Criminal Health Care Reform

Here is a message sent to Michael F. Bennet, United States Senator for Colorado this morning.

As registered independent voters in Colorado we are asking that not only do you vote Nay (against) the massive criminal Health Reform legislation, but that you also actively and openly encourage your fellow senators to vote likewise. Apparently, it has not dawned on the members of both houses that it is the will of the people rather than the money of the lobbyist who should dictate legislation.

Do we need Health Care reform? Of course we do! The health care and drug industries are taking outlandish advantage of the American people. Does America need to pass such reform as one massive bill in the dark of night under a trumped up deadline to get it passed before the American people realize what the criminals in congress are doing? Of course not!!! If the proposed Health Care is so advantages to the American people, should members of Congress be forced to use the care for themselves? Of course! Should we gut Medicare now for what appears to be a savings, only to add this false savings and additional money to save Medicare in a few short years? Only an idiot would believe this!

Please vote against this legislation. The American people will have no recourse but to remove from office any Senator or Representative who should vote in support of this legislation regardless of their political party. I pledge my support, both monetarily and through action, to any cause which will act to remove any member of congress who supports this legislation whether it passes or not. Obviously, these members have sold out to the lobbyists and do not represent the interests of the people. This is a shame for America and our fore fathers would revolt rather than allow this to happen. Listen to the people, not the people paying bribes.

We, the people, are not sure what the heck you people are thinking. We are not stupid.

Most sincerely,

RE: Sara Palin

This morning I ran across the e-mail message below in the trash folder on my mail server. Based on the e-mail header, the message originates from the democrats.org domain which I am assuming is related to the Democratic party. My response and the original email are below. I'm quite certain those who relate to the original e-mail message will not understand the reason for my disgust.

Mitch,

I received the following SPAM message on my server in the trash folder. As the owner of the fla*****.com domain I can assure you the email address "DALY@FLA*****.COM" does not exist and is fraudulent. Remove this address from any future e-mailings and contact the person(s) using this e-mail address by whatever other means you have to communicate with them and request they stop using this fraudulent email account.

I am always disappointed to see politically motivated nonsense messages like this one. These serve no purpose but to spread misinformation. Misguided hate mongering like this message are intended to excite hatred and are destroying our country. I will forward your message and this response to my friends and family to express my disgust, which was probably not the intent of your original message. I'll also post this message to my blog.

If you have an opinion express it, don't attack other people personally or their opinions. If your opinion is not supportable on it's own, then shut up.

Thanks

---

From: "Mitch Stewart, Democrats.org"
Date: Sat, 21 Nov 2009 09:19:22 -0500
To: Kerry Davey
Subject: Sarah Palin

The Democratic Party
-----------------------
Kerry --

Right now, Sarah Palin is on a highly publicized, nationwide book tour, attacking President Obama and his plan for health reform at every turn.

It's dangerous. Remember, this is the person who coined the term "Death Panels" -- and opened the flood gates for months of false attacks by special interests and partisan extremists.

Whatever lie comes next will be widely covered by the media, then constantly echoed by right-wing attack groups and others who are trying to defeat reform.

Dell Is Trying to Rip My Son Off

What the hell does Dell think they are doing? My son bought a Dell Inspiron 530S last year with a 350 watt power supply and built in video from Best Buy. The built in video did not give the system even basic game capabilities according to Vista. Having made the mistake of recommending my son go ahead and buy this computer based on the Best Buy weekend special, I didn't feel confident to recommend a video card. After my son bought a minimal game that would not load on the system due to the lame video capabilities, he and I went to Best Buy to find a slim video card that he could use. Considering Best Buy's technical credentials, it should be no surprise they had no clue what card might be used in this system to give it even basic gaming capabilities.

Since Dell built the system and it had such a lame excuse for a power supply I looked on the Dell web site for a video card with a slim form factor. I found several costing between $39 and $60 on the Dell web site that should meet his needs, but since I had recommended he buy the POS to begin with, I had lost my confidence and didn't want to recommend which one would work on this system. Instead, since Best Buy didn't have a clue or know what they were doing, I recommended he contact Dell Support and ask them which card he should get. He did as I recommended (see Support Chat Session below).

Well, since I'm writing this Dell obviously failed to come through and has tried to take advantage of my son. Based on the chat session below, Tech support identified a card meeting his needs at 1:41:11 which was a P/N 2542453 for $ 55.99. When he was transferred to Sales, low and behold they told him "Oh no, that's not the right card. You need a a A2418153 (aka GeForce 9500 GT) with a TV tuner and 1 GB of video memory for $99. In addition he needed a mysterious $10 cable to install this card in his system. Now don't get me wrong, this card is awesome, but with the statement on the side of the box, "POWER SUPPLY ADVISORY NVIDIA MINIMUM POWER SUPPLY REQUIREMENTS - Minimum 400W or greater system power supply (with a minimum 12V current rating of 18A). Yeh, this card that Dell sales managed to convince my son to buy would probably work for a week, a month, or maybe even several months while the power supply fries itself and the system overheats. How dare Dell take advantage of my son's innocence, naivete and inexperience to sell him a card that exceeds what he needs and will eventually damage his system as it approaches it's end of warranty period.

On my son's behalf I will contact Dell first and the Colorado Attorney Generals office if I am not satisfied with their response. I don't like the idea of some sleazeball salesman taking advantage of my family.

