Randy’s random musings

Here I am, almost three months later… My wife and son have come to join me (finally!), and soon my mother/brother-in-law will be here to visit, and hopefully our dogs shortly after that. (apparently, getting the right paperwork for importing dogs into Germany isn’t the easiest thing in the world to do) We found a real nice house to rent (and possibly buy, eventually) in Wassenberg-Orsbeck, and look forward to moving in next week.

I just brought a new site online for NATO Airbase Geilenkirchen, an electronic bulletin board, of sorts. The idea is to give people a place to advertise things they want to sell, like Craigslist, but for a really small community.

My Nav-Cam with Tom-Tom has paid for itself many times over, over here in Germany… Couldn’t live without it! The battery does die quickly, though, even when it’s powered off. Qaiser has a good comment with a solution that I’ll integrate into the FAQ when I get time.

I landed in Dusseldorf this morning, and I’m relaxing at my friend Ercan’s house now. I have a few days before I start work. Cathy and Ben will be joining me in a month or two, but until then, I’ll miss them tremendously.

At the end of this year, shortly after Christmas, I expect to be heading over to Germany to take up employment for NATO, and will reside there indefinitely. Catherine and Benjamin will be joining me, but their timeframe is a bit more uncertain. We’re all very excited! We’ll miss our friends and family here stateside, but we intend to come back to visit quite often, and will extend an open invitation for guests to come visit us on the other side of the “pond”.

I downloaded the new Firefox beta a few days ago, and I’ve been using it as my primary browser since then. I have to say, I’m impressed! I’m using it on Mac OS X, and it seems to “fit” a lot better than before. Speed seems to be the primary improvement here–not only do pages seem to display faster, but my machine feels more responsive overall!

The biggest downside to using this release currently is the lack of add-on support. Eventually, add-ons like DownThemAll and ForecastFox will be tested with the new version, and released. But for now, I’m missing them…

I just finished creating a web site for my mother-in-law, who has just started a photography company. So, if you live in Arkansas or Oklahoma, and a need a good (yet cheap!) wedding photographer, check out the Day Photography web site! Or if you just want to see the ugly web site I made…

For the sake of comparison, you can see the site I made for my wife a while back: Sparks Photography. Yeah, it all looks pretty similar, but I made a lot of changes under the hood for the CSS layout. (for example, the layout of the packages on the “Weddings” page on the Day Photography site)

I’ve already been using OpenDNS for quite a while, after realizing that most of my Internet losses of connectivity were, in fact, failures of my ISP’s DNS servers. Recently, however, I was searching for a simple, free, effective porn blocker/web filter for a friend of mine with young children, and I was surprised to learn that OpenDNS had begun offering such a service!

Implementation is relatively simple, assuming you have a static IP: (Dynamic is a bit messier, but still possible) All you have to do is create an account, and associate your IP address with the account. Then go to the dashboard, click “Block Adult Sites”, then choose which types of site to block. Done!

I can think of about 10 different ways to get around such a block, but I suppose a block/filter like this is sort of like locks on doors: to keep honest people honest. It won’t be a substitute for parents actually watching their kids, but another tool for the belt.

Over the past month, I’ve had the decidedly unpleasant task of returning three out of four 500 gig Samsung hard disk drives (HD501LJ models) for RMA replacement. One had just been purchased from Newegg, and the others were a few months older, meaning I’d have to return them to Samsung for replacement.

Two of the failed drives had a “smoked” component on the circuit board, near the power connector. I’m not certain if the drives were defective, or if my computer’s power supply may have been to blame. However, the third drive had a read error that caused me to lose data, and didn’t show up until I’d been using it for a few months. A surface scan with one of the hard drive diagnostics included on the Ultimate Boot CD indicated hundreds of bad sectors that were unrepairable. Read the rest of this entry »

I’ve had occasion to contact Newegg’s customer service twice recently, and was impressed both times.

The first time, I had purchased a Samsung hard drive that was dead on arrival. I didn’t even have to call Newegg. A few clicks on their website, and voila! A few minutes later I had my RMA number in my email inbox. I sent the package back, and a few days later, received an email from them stating that they’d received it, and the next day they emailed me a tracking number for the replacement item! Smooth like butter…

Today I had to call them about an order placed yesterday. I requested FedEx overnight shipping (due to my loathing of UPS), and was notified at 1pm that FedEx overnight service wasn’t available to my address! I had also requested (and paid for) rush processing on this order, by the way. They didn’t even bother to call!

Well, I called them up to give them a piece of my mind, and not only did they apologize for not calling, they even offered to pay for the UPS overnight shipping charges! I still ended up with my item a day late, but somehow, I’m not too upset anymore.

Even though they aren’t perfect, they really seem to care about keeping their customers happy, and as long as they keep it up, I’ll be a loyal customer.