously designed so you will buy a new microwave).

I thought of drilling a hole on the plastic frame where the plastic snapped and then thought, nah screw it, the metal opposite it makes much more sense...... (hey Electrolux designers...send my design consulting fee in beer thanks).

3 mins later with my dremel, shazam




Door locks now have tension




And presto all fixed..... Electrolux you still suck.....but I love how you are still nice and shiny :)




Saturday, September 07, 2013

Bananarama - Love In The First Degree....and...."What the heck did we do before the internet"?

What the heck did we do before the internet?

I am doing some LFC work on the pc this afternoon with the mp3's in random play mode only to hear "Love In The First Degree"...come up on the rotation and I was like wow I don't listen to Bananarama enough.



And then I was like whatever happened to them and fired up wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bananarama reading about how Siobhan Fahey left to go off an form Shakespears Sister which is actually quite cool because
1/ I didn't know that it was the same person
and
2/ I actually have two of their cd's....ok I actually have an ex girlfriends cd's (Hi Dorianne!!) but hey they are here in NY and ripped to my media server so I was like cool I should listen to them and then played them back to back while working and thought, whatever happened to them ......

Only to find out one went crazy (oh and was married to Dave Stewart....which is weird as I thought Annie Lennox was married to Dave Stewart....but guess not) and the other one was name Marcella Detroit and .....wait what!!...I have two of her cd's as well, so fired them up and went back to work.

So i'll ask you again.....what the heck did we do before the internet.

Thursday, September 05, 2013

Ian Mitchell-Innes interview

Listening to Ian Mitchell-Innes interview, cost of petrol should be $50 a liter if you actually did the calculation of the costs in plating a tree, letting it decompose into carbon and get buried and then wait for it turn into oil.
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I3r2cqNfkKs

When you think about it makes a LOT of sense.

I also really like his thoughts on overgrazing (around the 15min mark) and it being TIME not DENSITY.

Wednesday, September 04, 2013

101 domains.com genius marketing

Some great ideas being implemented by 101domain for authentication to prevent NYtimes/Twitter style DNS hacks.

I’m wondering how many of us have the domain “worth” or volume of domains to make the “one time password security card” a worthwhile option.

Still a great idea to turn a “crisis” into a marketing opportunity 


- http://clicks.skem1.com/preview/?c=9738&g=1273&p=ed8db6ad4e948c4647d47b4563c7ed95&utm_source=Rightway%20Gate&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=DomainSpecialsfrom101domain

Tuesday, September 03, 2013

2 million people walking......

I just donated to @UNRefugeeAgency to help Syrian refugees (just announced on #DailyShow now numbering 2m people have crossed into Jordan/Egypt/Iraq/Turkey etc, some of the photos showed not poor or rich but just ordinary middle class walking to these camps (eg people like Jodie and I).
Regardless of your political feelings and how you feel about the situation make your contribution too at -> http://ow.ly/7n9c3

Better file rename

Love this app, saves SOOOooooo much time and effort when dealing with photo file renames.
http://www.publicspace.net/windows/BetterFileRename/index.html

hey cannon....your naming option suck

Americans giving up citizenship deciding the grass really is greener

1100 in 3 months this year is actually less than I thought it would be
- http://www.businessweek.com/news/2013-08-09/americans-giving-up-passports-jump-sixfold-as-tougher-rules-loom