+---- My Son's Dell Support Chat Session ----+

This is an automated email sent from Dell Chat. The following information is a log of your session. Please save the log for your records. Your session ID for this incident is 29324473.
Time	Details
08/03/2009 01:12:49PM	System: "Thanks for choosing chat for your technical support needs. A chat agent will be with you shortly. Just so you know, you can also visit our website at support.dell.com to get technical help."
08/03/2009 01:14:49PM	System: "Thanks so much for your patience. Chat agents are eager to help you with your troubleshooting needs, so stay on line and the next available representative will assist you."
08/03/2009 01:17:54PM	Session Transferred to Agent (Jaswant _110991)
08/03/2009 01:18:07PM	Session Started with Agent (Jaswant _110991)
08/03/2009 01:18:16PM	Brian Xxxxx: "Im having trouble finding a Video card for the inspiron 530s i have is there anything I find that is good enough for under $50"
08/03/2009 01:18:19PM	Agent (Jaswant _110991): "Welcome to Dell's Technical Support Chat! My name is Jaswant. How may I assist you today?"
08/03/2009 01:18:54PM	Brian Xxxxx: "Im having trouble finding a Video card for the inspiron 530s i have is there anything I find that is good enough for under $50"
08/03/2009 01:19:24PM	Agent (Jaswant _110991): "I apologize that you had to wait too long to reach us, we have been experiencing high chat volumes today and are working on it. Let me understand the issue we’re facing with the computer right now so that I can assist you right away."
08/03/2009 01:20:22PM	Agent (Jaswant _110991): "You want to upgrade the video card. Is that correct?"
08/03/2009 01:20:30PM	Brian Xxxxx: "Yes"
08/03/2009 01:20:52PM	Agent (Jaswant _110991): "May I know do you want to install any specific card?"
08/03/2009 01:21:59PM	Brian Xxxxx: "Well Im not sure I bought a game for my son and it says the video card needs to be better im at a 3.0 rating and needs to be a 4.0"
08/03/2009 01:22:29PM	Agent (Jaswant _110991): "I understand your concern and I will personally attend to the issue. I assure you that I will do my best to provide you quality service. Please give me a minute to pull up your account information."
08/03/2009 01:22:52PM	Brian Xxxxx: "Thanks"
08/03/2009 01:23:59PM	Agent (Jaswant _110991): "Thank you for staying online. I appreciate your patience."
08/03/2009 01:25:15PM	Agent (Jaswant _110991): "I am checking the video card which are under $ 50."
08/03/2009 01:27:22PM	Agent (Jaswant _110991): "May I know the name of the game which you ant to play?"
08/03/2009 01:27:51PM	Brian Xxxxx: "The Witcher"
08/03/2009 01:28:02PM	Agent (Jaswant _110991): "Thank you for the information."
08/03/2009 01:29:08PM	Agent (Jaswant _110991): "I tried to find a video card lesser than $ 50 and I am afraid that I was not able to find any card in that range which will be compatible with this game and can also give you a rating of 4.0 I will recommend that you may contact our sales department to ge"
	t less expensive card.
08/03/2009 01:29:26PM	Agent (Jaswant _110991): "The best people to assist you with regards to purchasing the card would be the Dell Spare parts Department. For ‘Home & Home Office’ customers, they are available daily between 7A.M. and 11P.M. CST at 800-357-3355, extension is 72-69938. They would be abl"
	e to recommend the correct part, considering your requirements. Our Spare parts representatives would be happy to assist you and provide any additional information that you might need.
08/03/2009 01:30:13PM	Agent (Jaswant _110991): "I will be happy to help you order a card which is $ 55.99 excluding taxes and shipping."
08/03/2009 01:31:11PM	Brian Xxxxx: "Yeah thats fine if it will get me to the 4.0 and fit in this slim box"
08/03/2009 01:32:42PM	Agent (Jaswant _110991): "May I know the address at which you want to get this card?"
08/03/2009 01:33:26PM	Brian Xxxxx: "xxx S. Xxxxx St. Xxxxxxxx Co. xxxxxx"
08/03/2009 01:33:52PM	Agent (Jaswant _110991): "May I know from where did you order this computer?"
08/03/2009 01:34:17PM	Brian Xxxxx: "Bought it at Best Buy"
08/03/2009 01:34:44PM	Agent (Jaswant _110991): "According to our records, this system is still registered under the name of Best buy. Would you like me to transfer the ownership on your behalf so that you don’t face any issues in availing technical support in future?"
08/03/2009 01:35:59PM	Brian Xxxxx: "Yeah I thought I had registered it and also I accidentally gave you the wrong zip code"
08/03/2009 01:36:28PM	Agent (Jaswant _110991): "May I have the name, telephone number, complete address and e-mail of the owner?"
08/03/2009 01:38:00PM	Brian Xxxxx: "Brian Xxxxx 303 xxx-xxxx xxx S. Pierce St. Xxxxx Colorado xxxx Brian@ourdomain.dom"
08/03/2009 01:38:25PM	Agent (Jaswant _110991): "Thank you for the information."
08/03/2009 01:38:37PM	Agent (Jaswant _110991): "Could you please stay online for 2-3 minutes while I transfer the computer under your name?"
08/03/2009 01:38:47PM	Brian Xxxxx: "No problem"
08/03/2009 01:40:07PM	Agent (Jaswant _110991): "Thank you for staying online. I appreciate your patience. In order to place an order for this card I will recommend that you may contact our sales department as they will be happy to assist you and also let you know if a also expensive card is available."
08/03/2009 01:40:27PM	Agent (Jaswant _110991): "They are available daily between 7A.M. and 11P.M. CST at 800-357-3355, extension is 72-69938."
08/03/2009 01:41:11PM	Agent (Jaswant _110991): "The Dell part number of the compatible card which is $ 55.99 is A 2542453."
08/03/2009 01:41:40PM	Brian Xxxxx "Ok Great thanks for the help"
08/03/2009 01:42:17PM	Agent (Jaswant _110991): "You are most welcome. You will get our chat transcript in your E-Mail box for future reference so that have the part number and phone number handy."
08/03/2009 01:42:35PM	Brian Xxxxx: "Thanks again"
08/03/2009 01:42:58PM	Agent (Jaswant _110991): "You are most welcome."
08/03/2009 01:43:03PM	Agent (Jaswant _110991): "Is there any other DELL hardware related issue that I may assist you with?"
08/03/2009 01:43:04PM	Session Ended

Obama Left with a Mess - Say what?

I am growing so tired of hearing how the Obama administration was "left with a mess" whenever they are asked why the current economy is in such bad shape. They seem to forget that it was Clinton who left America at such risk that we were attacked just 8 months after he left office due to his weak response to the al qaeda threat. It was Clinton who directed credit requirements and standards be lowered so that more of the poor could own homes. This directly lead to the current collapse of the housing market and thus the economy.

It's time to stop this immature response and for the current administration to stand on their own feet. Throwing rocks in a glass house is not smart.

Now I hear that the Obama administration is collecting an enemies list! This concept worked so well for Nixon and the Nazis in Germany. Actually, it's more like the Nazis in Germany since they are asking network neighbors to report one another (flag@whitehouse.gov) if they don't agree with the administration. Nixon at least collected his own names.

This seems to play along with personally attacking people who have different opinions. Personal attacks make this a battle of personalities rather than of ideas. This classic propaganda ploy was used by the Nazis in their rise to power.

A final thought, if this health reform measure is so good why doesn't it cover the Executive, Legislative, and Judiciary branches of the government? While I realize the current health care system is broken and costs are out of control by greedy pharmaceutical companies, dishonest participants, and the tort system, I am still against socializing our health care system. Look what the government has done with Medicare and Medicaid which are looming disasters we are shamelessly laying on our children. The current proposed reform will only add to the burden of these innocent future victims of our fiscal irresponsibiliy. However, should the hypocrites in Washington, D.C. sign up for this same health care system they are cramming down Americas throat, I might be more willing to listen to their banter. Another requirement is that the law be READ by every member of the congress who then signs a legally binding assertion that they have read what they are approving on the behalf of their constituents. It they can't read, but only talk instead, they should give up their seat to someone who is literate.

Anyone who says these thoughts are not my own, and instead put in my mind by others is a dishonest idiot and should not hold a responsible position affecting others. The Republicans couldn't orchestrate a sing along let alone something this fundamental to the American idea and so widespread.

Just some thoughts on my mind.

Thoughts on my mind

I have several thoughts that given time I would like to share. These include:

1. Reef Club Cozumel conditions and service (Reef Regency, Wyndham)
   
2. Promises to see whale sharks off Yucatan
3. Vacationing without the rest of the family
4. New 2009 Nissan Sentra (window tinting, Car Toys Alarm system, chrome wheels)
   

These are the topics on my mind.

Stanley Hotel - Estes Park Colorado

We waited until today to drive our new 2009 Nissan Sentra up to Estes Park, Colorado. We bought the car three days ago and it's rained every day since with really cool temps. We really lucked out and the choice to go today proved ideal. What a wonderful trip into the mountains in our new car. The car performed flawlessly throughout the trip and had no problems with the climb.

If you have never been to Estes Park you need to make plans now. This place is why we live in Colorado. The views going through the mountains are unbelievable, then you get to Estes Park and they become breathless. Needless to say, we went with plans to see the Stanley Hotel. We were not disappointed! This hotel, where Steven King spent a vacation contemplating "The Shining" is absolutely beautiful. Most people don't realize that the version of the movie "The Shining" starring Jack Nicholson was not shot at the Stanley hotel. However, they did everything they could to make it appear that it was used in the movie. Once you've seen the hotel and how it is nestled right in the town of Estes Park, you realize there is no maze in front of the hotel and something is amiss. A later version of the story, shot for TV, was actually shot at the Stanley hotel in Estes Park. Both movie versions of the story are available in the hotel's gift shop.

We had a really wonderful day in Estes Park, about an hour and a half North of our unincorporated Jefferson County home.

Must Be Fair with Cheap-O-Air

I really need to be fair with Cheap-O-Air. I checked for the cheapest airfares to Cozumel for our July 4 trip on June 30th. I tried everything I could think of including Orbitz, Expedia, Travelocity, CheapTickets, Cheap Airfare, etc. All of them wanted $650 plus per person round trip. Only Cheap-O-Air gave a round trip air fare of $381. After the Albuquerque experience I was leery, but low and behold they came through like a champ. Even exceeded their own expectations when they gave me some warning that some of the tickets were not electronic and had to be mailed. After clearing this up the night before leaving, we had all-electronic tickets round trip. Arrived at DIA sleepy and Continental said because it was a holiday (July 4th) we could upgrade to first class for $75/per person/per segment. We took that deal and really enjoyed the flight through Houston.

