As some of you will know, I’ve been hosting computer-aid.com.au with netfirms for nearly 2 years.

My netfirms hosting plan ends in November 2010, but after a welcome improvement in service when Dan Kershaw took the reigns earlier this year, I found that customer service took a serious nose-dive once Dan and Netfirms parted company.

So I decided I cannot wait until November, I’ll bail out now.

So I switched to Hostgator.

Besides the unknown of switching to a new host, I wasn’t looking forward to the huge effort in moving my website and wordpress blog to another host. Its particularly difficult because Netfirms do not use the standard Cpanel, so I would need to get my hands dirty and do database transfers, etc.

I then noticed that Hostgator will actually transfer 1 website (or multiple websites if hosted via a single cpanel), as part of the signup deal.

Wow!

OK, on the day, there were some little problems with the transfer (eg getting US and Australian timezones mixed up, and a strange Apache password problem with my wordpress admin area, but all the time, the hostgator people responded quickly, and fixed the problems.

Overall, hardly anyone noticed that I had changed hosts… which is the way it should be!

So, although its early days yet, I can say hello to Hostgator!

And goodbye to Netfirms (and good riddance!)

Posted by Computer Help as Rant, Review at 4:20 PM UTC

2 Comments »

Having separated from my wife, I decided it was about time I changed my Telstra telephone bill, so that it would be in my name (and not hers)… now there is a recipe for BIG problems!

For many weeks, Telstra would pass the buck:

If I called, they would say I’m not authorised to make changes on this account… she needs to call.

If she called, then Telstra would say I need to call to change ownership to my name…

Eventually, Telstra told us we both had to be on the line, in order to change ownership.

OK, we both sat down in front of the phone, called Telstra, only to be told they cannot change ownership over the phone… we both need to go into a Telstra Shop!

I figure: we can nail them on this… there is a limit on how many combinations of requests they can make before they are cornered,and then have to do what we ask…

Sure enough, we go into a Telstra Shop, and after a few “sure, we can do that” replies from the sales guy, they eventually admit that they cannot do it, and that we must call to fix things.

Fine. We will call from the Telstra Shop, so if they say “go to a Telstra Shop”, we can get them to talk directly to the shop guy.

So the sales guy dials 132200 for us (funny, I never used that number before…).

Nevertheless, we find ourselves talking to a lady that seems to know what to do…

She says that the line needs to be disconnected, and then reconnected in the new name…I’ll only be without a phone for about 1 hour.

Just to be sure, I also ask about my “duet” service (I have 2 phone numbers going to 1 physical line… the 2 numbers ring differently, so I know if its a personal, or a business call.

She then goes: “oh, that might be a problem… I didn’t realise that you had a duet line”

I’m thinking: she should be able to see that on my account details… I thought it would be obvious.

It turns out that Telstras new billing system doesn’t support duet lines, as they are phasing out the service (no doubt to make more money by forcing people to pay for 2 separate lines).

Anyway, after a lengthy discussion with her supervisor, she tells me it can be done via the “old” billing system, and that tomorrow (Friday) morning, it will be done. I get the reference numbers, and I eagerly await this change.

At midday, on Friday, I call Telstra, asking for a progress report, as I can receive business calls, but I cannot make calls, and I cannot receive personal calls.

I’m told “It should have been done by now…I’ll make a note on the system and schedule to be done by close of business today (Friday)”

Since nothing happened by the end of Friday (midnight!), I call again, first thing on Saturday morning…

At this stage, it gets a bit confusing, as I’m shuffled between 4 different departments.

I eventually end up talking to a rude and condescending guy… but I put up with him, as he actually seems to know whats happening and what needs to be done to get my phone fixed.

Apparently, the line disconnect and re-connect cannot be done via the “online system”… and someone actually has to perform the work at the exchange! Who would have thunk it!

Now we are into the weekend (a long weekend as well!), so I have to wait until Tuesday before I can call to say “it ain’t working”.

On Tuesday, Telstra log it as a line fault, and get a technician to fix it.

Now I’m wondering: the phone and internet were working perfectly…all I wanted was to change owner details…and now I’m dealing with “faults” that didn’t exist before.

Anyway, the technician calls me the next morning (Wednesday), and after 2 attempts, fixes my phone line…

So thats the end of it?

No!

Since I get my broadband internet via an ADSL service on my phone line, I find my internet stopped on Monday morning.

