New addition

Well, I have a new addition to my family… a new 2012 Ford Focus hatchback. It’s pretty sweet. I was a little scared driving home from the dealer, however. It was dark and raining (I don’t like driving in the dark and in the rain) and I was driving an unfamiliar car. To add to the danger, I caught myself trying to play with all the techie stuff in the car, and there is a bunch of it! I finally decided to pull over, get something to eat and play with the car in the parking lot as I ate.

After about an hour of that (really!), I started my drive back home. About half-way there, I was out of the rain and I started feeling more comfortable. I brought it home and parked. I have kept my Beetle and it’s still parked in its usual spot, in front of my apartment and the Focus is in a guest spot. I’ll switch them tomorrow. I know my Beetle will be jealous. It has served me well, but it’s past its prime. I’m keeping it as a backup.

I’ll write some more tomorrow, after I’ve gotten to know my Focus better.

Don't host with Siteground!

I started hosting a site with Siteground on June 12, 2007. When I started the hosting fees were about $80. The are now $108 for the year. I have another account with GoDaddy and I’m in the process of moving my site there. I thought I had until June 11, 2011 to cancel the Siteground account. I found a charge on my bank account today of $108 from Siteground. This is what prompted the following chat session.
You are now chatting with Petar

Michael Moore:
Existing customer
mmoore@atomicdwarf.com
Domain name: alphacontrol.org
Interested in: service renewal
Question: I wasn’t planning to renew my hosting agreement and I thought I had another few days before it expired. However, I see that a charge has been made to my bank account to automatically renew. Please let me know what I can do about this situation.
———————

Petar: Hello Michael

Petar: Welcome to SiteGround.com Hosting Services!

Petar: Could you please allow me a second to check your account details

Michael Moore: yes

Petar: I can see that you are a customer of ours for a long time, Michael – since 2007 actually and may I please ask for the reason you would like to close the account?

Michael Moore: I see that your prices have gone up and I only use this account to host a wiki. It’s expensive. I have another website already where I can host it. I am moving my wiki there.

Michael Moore: If I do that, I can avoid the $108 expense of this account.

Michael Moore: I thought that my account didn’t expire until June. I thought I had a few days yet.

Petar: Unfortunately, the renewal payment was already processed and I cannot give you a suitable discount for it, Michael, however specially for you I can offer you something else – what would you say if I offer you to extend your expiration date for the account with 3 more months?

Petar: In that way you get 15 months of hosting for a renewal rate of 12 months and you can always use the account for another website

Michael Moore: Is that going to let me avoid the $108 charge?

Michael Moore: I want tp pay $0 and have 0 moths of hosting. How is charging me $108 any kind of compromise.

Michael Moore: When was my account set to expire?

Petar: From what I can see your account was set to expire on 2011-06-12, and we have all services on recurring for our customers convenience to avoid any downtime due to expiration

Michael Moore: I created my account on June 12, 2007. I didn’t expect to be charged again until June 12, 2011. Why did you charge me early?

Michael Moore: Why was it renewed before 6/12/2011 though?

Petar: That is why the recurring date is set 15 days prior to the expiration date in the event that the renewal is not completed due to an error, the customer would have time to rectify it

Petar: That is exactly why we start to notify you 45 days prior to the expiration date that your service is up for renewing

Michael Moore: I do not want to extend my account another 3 months. I do not want to pay $108. What can I do?

Petar: You can easily cancel the account from your User area -> Billing section -> Billing cancellation link and there you will see the options that you have, Michael and you can choose the most suitable one for you

Michael Moore: If I cancel the account, will I get all or some of the money back?

Petar: You can request for a refund of the payment and we will refund it withholding only $35 late cancellation fee and $14.95 domain name renewal payment – the rest will be refunded to your credit card, Michael

Michael Moore: How is it a late cancellation? I’m cancelling it before it expires again? I also will want to cancel the domain name. I’m moving it to another host as well.

Petar: The late cancellation fee is there to cover all the transaction fees that follow the initial transaction and then the refund, as well as the time and effort of our Billing, Sales and Admin departments

Petar: and as for the domain name I can make a special exception for you and waive that fee so the total withhold will be only $35 and you will be getting refunded $72.40

Michael Moore: So, I would, in effect be paying $35 for receiving no service.

Petar: Actually, this is a special solution for you because you have contacted us so soon after the renewal took place, Michael, because all renewal payments are non refundable

Michael Moore: Just so you know, I will be posting the text of this conversation on my personal blog and making my own comments. I’ll also be liking it to my Facebook account.

Petar: We have tried to notify you about the upcoming renewal by sending you 3 notification emails to mmoore@atomicdwarf.com

Michael Moore: The comments on my blog and Facebook will be non-retractable as well.

Petar: Yet you have not taken any action to stop the renewal and and we had no way of knowing you did not need the account so it was renewed for the next year

Michael Moore: OK. It looks like you will be charging me $108 and I will be making my case to the court of public opinion.

Michael Moore: So be it.