The only issue we had with the travel on this trip was our plane out of Cozumel airport was delayed more than four (4) hours! The delay was Delta's fault, not Cheap-O-Airs. If you've ever been to Cozumel by plane, you know there is not much to do at the airport so the delay was boring, and given that I was sick for two (2) days with stomach cramps etc., I was miserable. Our connecting Frontier flight out of Atlanta left two hours before we arrived. Delta in COZ told us that they would put us up for the night in Atlanta. However, when we went through customs and checked with Delta in Atlanta, they told us we had 15 minutes to catch our Delta flight to Denver. Rushing through the Atlanta airport we made the flight and a nice lady even gave me her isle seat. By this time I was feeling REALLY sick and developed shivers with chattering teeth. My wife showed her concern by demanding that I stop shaking because it was annoying her. Welcome to 37 years of marriage.

Linux Pulls It Out!

Don't ask me how Linux decides what it's going to do next. Yesterday, after being turned off for two weeks the two Linux boxes booted up just fine. My main rationale for booting them was I received an annual email from Linux Counter to check my listing (user 164701). Noticed I only listed the old machine so I added the IBM to the list. I installed the auto update script and it shows in the cron log that it ran on both machines, but still doesn't show up on Linux Counter as auto updated.

As soon as the old box booted I noticed that somehow without input from anyone but the Linux Gods it was back to the 1280x1024 screen resolution. I updated both boxes which requested a reboot when it completed and they both came back up without problems.

Just wanted to post this to be fair to Linux and all the work people do in developing it. I could of just posted it as a comment to my May 31, 2009 post, but that's like a newspaper accusing someone on page one for the headlines and posting the retraction on page six. That's not right for newspapers, TV networks, or my posts.

Restoring the Dead - Windows XP Pro

Well yesterday I decided to go for it and wipe out and restore from scratch the computer that had been my primary computer since mid-2003 until October 2008. It was running Windows XP Pro with 2 GiB of memory and a 320 GB SATA drive. Actually it has 160 GB and 80 GB IDE drives installed too that are disconnected.

The Windows XP Pro was eating itself. File ownership seemed to have been corrupted which caused programs to not install properly. Devices such as the LeadTek PVR had long ago stopped working and the Dazzle Digital Video Creator 80 (DVG 80) recently quit working. The DVG 80 was really the last straw since without it I couldn't capture the videos of my granddaughters. Heaven forbid!

In addition I had tried to just re-install Windows XP Pro on the disk using the slipstream disk described below. This resulted in a half pregnant install where each boot asked to run setup or boot to windows. The default was to run setup which resulted in a BSOD (Blue Screen of Death). The problem was created by a virus called Norton GoBack sold by Symantec as part of my Norton System Works 2006 which I could not uninstall by itself or with the entire Norton System Works deinstall and Windows said I could not complete the install unless it was removed. Complicating the issue was that I have my WinXP Pro machine sharing a monitor, keyboard and mouse through a KVM with my new Vista 64-Bit computer. With the KVM there was the risk that while I was booting I might not be there to select boot to windows rather than run setup and then BSOD.

Before starting, I decided to "slipstream" my original Windows XP Pro 2002 all the way up to Service Pack 3. To get instructions for this I Googled "slipstream xp sp3" and found the article "How to slipstream windows XP Service Pack 3 to Create an Integrated XP Setup Disk with SP3" at HowToHaven. I followed the steps in the article blindly, but carefully to create two XP Pro SP3 install disks, the extra one just in case the other one didn't work.

To start the re-install process, and remove any doubt whether I wanted to do this I removed the primary partition, created a new one for the entire disk and formatted it as NTFS. To do this step I used the Live version of Gnu Disk Partitioner (GParted 0.4.5-2). Live GParted is Linux based and boots up from a CD quickly. What a nice simple program to use and very similar to the last version of Partition Magic I used years ago. First step, success.

Then I tried installing XP Pro. It booted to the CD and looked like it was going to go smoothly, only to fail when it said it couldn't find any hard disk installed on the system. Another quick trip to Google revealed that Windows didn't recognize that I had SATA support and I needed the to download the drivers to a 3-1/2 inch floppy and use them early in the install process. I went to the Asus web site and downloaded all drivers for my A8V motherboard. One of them had a make disk utility for doing what I needed. That's when I found that coming by a 3-1/2 inch drive and finding a disk for it was no simple feat. Found some old Linux boot disks and other stuff and tried formatting and making the disk in my wife's HP desktop running Win XP Home but it wouldn't do it. In a panic I decided to break out my old Windows 98SE laptop and see if it could deal with the 3-1/2 inch floppy. First thing it told me was the disk was locked which was probably why my wife's computer couldn't do anything with it, but it was too stupid to tell me.

The second attempt installing XP Pro with SP3 went pretty smooth. Pressed the F6 key when prompted and inserted the 3-1/2 inch floppy to load the SATA / RAID drivers. Holding my breath until the prompt came up asking for my product key into which I entered my original product key and in about a half hour I had a "working" Windows XP Pro computer again!

Fixing the network setup (it wanted a dial-up connection?), was a first step and then quickly re-installing Norton Internet Security 2009. These steps went very smooth.

I created some accounts and decided to end the day on a success and would install all the other stuff later.

The first thing I noticed this morning was that the video was honked up. Dragging a window would cause it to be redrawn slowly. I looked at the Device Manager and the video device had a Yellow Question Mark indicating it didn't know what it was, and had decided to use a generic VGA driver. There was another Yellow Question Mark indicating there was another unknown device. Opening the case and pulling the card revealed I had a eVGA e-GeForce 6200 AGP card with 256 MB DDR memory. I went to the evga web site, downloaded and installed the latest driver. Sure enough that fixed the problem with the video.

After that, I thought I would install the LeadTek WinFast Multimedia Software Pack which hadn't worked for a couple years now. This fixed the second Yellow Question Mark and now all the installed devices seem to be recognized.

Next I installed Nero 6 which came with my Pioneer DVR-710 DVD recorder. The drive itself seems to have been recognized during the Windows install.

Well, the Dazzle Digital Video Creator 80 along with it's MGI Video Wave 4 software seems to have installed okay. When I plugged the DVC 80 into a USB port Windows recognized it, loaded the drivers and said it's working properly. That's great news if it's true.

I am amazed at how much software I had installed on this computer:

• ULead Video Studio 7 SE
• ULead DVD MovieFactory and Cool 3D
• Pinnacle Studio 9 (previously had both 7 and 8 on it)
• Adobe Premiere Elements 3.0 (7.0 on Vista Machine)
  
• Adobe Photoshop Elements 3.0 (7.0 on Vista Machine)
• Microsoft Office XP Professional 2002
• Microsoft FrontPage 2002 (Yuk!)
• Microsoft Visio Professional 2002
• Microsoft Project Standard 2002
• TextPad
• MyInfo
• WinZip 12
  
• ... and all those downloaded programs, oh my!

Despite having nothing but trouble with the Pinnacle Studio products I installed it anyway. I'm still disappointed they nickle and dime you to death for any add-on. Since I have never used them, I don't plan to install the ULead DVD MovieFactory and Cool 3D. Obviously, I have done a lot of Video and Photo work on this computer.

Well I'll be off the rest of the day, installing and rebooting.

Linux Still Sucks

Back on April 4th and 8th, I commented to my own post "Linux (Fedora 10) Sucks!" that I had ordered and installed CentOS 5.2 on two computers. All went well once I added memory to the old IBM E series 580. Both the Micron and IBM installed CentOS quickly and they both run fine. Last weekend, over the long Memorial Day weekend, I thought I would run Package Updater. The updater appeared to run just fine on the IBM, but the Micron came up an error while resolving dependencies. The error message reads, "Unable to resolve dependencies for some packages selected for installation." Under details it says, "Missing Dependency: /usr/share/magic.mime is needed by package httpd-2.2.3-22.el5.centos.i386 (updates)". Of course when I go to the /usr/share directory, there sits the magic.mime file. Today I Google the "Missing Dependency..." and sure enough a guru has trouble shot the problem and found all you have to do is clean out the Yum database with the command "yum clean all". This seems to have fixed the problem this weekend, but why did the problem exist in the first place?

After I ran the Linux software updater, the Micron wanted to reboot and I told it to go ahead. It came up in a screen resolution of 800x600. You would think no problem, I'll just set the resolution back to 1280x1024 that I had been using before and take advantage of my 19 inch monitor. As I should have expected when I tried resetting the screen resolution, my choices are now 800x600 and 640x480. Now what's up with that? I give up, Linux is never going to mature and will always be nothing more than a playground for the people who want to play there.

