Randomn3ss

Thanks to Scott for passing on a great photo blog featuring Fail photos.  You know, those little photos that show us how stupid life can sometimes be.

The FAIL Blog

How do I call eBay? It is a simple enough question, asked to me by a co-worker who is not internet savvy. She is in her late 50’s and rarely uses a computer, but wanted to help a friend out who was having issues with the auction site so she told her friend she would ask the tech guy at work, that’s me. The first thing I suggested was to try to use the website to contact them, my co-worker said it was too confusing and it would be so much faster to make a three minute phone call to get the answers that she needed. She is right.

I’ve been using eBay to buy and sell items since the late 90’s and virtually every transaction has gone smoothly, however I did need to use their support system once, called safe harbor. It was a real pain in the ass from a customer standpoint, and I’m very fluent in websites and how to use them. Now I was understanding the frustration my co-worker and her friend were having. A quick Google search yielded me the results, since I know eBay doesn’t publicly publish their number, in less than five seconds I had a happy co-worker. The results:

Toll free phone numbers: 1-800-322-9266 and 1-888-749-3229. Business hours are 7.30am - 5.30pm Pacific time, Monday through Friday.

Mailing address:

2145 Hamilton Avenue
San Jose, CA 95125

From my understanding after trolling through some sites to find these numbers, eBay has a nasty habit of changing their customer service numbers if volume gets too high or they feel the system is being abused. It sounds really absurd that a billion dollar company would not want to help their own customers, but this seems to be the case. I have not found any “old” numbers to back this up, but I will add a caveat to this article. Try to resolve any and all issues with the buyer or seller you are did a transaction with first, utilize the support system on the website and then call if you still can’t get an answer.

News organizations are supposed to report news, social networking sites like Digg that rely on user submitted and popularized news should let what is going to happen, happen. Wiep.net is reporting that the Digg police have buried over 750 posts about the Digg update that happened on September 19th, full details on the update can be seen in this official Digg blog post.

This wouldn’t bother me so much except for the fact that Digg apparently chooses what sites it does and doesn’t want to promote certain stories. The “Digg-effect” has made unknown sites popular and decent money makers overnight and in some cases increased readership 10 fold. For Digg to decide who does and does not get traffic, even though in most cases it isn’t abusing the Digg algorithm is a poor choice on their part.

Just like yesterday�s article about winning and giving away an 80gb hard drive, today I am writing this article to enter a contest to try to win a Canon digital camera that I will in turn give away here on Randomn3ss in a contest of some sort.

This contest is being done by the stay at home dad, geek style, a blog about, well a stay at home dad who does geeky things. Never hearing of the site, I took a few minutes to get familiar with it. Most of the articles have to do with geeky things Mike does at home while raising his daughter, no big surprise. What�s nice and refreshing is that the site is actually well put together and an easy read. Not being a parent, I can�t associate too much with all of the content, but his writing is above average and more importantly, tells his story.

The stay at home dad digital give-away is a Canon SD750 digital camera, 7.1mp of digital goodness. Not a slouch of a prize, retail is around $260 on this thing. Additionally, the winner will receive a SmugMug Pro Account that has a value of $150 and a $30 credit with them. 15 runners up will receive a SmugMug Power User Account valued at $60 and a $10 credit with them. Should I win the grand prize or be one of the 15 runners up, I will be giving the prize away to one of the readers of Ramdon3ss, so please wish me, and you luck.

Since I�ve been on the Internet, I�ve looked for free stuff, trial sizes and coupons. Maybe it�s the cheap bastard side of me, but I just like to get free stuff. Over the years I�ve managed to get free magazine subscriptions, coffee samples, dish towels with various brands of liquor on them, soap, condoms, the list goes on and on. The major downside to all of this is that you usually get Spam and or your mailbox flooded with all kinds of other stuff that goes right into the trash.

If you are bored, have extra time or like the idea of trying to get free stuff, it can be fun. I�ve recently found a site to get free samples and printable coupons that actually makes sense. It is divided up into categories and sub-catagories. The downside to this site, it is covered heavily in advertisements, so finding the deal amongst all these other ads can be a bit of a pain in the rump. That said, there are sections for things like printable coupons and free product samples.

While I�ve just recently filled some of these out and don�t expect to see any sort of result for another six to twelve weeks, the interface is nice, most of the deals and trials seem to be legit and overall it is well put together. If you run a wide screen monitor, the site width may get a bit annoying, but I guess that�s the price you pay for free.

The only thing really missing from this site is an RSS feed; I�d like to know when new deals or coupons come out with having to visit a site all the time. Getting things via email or in an RSS reader is much more convenient for me then going back to a bookmark daily.

Disclaimer: This is a sponsored review.

