Flyback Transformer

Save Space on Jolicloud

gonz — Sun, 25 Oct 2009 02:00:14 +0000

I’ve been happily running Jolicloud Alpha 2c on my Asus Eee PC 701 for the last couple of months. Along with the Google Chrome Dev Preview browser for Linux, this is without question the best lightweight OS for my netbook’s tiny 4Gb SSD drive.

However, I was dismayed to see my remaining free space steadily dropping from about 1.3 gigs free just after installation, to less than 250 Mb free this morning. I searched online for some tips to retrieve my unused space, but could only find this terminal command to delete cached installation files:

“sudo apt-get clean”

After poking around a little more, I discovered a utility in the Accessories folder called “Disk Usage Analyzer” that was really helpful in figuring out which directories inside my home folder were taking up the most space:

This handy utility helped me realize that a bunch of Prism cache files inside my home folder were taking up nearly a gig’s worth of space on my 4Gb SSD (Prism is a minimal web browser used by Jolicloud to create local executables of web-based services). Armed with that information, I was able to delete the cache files. Now my free space is back up to over a gig.

Bye-bye, Comcast

gonz — Mon, 21 Sep 2009 23:03:41 +0000

Dear Comcast,

Here’s why I am leaving you.

Last Saturday, I started moving from old house to new house. I called Comcast customer service to schedule a transfer of service from old house to new house. I was given a time window of 3:00 pm to 5:00 pm. By 5:30 pm on Saturday, after waiting at my new house since 3:00 pm, your local technician/installer had not showed. I called Comcast: “Oh, sorry, he’s a little delayed but will be there shortly.”

Long story short, technician never showed up on Saturday. Called Comcast again: “Oh, sorry, someone from Dispatch will contact you by 7:00 pm to reschedule.”

Nobody from Comcast called me to reschedule. I had to call Comcast early Sunday to reschedule. Spoke to nice rep named Joanne: “Oh, sorry, but we don’t do installs on Sunday. Soonest would be Monday from 1:00 pm to 5:00 pm.”

Me: “No can do, I’ll be at work. My wife can be home by around 3:30 pm.

Joanne: “Okay, I’ll put in a note that even though the time window is 1:00 to 5:00 pm, the tech should come around after 3:30 pm.”

Me: “Thanks.”

Monday, my phone rings at 1:30 pm: “Hello, this Comcast, the technician is at your house waiting for you.”

Me (incredulous): “But I specifically told Comcast yesterday that no one can be at my house until 3:30 pm.”

Rep from local Comcast installer: “Dunno.”

Me: “Fine, I’ll leave work just to meet the tech at my house.”

Local installer: “Okay, the tech says that he will wait for you.”

Me, driving like a madman to meet the tech at my house. Get there, nobody is there. Me, calling local installer’s office: “Your tech isn’t here waiting for me.”

Local installer: “Oh, he just went to get some lunch, he’ll be back in 20-30 minutes.”

Me: “So…you call me, tell me the tech is at my house two hours earlier than he was supposed to be there, I leave work just to meet the tech at my house, whereupon I find that he’s just left my house to grab some lunch.”

Me, furious: “Please write this down in your notes so that Comcast can read them. Comcast, I am done with you. You have screwed up this supposedly simple installation at every step of the way, in every way imaginable. I will have nothing more to do with you. Today, I cancel my Comcast account forever.”

Me, now calling AT&T U-Verse.

And that’s why I’m leaving you, Comcast.

Unhappily yours,
Martin

A Frigid(nightm)are / Electro-sux Horror Story

gonz — Wed, 19 Aug 2009 07:56:13 +0000

This is my family’s personal horror story about our ongoing customer service nightmare at the hands of Frigidaire/Electrolux.

On July 24, 2009, our eight-month-old Frigidaire refrigerator unexpectedly broke down and stopped cooling. All it would do was beep continuously. There was no reason for the failure: it simply stopped working.

