return void;

Finding a good online retailer that has good pricing, great shipping, and even better customer service has been an eight year process for me. I’ve bought from NewEgg several times in the past, and they have rarely failed to impress. Until now.

I recently purchased a few items as part of my evil plan to stay one step ahead of the world (I’ll detail what that is at a much later date).

Today, I received this notice from NewEgg:

We are sorry to inform you the following items are back ordered:

Item #:17-131-163(DVD+R DL VERBATIM 95166 8X 10PK RT) Quantity:1

Deduct Soamount:24.99 (USD)
Deduct shipping charge:4.50 (USD)
Total deduct amount:29.49 (USD)

Back orders are usually caused by Inaccurate inventories: with thousands of individual parts, it is possible some inventory counts may be inaccurate. Also, the accuracy may be correct but our warehouse reports we cannot ship the last one or two items due to being damaged on the shelf.

To speedup your order process, we have removed these items from your order. Newegg does not accept any back orders. All back ordered items are refunded in full and will not be shipped. Your account has been credited full, including shipping, for all these deleted items.

We would like to suggest you go back to our website and place your email address on our Auto Notify listing. Once we do get more in stock an email notification will be sent to you.

Please allow 3-4 working days for this credit to show up with your Bank.

This order will be shipped, without back ordered items, in about 24-48 hours, except weekends. All deleted items will not be shipped.

thank you for your patience,

Customer Service
NewEgg.com

Did you pay attention there? One of the items I purchased, the Verbatim DVD+DL pack is out of stock according to this notice. Check the link I provided again. At the time of this writing, that item is indeed in stock. The email was dated 5 hours prior to my writing this. Why didn’t they just wait?? Now I have to purchase the items again and wait again.

After logging in, I found the correspondence according to NewEgg:

Item #:17-131-163(DVD+R DL VERBATIM 95166 8X 10PK RT) Quantity:1 Deduct Soamount:24.99 (USD) Deduct shipping charge:4.50 (USD) Total deduct amount:29.49 (USD) deleted B/O by Rodney A Newsom 3/29/2006 11:53:19 AM

Also, at the bottom of the notice, you may see that it says that the rest of my initial order will be shipped in about 1-2 business days. I checked the order status and found that the remaining order was shipped on “3/29/2006 12:28:37 PM,” so one of the two are lying. I still have not received a tracking number.

Something is afoot at the Circle-K!

Enough already, over the course of the past three episodes of the Sopranos it has become abundantly clear that the show just isn’t the same without James Gandolfini as Tony Soprano. Sometime prior to the third or fourth season there was a demand on his part for more money as his recurring role, and speculation as to whether the show would continue on without him.

Episodes two and three of season six has Tony laid up in a hospital, not breathing on his own in a coma. Unfortunately the show has gone absolutely nowhere since Corrado “Junior” Soprano shot his nephew. Sure there may have been some power struggles among the lower ranks, but nothing has been done to promote a story line other than Tony struggling for his life, which takes up about one tenth of the show.

He has been wondering around not really knowing who he is, with recent events which occurred in his real life mixing with his dream world. There is all sorts of symbolism which are represented in this world, like a Finity Family reunion representing the afterlife, or his (well, Mr. Finity’s briefcase) representing his real life. Perhpas even the name “Finity” representing a finite amount of time Tony has left before his “associates” get tired of him and plot to clip him?

Edie Falco (Carmela Soprano) may be a fine actress, Steve Van Zandt, and Michael Imperioli work great in supporting roles, but even their combined strength simply can’t carry the show much further. It was a struggle getting through these two episodes because crying and bickering will only carry a show so far. Pining over some ones eventual collapse or recovery just doesn’t make for good television, especially given the history of quality the Sopranos has displayed.

Get Tony out of the hospital and get the show moving along. Simply put – it cant last any longer without him as the main lead.

This past week has been very rough on both sunshine and I. She had a 3 hour midterm that she studied for all week, and I was assigned a new project at work. We haven’t had much time alone and when we do, one of us is usually exhausted and sleepy.

I was put on a project of very high importance. In fact, I believe I started working on it on Monday. We have until the end of the month to complete it, so there’s a huge push to finish ASAP. Getting from requirements to implementation usually takes a few weeks, but in this case it took 4 days. I was also urged to come in and work some overtime on Saturday (yesterday). Since we do not get paid overtime unless we work 8 hours or more a week, it’s kind of a big deal to come in on the weekend. I was there at 7.45am, but did not actually get the lab open until 8.30am (don’t ask), and stayed there until 4pm. I’m just plain tired.

I had a whole bunch of things to finish this weekend, but I simply do not have the energy. I still need to finish and double check my taxes so that I can eFile it already. We should be getting some money back so that’s always good. It will probably go towards building a machine that will take over the world (evil laugh)!

