Now coming at you .. American Sized

For some reason the default blogspot templates are all incredibly narrow - built to fit on a SVGA screen. No one uses those resolutions anymore except on mobiles and it made large amounts of text too hard to read. So after much frustration - here is the new wider version of Coreplex. I have no idea why blogspot doesn't offer wider, fixed screen templates by default. They make it a pain to change! See a post soon on how to do it

Welcome Home!

Well we wrapped up our long summer holiday this week (all possible due to the generosity of my parents). Friday was going to be the first day back to work, and as I went to get into my car.. I notice the door didn't open right. This drew my attention to the car a bit closer.. and then I see this



Welcome home!! Haven't even been in our temporary apartment for 3 weeks and I get this GREAT reminder how miserable apartment life can be vs owning your own property.

Ugh.. yet more BS to have to deal with

If you build it - they will come - The Rebate Draw works

Mail in rebates are the ultimate 'coupon'. Designed to attract buyers, but intentionally made difficult to ensure a low return rate, reducing the actual discount the vendor gives. It got so bad, they really started to lose their value as people were just fed up with them. Well thank god some vendors realized happy customers will be repeat customers. They made rebates easier

• places like best buy/CC automatically printing the rebates for at the register
• Staples and others offering electronic submission (some even without any paperwork)
• The idea of self-service, electronic tracking for rebates

These ideas have become more and more mainstream, making rebates more reliable and most importantly, less burdensome. In my last computer build, I intentionally steered towards products that were offering great prices with rebates. In fact, in one computer build alone, I had 5 rebates, along with another from just a few weeks ahead. Mailing in 6 rebates? What's my return? How much trouble? 1 electronic staples rebate 3 corsair mail-in rebates 1 antec mail-in rebate 1 coolermaster mail-in rebate The staples one came back first. 4 of the other 5 came within 3 days of each other, and the last just came today. These were mailed out the week of Feb 13th. So took awhile to get them, but not a single one required a call, resubmission, or any hassle. Total rebate? $250 Total Pain? 5 stamps and some handwritten envelopes Keep it up boys - make the rebates attractive and you'll get the business you want