We called Frigidaire/Electrolux customer service (their call center is located in the Philippines) to report the problem. Little did we know that we would be forced to call them every day, several times a day, for the next month.

The part to fix our refrigerator (the control board) was out of stock, so on or around July 30, 2009, Frigidaire/Electrolux customer service told us that if the part had not arrived by August 4, 2009, our refrigerator would be replaced with a new one. We would have been happy with this resolution, had it in fact taken place as promised. But as we soon discovered, Frigidaire/Electrolux customer service is full of empty promises.

In the meantime, we had lost about $400 worth of food that had been stored in the refrigerator. We threw out most of the food and kept what we could in a couple of coolers. We have been buying 40 pounds of ice practically every day since July 24, to keep the food cold.

On August 7, 2009, we received a copy of a letter from Frigidaire addressed to our local dealer from whom we had bought the refrigerator (Fry’s Electronics), requesting that Fry’s replace our failed refrigerator with a new unit.

That letter was sent from Frigidaire to Fry’s customer relations on August 7, 2009. On that same day, my wife Sandra personally went to Fry’s to ensure that they received the letter and to expedite the replacement of our refrigerator. Then ensued two days of being bounced around between Fry’s and Frigidaire — Fry’s wouldn’t release a replacement until they could verify the letter from Frigidaire, and it seemed that no one from Frigidaire was willing to take ownership of our situation and help us get our replacement faster.

On August 10, 2009 we called Frigidaire’s customer service call center for what seemed like the dozenth time. We were getting frustrated because we didn’t know anymore what to say or how to complain to them that would get our replacement refrigerator into our hands faster. Finally, the call center in the Philippines put us in touch with a higher-up customer service representative in the Frigidaire/Electrolux headquarters in Georgia. This person, Felicia Roseboro, told us she was referring our case to the “replacement department,” to resolve the issue as soon as possible.

On August 13, 2009, Ms.Roseboro told us that they could not find a local dealer in San Jose, CA who would agree to replace our refrigerator. On August 14, 2009, we received a call from a certain Keela Rhodes of Frigidaire informing us that instead of replacing our refrigerator, they would simply ” buy back” our refrigerator for the purchase price minus the tax, delivery and installation charges. She told us to expect a letter from Frigidaire/Electrolux later that day.

At the time of this writing, we have received a copy of said letter. It instructs us to send our own letter of response to Frigidaire/Electrolux agreeing to the buy-back, as well as the original purchase receipt and the refrigerator’s original “serial tag.” Since we are not sure what this “serial tag” is, for the last three days we have been sending email and leaving voicemail with Ms. Rhodes and Ms. Roseboro, asking for a simple clarification of what this serial tag is.

We have not received any response from Frigidaire/Electrolux since August 14, 2009.

Meanwhile, we have been spending extra money on food and ice for our coolers, every day since the eight-month-old refrigerator broke down 26 days ago. In four days, it will have been one month since the refrigerator stopped working.

We feel that no one in Frigidaire/Electrolux is genuinely interested in helping us receive a replacement.

We feel that if we do not call or email Frigidaire/Electrolux on a daily basis, then that company is perfectly content to disregard the hardship and inconvenience that our entire family has suffered, and continues to suffer daily, due to the failure of their eight-month-old refrigerator.

It’s bad enough that the refrigerator failed after only eight months of operation. It’s even worse that Frigidaire/Electrolux do not seem to stand behind their product. The worst part is that they make their customers feel like we don’t matter to them at all.

We just want a working refrigerator. We want Frigidaire/Electrolux to do right by its customers and ensure that this issue is resolved to our satisfaction, After all, it’s not our fault that the product failed. We have already been promised a replacement. How long do we have to wait for that replacement to be given to us?

in conclusion, my advice to you all is to stay away from all Frigidaire and Electrolux products. Let’s refuse to support a company that doesn’t value its customers enough to process a product replacement in a timely manner. Let’s use the vaunted power of the consumer to punish Frigidaire with our wallets.

