I finished captioning the Chicago pictures, so I opened the album in the Images section. Please check it out and leave comments. Remember that you have to login before leaving comments, but anyone can see the pictures without logging in. The login is the same as for the message board.
If you like the pictures, you can email them to friends in an e-card just by clicking on the little envelope above every picture. As soon as I get the scanner up, the other pictures will follow.
Plus, I've been making some progress in the new color scheme. Maybe in a week or two it'll be ready. It will start with the main site and then migrate to the forum and gallery as well.
I had finished my X-Box, installed a network card on my TiVo, got my new MX-500 Universal Remote mostly programmed (relieving me of the 7 plus remote mess on the coffee table) and was working towards finally making this site pretty. I even managed to get some new pictures up (which many of you have noticed). And then...
TiVo takes a crap. Last night, while watching Family Guy (which I often do while working on the site) the TiVo froze up - a first in its two years. Then, I rebooted it, and got the fabled Green Screen of Death (GSOD). The GSOD is much like Windows' BlueSOD, except green. You're supposed to let it try to fix itself for the next day or so - which I did to no avail. Now, I have to boot this computer into Linux using a boot CD and extract the video files I want to keep, run diagnostics on the drives, and then reformat them for the TiVo. That should take a day or two. Good Times.
At least if I'm going to fill my day with nothing I picked the right day to do so. Right now there are no degrees outside. That's kind of creepy. Lacking any degrees sounds much worse than actually being on the negative side of the ledger. It makes walking in our 8" of snow sound liek you're walking on the moon. Your nostrils freeze on inhale, melt on exhale. In the 30 seconds from my car to the apartment, I lost all feeling in my right hand. So maybe not going outside tomorrow is the right thing to do.
As Greg pointed out to me over the phone, I realized I had never told what happened to my car. In case you didn't read earlier, my car had sporadically stopped starting. I had resumed it was related to the cold outside, but it turns out that $250 later, it was just something really dumb.
My car is a 2001 Nissan Altima, which like many other dumb-ass cars requires a key with some wacky computer chip in it before it will start. Now this at first sounds like a good idea - it prevents hotwiring the car, and thus reduces the likelihood of it being stolen. However, it is also a great method for bilking people out of money, as I found out earlier this year.
Over the summer, I went on a trip for work and left my car at my boss, Rock's house. I gave his wife, Julie, the key in case she needed to move it for whatever reason. When I got back, the key is lost. Combine this with the key I apparently lost sometime over the past few years, and I am left with only one key and it has no remote lock thingy (which goes from cool accessory to bare necessity in no time). Rock feels bad and offers to pay for a new key and remote.
I know it's gonna be kind of expensive because of the chip thing, but neither Rock nor I were prepared for the sticker shock on this key.
Key + Remote + Programming to make the key work = $270
That is highway robbery. It didn't end there. In November, Julie found my key in the corner of her closet and returned it. I tossed it in the bowl with my other keys and forgot about it. On Dec 15th, my car wouldn't start, but got going after Al gave me a jump-start. Then two days later the car wouldn't start at all. I called Nissan because the battery was still under warranty and they told me to get it towed in - but before I called the tow company, I started it again and it worked. I drove it to the dealer and they said the battery was fine. Cost to me: $0 and three hours.
Then, the next Monday it didn't start again. I had it towed to the dealer where it started every time. Thus, no reimbursement for towing. Cost to me: $84 for towing, 3 hours on the phone, and four days with no car.
I got it back and it wouldn't work again. I waited three days to make sure it would stay broken. Then, I called them and had it towed. Now it wouldn't start for them. Good, right? Now it'll get fixed.
Except for the fact that the reason it didn't start was that the key Julie found was made invalid by the earlier programming of the new key. They said that it was my fault for not knowing reprogramming invalidates all other keys instead of just matching the new key to the old chip like I presumed. Angry at the message, they made me pay for the tow over the phone, or I would not be able to pick it up before my New Year's trip to Chicago. Fine. Cost to me: $84 for tow, 3 hours on the phone and much frustration.
HOLD ON!!! When I pick up the car from the lot, I see that they didn't charge me $84, but instead over $200!!! Why? Because they overcharged me $21 for the tow and $90 to reprogram the lost key -- WHICH I NEVER AUTHORIZED! On top of that, it made my other two keys INVALID!!!
TOTAL COST TO ME: around $300, plus two weeks with no car, one less working key and about 12 hours on the phone or at the dealer.
Since New Year's, Nissan has refunded the $21 tow overcharge and reprogrammed all of my keys for no charge after a prolonged argument and waiting at the dealer for an hour. I have since made four calls to the national Nissan number that remain unanswered. They even sent me a customer review form to rate their help. When questioned about why they charged me $90 to make two keys invalid, they had no good answer, but the dealer refused a refund.
The journey continues. I have almost lost the ability to be outraged.
Just a quick note to all you wacky kids out there:
There's a new email virus that is making quick inroads into people's computers. I believe that it works like the virus that came about a few months ago - it comes from people you know who have been infected. I've been sent it twice already.
The body of the message looks similar to this:
Mail transaction failed. Partial message is available. --OR--
The message contains Unicode characters and has been sent as a binary attachment. --OR--
The message cannot be represented in 7-bit ASCII encoding and has been sent as a binary attachment.
It has an attachment that is the virus. Remember to never open an attachment, even from a friend unless you are expecting it. As an added bonus, it's really new, so unless your virus scan has updated in the last 12 hours, it won't find it either. Good Times.
Isn't the internet grand?
Click here for more details.