Petar: Of course, that is entirely your right as everyone can express his or hers opinion in any way he/she wants, Michael

Petar: I am only saying that we have provided you with the service you have paid for and as per our mutual agreement when you created the account, it has been set on recurring

Petar: Which can be stopped at any time from your account if not needed, yet since you did not such a thing, the account has been renewed as per this agreement

Michael Moore: Well, I won’t be making that mistake again.

Michael Moore: I understand.

Michael Moore: Good bye.

Annabelle Lee

ANNABELLE LEE

Author: Edgar Allan Poe
Reader: Michael Alan Moore

It was many and many a year ago,
In a kingdom by the sea,
That a maiden there lived whom you may know
By the name of Annabel Lee;
And this maiden she lived with no other thought
Than to love and be loved by me.

I was a child and she was a child,
In this kingdom by the sea;
But we loved with a love that was more than love –
I and my Annabel Lee;
With a love that the winged seraphs of heaven
Coveted her and me.
And this was the reason that, long ago,
In this kingdom by the sea,
A wind blew out of a cloud, chilling
My beautiful Annabel Lee;
So that her highborn kinsman came
And bore her away from me,
To shut her up in a sepulcher
In this kingdom by the sea.
The angels, not half so happy in heaven,
Went envying her and me
Yes! that was the reason
(as all men know, In this kingdom by the sea)
That the wind came out of the cloud by night,
Chilling and killing my Annabel Lee.

But our love was stronger by far than the love
Of those who were older than we
Of many far wiser than we
And neither the angels in heaven above,
Nor the demons down under the sea,
Can ever dissever my soul from the soul
Of the beautiful Annabel Lee.
For the moon never beams without bringing me dreams
Of the beautiful Annabel Lee;
And the stars never rise but I feel the bright eyes
Of the beautiful Annabel Lee;
And so, all the night-tide, I lie down by the side
Of my darling, my darling, my life and my bride,
In the sepulcher there by the sea,
In her tomb by the sounding sea.

Is this what they want? Really?

Supreme Court Judge John Paul Stevens announced today that he is retiring. President Obama stated that he wants to replace Judge Stevens with someone who has “an independent mind, a record of excellence and integrity, a fierce dedication to the rule of law and a keen understanding of how the law affects the daily lives of the American people. It will also be someone who, like Justice Stevens, knows that in democracy powerful interests must not be allowed to drown out the voices of ordinary citizens.”

Some Conservatives have already vowed that they will oppose whoever he picks. Evidently they want someone who does not have an independent mind and will just do what he’s told. A record of excellence is irrelevant to them. Integrity, to them has no place in the judiciary. They also have been fighting the idea of the rule of law for the last 10 years at least. Some Conservative also don’t seem to be concerned how the law affects the daily lives of the American people. Perhaps they are only concerned with how it affects the well-to-do. They seem to want it to be someone who believes that powerful interests must be allowed to drown out the voices of ordinary citizens.

I’m not a scholar or anything, but this doesn’t sound like what I was taught in civics class in high school.

Recover Photos from Formatted Camera Cards

A friend of mine called me today because he accidentally formatted a camera card on which he had already stored about 300 pictures. He has since taken some new pictures and stored some them to it, so I think the chances of him recovering the other photos is significantly less now. However, I did find a program at http://www.pandorarecovery.com/ that looks like it will be able to recover a good number of his files.

To test it, I took a card that I had previously deleted the pictures from. I took a couple of new pictures, then reformatted the card. I then ran this software and was able to not only recover the pictures I had just taken, but I could recover some of the pictures I had previously deleted!

It looks like he’ll be able to get back a lot of his pictures. However the new pictures he took, are probably saved in the same space that some of his old pictures used to be in, so he probably won’t be able to get some of them back. It looks pretty good though!

I thought I’d share this because this has probably happened to you before or will happen at some time.

Please breathe responsibly!

If any of you have a friend, relative or other loved one who insists on smoking while they are hooked up to oxygen, please pay attention to this.

I found out today that a relative of mine lost her house and her husband a couple of days ago in a fire. Her husband had emphysema and was smoking while he was hooked up to oxygen. He caught on fire, the house caught on fire and he died ultimately from burns. My cousin has lost everything in one horrible instant.

If you know anyone who does this, please do whatever you can to stop them, even if it means telling them you won’t be in their presence while they do it! This is serious, folks!

Transitioning Again

I’m a computer person from way back (1981 or so). I’ve done a lot of tech jobs in that time including help desk, desktop support, teaching and programming. My most current gig was as a contract developer (programmer) for a consulting company (Bucher + Christian), here in Indianapolis, Indiana. I worked at the Lilly Corporate Center for 18 months. Normally, Lilly limits contractors to a maximum of 18 months, however a woman from the Lilly Technology Center saw what I had done for a counterpart of hers at LCC, so she lobbied to have my contract extended for 3 months so I could do the same for her.

