Based solely upon the printing on the boxes Saran Quick Covers came in, over the life of the product Saran has shrunk their diameter as follows:

So I joined the Chrysler “In Circle Club”.  Only $9.95/mo for free oil changes sounded like a good deal, until I got the bill.  Turns out the oil itself isn’t free, just the oil change.  They charged me $40.60 for the oil, so with the monthly fee, $70.45/quarter for an oil change.  Compare to my last oil change at Jiffy Lube for only $58.46.  And Jiffy Lube only takes 15 minutes, Chrysler takes at least an hour.  Some deal.  Oh, and did I mention the one year contract?

I went to the Hanover Park Car-X on July 14, 2006 and asked them to check my brakes and air conditioner. They charged me $754.08 to fix my brakes, but found nothing wrong with the A/C.

On August 15, 2006 my A/C completely stopped working.  I brought my car back to the same Car-X and left it with them to diagnose the problem.  They found a blown low side hose, and said they would have the part the next day.  They called on the 16th to tell me that they received the wrong part, and would have the correct one on the 17th.  They called on the 17th to say they had again gotten the wrong part, but would have the correct one on the 18th.  Their call on the 18th was to say that they had finally received a part close enough to the original that they could make it work.  I finally had my A/C repaired on the 18th, for $515.86

On Saturday the 19th (the very next day) my A/C again stopped working.  I again brought it back to the same Car-X.  This time they found the high pressure relief valve on the compressor had blown, and wanted $507.61 to replace it, without charging me for labor or refrigerant. I spent the next 15 minutes or so arguing with the tech in front of the manager.  I insisted that simply replacing the compressor would accomplish nothing, and that he instead first needed to figure out what was causing the high pressure in the system that caused both the hose and the valve to blow.  He insisted that he had already checked out the whole system thoroughly, and there was nothing wrong with it other than the compressor.  Seeing that I was getting nowhere, I left.

I dropped my car off at a different shop first thing on Monday the 21st.  They quickly located the real problem.  The dryer was full.  The total to replace the dryer and compressor came to $778.08 (they charged me for labor and refrigerant, as rightly they should.)

Had Car-X found the full dryer when I first asked them to check the A/C, it would have cost me around $100 to replace, the hose and compressor would likely never have had to be replaced (which cost me $1293.94), two complete charges of refrigerant would not have been released into the atmosphere, and I would not have been without my car for several days. As “compensation” for this, on August 25, 2006 the store manager gave me $200 store credit and two free oil changes.

While building a 1U Freenas server I had need of a couple custom IDE cables. I purchased a pair of Ultra Products rounded 80 conductor cables on December 07, 2007 at the Hoffman Estates Tiger Direct, planning to cut them open and re-crimp as needed. After cutting through the jacket and shielding I found I had been swindled.

The 40 extra conductors in an 80 conductor ATA cable are grounds designed to prevent crosstalk between the 40 data conductors. It is this reduction in crosstalk that allows data rates in excess of 33MB/s without introducing errors. In a flat cable, the grounds are simply interleaved between the data conductors. As the design of a rounded cable makes this interleaving impossible, quality rounded cables use twisted pairs, each consisting of one data and one ground conductor.

As seen in the pictures below, the Ultra Products cable claims to use twisted pairs, when it in fact does not. I have included pictures of a real twisted pair cable from A.C. Ryan for comparison.

FreeBSD will hang when initializing the RLT8110SC onboard NIC on the Jetway J7F4 series mini-ITX motherboard. The work-around is to enable the boot rom in the BIOS. The attempt to boot off the network will initialize the NIC allowing FreeBSD to use it. You do not actually have to boot off of the LAN, just the attempt is enough.

I bought a used car on June 15, 2007. It came with three burned out bulbs, two in the third brake light, and one in the rear registration light. On June 20, 2007 I pulled into Jiffy Lube #2652 and told them to do a light check. Just a minute or two later they pulled my car out front and told me all my lights were fine. I had them pull it back into the bay, and proceeded to show them the three burned out bulbs they had missed.

The following describes how to get the real electronic serial number (ESN) from a Qualcomm QCP-1900.

Near as I can tell, the number on the sticker in the battery compartment is completely unrelated to the ESN and is used only to calculate the unlock code. To get the real ESN you will need to connect the phone to your computer. The GDIP cable I use for this has a DB25 serial interface and is part number CV90-22956-1. You will also need either the Qualcomm Phone Utilities or Qualcomm Phone Support Tools (QPST).

Qualcomm Phone Exchange, part of the Qualcomm Phone Utilities, allows you to backup your phonebook and other settings. The filename used to save this information contains the ESN of the phone in hex. Using an old dead phone as an example, the filename “QCP-1900 – 01981115.qpf” indicates the hex ESN of this phone is “01981115″. Inside this save file is also a field labeled “ESN=”. This field does not contain a valid ESN, but can be used to calculate the ESN. Although ESNs use a special hex to decimal conversion, Qualcomm Phone Exchange uses the normal hex to decimal conversion for this field. In order to calculate the ESN from this field, you must use the same incorrect conversion the Qualcomm software used, in reverse. For example, if the file contains “ESN=26743061″, simply put “26743061″ into your calculator in decimal mode, and then change to hex mode. For our example you will get “1981115″. QPST will likewise display the ESN as “1981115″. Note that in either case you will need to add the leading zero.

Any way you do it, once you have the correct hex ESN, you will then need to convert it to decimal using the conversion specific to ESNs. A quick Google search finds such a converter here. Entering “01981115″ into the hex side of the converter and hitting convert will give you a decimal esn of “00109965845″. This is the ESN your cellular company needs.

Dedication, perseverance, commitment, these are all traits that — wait a minute, wrong kind of dedication. It is fitting only to dedicate this blog to the one who served not only as my inspiration and an example to aspire to but also provided the encouragement and counsel I needed to start this, my first blog.