Anyways, I have way too many things to do around the house lately to post anything. I have joined a Ruby work study group at work that I would like to post about sometime later. Anyways, off to brew some energy (read: coffee) and get crackin on these chores.

I can’t think of anything more annoying and frustrating than getting in your car in the morning to find it not wanting to start. This was the situation I found myself in this morning.

Over the weekend, it rained very heavily. I don’t usually bother to drive my car on weekends because it’s usually just easier to use my wife’s car. There’s a good reason for that: my car is a big brown turd. It’s an 1982 Oldsmobile Cutlass Ciera that was my grandmother’s and was given to me when my last car was wrecked (not my fault). When it was given to me, it had a smidgen over 30K miles. That was 5 years and 65K miles ago. It hasn’t had much major servicing since then. There are a few problems that have cropped up over the years, such as a busted radiator, worn fan belt, worn plastic tubing, broken A/C pipe connection (never fixed), bald tires (still need replacing), several batteries (don’t ask), worn windshield wipers (still needs fixing), several headlight replacements (still need to replace one), broken glove compartment latch (just made it worse, more later), and this new problem.

Okay, so it rained all weekend, which is what caused today’s problem. After Goggling around and checking my engine (rinsed and repeated) for about 4 hours, I finally found the problem: distributor cap. Either it is cracked, loose, or needs to be replaced. Either way, it at the very least needs to be cleaned out. When moisture enters a distributor cap, the firing mechanisms that turn your engine over do not set off and it sounds like your engine will forever crank. So after it started drying up outside (thanks Big Guy), securing the spark plug cabling, and cleaning many parts, it finally turned over.

I had to go through a large routine of checks to isolate this problem. I found several guides online to help try and pinpoint car problems, but all seemed to be pointing to this conclusion. I tried to find my distributor cap but had no luck. I checked Google’s images long enough and eventually stumbled across this page that showed an image of an engine in which I was able to identify my cap. Checked my engine, and the damn thing appears to be mounted on the back of the engine between the engine and the firewall. It took me about 2 hours to find this elusive part because everything in my engine is coated in grime and made from metallic gray parts. Everyone kept telling me to find a plastic cap, generally round, but I couldn’t tell what was plastic and what was metal, let alone unique colors.

Since this car needs to last until I can decide and pay for a newer car, I will be keeping my eyes open for a Haynes manual. It was my intention to get a newer car this summer, because I will have to drive much more for school than I currently do. Only a few months to go.

I’m going to go out on a limb here: I hate cars. I hate everything about them. They are expensive but lose much of their value usually before you finish paying it off. They always need huge amounts of maintenance and the people performing such services are generally considered low-lifes and untrustworthy. None of the internals are labeled (how hard could it be to laser inscribe the engine parts). Every car should come with a COMPLETE maintenance manual, not just a “this is the oil gauge” type of manual. If I pay $20K for a car, you would think they would provide you with all the knowledge you need, in print or digital form, for repairing, maintaining, and diagnosing your investment.

Jerry Seinfeld hates clothes; I hate cars.

Often times I have heard people discuss the topic, “If you could have any super power, what would it be?” Well let’s narrow down this and say, if you could have to power of invisibility or the power of flight which would to prefer to have, and of course why would you choose that particular power over the other?

Did you already decide? Was it spur of the moment, or did you really think about the unique potential each one really offers?

The power of flight is something mythical in my opinion. It is something humans have always thought of doing, and it currently done with the aid of machinery. This type of power would almost be one to be flaunted, because people are going to see you zipping around the clouds, or wondering how you got somewhere with a fantastic “wind-blown” look. Would it be more for the extroverted personality, one who enjoys putting their skills on display, or is that something you would like to do?

Then there is the power of invisibility, opening many doors of possibility. You would be able to get away with many many things, and even have the potential of living a complete a life which isn’t dominated by a nine to five job because you could get anything you wanted without being noticed; if you wanted that is. You could see movies for free, spy on people, hop on a plane and zip off on some exotic vacation, find out what people are really saying behind alleged “closed doors”.

So for all the loyal and causal readers alike, take a moment to think about this and leave a comment which you would choose.

Personally, I like the power of flight over invisibility,

For those of you who are familiar with your Roman history, today is referred to as the “Ides Of March.” In spirit of the bad omens that haunted Caesar before his murder, lets go over some creepy and big news items that happened today.