This new episode reminds me of the "good old days" back in 1997-98 while running Redhat 5.0 and needing to setup my video card. I had time back then, wanted a Unix box at home and wanted to learn this new thing called Linux. Back in those days if your video card didn't come supported out of the box, you did some rather bizarre calculations and then put the results in one of the configuration files in a very specific order. Then came the Xconfigurator or some such. Been there, done that, grew tired of that. Finally, when the computer I was running Linux on back in 2002 or 2003 burned out the IDE controller trying to load Redhat 9, I decided the heck with it and didn't run Linux until I ran across Fedora Core 6 in a magazine in late 2006. That's when I bought the Micron at a garage sale. This is how I got back in the Linux playground. I was hoping that Linux had matured and all the esoteric mechanization to do the simplest tasks was gone and Linux was maturing. Obviously, it was not to be true.

Looks like the next time Linux costs me money, in either software or hardware, I'll just let it die. Until then these two machines will limp along updating when they can and falling behind when they can't. When they die for whatever reason they will end up in a re-cycling center somewhere.

Just to make it perfectly clear, I am no fan of Microsoft Windows either. Microsoft's careless disregard for how much the hardware you must buy to support their software and not to mention the ridiculous software prices drives me nuts. I've got this XP Pro machine that has managed to corrupt it's NTFS file system. Not sure if this problem is Windows or the Symantec/Norton System Works and their virus called GoBack. Oh well, that's a story for another post.

Then there's this Gateway, Vista 64-bit stuff.

Sounds to me like I am just getting older and less tolerant of the things that don't work like they should, or maybe I am expecting too much. I don't want to keep complaining about Linux, I just want it to work without jumping through hoops and clicking my heels together the right number of times.

What Happened to Gateway Computer?

So what has happened to Gateway computer?

First, a little background. I've never owned a Gateway computer. I've had Compaq, HP, IBM, Dell, Acer, even Packard Bell and a slew of homebuilts, but never a Gateway. Considering I grew up in Iowa, that's sort of strange. I've always heard fairly good things about them other than they tended to use non-standard parts which you had to go to them to replace or upgrade. So far I've not seen this problem.

Last October, in 2008, I bought a brand new Gateway LX6200-01. So this is my first experience with Gateway computer. The computer is awesome and Gateway did a fine job bringing this to market. It has a 750GB Hard disk, 8GB of memory, two really cool external SATA drive trays, and every interface imaginable under slick hidden access panels. I bought it at the local Best Buy. I thought my only problem was that I told the salesman I wanted a non-built in video card, but then found that it had fairly decent ATI HD 3200 (AMD) video. I've been pretty happy with the computer overall. Then I tried to contact the Gateway technical support ...

I bought the computer on October 25, 2008. On October 31 I contacted Gateway support about an issue I was having with the computer recognizing my Hannspree HF229H 22" monitor. Their immediate solution was to use the backup created as part of the initial setup to essentially re-image the machine. Having already installed enough software that I was not willing to start all over, I decided to contact ATI (AMD) and see if they knew how to fix the problem since re-imaging and then booting again would just cause the problem to recur. Like most hardware vendors, ATI suggested completely removing their Catalyst Control Center (CCC) software and installing new drivers. What they suggested fixed the problem with the monitor, however I noticed the screen saver did not work. Eventually I found that after every boot and log in the screen saver delay was reset to 1 minute. Setting the value to 30 minutes each log in seemed to deal with the problem.

In early November 2008, I contacted Gateway Tech support to ask about software for the Fax/modem. Their response was that the operating system they included on their computer didn't support the included Fax hardware. After shaking my head, all I could do was shrug and say to myself "What are these people thinking?".

Since the only less than stellar aspect about the computer, causing the "Windows Experience" to only be 4.0, was the graphics adapter I decided to add a new video card. Not being a high end gamer, but expecting reasonable performance on Micro$oft Flight Simulator FSX, I chose a Sapphire Radeon HD 4650 to minimize the system change. The card has 512MB DDR2 memory and is working great today.

On May 9th I grew tired of the screen saver issue and I was feeling happy that I had cleaned up the other issues mentioned earlier. I contacted Gateway tech support describing the problem [090509-000110]. They informed me that my computer was not registered based on the serial number submitted, said that they would be happy to register it for me if I gave them the information, that my computer was indeed under warranty, and informed me that to set the screen saver I should "right click, choose personalize..., etc.". Since their response was almost a quote of my original Tech support request, I asked whether they even read my original request. I also asked why the message from Gateway, dated October 31, 2008, entitled "Thank you for registering" did not mean I had already registered the computer. By this time, I was suspecting I was dealing with a "Help Desk" that didn't have a clue, or at least didn't care and my response was with a smart ass attitude and I included Google results showing this is a well known issue with their computer, even Answers Microsoft is aware and Windows VistaForums has six pages on the problem. The response I received really shocked me. I was told that obviously the person responding couldn't help me with my problem and they gave me the pay for support number to call to find a solution.

In one breath, Gateway Tech support is telling me that my computer is under warranty and the next that I need to pay to find a solution. Does Gateway still employ any technical types who see they have a problem and find a solution, or have they gone to "don't care zombies" who just collect a paycheck?

Thanks Gateway, you ruined a really promising day and convinced me never to buy another Gateway computer all in the same day! What was this, a lazy and/or stupid employee, or a company's attitude toward their customers? Doesn't matter it was Gateway.

Me, Sprint and SamsClub

About a month ago I decided to replace my Palm Treo 755P because it kept rebooting every morning the first time I tried to use it. That got really old. On April 10, I was in the local Sam's Club and stopped at the phone Kiosk, which I found is run by a Radio Shack company. I left with a BlackBerry Curve 8330 and spent about a week with it. I was not really satisfied with it as a replacement for my Treo 755P so I returned it for a Samsung Instinct S520. I found the Instinct looked really nice, but didn't have any of the applications I used constantly and the news was through the browser rather than a standalone application like on the Treo and BlackBerry. Earlier this week I decided to take the Instinct back and get another BlackBerry. I went back to the Sam's Club and admitted my embarrassment at having to return yet another phone and get another BlackBerry. They said no problem and replaced the phone.

Some of the problems I experienced in this comedic episode were:

1. The Treo thinks of itself as the top dog and will accept Bluetooth address entries from anywhere, but won't share them with another phone.
2. The Sam's Club phone kiosk has no means to transfer your address book, but the Sprint Service Center is willing to do it for you.
3. The Treo had a incredible Address book capability and the Samsung address book was pathetic. Having more than a hundred entries in my address book and finding the Instinct stored them using the first name gave me nothing but grief. Quick, what's the first name of your dentist? You had to scroll through all the names on the touchscreen and not click on one and start a call. There was a tab thingy that allowed you to quickly change the first letter of the first name you were trying to locate, which had minimal usefulness.
   
4. The Instinct touchscreen takes a lot of getting used to. The day after I got it, on a Sunday morning at 6:00AM, I was trying to text my son. Somehow I ended up texting my son, a co-worker I hadn't seen in more than a year, and my wife's 70+ year old aunt in California. Thank God my wife's aunt's phone was a land line and the text message failed at 5:00AM on a Sunday morning. Later I got involved in a confused conversation with my co-worker who didn't know who I was based on my phone number and assumed he was talking to a relative of his.

Had a tooth pulled yesterday, so decided to go home after Sam's Club rather than go to the Sprint Service Center. On the way home I found my tooth was bleeding profusely and I needed to put more gauze on it and lay down to make it eventually slow down. Today it's not bleeding , but I had to drink a pot of coffee at room temperature.

Well I'm about to leave for the Sprint Service Center I'll follow up with how things go there? Still got some tasks and questions about the BlackBerry, such as:

1. Transfer address book
2. Setup email and make sure account is set up correctly for the BlackBerry
3. Ask how to add/remove apps (Doc2Go) using my credit card and not going to phone bill
4. Same w/ Ringtones
5. How to change the Background image
6. How to move apps (MySpace which I don't use and Facebook which I do use).