Why Business Travel sucks

Well - you have a bad day, what do you do? You 'go on the internets and complain' Today I was flying out of Dulles International to Europe - which I do frequently. Always leaving on a Saturday, which the last half dozen times or so hasn't been so bad. Living only about 15 miles from the airport, you don't expect to spend a ton of time getting through the airport, but I had being rushed, so I always plan conservative. Yesterday was an example why... Economy parking at Dulles requires taking a bus to the terminal, which can take any varying amout of time to show up. So I normally plan an extra 30mins if I have to park vs being dropped off. When I arrived at the lots, relativly quiet, but they looked aweful full. Usually within 5-10 lanes you can find something. But I kept driving, and driving, and driving with nothing open. I went through Green... nothing. I went through Gold... nothing. I went through Purple... nothing. And I don't mean 'nothing nice' I mean.. nothing AT ALL. I'm starting to be concerned I'll have to park in a more expensive lot just to find a spot! One area of the lot was closed off from what looked like paving/sealing work, but it should not have filled ALL the other lots. After almost 30mins of circling to find not a SINGLE SPOT open, I headed over to Blue, which is the front most lot. Lots of passes and finding nothing, eventually, I get to the farthest north corner of the lot, and not only is there one spot finally, but several - about 5 I can see. 5 parking spots - I'm amazed by seeing a whopping 5 parking spots. How nuts is that? I've never seen this place so crazy. So we wait for the bus, which takes about 10mins and then there is no room on the bus for luggage - its all full. That always makes for interesting bits, but that was minor. I get to the terminal to check-in. I'm premier with united so you get separate check-in so I don't worry about how long this will take. However this flight is a co-chair flight and some you check in at United, some the other carrier. I had not checked ahead and just went to the United check-in. It was eirely empty. Normally the united economy area is a mad-house, but it was quiet. I walk right up - to find I need to check in at Lufthansa. Ok, no biggie, I head over there. Oh - this is where everyone is at! It's a complete madhouse. Literally the line queues outside their check-in area, and through another airline's area, and back out into the walkway. I check with an agent to see if my status gets me into another line; he confers with another agent, and they say yes and put me in the business class line. Perfect - there are only 3 people in front of me. There are 4 agents working first class, business, and a bag drop off. I'll skip all the frustration and get right to the point. How long should it take to check-in customers, and at what point do you take them aside and deal with them so you don't hold up everyone? How many guests do you think they could check in in 15mins? 30mins?45mins? Try 2 couples in.. 45mins! Literally - zero exaggeration - 45mins in line and they served TWO couples. TWO. Given the first couple was already at the counter when I got there, that means in 45mins I moved forward 1 person. So what did Luftasana do about this? Nothing. We weren't allowed to cut into the other business class line - which had spurts of speed, but then there would be long periods where NONE of the lines for First or Business were moving. I watched people in the first class line wait over 30mins to get through about 5 people. It was surreal. You'd think, ok, once they get through this guy, it's gotta speeed up and you just need to be patient. They'd have one delay, the guy would go away, 10mins later come back, and you'd think you're set... and then boom he's back on the phone and everything stops again. You think its not worth trying to get to the end of another line of 10+ people as it can't possibly stay this slow... but oh.. it did. Finally one of the agents (this is after 40mins) starts taking some people from our line which knocked 1 of the 2 left out in front of me. Mr. Sloth finally managed to finish his second couple in 45mins and finally the second agent who let us cut his line finally took me at about 50mins. Checked me in right in.. and that ordeal was over. On most days I'm from home, to the gate in about an hour. So far today, it's been over 2:15 and I'm not even to security yet. Then security - ah.. well they've done pretty good with security at Dulles where it's quick to move through. They have a premium passenger line - which premier people are entitled to. But since the co-chair flight is operated by Luftansa, the ticket is theirs not United's. I get to the first check, and the airport checker tries to kick me out of the line because something isn't marked on my ticket. I explain I'm United Premier, this is a united flight. I even pull out my card, show her that and where it's on the ticket as a united flight! She's persistent about some code and I'm starting to get pissed - this is pretty freaking simple! Then finally she lets me go. Move through the rest of the process without issue, but then I gotta goto B-gates.. which after all this means you get to walk about another mile to your gate. Finally at the gate, before I can even sit down, they are starting to board. It's a good thing I left 2.5 hrs before my flight! They start boarding first class, and they have these queues setup and the lady tells some economy folks to line up in this queue and wait. So people start queueing, and I join in. Apparently today's lesson is - never follow me today. Because as one agent finished checking first, the lady who told everyone to queue up, proceeds to start boarding the queue right next to ours (which is also economy, just another line). But the agent in front of us insists that we wait, while his coworker literally right behind him checks dozens of people through! Finally the sloth figures out what is happening 20 inches away from his head and boards us as well after 3-4 minutes of pointless waiting. Lucky for me (is that possible today?) I wasn't one of the approx 10 people I saw in my cabin alone that had double-booked seats and had to be shuffled around. The flight was on a A330 which I had a window seat, which is nice so they don't ram you with the carts, but kind of makes you stuck depending on what the person next to you is doing. They had a different flight entertainment system which actually let you pause, FF, etc your movies and don't have to watch the films according to the fixed schedule. Awesome! To bad they didn't have a single film I wanted to watch. I passed the time listening to podcasts and playing a little on the DS. I slept for about 15mins out of the 8hr flight. Arriving in Frankfort, I had about 2hrs until my flight was scheduled to board. But you can't sleep really because there is no one there to ensure you wake up in time! So you smell, you just go into zombie mode waiting for your flight. Which today - is also delayed. Boarding time comes and goes. Finally about 45mins after our scheduled boarding time, we board. I am in the next to last row on the aisle.. or so I thought. Get there and someone is in my seat. Turns out its a family with two kids under 5 and they are spread all over the plane (they didn't figure this out before they sat down and spread out in the wrong seats???). So now I wait in the back until the plane fully boards and I switch seats with one of the father's tickets so they can all sit together. Window seat, no one next to me.. so not a bad trade off. Karma right? But these smaller A320 planes are pretty tight on the legroom. Combined with a guy in full recline in front of me.. ugh. Then I had to goto the bathroom, but this is a short hop, I'm not on the aisle, etc.. so you figure you can just wait. Well then coming in for the landing, tons of turbulence and it was probably only the second time ever I felt nauseous on a plane. Then it was on to get my luggage which came up fast - woohoo and the train ride to the city. Finally, almost 16.5hrs after leaving home.. I'm finally able to lie down and rest. And we do this by choice???

