May 2nd, 2012 Vespre
Ok, I just bought a Seagate 3TB hard drive. It was actually an external and I’m sure will have overpaid in the months to come, either way I needed the space. So after following this to open the enclosure, I’ve installed it in the PC. Now the next problem is how do I get it to read as one 3 TB drive? So a few warnings. My system is not your system. If yours is older it might not turn out as easy as mine. I’m not going to make it the boot drive.
So when I booted up, the BIOS saw it as 3000GB. Great start. If yours doesn’t do that stop reading this and google harder.
Windows 7 saw it as 3 chunks. Something like 350 GB, 749GB, and something else (add it up). So I hate installing software I don’t need, but ended up doing that before finding some nice instructions (I’m posting it again because the instructions didn’t match entirely with what I had to do) on how to get this to work. Don’t do like I did and just do this instead:
(Disclaimer: If it doesn’t work don’t blame me)
1. Start > right click Computer > Manage
2. Find your new disk you just installed in the lower panel (it’s probably in 3 segments: 1 health, 2 unallocated)
3. Right click on healthy segment (for me it was the 350GB segment) and select delete volume
Now you should have 2 unallocated segments, one being 2TB the other being 750GB or so
4. Right click on the Disk# and select Convert to GPT disk
Now you should have 1 unallocated segment
5. Right click on that segment and click make New Simple Volume…
6. I just followed the defaults from here. Voila done.
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April 1st, 2012 Vespre
Somewhere within the past couple of months it seems the battery for this Creative Zen Vision M died. As it stands, the second I unplug it from the wall it turns off. There’s no sign that it charges. It won’t power up plugged it to a USB. So I guess I’ll just call it a 6 year life span. I’m sure it was used a lot more than some players. Perhaps part of the problem is that it spent so many years being charged even when it was full. Although, that shouldn’t be a problem that hasn’t been fixed yet.
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June 11th, 2011 Vespre
It’s been about 5 years since the ZVM was bought. I see on the after market it’s worth about a third (if that much) of what I initially paid for it.
I noticed that Creative still exists and they have been following in Apple’s footsteps. I don’t see any Zen Vision line any more though. I also don’t see devices with over 16 GB capacity. They have an iTouch alternative. I wonder why I never found this when I looked up iTouch alternative. Makes me wonder how many other devices go under my radar.
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March 18th, 2011 Vespre
Despite the horror stories out there Zecco’s ACH out has been one of the fastest transfers I’ve seen so far. Certainly faster than bank to bank in any case. I put in an order on the 15th, but missed the deadline of 1PM Eastern. Today it’s in my bank with in three days as promised. I didn’t check the account yesterday so it might have already been there. They transaction date shows the 17th in any case. This is the first time I’ve actually ACH’d out. That’s telling hmm?
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March 9th, 2011 Vespre
There’s a lot of reasons to hate Bank of America, but if you’re perplexed as to how someone could actually not hate its website, it might be because you’re looking at different things. It seems Bank of America web sites can differ depending on the state you opened the account. (It may even differ by branch, but I’m not sure.) From their front page you can choose a state. After you log in, things can start looking different. Here is a comparison of a BoA website for little city (left) and BoA website for big city (right). (Yes, big city amazingly sucks yet again.)
The purple spots are marked out identifying items. Don’t mind it. First thing to note, the right site is sparse. And that’s not too bad, but it gets worse. For some reason banks from two different states can’t offer the same checking. So one was Regular, the other was MyAccess. The MyAccess state forced a Savings Account without any of my input. But back to the sites. Let’s take a look at the account pages for the checking accounts.
The site on the left again looks more complex and jumbled. First thing to note, the left shows only the last 4 digits of the account number. It seems to be aware of security concerns. You can see the account number by clicking on a link. The right shows the full account number. 2nd, On checks that you write you can see a copy of it. On the left site it uses modern styles. You click on the edit details and there’s a drop down that shows the check. On the right site also lets you view the check, but it takes you to a new page. The right site doesn’t seem to be aware of AJAX. On the right site every item that was paid via Bill Pay or as they call it Bill Payer is unclickable. On the left, Bill Pay items are clickable.
Most importantly, the left site gives you access to your monthly statements. The right site DOES NOT. What kind of crappy bank won’t even let you access your monthly statements online?
On a separate note, the left site can be bilingual. Let’s go on to Bill Pay or Bill Payer.
On the left site, when I click on the Bill Pay tab, it shows the Bill Pay Center right away. On the right site, if I click on Bill Payer I get to see a list of payees. I have to click on Quick Pay to get the equivalent site. 1st, take a look at how long it takes for bill pay to get payment to payee. The left takes 2 days, although it depends on they payee, for most big companies 2 days will do. The right warns of 5 days. The left conveniently labels the dates as “Delivered By” dates. Takes a lot of guess work and irritation out. The right, just “Date”. Again, the right shows lack of sophistication by making a pop up calendar in a separate window. The left has a sort of AJAX style drop down calendar. Also the calendar marks the earliest deliverable date. Very useful. The right shows the account numbers outright, while the left only shows the last 4 digits. The left shows available funds. The left also gives an option to pay within a day, but they charge $10. The right lets you calculate the total. The left takes you to a page that shows the total after you click “Make Payments”. We’ll move on to Adding a Payee. Already in the above picture, on the left you will see, underlined in green, a link that will get you started on adding a payee. It creates a drop down. On the right you would have to click on “Add Merchant/Payee” which takes you to a new page.