Jolicloud saved my 5-year old!

gonz — Mon, 17 Aug 2009 03:20:52 +0000

So the airport antenna on my 5-year-old son’s PowerMac G5 (coincidentally also 5 years old) has been gradually degrading over the past couple of weeks, deteriorating into complete failure this weekend. This isn’t good, because without his Airport antenna, son has no Internet, and without Internet son has no Spongebob Squarepants on his computer, and without Spongebob, he keeps bugging Mom to use her computer, which upsets Mom, which then eventually means that I never hear the end of it.

Rather than spend $30 on a second-hand Airport antenna on eBay, my temporary solution was to set up my son with my Asus EeePC 701 running Jolicloud, connected to an old 17-inch VGA display. Son gets access to internet, Spongebob and other flash games (via Friv), therefore doesn’t bug mom, and everyone’s happy. I would never have thought that my EeePC under previous OSes such as EeeBuntu or CrashBang Linux would have been usable by my five-year-old, but Jolicloud is very accessible.

Jolicloud Alpha 2c on EeePC 700

gonz — Sun, 16 Aug 2009 08:49:21 +0000

jolicloud desktop

Jolicloud OS for Netbooks (currently in private alpha) invitation arrived two weeks after I signed up for it.

I was amazed at how well it supports my Asus EeePC 700 out of the box. Normally when I install an alternative OS on my EeePC, I have to tweak the OS extensively post-install to force it to recognize my wireless card, to support onscreen brightness and volume indicators, processor throttling, etc. Jolicloud, however, supports all these things on the EeePC 700 directly after installation; especially impressive considering Jolicloud supports many other Netbooks aside from the EeePC.

Jolicloud is built upon Ubuntu Linux, and as you can see from the image above, its interface resembles Ubuntu Netbook Remix. However, the installed size is smaller than a default Ubuntu installation, taking up just 2.5 gigs of my EeePC’s 4GB SSD. Jolicloud is a stripped-down Ubuntu install, de-emphasizing local applications and skewing heavily toward web-based apps that live in the cloud. So, for instance, Open Office isn’t installed by default; sure, you’re free to install it afterward from Jolicloud, but you can also just as easily choose Zoho or Google Docs. Jolicloud treats local and cloud-based apps equally, blurring any distinction between them. The message seemsto be that with Jolicloud, it really doesn’t matter where your apps reside; what matters is what you can do with them.

I’ve tried many different OSes on my EeePC: the default Xandros Linux (very poor), EeeXubuntu (a custom version 0f Ubuntu 7.10, hasn’t been updated in a while), Eeebuntu (very nice EeePC-specific version of Ubuntu, constantly updated) and CrunchEee (an EeePC-centric version of CrunchBang Linux, a lightweight Ubuntu variant using the Openbox window manager). My previous longtime favorite has been CrunchBang for its simplicity and economy, although the learning curve is rather steep for the average user. Jolicloud beats them all, in my opinion. Even as an alpha release, it is a more complete and seamless experience than anything else I’ve ever run on my EeePC.

Netbooks pre-installed with Linux reportedly suffer four times higher return rates than Windows XP. Jolicloud has the potential to reverse that trend because of some key innovations. First, it makes browsing for, adding, and removing apps drop-dead easy, thanks to the Jolicloud “My Applications.” This is a big ease-of-use improvement over Ubuntu’s Synaptic Package Manager, which can be a barrier to non-technical users.

Second, Jolicloud integrates very nicely and easily with the social web. It’s the first Netbook OS that rivals my iPhone in casual easy browsing of Facebook or posting Twitter status updates.

Third, it just works, as I explained earlier with its out-of-box support for all of my EeePC’s esoteric hardware and features. It runs all web apps full-screen in Prism, a simple browser without the normal browser interface.

