Vistaprint.com – Buyer Beware*

Looking for a cheap place to buy business cards?  You might find companies like vistaprint.com near the top of your Google search.  Your “cheap” cards might end up costing you a lot of extra money.  Here is the scam – and it IS a scam!

You get ready to place your order and you are offered $10 off because it claims you were a previous customer.  The next month you may see a curious charge or two.  They might be called things like Mvq*Vpclubus and Mvq*Bizmax; and each of them is a $14.95 charge against your account.

When I saw these charges, I googled them and things pointed to vistaprint.com.  Since we had just purchased business cards from them, I assumed these were the charges for the cards and moved on.  I didn’t realize that this was the second month these charges had been made. 

I am one of many Americans paying bills online and am guilty of not staying on top of my charges.  Having reviewed these charges, I have since learned that I have been charged $14.95 TWICE each month since May!  Shame on them and shame on me for not monitoring this better.

Additional google searches have returned complaints against these fraudulent charges and the company.  One complainant offered their 1-800 number to call.  We called 1-888-243-6185 and spoke with Eric and then a supervisor  who were both very helpful and assured us that in two business days we would be refunded ALL charges.

We did receive an email shortly after stating this intention, but others have been promised the same and continued to receive charges.  I will give the employees of Vistaprint the benefit of the doubt, and will follow up when this is resolved.

* Update: September 22, 2009 – As promised, our account was refunded $14.95 x 8 for the 4 months these charges occured.  I encourage any other victims to call the 888 number above.

Our Happy Hound

We are funny about our pets.   Take for instance my “Happy Hound” Collie Rose.  She was neither a hound or a Collie.  She was a Chow, but our 2 year old named her Collie Rose because it sounded pretty.  I called her Happy Hound because she looked like she was smiling at me.

Collie was trailer trash.  She was born in a trailer park to a stray.  As a single parent, Collie’s mother taught her the wiles of avoiding the dog catcher while snacking from trash bins and sympathizing residents.  Those who didn’t appreciate her scavenging would “sweep” her away with a broom. 

Collie was rescued and given to us at probably less than a year old.  For the first three days, she would only interact with our daughter.  It was touch and go for a while as her tendency towards biting was in direct opposition to my desire not to be bitten.  We soon found out that Collie harbored great animosity towards brooms. 

Any wooden broom would be chewed to shreds.  We remedied this by purchasing a metal handled broom – or so we thought.  Collie found that bending a metal handle back and forth between two trees would stress crack it in half; a few extra teeth dents would ensure it wouldn’t be beating any dog soon.

Through the years, we could count on Collie for two things:  She was an excellent protector, and any wild animals within a quarter mile had short futures.  Ground hogs, opossums, raccoons, skunks, and snakes didn’t stand a chance.  Oh, some of them put up valiant attempts, but when it came to homeland security, Collie let God sort ‘em out.

Collie spent her last four years as a city dog.  Whether the change prolonged her life or shortened it, it’s hard to say.  She seemed to adapt well and took advantage of more leisurely days.  She gradually slowed down, but in the end, she slipped away quickly and peacefully.  Collie Rose, from trailer park stray to pet extraordinaire, died at the ripe old age of 16.  She was buried above Reading Rock, her favorite area.

iTunes Rolling Out Higher Prices

Profits might be up at Apple, but for how long?  I just logged into my iTunes account, after a long break, to buy some music.  Imagine my surprise to find the song I wanted was $1.29 instead of $.99.

I’m not sure if Steve Jobs is still a little foggy from the pain meds, but news flash – the reason why this whole paying for music thing started working is because the cost vs. hassle ratio became favorable.  But for a 29% increase, free downloads just changed that. 

I don’t want to hear about how the record companies did this or that.  The solution is simple.  iTunes should refuse to list any music at a higher cost.  That would fix the record companies wagons fast.

The Emperor Has No Clothes – Twitter is bogus

I think I was the first person I know that signed up for a Twitter account after hearing about it on This Week with George Stephanopoulos several months ago.  Hey, I’m a cutting edge computer dude, so I have to keep up with the latest buzz.  It was really cool “following” Weird Al Yankovic, but then it started to hit me…what now?

At first, I thought maybe I just don’t understand Twitter or I just need to play around with it to learn all the cool things it can do.  After all, every actor, hipster and wannabe can now be found on Twitter, and anyone who’s anyone on TV says they Tweet.  Not wanting to feel inferior, I’d login occasionally and type a sentence.  But soon, I began to resent Twitter.  I mean, who wants a Tweet that’s two weeks old? But I felt completely unfulfilled.  What was I missing?

And then it hit me!  I wasn’t missing anything.  Twitter sucks!  There, I said it.  Twitter sucks and this has all just been a big media hype.  Everyone can run around and feel like they are part of some new great thing, but when I finally admitted to myself that Twitter is a complete farce, I suddenly felt whole again.  And so I say to all the hipster wannabes out there:  The Emperor Has No Clothes!