3 easy steps for the left. For the right, well it doesn’t out right say it, but surely it can’t be that hard… right? I try to enter a payee on the left. No problem. Click on go and it’s ready to search for payee. On the right, it won’t even let me type past 11 characters. WTF?!? What’s this 10 day processing garbage? Well, let’s just see the results.
On the left, Bingo, found. On the right, NOT FOUND. I have to click to the next page before I found 2 possible entries that might be right. While the first one is right, but name, the address listed doesn’t match where the payments are supposed to be mailed. The second one that an incorrect name, but at least the address is right. So I went ahead with that. Also, keep in mind that the left is doing an out of state payee. The right isn’t. Get with the program, right.
Now on the left I have to enter the account number, including dashes and what not to match exactly what it showed on the bill. On the right you have the same thing except they are more explicit about what matches and what doesn’t. In this example, I don’t think the number of my account matched all the numbers they wanted, but it still worked. With other payees, there were cases where there were a page worth of identical names and identical addresses. The only thing differentiating it was the account number sets. For example one might allow only XXX-XXXX, while another would only allow XXXX-XXX. These numbers were over 15 digits long with multiple dashes. All you had to go one was counting out the XXXs and hoping it matched the number set of your account. You had to check each one manually. The left just figures it out. Big pain in the butt. The left is again so much better. Notice at the end, the right is just a submission of a request. The left gets things done.
After clicking “Continue” or “Submit Request” the following results.
1, 2, 3, the left is ready to go. I can start paying right away. The right has a pop up warning telling me to wait some more and takes me to a new page. Ridiculous.
I don’t know why a system set up for the big city is so cumbersome and crappy. I suspect that it might have to do with Bank of America buying up banks that already had an online system in place and they were too lazy to convert it over. Or maybe they had contracts to keep the legacy site up. The little city site might not have even had a site and it looks like a corporate effort was put into the latter site.
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February 26th, 2011 Vespre
Got an email today from Zecco warning of new pricing structure.
From $4.50 (not the cheapest) to $4.95 (even worse) per trade.
$6.95 per trade for stocks priced under $1 (WTF?!?).
No more 10 free trades a month.
Starts March 30, 2011.
Damn Zecco. Nails in the coffin.
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January 16th, 2011 Vespre
Or is it just this one?
Do people still run blogs? Been awhile and some things changed. I thought to pontificate on the matter of big city vs. little city. While it might only hold true for my specific situation, I suspect otherwise. Having been in one place for so long maybe there is a bias but we’ll see.
Traffic is horrendous in the big city. Stop lights everywhere. Road construction. More bad drivers. Backed up. How many hours of people’s lives are wasted waiting for the light to turn green?
This stuff can be true for little city as well, so maybe it’s a magnitude issue. Lot more lights. Lot more people.
Parking is atrociously worse in the big city though. Generally, no free parking anywhere. Never paid for parking in little city, except at the uni. Stores that do have parking have spaces labeled compact. Maybe it’s meant for tricycles. I don’t know. I haven’t seen a non-compact parking space. As a result, people like to park over the line, or maybe they’re just bad. Never seen it that bad in little city. The post offices have maybe 10 parking spots. The PO in the little city, had probably 30 or more parking spots. Parallel parking was more of an option in the little city.
Big city has a public transportation system. It’s not bad. Little city had one too, surprisingly. Never used it though.
Big box stores are far away in the big city. They can’t build big new things when there’s big old things in the way. The little stores are generally more expensive too. Maybe the location we chose isn’t that good. For a third the price in the little city you could be fairly close to big boxes.
Disposing of garbage is a huge headache in the big city. There are at least three different cans: food & yard waste, recyclables, and *gasp* garbage. The F&Y and recyclables can was the same size as the garbage can we had in the little city, but the big city garbage can we have is about 1/4th the size. You could order one that’s bigger, but that costs more. In the little city, you put everything into the garbage can. If you wanted to be eco-friendly (It’s an option!) you could put the recyclables in a blue bag and leave that by the side of the road along with the garbage can on collection day. Here in the big city you have to separate food from garbage. Don’t put the food you collect in a plastic bag now. Use a paper bag. If it leaks it’s your problem. And the yard waste, well that doesn’t include chopped down trees. Sticks have to be less than so and so length and no thicker than so and so inches. What if you need to get rid of logs, tvs, or beds? In the little city, you could collect up leaves in plastic bags and leave it on the side of the road. You could drag entire piles of brush to the side of the road. You could leave just about everything on the side of the road. Someone will pick it up. Here in the big city, you can leave it on the side of the road, but get ready to open your wallet. There are rules for the yard waste in addition to extra costs. You have to tie it up in so and so fashion, no plastic bags, or have an extra can that is labeled “yard” and it better be less than 60 lbs. That’s why people around here must’ve been jumping with joy when Craigslist appeared. You’ll find all kinds of free “firewood”, “moving boxes”, “mattresses”, “tvs” (CRT, of course), “furniture”, “washers”, and “dryers”. They all work fine… probably. So perhaps if you leave something on the side of the road someone other than the city utilities will pick it up. In the little city though, there was never any documentation on addition costs in the first place.
I don’t see what the big deal about living in big cities is. Yet people clamor to be here, pushing up the prices. If you’re rich, you can afford to pay out your ass and live right next to work. If your poor, better GTFO. But I’ll stop here, rich vs. poor is a whole other post.
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