User Blogs

Once upon a time, if you RMA'd a Western Digital hard disk and they didn't have the same disk in stock, they would ship you the next better drive. I don't know if this was exactly etched in stone or if it was just the way they did things, but those days are now gone.

If you are using the GNOME interface and have the Serpentine audio CD-producing program installed, try this fun trick. (I'm doing this on Ubuntu Gutsy; things may look slightly different depending on versions and distributions.)

If you want a road sign font, you can pay $800 (for the full set) or you can make your own. You also have several other options like Blue Highway or the roadgeek fonts, although the latter is often criticized for being poorly put together (badly authored.) The creator of that set simply traced the existing fonts. I have no idea why, because you can download the "Manual on Uniform Traffic Control Devices" which contains all the outlines.

Today, the UPS man brought two packages, as HP made good on their promise of replacements within 24-48 hours. As promised, my replacement battery was in one of the packages. In the other was another incorrect power supply of the same type as the last. I have now spent over two hours (over several days, even) getting a replacement power supply for my warranted, business-class HPQ laptop.

In the ongoing saga of My Compaq nw9440 laptop, the DC power cable coming from my power supply developed a break and subsequently caused the repeated full draining of my battery, which will now not charge above 49%. So I decided to try the online chat system and see if it works on Firefox/Linux - which, amazingly, it does. I tried to use it less than a year ago and was rebuffed, so I took this to be an encouraging sign. You'd think that by this point in my life, I would know better...