It seems that when a line is disconnected and then reconnected, then any ADSL “codes” on that line are cleared.

And since my internet is not with Telstra, then they don’t give a shit.

I have to ask my ISP (TPG) to have my broadband re-connected. TPG then need to request Telstra to place the TPG ADSL codes on my line.

I even tried to call Telstra, to try to speed up the process, but I hit a brick wall, as only an ISP can make that request.

In the end, I have to wait days for Telstra to take their time doing something that should only take minutes (some might say it should never have happened at all!).

I finally get my internet back on midday on the Monday after my internet was disconnected.

Normally, 1 week without internet isn’t a problem for me, but when I depend on it for many parts of my business, then it becomes difficult.

Grrr.

Posted by Computer Help as Rant at 4:30 PM UTC

3 Comments »

If you believe Microsoft, something as modern as Vista should be a shining model of efficiency.

Well, I recently found an example of inefficiency that seems to go back to the days of windows 95 (or maybe even earlier).

Yep, I’m talking about the temp folder(s).

As Microsoft has waded through the various versions of Windows, the location of the temp folder (or folders) has changed, but the lack of housecleaning hasn’t.

With Vista, I recently got a slow laptop from a customer, and I decided to take a look at:

c:\users\{username}\appdata\local\temp

And what did I find?

over 4,000 temp files… some over 2 years old.

Sure, you can install something to cleanup the temp files, but average computer users don’t know about computer maintenance… they just assume it get done automatically.

Its amazing how a company will put so much effort (and money) into advanced new features… yet some simple maintenance like cleaning the temp folder at startup time, is totally ignored.

Out of curiosity, I took a look at the latest Windows 7 beta… and it also has the same issue…

It makes me wonder if anyone at Microsoft actually cares about the long-term usability of their windows products.

Posted by Computer Help as Rant, Technical at 4:57 PM UTC

8 Comments »

Sometimes it seems that technology just conspires against us.

And often, it seems to happen the most, to those of us who have a good grasp of most things technical.

Most recently, I just noticed someone had replied to one of my posts.

The reply was in Russian, so I fire up google translate so that I could copy and paste the comment, translate, and then I could reply.

I then login to my website, write a reply, hit “submit comment”, and I get a page not found error.

Grrr

Ok, I’ve been getting quite a few “page not found” errors recently, and I figured it must be my hosting company (Netfirms). Why? In the past, when this happens, I navigate to netfirms.com, and I would get the same error, yet other websites would work just fine.

This time, I thought I’d also try viewing netfirms and computer-aid.com.au from a “different location”. Easily done using proxify.com

Proxify shows my website without any issues…

OK, back to by normal web browser, go to computer-aid.com.au and netfirms, and now they work.

Ooooh, I hate intermittent problems.

I hit a navigation button on my website, and I get a page not found error…

Hmmm

I try FTP, but that fails, as does ping and ssh. Its as if netfirms and all their hosted sites have suddenly disappeared…

Then I start to wonder: I’ve seen similar problems in the past.

It could be a DNS problem, or a hosting problem, or a transparent proxy problem with my ISP.

Just as I’m about to write some “please explain” emails to any possible culprits, everything starts working again…

sigh

I then go to my main blog page, and I get a “bad behaviour” error (my browser is behaving like a spam bot)… I don’t like where this is heading…

I re-check everything, and suddenly everything starts to work again… except:

I notice that only my home page is generating an error (everything else is fine)

Since the home page has some dynamic content (a short summary of my last 4 blog posts), I figure that maybe the script (runs once per day) that generates the main page, has gone haywire (it does that about once every 2 months).

OK, back to SSH, and I can’t login again.

Time for a 5 minute chocolate break (I love the Cote d’Or 70% & raspberries dark chocolate… yum… I really do need to exercise more… )

OK, back to SSH: now I can login (it must have been the chocolate )

yep, my index.html is only 243 bytes (it should be over 10,000 bytes).

I re-run the script to generate index.html, but the file is still 243 bytes.

I look at the contents of the file, and I see an error message about “cannot read RSS feed”

OK, I point my browser at http://www.computer-aid.com.au/blog/feed

Sure enough I get: Access is denied. Error processing resource

I also login to my wordpress admin panel, and I see my scheduled post for a few hours ago didn’t get posted. A “missed schedule” error under the failed post.

OK, I post it manually.