Well I'm back and the Sprint Service Center came through like a champ. They answered all my questions above. They showed me:

1. Done, quickly. Looks like they managed to transfer all the phone numbers and the email addresses including multiple for one person. The street addresses don't seem to have been transfered.
2. They showed me how to setup my email accounts using sprint.blackberry.com. I had to create a new blackberry account and then I just typed in the credentials for both my prime accounts.
3. Suggested I go to crackberry.com for the downloading and visiting the forums to get answers. They also recommended I visit the sprint downloads site.
   
4. See number 3.
5. See number 3.
6. The answer was easy, you find the app and click Move then use the ball to move it to where you want.

So I'm happy with Sprint and my BlackBerry. Not so with Gateway support as I'll explain in a post soon.

Linux (Fedora 10) Sucks!

<--- GEEK ALERT--->

I have been using various forms of Red Hat Linux since 1998. I was primarily using Linux for web development, and did some amazing things with it. In the past I have let it run for more than three months, and only shut it down when I noticed I hadn't used it for weeks. Another time to support development on my computer and hosting on a distant system, I disconnected it from the network (10base2 and dial-up back then) and set up the DNS server to return itself as the response to any request for an address. Worked like a champ.

Over the years I have had trouble keeping up to date with the current version. Back in 2002 or 2003, I burned out the IDE controller trying to install Red Hat 9. Went without Linux for a couple years. My latest system running Linux, an old Micron with a 9GB SCSI drive and 384MB of memory and a CD drive, started at Fedora Core 6 using CDs. I had managed to use the Internet to nurse it through updates to Fedora 7, 8, and 9. Each one presented challenges, but was surmountable. Then came Fedora 10.

Back on January 2, 2009, I decided it was time to update to Fedora 10. I started the process just like the previous updates. I happened to notice that Fedora 10 was not available on CD, but only DVD [sic - see comment 1 below]. As was true with the previous updates (notice I don't call them upgrades) it took many hours. After it tried to reboot, it came up eventually during the boot with the meaningless gibberish message:

Reading all physical volumes. This may take a while ...
Volume group "VolGroup00" not found
Unable to access resume devie (/dev/VolGroup00/LogVol01)
mount: error mounting /dev/root on /sysroot as ext3: No such file or directory
scsi target2:0:0: FAST-20 WIDE SCSI 40.0 MB/s ST (50 ns, offset 8)
sd 2:0:0:0: [sdb] 17783204 512-byte hardware sectors (9105 MB)
sd 2:0:0:0: [sdb] Write Protect is off
sd 2:0:0:0: [sdb] Write cashe: enabled, read cache: enabled, supports DPO and FUA
sd 2:0:0:0: [sdb] 17783204 512-byte hardware sectors (9105 MB)
sd 2:0:0:0: [sdb] Write Protect is off
sd 2:0:0:0: [sdb] Write cashe: enabled, read cache: enabled, supports DPO and FUA
sdb: sdb1 sdb2
sd 2:0:0:0: [sdb] Attached SCSI disk
sd 2:0:0:0: Attached scsi generic sg2 type 0

Since the computer only had a CD and Fedora 10 was only available on DVD, I quickly tired of this update game and shut it down intending to throw the computer away.

Finally, last weekend on Saturday, 3/22/2009, I decided to checkout CheapBytes.com where I have bought Linux media for a long time. I was surprised to find they now had Fedora 10 on CD as well as DVD. I ordered both versions and they arrived yesterday. I decided I would take a old IBM E series 580, with a DVD reader and CD burner, but only a 9GB hard drive. I had a couple 40GBs laying around and put one of them in the IBM. I started the install process on the Micron using the install CDs and on the IBM using the DVD. On both, I must admit that the media from CheapBytes.com worked great and was faultless.

On the Micron using the CDs, again after hours installing the system rebooted and guess what. The reboot resulted in the same error message above. Darn all that time and electricity wasted on this attempt to update!

On the IBM using the DVD the system booted to the DVD and started the install by asking the standard questions. Eventually it came up to configuring the hard drive. Each time, and there were many attemps even with a different drive, the install would fail on the IBM with the meaningless gibberish message:

anaconda 11.4.1.62 exception report
Traceback (most recent call first):
File "/usr/lib/anaconda/lvm.py", line 248, in vgcreate
raise VGCreateError(vgname, PESize, nodes)
File "/usr/lib/anaconda/fsset.py", line 2506, in setupDevice
entry.device.setupDevice(chroot)
File "/usr/lib/anaconda/packages.py", line 169, in turnOnFilesystems

anaconda.id.fsset.createLogicaVolumes(anaconda.rootPath
File "/usr/lib/anaconda/dispatch.py", line 204, moveStep
rc = stepFunc(self.anaconda)
File "/usr/lib/anaconda/dispatch.py", line 127, in gotoNext
self.moveStep()
File "/usr/lib/anaconda/text.py", line 741, in run
anaconda.dispatch.gotoNext()
File "/usr/lib/anaconda", line955, in
anaconda.intf.run(anaconda)
VGCreateError: vgcreate failed creating vg "VolGroup00" (PESize=32768kB) on
PVs: /dev/sda3
Log:
Running... ['lvm', 'vgcreate', '-v', '-An', '-s', '32768k', 'VolGroup00', '/dev/sda3']

I even put the disk in a external enclosure and deleted the partitions on the drive which I believe came out of a Dell Desktop. All to no avail.

Finally, on a whim I thought I would stick an old Windows 98 install disk in and see if it would install. Sure enough, after answering more questions than a typical 3-year old has, it formatted the hard drive and installed. Since I blew past the driver searches by telling it to skip each file it was looking for, it's not really functional, but it didn't seem to have any problems with the hard drive like Fedora 10 did. It should be embarrassing to the Linux community, and Red Hat in particular that a ten (10) year old OS is robust enough to deal with installing on this hardware.

This experience along with the history of Linux might explain the Slashdot story back on March 25, 2009 entitled "Red Hat CEO Questions Relevance of Desktop Linux". The slashdot story was:

"Red Hat CEO Jim Whitehurst questioned the relevance of Linux on the desktop, citing several financial and interoperability hurdles to business adoption at a panel on end-users and Linux last night at the OSBC. 'First of all, I don't know how to make money on it,'Whitehurst said, adding that he was uncertain how relevant the desktop itself will be in five years given advances in cloud-based and smartphone computing, as well as VDI. 'The concept of a desktop is kind of ridiculous in this day and age. I'd rather think about skating to where the puck is going to be than where it is now.' Despite increasing awareness that desktop Linux is ready for widespread mainstream adoption, fellow panelists questioned the practicality of switching to Linux, noting that even some Linux developers prefer Macs to Linux. 'There's a desire [to use desktop Linux],' one panelist said, 'but practicality sets in. There are significant barriers to switching.'"

Discuss this story.
Anyone have any comments, other than Windows 98 is from the same era as the hardware and thus should support it.  I might go back to CheapBytes.com and get the CD version of Fedora 9 and try to install it on both systems.

I've not been a big fan of Microsoft over the years, primarily for their attitude that they know what you want more than you do and force things on you. However, I now find myself with:

* Gateway desktop w/ Vista with 8GB of memory 750 GB hard drive
* Homebuilt desktop w/ XP Pro 2 GB of memory 320 GB hard drive (see Seagate Story below)
* HP desktop w/ XP Home 1 GB of memory 80 GB hard drive
* Dell Dimension desktop w/ XP Home 1 GB of memory 250 GB hard drive
* Dell Inspiron laptop w/ XP Home 1.256 GB of memory 160 GB hard drive
* Compaq laptop w/ Win 98SE
* Homebuilt desktop w/ Win 98 64 MB of memory 6 GB hard drive

Seagate Support Services [sic] Are Totally Incompetent

I can't believe over all this time, I've not properly uploaded my thoughts to this blog even though I wrote them up and saved them on my computer. Here's another example. The journal below documents an experience with a "high-tech" company. Though it's not given below, the story eventually did end without much help from Seagate. They now leave me alone and I try to buy Western Digital drives rather than Seaget or Maxtor (owned by Seagate).

May 9, 2007 - I buy a Seagate ST3320620AS 320GB SATA Hard Disc from Newegg.com for $79.99 with free shipping.

May 19, 2007 - I install the drive with no problems using the Seagate DiscWizard tool which is their version of the Acronis software to clone my disk. The drive is replacing the system disk on my primary computer.

Jan 18, 2008 - The computer was left on overnight to run a Norton Internet Security full system scan.