Overall, Jolicloud is impressively polished for an alpha release. I can’t wait for future releases.

love + hate = netbook

gonz — Mon, 10 Aug 2009 07:59:23 +0000

I have an on-again, off-again relationship with my netbook, an Asus EeePC 701 I bought two years ago, at the very dawn of the netbook era. In retrospect I should have waited before buying, because now I’m stuck with a netbook that’s too small, its keyboard too cramped, storage too tiny (non-upgradeable 4GB SSD) in comparison to today’s netbook offerings.

My Eee PC spends most of its time sitting on my desk, unused. I’ll dust it off every few months, when a new version of EeeBuntu or CrunchEee is released, to test the latest in EeePC-optimized distros (CrunchEee is my favorite), but mostly the thing sits idle.

Blogwriter Test Post

gonz — Fri, 02 Jan 2009 11:47:28 +0000

This is a test post from my iPhone to my blog via Blogwriter Lite. One of the reasons why I haven’t blogged as much lately is because it’s just too inconvenient to fire up the portable when I’m home. I use computers at work all day long; the last thing I want to do when I get home is mess around with computers some more. This might be a good compromise solution. Also, I’m getting pretty fast at typing blog posts on the iPhone. The auto-correct feature is very slick and helpful, once you’ve gotten used to it.

Of Groceries and Geography

gonz — Fri, 02 Jan 2009 07:14:13 +0000

I’ve always taken groceries for granted. You go to a grocery, you buy what you need, you forget about it until the next time; that’s how it is for most people, I’ll bet. That’s how it was for me in New Jersey, when we lived there, and also in upstate New York, where we lived most recently before now. It’s one of those things that you take for granted.

Well, I’m here to say that a) you don’t value what you have until it’s gone, and b) the quality of the grocery really does depend on where you are.

In New Jersey, we had Shop-Rite, which handled our basic needs adequately. In fact, I would say that we were very happy with Shop-Rite. It had what we needed when we needed it; rarely were essential items out of stock. Every so often, Shop-Rite would have promotions like their “Can-Can” sale, in which all canned goods were heavily discounted. Aside from the fact that our local Shop-Rite could get a little crowded during the holiday rush, it was a satisfying grocery. We took it for granted, because it did what it was supposed to do for us, without fuss.

When we moved to upstate New York, we didn’t miss Shop-Rite, because that’s where we discovered Wegman’s. Wegman’s is, in a word, awesome. In a few more words: Wegman’s is, in our experience, the gold standard by which all other groceries must be judged. Why is Wegman’s so awesome? Think about a grocery that excels at pretty much every category by which a grocery can be judged. Clean and appealing interior and decor: check. Friendly, helpful, cheerful, motivated staff: check (for over a decade, Wegman’s has been a perennial member of Fortune magazine’s list of Top 100 companies to work for, usually occupying one of the top three spots). Comprehensive, thoughtful, well-stocked selection of grocery items: check. Excellent deli section with lip-smacking sub sandwiches: check. Complete, top-quality produce section: check. I could go on, but you get the idea: Wegman’s simply outperforms any other grocery chain I have ever tried, and I’ve tried a lot. If you live near a Wegman’s, consider yourself lucky, and cherish what you have. If Shop-Rite is a Toyota Corolla, then Wegman’s is a Lexus.

Now that we’ve moved to Northern California, we miss Wegman’s. I don’t mean that usual kind of missing something where you start out missing it a lot, then less as time goes on, until eventually it becomes a dull ache, dimly remembered. I mean that I’ve been here for five months, and I miss Wegman’s profoundly each and every time we go to the grocery over here. Exhibit A: in New Jersey, we only found it necessary to go to one Shop-Rite, the Nutley Shop-Rite, got everything we needed every single time, and didn’t feel the need to shop anywhere else. Exhibit B: in New York, we only ever found it necessary to patronize one Wegman’s, the large and newly-built Liverpool Wegman’s, less than 5 minutes from our house. Here in Silicon Valley, practically each time we go grocery shopping, we find ourselves having to flit from one grocery store to another, like pollinating bees, just to be able to find everything we are looking for. We go to Safeway, they have some things but not others, or their produce section flat-out sucks compared to Wegman’s or even Shop-Rite. So we are forced to go to another Safeway, or a Lucky, just to find everything we need, except those other place don’t have everything we need, either. We even tried a Save Mart, but it featured the sorriest-looking meat section I have ever seen in a major chain grocery, so we quickly got out of there. There was one day where we hit no fewer than five different grocery stores, including the much-hyped Whole Foods Market, in search of The One Grocery Store to satisfy all our needs, like we had in New Jersey and New York; is that too much to ask? Is it too much to ask that we find one, just one signle grocery store here in San Jose that can measure up to Wegman’s, or even just Shop-Rite?