Now, where was I?

Oh yes, index.html

I disable the script and go back to a purely static home page.

Now, where was I before that?

Oh yes: failing RSS feed.

Thats possibly due to using feedburner, and the “possible” netfirms outage (which I can’t really confirm… I wish netfirms had an outage “bulletin” so I could at least confirm my problems are not some strange blocks on my end.

Anyway, I’ll give it a few hours and then see if it fixes itself.

Now, back to replying to the blog comment.

I write the blog comment (for the second time), and this time it works.

I’m sure I’m not the only one who has these time warps… a two minute job take an hour or two to complete.

I sometimes wonder if its worth it.

And whats worse, I still don’t know where the problem is, nor if it will happen again.

Grrr

PS: I have since disabled “bad behavior” and my website seems more reliable… I’ll keep monitoring and see what happens.

Posted by Computer Help as Rant, Technical at 4:17 PM UTC

5 Comments »

I seem to have the most fun when new web2.0 social sites decide to ban me for self promotion.

This time its Viadeo.com

I try to login, and I get the message: account suspended.

Yippee, a site that actually provides a “normal” message when they decide to ban/suspend you.

Looks like viadeo are a step better organised that stumbleupon and Mixx

But now I have another problem:

Viadeo send me regular emails (usually titled “your personalised summary”), with my account stats and other latest happenings.

The solution should be simple enough: a link at the bottom of the email to remove myself from the mailing list…

I click on the link, I get sent to the viadeo website, where I must sign in before I can stop getting the emails… catch 22

Sigh

OK, I flag the email as spam, and I now have some material for another blog post!

Posted by Computer Help as Rant at 1:48 PM UTC

2 Comments »

The City of Melbourne has unfairly obtained $50 from me.

The money doesn’t belong to them, and they should give it back (plus about $45 in interest)

This is an issue (from many years ago – around June 2002) that has always bothered me, as its an example of how government bureaucracy can unfairly take (I’m tempted to use the word steal) from ordinary people.

At the time, I was working in La Trobe Street, Melbourne.

The company I was working for, needed me to work late one night (on a planned out-of-business-hours, IT upgrade).

The way it worked, was I would start work at 5 PM, and work on the upgrade until about 1AM (or later if needed).

I needed to drive in (as I’ll need to drive home again, as there are no train services when I finished work). So I got to the City at about 4PM, and spent a frustrating 45 minutes looking for a parking spot.

I eventually found one, but when I put a $2 coin in the slot, nothing happened. I tried again with another $2 coin, and still nothing happened. I Just needed the meter to last until 6pm (I think), after which parking meters are not monitored.

I tried a $1 coin, and that worked just fine.

Unfortunately, I only had one $1 coin (but a few more $2 coins)

Besides, I had already put in enough money to get me past the end of the metered time.

I took down the meter details (PM000698 ), and once in the office, I called the phone number on the meter.

I explained what happened, and a nice lady told me I shouldn’t worry. If I get a fine, it will be discarded once the faulty meter is repaired, and I was given a reference number (PINN 141615062).

I figured: thats ok. I spent the money anyway ($5)… I did the right thing,

So I duly got fined. I wrote to City of Melbourne, and quoted the reference number.

A few weeks later, I got a letter saying that there was no fault found with the meter, and I’ll need to pay the fine.

The fine print basically said: if you don’t pay the fine, you will be taken to court, and you might end up paying a lot more than just the fine.

At the time, I tried to get the meter mechanics report on the meter… But nobody bothered to send a reply email. I eventually had to start sending daily emails to corspd@melbourne.vic.gov.au, asking for a copy of the engineers report (but never got a reply). About 2 week later, I get a maintenance schedule, which just shows that the meter (amongst many others) was serviced at a particular date, and no fault was found.

At this point, I feel I have no choice: Pay the fine, or risk paying an even bigger fine.

I pay the fine.

But I also email them, saying that they are effectively extorting the fine from me, so I will use whatever means I can to recover the fine. I also say that I cannot accept the meter mechanics records, as the meter was obviously faulty at the time, and I had already fed the meter with more than enough money to avoid having it expire within the allocated meter parking times.

Again no reply.

I say I will take the matter to the Victorian Ombudsman, but still no reply. I contacted the ombudsman, but I recall that there was very little that could be done…

I would love to organise a City of Melbourne “strike” or an act of civil disobediance… maybe something like: everyone who parks in Melbourne will refuse to put any money into the meters and will refuse to pay the fines.