That contract ended last Tuesday (11/24). The consulting firm doesn’t have anything for me at the moment, so I am currently “between assignments”. I’ve been between jobs before and I know that I’ll be OK. I’ll be eligible for unemployment benefits and I’ve been able to save quite a bit of money over the last 21 months. I think I’ll be fine for up to a year, if necessary.

However, it’s going to be a challenge. From past experience, I know that the worst part is going to be to keep myself motivated and productive. It’s very easy to get depressed. I need to guard against that.

Right now, I’m at a branch library doing some work (updating resumes, filing unemployment, etc.). I’ve found that if I don’t get out of the apartment, I start feeling bad. This definitely helps. I’ll keep posting here for my own sanity.

Goodbye Friend

On Thursday, April 16 a friend of mine passed away at the age of 96. Her name was Helen M. Everitt. She and I used to work at the Scott County Public Library together in Scottsburg, Indiana when I was a page there. She was one of my favorite people with whom to work. She was fun-loving, kind, smart and just an all-around nice person.

I think it was on Tuesday (or was it Thursday?) that we got books back from the local nursing homes. There used to be a program where the Library would take books to read to the residents of area nursing homes. It was Helen’s job to check the returned books back in. As a page, it was my job to reshelve them. I normally dreaded that day.

I would load up my cart with books and start the reshelving process. Initially, as I would be shelving the books, Helen would come by with an armload and pile them on my cart. It seemed that I’d no sooner finish with a stack of books until there’d be another stack replacing them. Also, I would have arranged the books in a certain order to make the process easier for me. When new books were added, it messed up my system. I would soon get discouraged. It seemed like I’d never finish.

One day, I explained to Helen that I preferred to load up my cart and completely clear it before getting more books. I asked her if she could just wait for me to come by with my cart when I was ready for them. Helen readily agreed. She was very accommodating. This one little concession made my job a lot more bearable. Of course, it meant that the books stacked up on Helen’s table until I came by. She didn’t seem to be bothered by it, as long as it was helping someone else.

I remember too, that I really enjoyed talking to her. She usually had some fun story to tell about her younger days. She also really loved puns (as do I). The more apt they were to make people groan when the punchline was told, the better she liked them.

She also really loved chocolate. She told me several times that when she died, if she found out that they didn’t have chocolate in heaven, that she didn’t want to go! Well, Helen, I hope you’re getting your fill of chocolate even now, as I write this! Thanks for sharing yourself with us all.

The Atom!

The subject of my first (non-introductory) post is one of my all-time favorite DC super-heroes, the Silver Age Atom!

Ray Palmer was a physics professor at an Ivy League University (Ivy University) in New England. Ray discovered that a piece of white dwarf star was destined to impact the Earth near his home. Ray calculated the exact location and retrieved the fragment. With it, he created a ray that could shrink normal matter. The problem though, was that objects so shrunk violently exploded after a few minutes in their shrunken state.

Ray eventually discovered that he was able to shrink himself and return to normal size without any problems. He created a costume and went on to fight criminals, mad scientist, space monsters and all kind of menaces.

One of the things I really like about his stories was that while many of the scientific premises upon which the stories were based, are downright silly, the writers did use the stories to introduce readers to actual scientific concepts.

Something else that sets the Atom apart from many other super-heroes is the nature of his origin. Many super-heroes who aren’t born with powers, decide to become heroes (to use their powers for good) after the gain powers. The Atom is one of the few super-heroes to gain super-powers because he was a hero!

In his origin story, Ray goes on a spelunking expedition with a group of grade school children. While in the cave, there is a cave-in. There is apparently no way out. Ray notices that there is a small hole (about 6 inches), leading to the outside, way up on a wall that could probably be enlarged if he could get up there. The slick walls prevented him from climbing, since there were no hand and footholds. He reasoned that if he was about 6″ tall, he would have plenty of footholds.

Luckily, Ray brought the lens he had crafted from the white dwarf star material. Realizing that he would most likely explode after a few minutes, he focused the light from the hole through the lens and passed under it.

He promptly shrank to about 6″, climbed the wall and enlarged the hole. After climbing back down, Ray passed under the lens again and was restored to his normal 6′ height.
Over the years, Ray created a costume with size and weight controls, fought criminals, defeated monsters, joined a group of heroes, travelled through telephone lines, journeyed through time and visited subatomic worlds.

His powers weren’t all that innovative (there had been several shrinking heroes before him), but the way he used them was terribly cutting edge. For instance, the coolest (in my opinion) use of his abilities was one of his methods of travel. Way back, before the advent of the internet and satellite communications, there was the telephone. Telephones were connected by switches, relays and thousands upon thousands of miles of cables. Taking advantage of this fact, when he wanted to travel thousands of miles very quickly, he would call someone at his destination. When someone answered, he would shrink himself down to sub atomic size, jump an an electron and the sound from a radio (which he would turn on for this purpose) would propel the electron and him with it to the receiver on the other end at near light speeds! How cool was that?! Of course, they never addressed the issues of what would happen if someone hung up the phone before he arrived or professor Palmer’s astronomical telephone bill, but hey, it was fun!