1. Get rid of the macro keys on the left.
   I’ve been working on this new keyboard for more than a week now and I still… STILL… keep hitting the bottom left macro key instead of the Ctrl key when copy/pasting or opening a tabbed window. It’s very annoying to try and open a new tabbed window and instead you wind up losing the page you’re on and opening a new page in your existing window of the browser.
2. Add a calculator button.
   This should be a STANDARD feature. ALL keyboards should come with the calculator button. You make a keyboard with all these extra button and not one of them is the calculator. Sure, go ahead and make that key reprogrammable for a macro, but hunting through the Start menu every time I need to do a little math is really annoying.
3. Make the USB outbound ports 2.0 compliant.
   Perhaps I am asking more than can be done, but is it too difficult to make a USB hub that has USB 2.0 compliant ports? I love the fact that this keyboard has ports, but they become quite less usable if their response time is cut by a slower connection.
4. Make sense in your install guide.
   “There is a switch on my keyboard with a picture of a joystick on it. What is that? Let’s check the book. Oh… it’s number 8. But wait there is no numbered definition list anywhere.” Why is there a numbered list of options in the manual and no legend to explain it? (btw: I’m still trying to figure out what this switch does)

On a related topic…

Does anyone have any recommendations for a collapsible bluetooth keyboard? I have recently found myself traveling with my Mac Mini between home and work. They keyboard is the only problem as it’s… well, it’s not small enough to fit in a bag that holds the Mac Mini.

I also thought it might be cool to get a keyboard that is compatible with the iTouch. Ok, so I don’t know if the current generation iTouch has bluetooth capabilities, but expect the new one (coming in June) will have it. As a forethought, I might want to be able to use this new keyboard with my iTouch for some quick text input.

November 23 I was billed by them again. Their billing policy is once every 3 months, so apparently I didn’t notice the third payment I made to them after cancelation.

I attempted to contact them to resolve the matter but receive nothing from them. I then reported it to paypal. This must have gotten their attention because they finally replied to me saying that,

If someone discontinues their service or agreement with the named person (or company) the subscription was created for, then they also need to cancel the subscription, PayPal has no way to know whether your service or agreement is still in effect unless you inform them of the status.What that means in a nutshell is that should you stop the service that the subscription was originally created for, you must also cancel the subscription or it will remain in force until such time as you cancel it. Additionally, please don’t confuse your service (with us in this case) with your PayPal subscription; they are two separate things. We hope this helps clear up some of the confusion.

Basically this means, “We will trick you into thinking you have canceled your account and never refund you for additional payment made.” Or, “We are crooks.”

As a PayPal merchant, I know you can reverse payments in paypal even if it is a subscription. However if you choose not to, then your a bad business person. If you choose not to after wrongfully taking money for 6 months (more than one payment), then you are a crook.

Info about their business:

Nation Voice Communications LLC
+1.(888) 242-6486 Phone
+1.(888) 242-6486 Fax
91 W. 12th St.
Bayonne, New Jersey 07002
United States
www.nationvoice.com
owners@nationvoice.com

Yes, I’m warming up for my campaign against these guys.

Update: 12/04/08

After not receiving a response to my last email asking them if they would refund my money, I decided to take the next step. I submitted a complaint to the Better Business Bureau. This will put a black mark on their business record and perhaps persued them into refunding me.

I also started a letter that I was going to send to ArtofWarCentral.com but didn’t yet send it. I am thinking of offering anyone who has ventrilo to switch from NationVoice to ArtofWarCentral and I will give them a free MODSonline account and a discount on their ventrilo.

Update: 12/04/08 (night)

A new employee from NationVoice called me and said he could help me last night. Either this thing could get resolved or he’s just new to the whole screwing over thing. His name was Mark and he told be I could resubmit the the contact form with my transaction ID from paypal and he would take care of it. That his bosses Justin and Craig should be able to help.

Also for the record, he confirmed that I canceled my account on May 18, 2008. I was charged again in August which I cannot receive a refund for due to the time that’s passed. I was charged again on Nov. 23, 2008 and that we should be able to resolve.

Next up if this doesn’t go well, I will contact a lawyer to see what the next step is.

Update 12/18/08

Yesterday I followed up with Nationvoice to find out what’s going on. I still hadn’t heard any news from them. Last night I received an email from them stating that a refund was granted and this morning PayPal has confirmed that for me.

Geez, it wasn’t easy but I got the money back. I will be MUCH more skeptical of subscriptions from now on. Sure, MODSonline requires a subscription and I have run into a few people who contest on PayPal the charge. And yes, our policy states we don’t have to refund you, but I ALWAYS do refund the person. I want people to think of MODSonline kindly.