The answer, unfortunately, is yes, that’s apparently too much to ask, and no, we still haven’t found that one grocery store. Even the two Costco branches near our house over here are strangely lacking in some basic items that we easily found in our New Jersey Costco, or our New York BJ’s. Sad to say, we are coming to the inescapable conclusion that when it comes to a satisfying grocery shopping experience, San Jose will never measure up to the other places where we’ve lived.

If you have a favorite grocery in the San Jose area that could change our minds, please let us know in the comments section. I’d love to be proven wrong!

R.I.P., SpyMac

gonz — Mon, 22 Dec 2008 01:48:24 +0000

Does anyone remember SpyMac? Several years ago, it used to be a vibrant Mac-centric online community that offered some great free or low-cost alternatives to dot-mac products such as mail and iDisk. SpyMac used to offer free email as well as one gig of online storage (at a time when such things were rare and unheard of). SpyMac was one place online where the Mac force was strong, and attracted Mac fans of every stripe.

I just visited spymac.com today, and was shocked to find it unrecognizable. It has transmogrified into “Leapfrog,” some kind of Web 2.0 social networking and video site, where people can upload their home-made videos and receive payouts. It also boasts of face-to-face chat and post pictures of each other. It seems to be a generic hodge-podge of Youtube, MySpace and Facebook that has nothing whatsoever to do with the Mac. The only vestige that remains from the old, Mac days is the logo.

Digging deeper, I discovered that the old school Mac-centric SpyMac site is still up at classic.spymac.com, but it hasn’t been updated in a long time. If you’re feeling industrious, dedicated or nostalgic, the whole sordid story of what happened to SpyMac can be read in this thread. The beginning of the end was the advent of Leapfrog, summarized in this press release. The long and short of it, as I see it: SpyMac grew too big, too fast; it incorrectly identified the needs of its audience, leading to bad decisions and resources being allocated where they shouldn’t have gone. SpyMac, the site and its services, were down more often, and members stopped visiting the site, and stopped caring. Stuck with a whole bunch of expensive server hardware and infrastructure to service an audience that no longer cared, apparently the site’s owners decided to launch Leapfrog as an attempt to recoup their losses.

The end result: a tragic and ignominious descent into mediocrity. So long, SpyMac; I prefer to think of you as you were, not as you are.

Advice For The Young At Heart

gonz — Mon, 21 Jul 2008 21:51:55 +0000

A young friend of mine was complaining about how older freelance web designers seem to talk down to younger freelance web designers because of their age and relative inexperience. I gave him this advice:

My advice to you is to believe in yourself, and be brutally honest with yourself about your abilities and your limitations.

Don’t ever let anyone tell you that you can’t do something, because only you can be the judge of that.

If you ever happen to hit a wall because of your relative inexperience, learn from it, and don’t make the same mistake in the future. Marc Andreessen was 17 when Netscape became a multi-million dollar company. Filo and Wang were in college when Yahoo! made it big.

Listen to everyone’s advice, young, old or middle-aged; everyone’s got some truth to share or experience to pass on. Use your own internal BS filter to separate the useful nuggets from the useless crap.

Be humble. No one likes an arrogant smart ass, no matter what age he or she is.

Here endeth the lecture. (Steps off soap box)