First and foremost, Sony finally made a public apology for the mess that has been their PR machine. To clear up any and all confusion, they held a conference to let all developers know exactly what they are planning, minus some details. You can read the full report made by 1up as they posted during the event. Most notably, they dispelled the rumors about the online service (supposedly will be free from launch), the required HDD with every unit (pre-installed Linux, sweeeeeet), the back-library downloads, PSP emulation and downloads of PS1 games, the shifted November launch date (damn DRM), and the PSP updates (price drop and EyeToy camera). Finally, something concrete from the world’s most powerful video game company. It’s too bad they blew their load before E3 because that leaves only Nintendo to steal the show. One thing I would like to note, I’m glad that Sony decided to include an HDMI interface in all of that time while waiting for BD to finalize.

Then I saw this article on Kotaku about the Twilight Princess debacle. In case you haven’t been following, there’s been much speculation as to whether or not Twilight Princess will be a Revolution game or Gamecube game. Shiggy announced today that it will have some awesome Revomote support. I’m looking forward to my arm getting tired after long gaming sessions.

It was also discovered today that Vista, Microsoft’s fifth major version of their OS, will not make heavy use of their .Net platform. Sounds a bit hypocritical if you ask me, but what can you expect from an OS that is going to be 3+ gigs, have few applications to boot, and have insane hardware requirements.

Apparently, shredding your documents is not enough anymore. Thank god the US government provides my employer with “burn barrels” (documents that need burning).

At what point can we expect a Terminator like scenario to take place now that the US government has decided to use robots to harm, or preferrably kill, humans? I for one welcome our new robotic overloads.

Lastly, in a shocking move, Amazon has shifted to unbelievable webhosting. For just $0.15 a month, you can have 1GB of Amazon storage. You will access this storage via SOAP and bittorrent. This is just freakin ridiculous. I can’t wait until they build a linux filesystem based on this setup.

I also wanted to point outa few stories that caught my eye but did not appear today (yesterday actually). First, there’s the world’s largest video game collection. This guy looks like he either has a rather large inheritence or is addicted to games like a true heroin addict. Then there’s the PSP Spot that was found in a train station in Tokyo. Take a close look at that picture. What freaking subway looks like that??? Where’s the homeless man deficating in the corner? Where the booze and bodily fluid stains on the floor? Too bad New York is not this clean. Lastly, Shiggy was knighted in France. Wow, “Sir Shiggy.” Rock on JumpMan!

Disclaimer: The following is a free expression of my opinions and no one should take it seriously.

I wanted to post this but I haven’t had the will to until now. I wanted to say that the Oscars are so retarded. I think I’m the only one that thinks it is. Seriously has anyone ever watched these movies that are nominated? Be honest. I don’t think anyone’s even heard half of these movies that are nominated. If no one’s heard or even watched these movies, how do they win the nomination? Call me ignorant. Do the Oscar crew decides who wins the award? If they do decide who wins, what makes the audience think that the Oscar crew isn’t persuaded by the movie producers to let them win?? Lets look at some example movies:

• Capote: Never heard of till now.
• Hustle & Flow: Movie about crunk music. Don’t even waste your money.
• Brokeback Mountain: Movie about gay cowboys – Oscar bait. I don’t want to sound like a homophobe (I’m not) but I hate movies that are made so they can get Oscars.
• Walk the Line: Movie about Johnny Cash. The only audience that watches this are old people. It doesn’t even sound interesting. Even if it WAS interesting, its probably doctored, i.e. made up an event that didn’t happen
• Good Night and Good Luck: Movie in black and white about some guy on the radio played by George Clooney. If I wanted to watch a B&W movie, I’d go to Blockbuster and rent a movie made in 1960s. This will probably be a movie where your history/politics teacher makes you watch.
• Mrs. Henderson Presents – Mrs. Who???
• Transamerica – Sounds interesting, but still, NEVER HEARD OF!
• Pride & Prejudice- Finally, a movie I’ve heard of.
• North Country – Another one I heard of. Hot Charlize Theron plays one of those roles where she a non-sexually applealing woman. Wait a minute… haven’t she done that before with Monster?
• Syriana – Another Clooney flick. Yes I’ve heard of it. I’m beginning to think Clooney is in desperate need of Oscars so he acts/directs 2 movies so he can up the chances of winning. Hey! When you’re nominated 5? times, you’re bound to win at least one.
• Crash – I almost watched this movie. It sounds pretty good too. Maybe I should watch it.
• Cinderella Man – I don’t get it. How ironic is the title. Cinderella is a boxer!
• History of Violence – Allllmost watched it, but no.
• Junebug – no, never heard of.
• The Constant Gardener- This movie is the only one I’ve watched. It’s was actually pretty good because it portrays a corrupted business/secret’s even tactics. JUST LIKE the Oscars.
• Munich - Excuse me Mr. Spielberg, but haven’t you already made a movie like this? Schindler’s List?