I Think I Have the Swine Flu

If Swine Flu means you are sick of Janet Napolitano, then I’ve got a raging case of it.  But seriously – aside from the occasional urge to start oinking, I’ve never felt better.

Pork farmers are not too happy with the latest craze that has everyone asking “Should I quit eating pork products”? I’m considering converting to Judaism, Islam or Vegetarianism (or perhaps all three)  just to be safe.

The numbers don’t lie.  We’ve now had a possible 159 deaths worldwide.  This is cause for great panic since this is nearly 1/2 of 1 percent of those that normally die of the flu every year;  and I’m quite sure that no government agencies have exaggerated these numbers.  Of course, every death from now on will be Swine Flu related.

Considering that the infamous Bird Flu epidemic wiped out nearly .00000001 percent of the global population a few years ago, I just don’t know how civilization will go on.

I’m told that flu inoculations are on the way.  Side effects of the shots may include dizziness, diarrhea, vomiting, fever, loss of consciousness and an aversion towards bacon.  Get to your county health department before you don hooves.

Samsung Omnia Initial Impression

Two days ago I replaced my damaged phone for the new Samsung Omnia through my Verizon carrier.  I wanted to submit a review as to my initial impression of the phone.  Later, I may resubmit a more informed review as I learn the finer and not so fine points.

The first thing to note is that this is my 3rd successive Samsung smartphone with a version of Windows Mobile – the Omnia sports version 6.1.  For those who have owned phones made by Samsung, you know that they a packed with great features, but always manage to have a few extremely irratating traits which keep you from unequivocally loving it.  The Samsung Omnia is no different.

The beautiful large display is the first thing that stood out.  Images are sharp and bright.  The screen rotation works well all the way around.  There is no such thing as upside down or sideways.  Touchscreen functions are very accurate and typing is at least as easy as the iPhone if not better.  The builtin 5 megapixel camera sounds impressive. Video Review of Samsung Omnia    There is a ton of free space on this device. My memory manager shows 35MB free for storage, 39MB free for programs and 7.8GB free in storage after downloading a few of my favorite apps.

I haven’t noticed many bad things yet, but one thing is so annoying, it’s almost a deal breaker.  When using the phone touch keypad, a touchkey lock pops up every few seconds.  Cycling through voice mail doing the usual 7 delete, 88# call back, etc. requires continually hitting the action key before you can hit another touch key.  I’ve time it’s frequency and this pain-in-the-ass pops up every 2 to 5 seconds.  If you already own this phone, you will no doubt arrive here as you look for a remedy for this annoyance.  I’ve searched.  Officially, Samsung offers no change to this setting.  Unofficially, there are code crackers already offering patched DLLs with limited success.

My initial impression can be summarized as this:  Samsung continues to offer great electronics with a lot of great features.  They also continue to have the most irratating shortcomings in the industry.  With a simple update, Samsung could solidify their place at the top of the smartphone market.

Optiplex 755 remote desktop problem solved

First and foremost, I am not taking credit for the solution to this problem.  What I am doing is restating the fix for remote desktop in hopes it will help someone else.  Enough said – see below:

Recently I configured 2 new Dell Optiplex 755s for remote desktop using custom ports 3393 and 3394.  I can do this in my sleep, so when it didn’t work, I was puzzled.  Basically, you adjust the port in the registry, turn on remote desktop, add an exception to the firewall if enabled and you should be off and running.  (Static the IP and configure port forwarding in the router for WAN access).

The weird part was that the remote desktop connection app would not return an error; it would quickly flash and sit there waiting for me to click on it again.  I noticed that if I typed in the wrong port, it would give me a connection error, but ports 3393 and 3394 for their respective machines just flashed with no error.

We looked at group policies, network security, login accounts, etc. with no avail.  A little Googling, however, returned the solution.  The new Optiplexes both came with dual monitor capable ATI Radeon 2400 video cards.  Apparently, there is a glitch in the video driver that ships in the new Dells.   A quick trip to http://game.amd.com/us-en/drivers_catalyst.aspx to download the updated driver immediately fixed the problem.

I wonder how many IT support people have had to waste time on this problem with the amount of Radeon 2400 video cards Dell is currently shipping.

Migrate to SBS 2008 from Server 2000

I thought I would share my migration experience in the event it might help someone else struggling with this issue.  Microsoft has no direct path for migration from server 2000 so the idea of such a move will keep an IT guy awake at night – thoughts of unjoining and rejoining the domain on every workstations dancing in your head.  There is a solution.  It’s a little clunky, but it works. Feel free to respond with a better or easier way, but here is what I did:

The migration obstacle is overcome by using an intermediate server with 2003 installed.  Basically, I installed a temporary copy of server 2003 on a laptop  (I’ll let you worry about MS licensing for the copy of 2003 which you will only need for about a day). After adprepping the old 2000 server, I ran dcpromo on the 2003 server and made it an active directory server.  Then I also made it a global catalog server.  Google the info if you need; the documentation is readily available.  Once the temporary server 2003 had synchronized all active directory information, I ran dcpromo on the customer’s server to demote it, making my laptop the master domain controller on the network.