20 Reasons why iTunes sucks

I'm tired of Apple fans refusing to acknowledge the short comings of iTunes. It's one of the worst music library products out there - yet the Cult of Steve faithful refuse to acknowledge Apple has failed to address the shortcomings of iTunes. Instead of aiming to be the best MP3 Player and Library Tool out there - Apple puts it's Product schemes first. This is the big difference between products built to fill a need, as most shareware/freeware is, and products built to sell another product. The general suckyness of iTunes can be summed up into Control. If are a simple user, and don't care about much.. iTunes will do ok for you generally. But not always.. we'll get to that as well. But if you are a user that actually wants some input into how your music is handled - watch out. iTunes is going to be your enemy. So lets list out some of the ways iTunes sucks 1. iTunes is geared towards monopoloizing your music. It's default model is to 'sort' your music into its file structure when you import music. This includes renaming the files and putting into a specific file structure. Not so bad - but do you get to decide those names or structures? NOPE! It's Steve's way only. Every mp3 renaming tool on the planet worth a damn lets you decide the naming system.. Not Steve tho! This normally would mean, well just don't let iTunes sort your files.. oh its not that simple! For many reasons to come Why is this important? Because even though the full info is in the ID tag of the mp3 file, you can't see that info in many file interfaces. So if you look at your files outside of iTunes - you have these stupid file names that don't make sense. There is NO reason to not let the user decide this part of the process. 2. Apple insists the only way to interface with your iPod is iTunes. Yes, there are 3rd party apps that work around Apple - yet Apple refuses to make it open. Why? Because they want control. Most 3rd party apps tend to conflict with iTunes as well when you try to sync back with iTunes. 3. iTunes is retarded when it comes to locating files. If a file moves or is renamed - iTunes can't find it. iTunes can tell you it can't find it... but it can't find it itself, nor can it be told to ID all files it can't find at once, nor can it be told to drop all songs it can't find from the library. So the result is.. you the user are required to one by one.. stumble upon any file problems and fix them. Good library tools automate the discovery of bad links.. and great ones will automatically find the file if it moved. Example.. lets say you added the year to the name of the album folder. In iTunes, that's suicide. In other tools, they either highlight this to you, or simply automatically find the missing files by looking at the ID tags. The Church of Steve would say 'well don't move your files' - of course if you've sold your soul to Steve, you've ignored item #1 so you'll ignore #3 4. Some things don't work unless you auto-sync your iPod. Example - you like using ratings on your songs? Don't bother changing them on your iPod if you didn't let iTunes sync that song for you. It will not populate back to your library. Like using Play Counts? Don't bother because they do not populate back to your library either unless you auto-sync your iPod. 5. Play Count doesn't count a play unless you listened to the ENTIRE song. Listening to your iPod and didn't want to sit through the crowd cheering at the end of that live song? Don't hit skip - or your listening to your song isn't counted. 6. Ratings are iTunes only. Forget that ratings are part of ID tags - and probably the best method for setting up smartplaylists (one of the really good features of iTunes), iTunes only puts ratings in it's library data. So what? That means if you ever delete a file from your library, you lose your ratings. Why would you delete a file? Remember what I said about moving a file? If you move files, your only option is to fix each file ONE by ONE by ONE. So its actually easier to delete the files and simply reimport them into iTunes. But by doing so.. you throw away all your play counts AND ratings. Ratings are standardized and if put into the files themselves, this wouldn't be a problem. But no.. the Church of Steve won't have it. 7. iTunes is a pig. Why do I need a 60meg download for a mp3 player? Oh that's because Apple uses iTunes as a trojan to push it's Quicktime player everywhere it goes. iTunes uses QT as its media engine. Instead of lessening the impact and overhead, Apple makes you download QT every time you get iTunes. Why do I care? see #8 8. Quicktime ignores preferences. Because Quicktime is installed with iTunes, its installed silently as part of the install. However, unless most good software, Quicktime ignores many preferences you already have set. Have QT turned off from the notification area? You did.. until you upgraded iTunes.. then its back. That goes for your desktop icons, and quick launch ones too.. every time QT throws itself back there. Stop clutteirng up my computer! 