Power On

Well I got my new PSU a few days ago, plugged it in and it runs fine. There was an initial high-pitched squeal when I first turned the PSU on, but after firing up the computer it has not come back.

So today I dropped off the rebate. It says it should take 10-12 weeks to arrive. I took the letter to the post office so it should certainly get post-marked before March 1st. I made scans of the receipt (invoice) and the UPC still attached to the box. I discovered in scanning the invoice that while it appears black and white to the eye when scanned it comes up colorful, probably so they can tell if they are in fact getting the original receipt or a copy.

I'm a bit paranoid when it comes to rebates. Stories like this and one from this blogger show that I am not alone in this paranoia. Besides this my dad had issues with a Motorola phone rebate, after he contacted them to find out why he hadn't received the rebate they tried to tell him he did not send the UPC. He had in fact sent them the whole box because of all the plastic crap they used he couldn't get it off. So after some additional hassling and a few more weeks he got his rebate check.

This site has a copy of the article from the Mercury new in San Jose that is no longer available on there website. This one really makes me leery of rebates!

So I will be counting down and keeping track to see if Newegg.com and Epower will be more honest with their rebates, I would find it hard to believe that Newegg could or would allow such scams and not have a mile long list of complaints of people getting screwed over.

However if it is the case, I've called the Better Business Bureau before, when my roommate's Xbox wouldn't play Morrowind and Microsoft said it was the game's fault, which it was not. After researching the problem and calling Bethesda who confirmed it was a problem with the Optical Drive that Microsoft used, I knew Microsoft had been feeding me a line, they were compliant only after we filed a complaint with the BBB. I hope I don't have to go to these extremes again, but I'm prepared to do so, simply on principle. The rebate now is only $15, but its my $15!

I can't do it Cap'n, I just don't have the power!!!

My PSU (power supply unit) finally kicked the bucket the other day. More accurately the fan in the PSU kicked the bucket. It would seize up occasionally causing the computer to crash, but I could just "jump start" it by sticking a pen or something in to rotate the fan and then it would run fine on its own. This time though, there was no recovering it. So I ordered a new one from NewEgg today, this neat one with lights in fact. I hope it arrives soon because not having the tower makes it difficult to print at the apartment, let alone it totally messes up my comic and programming aspirations. However, having to use the laptop with the grindy-growly fan, might just motivate me enough to send it in and get it replaced.

I already received the e-mail saying I've been charged for the PSU, so hopefully it will soon be followed by a shipping notice.

I was thinking about upgrading the RAM since I had the tower cracked open, but I'm not about to plunk $100 down to double the RAM from 1Gb to 2Gb, when there are no real performance hits to the system.

GIMP-y

So I've been using The GIMP to create a comic (check it out here). The thing is though that The GIMP has been slightly annoying me in certain aspects. Especially the rectangle selection tool. Now I will admit, I am no GIMP guru. There just isn't really a simple way to create shapes with it, at least not that I'm aware of, so I've used the rectangle selection tool, which while successful in some aspects I also seem unable to unselect the stinking thing. So then if I try to do something outside of the previously selected area I can't do squat. It just irks me...ok vent over.

And again...

Well reading Neko's post from before about getting my Wacom Tablet to work again, I found out it was because of a kernel (the kernel being the heart of the Operating System as it were) [wikipedia] update. Well of course after I went and fixed my tablet, someone found an exploit in the latest kernel, on February 10th, which was patched by no later than the 12th. I got the update notification automatically in Ubuntu, but didn't patch it right away (the exploit was a local one). So I checked before I installed the patch, Wacom was working, after I updated the system, no more Wacom. So it just means I have to go back to those steps and go through them again.

Another U.S. Ubuntu Distributor

I honestly don't know how this company actually rates, but I just saw their link when I was getting to the Ubuntu Forums, and thought I'd check it out. It is called Eight Virtues, and they sell desktop towers with Ubuntu pre-installed, and they say it is customized so you shouldn't have to reconfigure anything, which to me sounds like they have it setup where the user won't have to figure out how to make the DVD player play commercial movies on DVD. Also they only sell the towers, they recommend the purchase of monitors, mice, and keyboards from other places.

I don't know about their support and warranties (although they have what look like decent options) so that is really a big question. Although for the most part it looks like one would only have to pay for shipping back to them.

So this company out of Georgia (USA), joins Dell and System76 in offering pre-installed Ubuntu systems. I'm really glad to see it catching on.

Easy Come, Easy Go, Easy Come Back Again

So the other day I tried to use my Wacom Bamboo tablet, and to my dismay found that it was not working. So with some super sleuthing (read: going back to the original HOW TO), I was able to find out that one of the kernel updates had overwritten some things. The solution was provided by neko18 here. The fix was quite simply re-doing a couple of the original steps. So in a matter of minutes I was able to fix my problem.

It's getting scarier every day.

I could just stop reading all these articles about government and business associations trying to exert more control over people, but I think that would only help their positions. Lately after reading some articles I tend to find myself thinking...don't we have a Constitution? Shouldn't our Government respect that? Apparently in these days of Homeland "Security", we are expected to give up our rights so they can "protect" us.

For instance people crossing the border now forfeit the right to have their data kept private. An article in the Washington Post exemplifies the situation.

While this hypothetical article, The Right to Read, is somewhat satirical, it is quite scary to see some of this stuff in action these days. We're talking 1984 kind of scary.

The "great brains" {sarcasm} of the RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America) want to install "Copyright Filters" on your computer to filter for illegal content. They also want ISPs (internet service providers, for any who might not know) to filter for illegal content. These are the same people that sued a single mother for sharing songs somewhere to the tune of $10,000 dollars per song, or $220,000. You can of course buy the same songs for $0.99 on iTunes or Amazon.com.

More from the Business side (also from The Right to Read article) is this:

The proponents of this scheme have given it names such as “trusted computing” and “palladium”. We call it “treacherous computing”, because the effect is to make your computer obey companies instead of you. This was implemented in 2007 as part of Windows Vista; we expect Apple to do something similar. In this scheme, it is the manufacturer that keeps the secret code, but the FBI would have little trouble getting it.

What Microsoft keeps is not exactly a password in the traditional sense; no person ever types it on a terminal. Rather, it is a signature and encryption key that corresponds to a second key stored in your computer. This enables Microsoft, and potentially any web sites that cooperate with Microsoft, the ultimate control over what the user can do on his own computer.

Vista also gives Microsoft additional powers; for instance, Microsoft can forcibly install upgrades, and it can order all machines running Vista to refuse to run a certain device driver. The main purpose of Vista's many restrictions is to make DRM that users can't overcome.

And of course we can't expect any help from the government because they are basically clueless and are more willing than ever to rescind our rights in the name of Homeland Security. Apparently anonymity and computers = terrorism in their eyes.

I think I'm going to have to start hand writing daily letters to my representatives to inform them that I don't approve of this nation turning into a Surveillance-Police State.