You will need to Adprep the 2003 server now using the install DVD from SBS 2008.  Once this is done, I returned to the new SBS 2008 server.  Having created an answer file , I resumed the final part of the install in migration mode.  Again, Google proved invaluable for this part. My first attempt through the answer file was unsuccessful in getting the new server to login to the domain. I hadn’t installed and configured DNS on the temporary server.  This was oversight on my part but easily corrected.

Once the answer file was correctly navigated, the server finished the install.  I logged into the server and immediately opened the users tab in the SBS console and was disappointed to see all my users missing.  As a test, I tried to add an existing user account, but was informed the user already existed.  I tried a few more and they existed too.

 I opened Active Directly Users and Computers, bypassing the SBS console and noted that all my user accounts were there.  My groups were there too, but I had to add the appropriate users back to them.  A Google search quickly gave me the remedy for displaying my users in the SBS console by running the Change User Role wizard and selecting all users to add.

I finished promoting the new SBS 2008 to a global catalog server and then turned off the temporary server.  Users could still login to the domain without any problems.  I didn’t want to jump the gun, so I proceeded to configure other things on the new server to ensure everything was working properly.

My final step was to dcpromo the temporary laptop server back down to a member server and remove it from the domain.  All this might sound like a lot of work, but these steps saved a tremendous amount of time and made migration nearly seamless for the end users on the domain.

SBS 2008 Promises More but Delivers Less

I admit that I was more than just a little apprehensive moving a client to Small Business Server 2008.  I had minimal time to play  with it and learn its finer points.  Documentation is sketchy and sometimes incorrect since there were last minute changes to the final release.  Microsoft is rapidly addressing the issue.

I was pleased to learn that server migration had been greatly improved; disappointed to learn that there is no direct migration path from server 2000 to SBS 2008.   For more specific details on my migration see How to Migrate SBS 2008 from Server 2000. 

Once in the GUI, I began familiarizing myself with all the new menus and wizards.  I give Microsoft props on more wizard driven functions, but I despise their insistence in changing names and locations of certain features.  These are the same frustrations you’ve come to know going from XP to Vista.  Specifically networking and Exchange has some new terminology, sometimes for no apparent reason to this author.

Here’s where the less comes in:  

1. There is no client installable Outlook 2007 included in the client apps folder.  I’ve heard the MS explanation but it doesn’t change the fact that your clients will have to pay for it and most are perfectly happy with their Microsoft Office 2003 suite with the 2007 compatibility pack installed.  I give Microsoft a big thumbs down on this move. 
2. I defy any IT savvy person not affiliated with Microsoft to defend the built in backup solution for SBS 2008.  One word:  Sucks Royally! Ok, that’s two words but one wasn’t enough to describe the disappointment.  Simply put, it’s less customizable, has less features for backing up Exchange than expected, and  compatible with fewer backup solutions (eg. tapes)  Its more proprietary as well, making it harder to hookup to any old workstation to restore data to a temporary machine.  I would love to get a reply from someone that has gotten ntbackup to work on SBS 2008.
3. The system requirements for SBS 2008 is much higher than SBS 2003 and Server 2008 standard.  Running only on a 64 bit platform, it is a major memory hog with 4GB being the minimum.  Equate 4GB in SBS 2008 to 256MB in XP.  I am running 8GB and it seems to work well, but I’m thinking of doubling that in the future.  Couple that with the CPU and storage requirements, and you better be prepared to lay some dollars down for good hardware.  This isn’t necessarily a bad thing but it your bottom line will be higher.

Considering the above stripped out and dumbed down features, you might have noticed that the total cost of implementation is more expensive than with SBS 2003.  Factor in no Outlook licensing, the steep hardware requirements and the additional “familiarity” time, and you start scratching your head wondering if SBS 2008 is really worth the money.  I couldn’t help but wonder if Steve Balmer and Ashton Kutcher were going to bust into the server room and announce I had been punk’d.

Obama’s Address to Joint Session of Congress

Below is the transcript of President Obama’s Address to Congress.  I omitted anything that was a lie, only leaving the truthful parts:

“Madame Speaker, Mr. Vice President, Members of Congress, and the First Lady of the United States:

I’ve come here tonight not only to address the distinguished men and women in this great chamber, but to speak…

Thank you…you, and may…the United States of America.”

And that concludes the transcript of Obama’s Address to Joint Session of Congress.  Compliments of Truth in Government.