Jan 19, 2008 - Awake to find a Blue Screen of Death (BSOD) telling me that Norton GoBack was having problems with insufficient disk space. Eventually found that yes in deed, the Seagate ST3320620AS 320GB SATA primary hard drive had failed. I owned the Seagate ST3320620AS 320GB SATA 246 days, 35.1 Weeks, 9 Months or 0.68 years or a total of 5904 hours. I estimate, based on my typical usage including the holidays was 1019 hours. I begin using my laptop as my primary computer.

Jan 22-30, 2008 - I contact Seagate Data Recovery Services (SDRS). I vacillate on how to deal with the RMA saying ship it to Mcallen, TX and SDRS saying ship it to Santa Clara. I explain until I am blue in the face, I need everything off the drive so that it is bootable. Eventually the SDRS salesman says "Just send the drive to us and we'll take care of it", which convinces me to send it to Santa Clara, CA. I go online and get RMA 1000611097. The fact that Seagate has no means in their system to send a failed drive to SDRS and have the physical hard disc replaced under warranty was my first indication I was dealing with bureaucratic incompetent entity.

Jan 30, 2008 - Under RMA 1000611097, I send the drive to Santa Clara, CA using UPS 2-day air which cost me $69.

Feb 5-7, 2008 - I receive word from SDRS that yes the drive has failed. They say that the data can be recovered; it will take 2-3 weeks and cost approximately $700 or more under the basic data recovery service. I am then informed that all they can recover is the data, and they can not fully restore the drive and make it bootable because of Microsoft licensing issues. This is strange since on May 19, 2007 I had used their software to clone my original disc. I come to the conclusion that SDRS serves no service to mankind other than to frustrate and lie to their customers. When I tell SDRS I do not want them to do anything to my drive and ask them to return it to me, they tell me it will cost $15 for them to ship my drive back. My reply is: “I will pay your money grubbing incompetent company's bloodsucking $15 tomorrow from work. The costs of this useless waste of money and time have now exceeded the original cost of the brand new disk. Let your corporate management know that the service I have received in this very frustrating time has created a lifelong vehement enemy of your company only rivaled and equaled by my opinion of Microsoft. I shall share my opinion on this experience with anyone who will listen throughout the rest of my professional career.

Have a nice day!”

Feb 12, 2008 - I buy another ST3320620AS from Newegg.com for the same price of $79.99.

Feb 15, 2008 - I try to use the Seagate web site kludge to get another RMA, this time with the pre-paid return option. The RMA number is 1000646443. I then find out that for some reason, this is not the pre-paid option but the basic option that they will only send me a new drive after I send them the bad disc. I call customer service to explain the problem. They are having “computer problems” and they can’t fix it right then, but they take my credit card information and promise the matter will be taken care of when the system becomes available and I will receive confirmation then. I never hear anything from Seagate again until June 6, 2008.

Feb 26-Mar 3 - I find a local computer repair service that comes to my house picks up my computer replaces the Seagate disc with the new one I bought from Newegg.com on February 12, 2008. The entire disc is restored with no data lost and is bootable all for $120. After returning the fully functional computer and the failed drive, we install the failed drive in an external USB enclosure. Powering the drive on then off and back on again, we’re able to read and write to failed drive. It was nothing more than a sticky drive that Seagate had wanted to charge me $700+ to partially copy the data off.

Jun 6, 2008 - I finally recover from the frustrations of dealing with Seagate’s “Customer Service [sic]” incompetence, I decide to return the drive for warranty service. Knowing that the Seagate web site is frustrating I call Seagate Customer Service [sic] and explain that I want the $19.99 Advanced Replacement service where they send me the replacement. first The RMA number is 1000920148.

Jun 9-21, 2008 - I receive the replacement disc (June 13) and return the failed disc via the prepaid UPS shipping package that was included with the replacement disc. The failed disc is sent via UPS on June 21 and received at Seagate’s Mcallen, TX facility on June 25, 2008 at 12:16 PM. The tracking number was 1Z830E7V9051423442. Matter closed you would think.

July 11, 2008 - I receive two email messages from Seagate. One message is an acknowledgment for receipt of the failed drive. The second message (sent June 10) from Seagate E-mail Support has the subject: “Seagate Advanced Replacement Reminder [Incident: 080710-001485]” informing me that it is approaching the 30 day period and if they do not receive the failed hard disc before that time they will charge my credit card $179.20 + Taxes. My reply, also sent to Seagate Investor Relations (stx@seagate.com) and the SDRS salesman, was: “I have no idea why Seagate appears incapable of proper record keeping. There were three RMAs, two of which were canceled. The only active RMA (1000920148) was the one I returned the drive under using Seagate's pre-paid UPS packaging. It appears that through poor record keeping receipt of that drive was placed against RMA 1000611097 by Seagate receiving.

I have returned the hard drive covered under this RMA using the packaging Seagate supplied with the UPS charge pre-paid. The text portion of the receipt from Seagate for the UPS package is given below. You are not to charge my credit card any additional money. Should you charge my credit card, I will notify the credit card company that you have knowingly incorrectly charged my credit card. I will then notify the Colorado Attorney Generals Office of your poor business practices and ask them to investigate on the behalf of the people of Colorado.. I demand positive acknowledgment from Seagate on the closure of this matter.

The incompetency and anti-customer behavior I have seen in dealing with Seagate "Customer Service" is astounding and almost breathtaking.”

I then went to work, at a large Defense Contractor in the Denver area, and told five people (plus those not involved in the conversation, but overhearing it) in a discussion forum what had happened. I then shared the messages above, (July 11 and February 7) which contain my replies, thus continuing to fulfill my promise of February 7. The universal response was “what happened to Seagate they used to be just a good company”.

July 12, 2008 - I awake to find yet another email message from Seagate informing me that “Your order has shipped!” It is amazing Seagate manages to stay in business. I have no idea why they are sending me another ST3320620AS hard disc, if they are truly ignorant enough to do so. The tracking number is 1Z830E7V4245100704. I haven’t decided what I should do with the additional hard disc; keep it, or just refuse to receive it. I have however, concluded that mankind must be protected from such incompetence and that I need to warn the world by posting this to my Blog!

I remain astounded, breathless and amazed that Seagate is actually capable of staying in business.

Our Anniversary Outback Restuarant Experience

Below is the comment I left on the Outback website, on July 15, 2007. If you read any of this, be sure to read the bottom to find out how the local owner/manager responded. Had I thought of it, I should have posted this to the blog way back then.

+-------- Message on Outback Corporate Web Site --------+

Last night my wife and I ate at the Bellevue, Nebraska Outback because today (July 15th) is our 35th Anniversary and I have to go out of town at noon. I want to thank outback for turning our Anniversary dinner into a nightmare.

We arrived and were seated immediately. We ordered our meal of two Prime Ribs (16oz and 8oz) cooked medium well with drinks and Bloomin Onion appetizer. The drinks and Bloomin Onion arrived within a reasonable time. After tiring of the Bloomin Onion, I asked our waitress where our salads were. She said she didn't remember ordering our salads and that she would check whether she had placed our orders for salads. She came back a few minutes later and said she could not find our order anywhere and needed to re-take our order. We repeated our order for a 16 oz and 8 oz Prime Rib, medium well done and salads. Our salads arrived and then eventually the Prime Rib arrived cooked rare. My wife and I looked at each other and just shrugged. We ate as much as we could and decided to take the Prime Rib home and finish cooking it. The next time the waitress came by, we asked to get take out boxes for our meals and that the complimentary dessert for our anniversary be to-go. She asked if everything had been Okay, and I explained the issue with the under cooked Prime Rib. She apparently went and told the manager who came to our table. We explained how things had gone and he left to check on what had happened. Meanwhile two boxes and a bowl of ice cream covered in chocolate syrup with whipped cream and a cherry arrived. We explained that the dessert was supposed to be to-go and the waitress went back to make it to-go. My wife took several bites of the ice cream and commented on how good the chocolate tasted. At that point the manager arrived with a complimentary bottle of wine, a coupon for $45 off on our next visit and an offer to pay for the order minus the alcohol, which I considered a very generous offer. Finally the ice cream to-go arrived, we finished paying our part of the bill and we left with our boxes, ice cream, wine and coupon in hand. We get home and my wife decides to try some of the ice cream. That is when she found that ice cream didn't have any chocolate syrup, just vanilla ice cream with whip cream and a cherry. She just threw it in the freezer in disgust.