It was fortunate for them that they didn’t wait another 5 days. That would have been the 30 day mark and my next course of action was to start telling my story to the computer and gaming magazines. All those magazines have a department that LOVE to hunt down and resolve such issues. And my tactic was to continually make this more and more public until it was resolved.

I don’t think I was upset so much about losing the money, or potential of losing it. I was upset that this company thought they could get away with taking the money. I probably would have fought this for $20. I felt “taken” or “scammed” and was going to make it my goal to stop it from happening again. With Nationvoice residing in my Country and State, it made it that much more feasible.

OK. So, I’m beginning to ramble here. I hope a lesson has been learned by NationVoice. A lesson was certainly learned here.

Really though, the patio went in nicely. I’m impressed with the end result (note to self, get pictures online). Now all I need is the hot tub I was building it for.

The hot tub is in great condition. However, there is a very small leak on one of the hoses. The tub was under warranty and the repair man already assessed the damage. I figure, great, It’s almost ready for pick-up.

For the rest of this story, I will let the emails do the telling…

August 27th

Hi Erik,

Just wanted to give you status on the Spa…

Spoke to the repair service today for PoolTown (Spartan Service) and they have not received all of the parts from Sundance.  They receive one part, but they also ordered the next higher assembly to be able to replace that if necessary… so they are still wanting for those parts.

He hopes they will receive the parts within the next week and then they will schedule an appointment to come out.  He also indicated that he lost 2 service technicians due to an accident so he asked that I be patient.

September 10th

Erik,

I received a message on 4 Sep 08 from the repair service indicating that the parts have come in and they wanted to schedule an appointment.  I called them back on 5 Sep and 8 Sep (732-534-4589) and each time I left a message on their machine asking to setup a date… but I did not received a return call.  Yesterday, 9 Sep 08, I finally reached a “person” and he knew that my parts were in, but they were in the process of moving their office to a new location and he said he would call me back later that day to schedule… but I never received a call back.

Today, I called again and left another message on their machine… Believe me, I have been trying…

It is my understanding that the leak/drip is coming from one of the pump housings and they were doing to either replace the complete housing or parts within.

It is up to you if you want to take it now or if you want to wait for these guys.  You can take it any time you want…

Please advise.

September 12th

Erik,
Finally spoke to a “person” this morning.
They promised they would come out on Tuesday to do the repair.
Will let you know what happens…

September 17th

Erik,
Not good news…
I took the afternoon off from work and waited and waited, but no one came.
I left another message on their machine.

Not sure what else I can do?
I’ll keep trying…

Who’s the repair center causing all this trouble? Pool Town of Howell, NJ. You’ve heard rumors that their service was bad? Yeah, me too. Now I am a 2nd party victim.

And to think that I was considering purchasing a new hot tub from them. Image the grief I’d get out of that… of course, I’d have more to post about for your entertainment (bah, you only care about being entertained, don’t you).

Ugh. More to come, I am sure.

If anyone else out there uses my CopyforNotes extension (add-on), I have updated it to work with the new Firefox browser. You can grab it here: CopyforNotes version 1.8.

What extensions do I have installed?

• ColorZilla (not working)
  This plugin allows me to use an eyedropper pointer to select colors on any webpage. It allows me to easily select the color values when programming a website either from an image or the html.
• CopyforNotes (working)
  With this, I can select text on a page and copy it plus the url of the page for placement in my notes. I wrote this for MODSonair topics creation. It will either take the url of the current page or that of the link I am hovering over. More details are somewhere in this blog.. give a search if you want to know more.
• Dummy Lipsum (working)
  When programming a website, sometimes you need text to fill in an area here and there. This allows me to create filler text on the fly that doesn’t actually say anything. However, it looks like real sentences and paragraphs so the client can get the overall picture.
• Google Browser Sync (not working, damn it all!) (read following blog post)
  This extension that I love so dearly allows me to carry my bookmarks across computers without thinking about it. Whatever my bookmarks are at work are at home, which are on my laptop, etc.
  Wait, there’s more. It also saves my cookies, passwords and other authenticated business. I don’t have to keep typing in all that junk when going from work to home or any browser I have installed and setup with this plugin.
• Google Notebook (working)
  I use Google Notebook for taking my initial notes for MODSonair. This allows me to quickly save anything I see online for review later in the week. I then use CopyforNotes to turn those links into topics that easily paste into the final product.
• Greasemonkey (working, but not working) (now magically working without my intervention) (broken again)
  This is an interesting add-on that allows you to program and use Greasemonkey extensions. It’s like a platform of pre-made functions so that you can more easily program your own extensions. I use it for a Greasemonkey add-on that automatically inserts a custom signature into my different Gmail email addresses. I’m not sure what I’ll do without it that feature which isn’t working
• Gmail Signatures (new and working) (link)
  I found this as a replacement to the Greasemonkey add-on crossed out above. With it you can insert a custom signature for any of your gmail email accounts. Since you can send out your gmail from any account that you own (like from gmail, foyleman, or modsonline), you can now assign specific signatures to each.
• IE View Lite (working)
  Right click the screen and have the option to open your current page or selected url in IE. As a programming, websites need to work across multiple browsers.
• MeasureIt (working)
  Measer the width and height of a selection within your browser window. Great for figuring out the size of an area you have to work with to properly size the image you plan on putting in there.
• Screen grab! (working)
  Two clicks and you can copy or save the webpage you are looking at as an image. You can copy the select, entire page or what you see.
• Web Developer (working)
  A necessary tool for web programmings to hunt down problems on any web page.