Today Apple released a bunch of new things, mainly their operating system, and their website. Additionally, they released a beta of their popular browser, Safari for Windows and Mac. Way back when, I had a G3 iBook, the second generation white ones. It was nice for what it was, but only had it a short while before moving onto other things. Safari has always been a really nice, well built browser with some great functions built in and extremely easy to use.

As soon as I found out that there was a beta available for windows, I downloaded it for my XP box. This was about 8 hours ago when I was still at work; I needed to test it anyway to see if my company�s website would function properly in it.

First impressions, on Windows it looks and feels just like Safari on Mac. Third website I went to and it crashed though, like splat, asking if I wanted to send the error to Microsoft. After quitting the application, I re-launched it and started to surf again. One thing I noticed right away is that most of my favorite Firefox shortcuts work except for one. Ctrl + Enter to add the www. and the .com doesn�t work, major bummer.

It�s nice for what it is, but it is no where near as customizable as Firefox is. I have way too many add-ons right now in Firefox to switch to another browser; it does what I want and how I want. I will use it for web development, but that�s about it.

I�ve started to get some of my geek on again, trying to get caught up on podcasts I�ve downloaded over the last few months. In doing so, I�ve been listening to the most recent net@nite, which is somewhat geek related, but covers some pretty cool things going on in the web world. Their guest was Evan Williams, founder of Blogger (who later sold it to Google).

Evan�s newest project is twitter, it is sort of a present tense social app that does nothing more than let people stalk you. Essentially, it is a shout box that you can write to from their website, an instant messaging client, or your cell phone. Other people can then subscribe to you and can read what you are doing on twitter, via custom RSS feed, or have them delivered to their cell phones.

The software has a character limit of 140, so these are very short messages, designed to be done from a mobile device. I�m giving it a try and will be putting a public twitter badge here on the right sidebar of Randomn3ss so people who are subscribed to me can leave messages. Being a private person, I�m not sure how effective I can be at this, but it could be the next big thing in social networking, and if nothing else, a way to get your full blown stalker on and know when someone is taking the browns to the super bowl.

You can subscribe to me and join my friend�s list at http://www.twitter.com/mikepanic

Update: I have added my personal badge on the right sidebar, however I figured I should probably create one just for Randon3ss as well, and will more then likely switch it over in the next few days, depending how popular this really gets. Please all add http://www.twitter.com/randomn3ss as a friend to keep everything up to date. I will also be working to tweak the colors for it, as I know they can be hard to read.

There are reports online that your average company worker wastes around 1.15 hours per day, a good chunk of which is surfing the internet. This is costing companies millions of dollars per year. If you are going to do it though, don�t get caught! Lifehacker has a great article out today on how to get a little more privacy while browsing at work. Their first suggestion is to get Firefox, if you don’t have it, get it for home for sure and so long as you are allowed to install software at work, put it on there. You can get the link on the right side of this site for Firefox at anytime.

The article can be found here.

A few things not mentioned:

• If you are getting up from your desk for any reason, even for a short bathroom break, hit Ctrl + Alt + Del and choose Lock Computer (Window only). The easiest way for someone to get snoopy with your private stuff is to sit at your desk. Locking your computer will not close any applications running but will require you to Ctrl + Alt + Del and then enter your password again.

• Don’t surf porn at work. That is the most sure fire way to get busted and fired. It is going to be really hard to explain to the unemployment office that you are trying to collect because you were trying to get porn at work instead of at home.

• Be aware of social networking sites like MySpace and Digg. A good portion of job recruiters are searching these social networking sites prior to hiring you, you can expect that there is a good chance that they will monitor them even after you are hired. Nearly all of these sites have timestamps on the. It will be very hard to come up with a story as to why you were posting a lame Own3d picture on your friends MySpace page instead of working.

• If you piss off your network admin, they will reign down on you and turn your life into hell. They have the ability to do everything from cut you off the internet completely to install key logging software to see everything you are typing.

• Ask for the policy on computer usage when you are hired or if a new boss is appointed to you. Many companies do not have a problem with using the internet or computer for personal use if you are not on their time, including before and after work and during your lunch hour. Better to know the rules prior to getting caught.

• Emptying your recycle can or trash can doesn’t always erase everything like you think it does. It’s not worth going into all the boring details, just be aware that when you erase things, they are not fully erased and could be retrievable. So don’t download anything you know you shouldn’t be.

• Be aware who you give your work email address to. We all have that one friend who has to forward you every stupid email in the world that you don’t want to read, that is someone you want to steer clear of. Again, the network admin can track how much email you are getting, where it is coming from and what is being attached to it. Likewise, try not to subscribe to too many non-work related email lists.