9. iTunes installs fattening services that shouldn't be mandatory. iTunes installs several RAM hog services to accomodate Apple Software Updates and iPod services. Forget if you want them or need them - you got them without being asked or choice. Thanks Steve. 10. iTunes bugging me about new versions. No I don't want the latest stupid bloated version that now has support for products I don't own! You tell iTunes to not ask you again... yet it still keeps bugging you! Yup, that's right.. your choice to not bug you doesn't apply to all future versions.. just that one version. So the next time Steve's army releases yet another version, you get bugged again. It's like a phone solicitor that doesn't follow the do not call list! 11. iTunes can't scale. iTunes seems rather snappy - until you load it up with a lot of music. Put a 100+gigs of music into it and it becomes a sloth. It can't even keep up with mouse clicks in Windows. It takes forever to open or close. It's a total pig. 12. iTunes lacks true library features. When dealing with large volumes of mp3 files.. you need bulk tools for renaming, tagging, etc. Sorry, Steve doesn't like files that he didn't give you through iTunes - so these features don't exist. Now, iTunes has gotten slightly better in the last few versions with the multiple edit, but its still abysmal compared to proper library tools. It's still slow to apply changes too. 13. iTunes does not offer corrective tagging. MusicMatch had the best feature, called 'super tagging' which basically looked at the tags you had, and suggested the proper tags and artwork. It was awesome. Too bad Yahoo killed it :( 14. iTunes is your worst enemy if you ever outgrow your hard drive. Want to move your music collection? Woah.. slow down there buddy! See every problem above.. 15. Multiple users can not share the same library. Have children that you want to listen to your music? NOPE! Because each user profile on a computer must use its own iTunes library.. and since the library can not adapt for file changes (like adds or removes) you can't even point your library at a shared file folder. Oh, and each user profile means another activation. So no, the Church of Steve does not approve of your children using your music. You must give them their own accounts and of course then you can't even share music within your own family. 16. Have multiple computers? iTunes says FU! While you can authorize multiple computers with the same iTMS account, they all have different libraries. So you can't plug your iPod into multiple computers and use it the same as your primary computer. Want to play music off your ipod? hohoho NO says Steve. If you are using auto-sych, which you must to get your library to update from your iPod remember, you can't play music off your ipod on another computer.. even if its authorized with the same iTMS account. 17. You still can't move files OFF an iPod with iTunes. DRM through annoyance. Thank you Steve - You suck. You don't let me play music on my other computer, you don't let me move the files. You make other people write software to get around your stupid ways of blocking what is important - what the customer wants. 18. iPod Photo - buhahah.. got a lifetime to wait while they sync? Pointless feature due to the overhead of actually using it. 19. Why can't I download music you knew I already bought? Because that would be a BENEFIT of digital purchases.. but noooo.. DRM freaks so all purchases are one-time only. Lose a hard drive? Good bye music! 20. The bloat bloat bloat. Ever heard of MODULARITY? Why must I care all the bloat and weight of every digital video or audio product Apple makes just so I can use the ONE product I own? I don't care about iPhones.. or AppleTV.. or the other BS. Get out of my iPod! Oh wait.. the Church does not want to give up their opportunity to shove their product awareness down my throught. What does iTunes do well? Smart Playlists - these are great.. as long as your library data is good. Too bad iTunes constantly fights you because its library data is too fragile. See #1, #3, #5, #6 podcast directory and integration - itunes removes RSS, various websites, etc and makes it ultra simple to find, subscribe, and d/l podcasts. Kudos. Tho I'm sure many podcasters would have nasty things to say about their side of getting their stuff ON iTMS... The .99 song - gotta give it to the Church, he sold the labels on the model of per song at 99 cents. The per-character searching and 3 panel filter - set new expectations on search and browsing music libraries. Very effective Conclusion Open up the iPod for real Steve. Stop force feeding it on us. Listen to your user's needs - not your latest product aspirations and give us a real media library tool. I feel the most sorry for actual Apple users. Who's really going to go through and try building a mp3 player on OSX when Apple gives theirs away for free and forces it on most of their products? Apple users are stuck with iTunes forever.