Here it is, a day later and Batistablr has decided to purchase one of those domain names that I looked up on netsol, but to his surprise, it was no longer available. Someone had purchased this domain in the one day since I found it available on their site.

Batistablr looked up who thought to purchase the domain name in such a short time. It turns out that netsol purchased the domain name. But, how can they afford to purchase all these domain names that people search for?

Here’s the trick. Netsol knows that they can purchase a domain name. If they cancel the purchase within about 4 days after purchase, they don’t have to pay for it.

The Lesson: Don’t search for your domain names on netsol unless you plan on purchasing them from netsol. If you do, you will end up SOL yourself.

This week I spent some time browsing various themes online. I started in the usual places where you can find thousands of wordpress themes for free. The problem is that they all suck are quite boring. Nothing tickles my fancy enough to even consider trying it out.

After realizing that “free” might be the reason for suckage the quality of themes, I hit up templatemonster. Again, I was disappointed by the suckitude quantity of boring themes.

It does cross my mind that perhaps I should just develop a theme that’s less sucky of my own. However, that falls into the whole “not enough time in a day” category that I posted about a few days ago.

Is it me? Am I being too critical? ugh… sucks oh well.

The unit is from Panasonic model KX-TG6502. If at anytime I need to have a conference call, a maximum of two of us can pick up the phone. If someone tries to ring in on the other phone line, then forget it. They are out of luck.

Does anyone have any suggestions for a good multi-line cordless phone for use in an office situation. I don’t want to spend a thousand dollars.

Supersword, steer clear of selling this phone to any of your customers.

Almost, EA. Almost you got me on that purchase of Crysis via EA Link. That game downloader sounds like a great concept, but not if you are going to charge me again if I lose my download or installation.

###

So, I had pre-ordered Crysis from Gamestop last week. It was a little expensive, but I really can’t wait to get it. Add shipping and tax, and the price was at almost $75.

This morning, I noticed that EA was offering the game via their download agent called EA Link. I’ve used this in the past and it works similarly to Valve’s Steam client. However, I noticed something different this time around. When I added Crysis to my shopping cart, another item was added called the Extended Download Service (EDS). With it, I can re-download the game anytime I want over the next 2 years. Without it, I only get 6 months.

So, hmmm.. what option should I choose? I can purchase the game in a box and install it at anytime throughout my life (assuming Windows still exists). Or I can download the game and play it for 2 years until I reformat again.

The first Crysis tutorial I created had some issues after recording. In creating a video, I use a great program named Camtasia which is used to capture the screen and your voice as you work. When I went to edit the video, apparently the audio track was corrupt (according to the developers of the program) and I couldn’t add any fade effect between the opening still shot (title) and the video that I recorded (interesting side affect, hmmm).

This time, the recording failed for a new reason. Although I don’t know the cause other than the program is crap the recording is possibly really long, the video crashed during compilation to a version I could import into the editor. Basically, the recording I made was trashed. I never got to save the recording, it just disappeared and never asked me to continue.

After banging the desk for 10 minutes and yelling at the monitor waiting around patiently for a few minutes, I manually shut down the program for a restart. I figured I was left with having to start from scratch. But upon restarting the program, I was prompted with a notification that, “an unfinished recording was found and do I want to recover it.” “Hell yeah, I want to recover it, you @#$!”. Wouldn’t you know it… 10 minutes later I had the recording and I was able to edit it.

Problem again at this point… the video can’t compile with transitions. This refers back to the previous pain in the ass issue I had. The developer told me the audio was corrupted the first time and I don’t see how the exact same issue could happen again. I think it’s time for me to send another angry letter request for assistance. I love this program and don’t want to hate it… but what is with these problems I am having? This can’t be a coincidence anymore.

I’ll be back with an update to the result of my inquiry.
(”inquiry”… that sounds harmless, doesn’t it? lol)