My wife’s key fob to her Jetta stopped working some months ago. Appears to be the battery, since the LED is very faint and, well, the doors don’t unlock. Upon quick inspection of the fob, it appeared to be a sealed unit, which to me meant $$$$ at a dealer.

Not so!

A quick search found this page over at riskin.org. I suppose I should be thanking Kimmy and Jacob Riskin, so… thanks guys!! You’ve turned an expensive trip to the dealer into a cheap trip to Radio Shack.

There are step-by-step instructions and many more images available on their site. Go check them out and save some bucks.

You can’t handle the truth… but I’ll say it anyway. There are a handful of companies that I’ve come across recently that are worth checking out (at least in my opinion). They are, in no particular order:

• SunRocket - VoIP service for under $10 a month. I signed up with these guys a few months ago and am extremely happy with them. They are actually more reliable than my old Verizon voice line! And if you’re worried about power outages killing your phone (like I was), head on over to Costco or Best Buy and pick up a cheap UPS (it will pay for itself with the money you save by switching to SunRocket). Oh, and yes - you can keep your current phone number. Sign up for their unlimited plan using the link above and get 3 months free. (see comments)
• GrandCentral - Recently acquired by the evil Google empire, GrandCentral allows users to pick a single permanent telephone number from almost any area code in the United States. Use it so you have a single place for all your voice messages (which you can listen to and save right from the web), have it ring your work number when you’re at work and your home number during the evening. You can even block specific numbers, create custom greetings, and much more. Check them out, it’s all free.
• Mozy - Free online backup services, up to 2GB… and under $5 per month for unlimited storage. You can have Mozy automatically backup your most important files (or all your files if you desire) and then access them from the web or via a Windows Explorer interface right from your desktop.
• Crabersen - Very affordable domain names and web hosting is just a click away. Ok, I’m a little biased, but check them out. They offer very competitive web hosting rates in state-of-the-art data centers. Secure. Fast. Reliable. That’s the Crabersen advantage.

This post really serves as a reminder to myself… so I don’t make the manly mistake of forgetting my anniversary. It would be worthy of many nights on the couch if I forgot this one, since it is our first…

For the second year in a row, rivers are overflowing their banks in Lowell. Many roads and businesses were forced to close due to the rising waters or the threat of rising waters. In May 2006, the bowling alley in Lowell was severely damaged by flood waters and was closed for a number of months for cleanup and repairs. Yesterday, the lanes were again shut down due to the threat of the rising Merrimack River.

The above picture was taken yesterday and shows a flooded bowling alley parking lot. You can also see tarps and plastic sheets up against the bottom of the doors. They packed these with dirt and sand in an effort to defend against the threatening water. The interesting thing about this scene is that the river, which is across the main road, had not flooded the road (which was still open to traffic). It appears as if poor drainage in the parking lot caused excess water to collect.

Tom Wilson has aparently resorted to ripping himself off. My friend Carrie has been giving me Ziggy’s One-Day-At-A-Time calendar for as long as I can remember, and much to my surprise I found a repeat! The comic for Sept 8, 2006 was almost identical to the one from Mar 17, 2007. Sure, it’s drawn slightly differently, but c’mon… it’s the same strip! Have the Wilsons really been doing this so long that they’ve run out of ideas? Or maybe they figure their audience is so old, they’d never remember the same strip showing up twice. I would just ask that next time they wait more than 6 months to repeat it.

I think I’m coming down with a web-induced illness.  I spend all day managing the business side of one of my company’s web sites, so 90% of my day is spent playing around on web sites.  The last thing I want to do when I come home is do anything online.  My eBay usage has suffered tremendously… as has this blog (can you tell?).  This over-exposure to web radiation is starting to take its toll.

The dust was thick.  The smell was musty.  And there were cobwebs in every corner.  Today I grabbed a rag and some Pledge and made my blog all nice and shiny once again.  I’ve also pulled some static pages from my old site into my blog template, which will allow me to keep them updated a bit easier than before.  You’ll also notice a new masthead picture - that’s Mt. Washington in New Hampshire, taken this past weekend.

I had assumed that once the wedding and honeymoon were behind us, things would settle down a bit.  I couldn’t have been more wrong.

Since the wedding (June 24, remember? ), we have attended two more weddings, held a yard sale in Maine, traveled to DC/Maryland,  hosted a neighborhood party, and went to the NASCAR race in Richmond, VA… not to mention the countless projects ongoing at home!  Sheesh!  When do things slow down? 

Over the past month, I have had a whole host of issues with my Sprint PCS account. You name it, they screwed it up. The name on my account was suddenly changed with no way for Sprint to change it back (the caller ID name for one of my lines became the primary account holder name). They were forced to close my account and open a new one for me. Great. On top of all that, there were charges on my old account that I shouldn’t have had. They messed up a previous plan change and ended up billing me for extra minutes and services.

So here I was with my new account. It was set up on July 24 and the first invoice was sent out on July 26. There were a handful of issues with this bill. First, my corporate discount was missing. Second, all the services I just got credit for on my old account were now back! Grrrr! I called to have the corporate discount added and was told at that time to ignore this first bill and they would send me a new one. The due date on this first bill was August 21, so not a big deal.
On August 1, Sprint sent me another bill (due August 28). This bill was generated to align my account with the corporate billing cycles. Aparently, at this time, my previous bill (dated July 26) became past due. Yes, you heard right - Sprint considered my July 26 bill to be late and unpaid, even though it wasn’t due until August 21. On August 10, I received a disconnection notice due to my unpaid balance. On top of all that, my August 1 bill still had more erroneous charges and I was even double-billed for the last week in July (charges appear on both bills).

When all was said and done, I made two trips to a Sprint store, two email inquiries to the Sprint web site, and literally about 15 phone calls to Sprint. I had much better luck once the woman in the Sprint store gave me a “special” toll-free number to call. Aparently it takes you right in to the Texas call center, which is considered level 2. After one ring, you get a live person… and a live person who knows what the hell they are talking about. Double bonus.

Now, over a full month since I started down this road, my issues are resolved. I received almost $130 in credits for all of the erroneous charges they applied to me account. The funny part is, the last woman I spoke to in the corporate discount group was such an idiot that she credited my an extra $10! That’s the least they can do for all my time and aggravation.

The lesson for today boys and girls is: avoid Sprint at all costs. Their customer support sucks and their billing system sucks. Don’t waste your time with them.

It appears as if I have been neglecting my poor ol’ blog for the past few months.  Ok, so maybe I have.  But I assure you it has not been without good reason.  There have been 3 weddings in the past 6 weeks (one of which was my own!), a trip to San Diego, a vacation in Australia, countless incompetant businesses I’ve had to write complaints to, a house to clean (still have wedding gifts all over the place), numerous doctor visits, a washing machine to fix, and a whole shitload of work to catch up on… not to mention the normal stuff like mowing the lawn, taking the cats to the vet, going shopping, writing emails, eating, sleeping, etc.  Fun fun.

So, the other day I decided to transfer all of my domains to Crabersen Internet Solutions, clean up some of my DNS information, and do a general healthcheck on my various web sites.  Then, today I decided to post something to my blog, and while I was at it found the need to upgrade my installations of WordPress and Gallery.  Aparently they were grossly out of date.

What’s in store tomorrow?  Well, I need to actually post some decent pictures on my Gallery page and eventually re-do my home page.  It sucks.  I know it sucks and I just don’t have the time to update it since I spend all of my energy battling idiots at work who think they are web experts.  Um, sorry… the fact you know how to surf the web does not make you a web expert by any means.  Furthermore, the fact you use IE means you should be shot.