I’m sure the council doesn’t have the resources to procecute thousands of people per day, and with the spotlight on their inefficient parking systems, they just might be forced to do the right thing and do a better (and fairer) job.

Ah, thats enough ranting for now… I think I’ll just go into a corner and fume for a few minutes… Grrr

Posted by Computer Help as Rant at 1:05 PM UTC

10 Comments »

After having visited many blogs and websites recently, I can see where some people are making mistakes.

If you don’t want your blog to be popular, and don’t care how tasteless it is, then make it private, and only allow your own select group of fans/family to view it… and then ignore the rest of this post.

Otherwise… if you want your blog to be more popular, then don’t do any of the following:

9) Schizo- Blog has a topic, but you don’t stay on topic. OK, I admit it I’m as guilty as most bloggers with this. My computer blog sometimes has posts that have nothing to do with computers. But those posts are in the minority. And I aim to keep it that way. So should you.

8 ) Copycat- copying someone else’s content: also known as shooting yourself in the foot… and then shooting yourself in the other foot  . You quickly disappear off everyone’s radar, as most search engines will notice and punish appropriately. I only use copyscape to gloat over the poor suckers with too many guns and feet

7) Annoyingggg – music and/or videos that starts spontaneously. If you like the music, then make your blog private. Few people want to listen to your bad taste. I know few people would be interested in my heavy metal music.

6) Ad overload- too many adverts. Imagine you sit down to watch some TV… you find a show, but it splits the screen into 4  sections: 3 sections show bright, animated adverts, while a quarter of the screen actually displays the TV show. Would you watch the show? Probably not (maybe if its the superbowl, or world-cup soccer, or some other favorite).

5) Imitation - Copying the bigger blogs that make more money than you… This is similar to point 6), except you are trying to make money like the big boys. Remember: only the bigger blogs can get away with too many adverts… to some extent. You might find that by cutting down from 20 ads to 10, visitors are twice as likely to click on the 10 ads. People will only put up with ads if they really love the content (ie your blog is popular)

4) Anybody home? – Not updating your blog. Try to update at least once per week.

3) I wish nobody was home – You feel guilty about not updating your blog every week… but you don’t know what to write about… so you update your blog by apologising for not updating your blog. You know what they say: its better to keep your mouth shut, and have people think you’re an idiot… rather than open your mouth and remove all doubt.

2) Who am I? - Your blog doesn’t have a clear topic… you just write whatever comes into your head. You might find this hard to believe, but there are thousands of blogs like this out there, and millions of people trying to avoid them. Pick a hobby… anything! If you don’t have a hobby or anything you really feel strongly about, then please close down your blog (You’ll be doing the internet a favour).

1) Slowww- you have so many ads and trinkets (widgets), that your blog take 60 seconds to load. animations, calendars, large pictures. Cut out the clocks, calendars, world maps, FireFax download icons, and anything else that isn’t relevant. Almost nobody wants to know the weather/time in Upper Kumbukta West! Also try a cache plugin like “wp super cache” it can speed up a website significantly.

Posted by Computer Help as Hints, Humor, Rant, Technical, Tutorial at 1:21 PM UTC

6 Comments »

I used to like reading the news from ninemsn.com.au

But lately, ninemsn has become increasingly annoying to use.

What I find most irritating, is how pages will refresh:

You are happily reading a story… maybe half way through, and suddenly the page will refresh and be re-displayed from the top… so I then have to scroll down to find where I was reading.

Of course the spontaneous video popups, a huge number of ads, and the portal “look and feel” makes the site increasingly difficult to use.

So I thought I’d try the first few sites that google gave me when I search Australia for “online news”.

I got:

• abc.net.au
• news.com.au
• skynews.com.au

At first glance, they have a similar layout.

But then Sky spontaneously started playing a video.

I have had situations where I’ve quickly opened 4 news stories (in separate tabs)… and after a few seconds, I get a barrage of different voices and music… and I need to stop all the videos/sound.

Sorry sky: you’re out!

news.com.au has the same annoying refresh problem as ninemsn… ok, news.com.au is out

That means that ABC news wins. And they have no commercial ads! … ok they do self-promote a bit, but its not unbearable.