I find that we now have a $45 coupon that I don't know who I dislike enough to give it to. Obviously, neither my wife nor I intend to go back, but maybe sometime in the future when I confuse Outback with LoneStar and can't remember which one gave us "the anniversary experience" we might come back, but by then the coupon will be long lost. This is not how we had intended to spend our 35th anniversary.

+-------- Manager's Ultimate Response --------+

I went out of town that afternoon and was gone for most of the week. When I got home Toni (Martha) said the Bellevue Outback owner had called and wanted to talk to me. When I called him he apologized profusely and said that he was married too and understood the situation. Later we received a box of very expensive cookies and a debit card with $100 on it. We did go back to the Bellevue Outback and the experience was delightful.

Added Noblethoughts to janoble Twitter

I have just added the Noblethoughts blog to twitter using TwitterFeed. We'll see soon whether it works.

Having second thoughts on how to deal with CheapOair.com. I will probably just take it as a life's lesson that cost me $300 and will cost CheapOair.com and Travelzoo.com any business I might have had or might influence with others. Still haven't decided what I'll do. My problem is that I've used Travelocity.com and Expedia.com many times and never had them ignore my request for a particular time of day. In fact if I remember their services correctly, if they can't find a matching flight they tell you, they don't just list flights that are 12 hours later.

CheapOair.com's Initial Response

This summary is not available. Please click here to view the post.

Last Day in Albuquerque and Trip Home

This morning I awoke happy to find a working 4-cup coffee pot at the Hawthorn Suites. Turned the cold water on in the wet bar and the spout fell off. Oh well, the bathroom sink works fine so made coffee, fixed the wet bar spout and read email.

Continue to have trouble Hotsyncing my Sprint Treo-755P smartphone with my laptop. This is a long existing problem that Sprint has been unable to help with. It hangs while Hotsyncing media, pictures and video. Removed the "Team 2.0GB miniSD card" and the Hotsync went fine so I suspect the SD card is bad.

These are the sort of things I do while staying in a hotel before Toni (Martha) wakes up. I will sit for hours playing on the computer.

While we were leaving the hotel, I noticed someone on the elevator who was wearing a "Witchcraft" cap. I asked if he had flown on the B-24 Liberator now known as "Witchcraft" and he said yes. He said he had flown in Texas and I told him I had flown in Omaha. What are the odds that two people would meet in Albuquerque on an elevator who had flown this most historic of aircraft owned by the Collins Foundation?

Well, it worked like a charm, almost like someone planned it all out. Checked the car in at Avis and it was $40 less than their estimate. Got to the airport and checked in at United smoothly without much of a wait. Went through security remarkably quickly given how long the line was. The plane left Albuquerque about 10 minutes late, but arrived roughly on time. Got a $9 AAA discount at the car park and drove home without incident. We're home safe.

Our Day at the Albuquerque National Hispanic Cultural Center

What a wonderful, beautiful and huge place! We spent the day from 10:45 to 4:30 at the National Hispanic Cultural Center (NHCC) in Albuquerque, New Mexico. The NHCC is located at 1701 4th St SW, Albuquerque, NM 87102 (Ph: 505-246-2261 FAX: 505-246-2613). Their website is: NHCC. We even had lunch there which was some of the best mexican buffet I've ever had. Toni (Martha) spent most of the time until 1:00PM researching the Mares family. She didn't find much new information but found the staff there eager to help in the research. We found one of the staff was even married to a Mares. They also suggested she try going to the Special Collections Library, located at 423 Central Ave NE, Albuquerque, NM (404-848-1376 SpecialCollections@cabq.gov) Their web site is at Special Collections Library.

At 2:00 PM after eating lunch we went to the Performing Arts Center in the NHCC to listen to lecture by Louis Serna and Ema Moya. The lecture was intended to explain the history of the Cryptic Jews of New Mexico and more pertinent to Toni (Martha), Southern Colorado. The format was each speaker was given 20 minutes to explain their portion of the history of the Spanish people of New Mexico. Louis started by going back to Mesopotamian times and due to time constraints quickly covering the 40,000 years since then to illustrate how all the peoples of the world could be traced back to Mesopotamia. Ema then explained the relationship of all the Hispanic names and their role in surviving what they called the Mexican Inquisition which was a derivative of the Spanish Inquisition. We found the Rodriguez family lineage had suffered the most severe retribution of all the families due to the Inquisition. Ema explained why she did not care for the current use of the term "Cryptic Jew" since the expression "Cryptic Jew" was first coined in 1838 to describe the conversion of Jews to Islam under the same threats and intimidation used during the Christian Spanish Inquisition. After the lecture we spoke with both Louis and Ema. Both were delightful to talk to one on one. Toni (Martha) had been emailing with Louis for some time and both were delighted to finally meet. I don't know what it is about me, but after the meeting I voluntarily picked up some copies of two papers that Ema had prepared for the meeting and ended up mobbed and handing out papers for 10 minutes. After the discussions following the meeting I again ended up packing up Ema's pictures and documents and carrying them to her car. This ended up being a unique and treasured experience. Some of Ema's material showed a Albuquerque Mares cemetery stone with Mares and a star of David. Ema explained that there had only been six Mares brothers originally and that she to was related to the Mares family herself. Both Toni (Martha) and I found we would love to spend much more time with Ema as she has so much experience to share.

In just the nick of time we managed to reach "Old Town" to buy gifts for our granddaughters. We found we had plenty of time since typically the New Mexican practice is to close on their own time. Last night Alexis had told us she wanted a Indian feather hat which we interpreted as a Indian Headress. As we drove through the Old Town Square I dropped off Toni (Martha) expecting to circle until she bought what we needed. Instead on my first trip around the square I found a parking place directly in front of the San Felipe de Neri church built in 1706 (see pictures). After that Toni (Martha) and I walked the square buying gifts and a book on Cryptic Jews. For the girls we bought a Indian Headdress, a drum, a Tom-Tom drum and two small dream catchers. Hopefully the girls can keep the dream catchers throughout their long lives and have only good dreams involving their grandmother and grandfather. We also bought Green Chili stew packages and Green Chili peanut brittle. If you haven't already noticed, we love Green Chili.


After shopping, we had an early dinner at the Church Street Cafe behind the San Felipe de Neri church. Toni (Martha) had sopapillas and I had Green Chili Chicken soup and a Chef Salad. I'm catching a theme here involving Green Chili. We left Old Town after dinner to return to the hotel and post this blog.

Stay at Hawthorn Suites - Albuquerque, NM

We booked our hotel through Hotels.com again. My main search criteria was breakfast and in Albuquerque. The price seemed more than fair at the Hawthorn Inn & Suites and it was not too far from either the airport or the National Hispanic Cultural Center, the reason for our visit. The complimentary wireless access played a part in the decision too. According to our reservation with the hotel we had made them through Expedia so they must be related to hotels.com somehow.

To explain my state of mind on our arrival I went through Travelzoo.com to arrange our flight. I chose Friday "morning" for Denver departure and Sunday afternoon for our Albuquerque departure. One of the recommended sites was CheapOair.com. The price they quoted was $157 per person round-trip with a $20 total discount to "purchase now". No mention of the additional fees. I booked them immediately. We got to the airport yesterday at 7:30AM and the Frontier check-in kiosk informed me it was too early to check-in for our flight. We spoke to someone at the counter and they informed us our scheduled flight was not until 9:23PM!!! I checked and sure enough the flight from Denver was 9:23PM and the tickets were Economy so to change the flight cost an additional $150 per person. Frontier changed us to a 11:42AM flight for the extra $300, waived the $15 checked bag fee and we waited till then. Somehow our departure dates and destination were transferred from Travelzoo.com to CheapOair.com, but our time-of-day preference was not, or apparently there was no notice that it was being ignored. I intend to pursue this matter with both Travelzoo.com and CheapOair.com and I'll comment on their response. I'm expecting to get to the Albuquerque airport tomorrow and find that Frontier canceling our original flight caused our E-ticket with United for the return flight to be canceled. So far the score is: Frontier +15, Travelzoo.com -150, CheapOair.com -150.

Now on to the hotel ...

We arrived at 2:00PM knowing the room would not be available till 3:00PM, but we had nothing else to do until then. The person at the front desk called house keeping and found us a room on the third floor of four floors. As we've always experienced the people of New Mexico and Albuquerque are really friendly and easy going. It's an intentional slow pace here. We got to the room to find the promised very comfortable king size bed with a wet bar, fridge, and microwave. Overall the room appears pretty clean. The room has all the normal accoutrements including a hair dryer, hand along with bath soap and body lotion. The room also has a regular ironing board and iron. The minor downside was that we quickly learned the light switch in the bathroom turns on the fan which could wake the dead from the noise. We also found the light on one side of the bed and the florescent light over the wet bar don't work.

We had dinner at the Cervantes restaurant at the corner of the Gibson and San Pedro. The food was excellent, as is anything with Green Chili. We had the Chili Renos and beef enchiladas. The "silver" margaritas were okay and a little expensive.

The wireless Internet works fine, albeit a little slow. The signal strength varies from low to very low with the transfer rates varying from 11 to 24 Mbps. There are two WAPs and I didn't find any difference between them. The connection has proven reliable.

A simple thing, but one that can annoy you are the waste baskets. In the past I've stayed in hotels with one trash can in the room. Our room at the Hawthorn Suites had three trash cans. One in the main room, one under the sink and yet another in the shower/toilet room.

Now serious issues. As we were going to bed around 9:30PM the guests in the room above ours began doing gymnastic floor exercises, or at least it sounded that way. Then guests next door apparently staying with someone directly across the hall started visiting one another frequently and slamming the doors to each room. Sound isolation between rooms and floors is poor. Then I found the bottom sheet on the bed had a torn corner which didn't allow it to stay fixed to the bed. I awoke at 4:30AM and as expected found I was sleeping on the mattress and tangled in the bottom sheet. THEN at 4:30AM I found the carafe to the coffee maker didn't match the coffee maker and the coffee maker would not stay turned on. To adapt and overcome, I stood there holding the "On button" with my left hand while lifting and pressing the coffee carafe against the bottom of the coffee filter to activate the shutoff valve with my right hand for the entire time it took to brew. I did this twice - once for the regular brew and once for the decaf. 4:30AM is not a good time to mess with someones coffee!

The bathroom facilities are a separate room for shower and toilet. A sink and mirror along with the hair dryer are just inside the room door. The shower is wonderful. The water stream is strong. The shower curtain is on a curved rod so that the curtain doesn't cling. The room has several mirrors the one on the bathroom door is full length.

The hot breakfast was wonderful. It consisted of hash browns, scrambled eggs mixed with ham and biscuts with gravy. The cold breakfast available included fruit, cereals, etc. I was very pleased with the breakfast which runs from 7-10AM on weekends and is meant for hotel guests only.

Before breakfast I spoke to the desk person about the lighting and coffee pot. He said he would take care of the issues while we were out. After breakfast we went back to the room and found the light next to the bed turned on. Appears we had missed the independent light switch for that single light fixture, thus our problem not the hotels. The coffee pot and florescent light remain broken. Quick response to our reported problems, the staff are trying.

We spent the day at the National Hispanic Cultural Center (NHCC) and had a wonderful time. When we got back to the room, the coffee pot had been replaced and seems to work. Since housekeeping left two decaf packets and no regular coffee packets, I went by the front desk and traded for three regular coffee packets. So the problems appear fixed.

The next post will give a brief summary of the day at the NHCC.

Anniversary Stay at downtown Denver Hyatt Regency

Now that I've rediscovered my blog, I thought I would share my experience staying at the Hyatt Regency in downtown Denver for our 36th Anniversary. I originally created this for Hotels.com, thinking I could post this as my comment on the stay. Apparently Hotels.com wasn't able to accept the comment. Here's the post:

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We stayed two nights to celebrate our 36th wedding anniversary in a "Mountain View 1 King Bed" room. Our bed at home is king size and I doubt the bed in our room was really king size, but instead perhaps queen size or maybe something in between. Never the less the sheets were not big enough and each morning we awoke to the bottom sheets pulled out.

Parking is in a public parking lot under the building. While you are supposed to be able to use your room key to get into the lot, we spent 5 minutes sliding our key up and down with cars piling up behind us. Finally just took a ticket at $6 for the first hour and went back to the front desk. They quickly fixed the problem and changed my charge for parking from $21/day to $10/day. I wasn't even aware parking cost anything if we were guests at the hotel let alone $21 a day. Yikes - we could have taken the light rail to the hotel. The "parking fee" adds to the price of your stay at the hotel.

Internet choices are to either establish a T-Mobile Hotspot service plan account for wireless, or pay $9.95 per 24 hour period for wired. My laptop was prepared for either so I chose the wired rather than establish a service plan I might never use again. Since check-in is at 3:00PM and Check-out is at 11:00AM which is only 20 hours rather than 24 they are charging for at least four hours you can not use. In our case, we didn't get settled in our room and get the Internet set up until 6PM, thus I could only use 17 hours for the last day's service. When are hotels going to learn that people are migrating to hotels that don't charge for internet access?

Other premier hotels offer a free breakfast or at least free coffee. This hotel has an awesome buffet breakfast, but it costs $15 per person plus tax and tips. This added an additonal $60 for our stay which I consider another fee for staying at the hotel. The server and other restaurant personnel were very friendly and service was great.

Speaking of costs, there were two Aquafina bottles of water in the room. They had tags around the necks saying they were $6 each. Room temperature tap water at $6 a bottle is a bit much.

As soon as we checked in and got to our room we used the ice maker on our floor without problems. The second day after spending the day walking the 16th Street Mall in 100 degree weather the ice maker could not fill the ice bucket. As I walked back to the room I noticed that there was some sort of rust/white coloring in the ice. I tried to explain to the housekeeping person about the ice, but only got a blank stare due to a language barrier. I went to another floor and hopefully got good ice. Now I wonder what was in the ice I used the day before.

Around 4:30AM on the first night we began hearing pounding or banging noises from the room next to the head of our bed. The next afternoon at around 5:00PM we heard some banging noises in the room on the other side of ours. Don't know what this was all about, but you'd think making this kind of noise in a modern hotel would require pounding directly on the wall. You could also hear conversations and other noises in the bathroom next to our bathroom.

Service people were very friendly especially the people working in the Altitude restaurant.

The room was clean, but nothing special other than the gorgeous view of the mountains. There was no mattress pad and the sheets came loose during the night. The mattress was comfortable.

Bottom line: Would I recommend staying in this hotel, well yes but ... expect what you see in modern society by greedy companies who don't care what you think and run for stock holders rather than customers. Bring your big coin purse for all the nickels and dimes you'll need.

Long Time No Post

I just read travisdean9152's blog and he posted that it had been a long time since he had added to his blog. It had been a mere month. I then looked and realized it has been over three years since I'd added anything other than pictures. So ...

I still feel deeply about the the two previous opinion or "thought blogs" I posted way back in 2005.

Now for my personal thoughts. In January 2002 we moved from Colorado to Bellevue, Nebraska outside Omaha. The move was necessary to make visiting my mother in Des Moines easier and was made possible by my employer. We left our twin 20 year old sons along with two friends living in our house and moved to an apartment. While we were there, our granddaughter Alexis was born November 23, 2003. We were lucky enough to be back in Colorado for her birth. Since we lived in Nebraska, we didn't get to see her as much as we wanted. Then in November 2007 we moved back to Colorado and into our house, again thanks to my employer. On April 25, 2008 our grandaughter Addison was born and we have enjoyed being able to spend time with them both. Needless to say we enjoy being home with our family, which now includes our two daughter-in-laws Crystal and Stacy.

My plans for retiring at the end of 2010 have been put on hold. We, like everyone else have been impacted by the current economic conditions. I feel confident the United States will be able to recover from this interruption to our economic prosperity. Now that President Obama is spreading a lot more positive spin to economic conditions, contrary to the other democrat cronies in the congress, the country will soon begin to pick up the message and the recovery will begin. Why the democrats leading congress need to spread doom and gloom just to spend massive amounts of money is beyond me. Considering the characters involved in this, I'm sure that I'll comment again on this.