I guess I’m showing my age, but the ABC news site is not overrun with gossip and sensationalised videos and articles, so I can read the interesting bits (and not just indulge in voyeuristic entertainment)

Posted by Computer Help as Rant at 1:13 PM UTC

4 Comments »

I found this link, and had a good laugh: vista performance and tuning

If you can manage to read through the whole 14 page document (and maybe even follow some of the links), you will find the process is far from Quick, and far from Easy.

I skimmed through most of it, as many parts seem to follow tip that have been available for quite a while (even I have a condensed set of tips: Tuning Vista). But I don’t pretend its quick or easy.

The part that caught my eye was the brief discussion on UAC:

While we recommend that the majority of your users run with standard user (non-administrator) privileges, there are times when it is necessary to deploy a subset of users with administrative privileges. In such circumstances, the User Account Control (UAC) Consent Prompt can slow access to administrative operations and has led some organizations to look at turning UAC off entirely.

A better alternative is to change the behavior of the elevation prompt for administrators to elevate without the prompting. This option, which can be set via Group Policy, allows the administrator to perform an operation that requires elevation without consent but still provides the other benefits afforded by UAC, such as Internet Explorer Protected Mode

For more information read “Understanding and Configuring User Account Control in Windows Vista” at the Windows Vista TechCenter.

So I thought: Hey great! I’d like to know how to elevate without prompting.

Well, I really struggled to understand the damn thing… so how is an unsophisticated vista user supposed to be able to read, absorb, and that decipher what needs to be done to elevate without prompting?

If you are interested in elevating without prompting a better solution is: Tune UAC

Microsoft: I think you really need to release a vista tweakui. Believe me, Vista needs it much more than XP ever did!

Posted by Computer Help as Rant, Technical at 1:02 PM UTC

No Comments »

This relates to a prior post: http://www.computer-aid.com.au/blog/2008/05/16/on-hold-to-acer-for-125-minutes/

After trying a few more times, it seems that acer has palmed off many spare parts enquiries to highpoint australia.

And contacting highpont is what is proving the most difficult.

I’m just after a replacement LHS hinge for an acer aspire 3634lmi laptop screen.

But, it seems whenever I call highpoint, I get put on hold for just over 2 hours, and then I get disconnected.

I’m starting to wonder if there is a serious problem with this company.

Highpoint Australia seems to be consistently unable to answer routine telephone enquiries. I can understand a small company might struggle, at times, to cope with high demand, but a company as large as highpoint should at least be able to answer phone calls (if I get told: “sorry we can’t help”, then at least I know where I stand).

I then jumped onto their website, and I got an email contact form… amazingly, they replied within 15 minutes… whats going on here?

Anyway, they want to charge $129 to pickup, fix, and deliver the laptop.

From what I’ve been reading on the web, it seems like once highpoint have your equipment, you can be looking at a long wait before getting it back… So I’ll decline and push for just getting the part (if possible)

Posted by Computer Help as Rant at 1:08 PM UTC

6 Comments »

Is it just the way I write?

Am I a grumpy old so-and-so?

I believe I write objectively about my experiences, both good and bad, and I believe I should be free to express my opinion. If I’ve had bad experience with a company, then I say so. 

Anyway, for the second time in 2 years, I’ve been threatened with legal action.

Some guy calls me, saying he’s looking at my blog…

Me: “ok”

Guy: “i’m reading your post about Bxxxxxxx”

Me: “ok”

Guy: “guess where I’m from”

Me: “don’t know”

Guy: “Bxxxxxxx”

Me: “ok”

He then tells me he wants the post pulled immediately, or he will be talking to his legal representative.

I say I’ll look into it.

Anyway, I remove the references to Bxxxxxxx from the post (he didn’t say which post, so I made an educated guess).

The next day, I thought I’d better make sure the call wasn’t a crank call, and that it actually came from Bxxxxxxx.

So I email Bxxxxxxx, saying that the blog changes were only temporary until I get confirmation about who, what, etc.

Well, the reply was a legal ultimatum, saying things like: “posts regarding Bxxxxxxx in the blog section of your website amount to defamation” and “We are therefore giving you 24 hours to remove all posts relating to Bxxxxxxx”.

Um, the words don’t seem to make much sense to me… if I had a post that said nice things about Bxxxxxxx… then would that also be regarded as defamation? According to the wording of the email: yes!

And do the posts have to be removed? I don’t think so; so I decided to censor the relevant parts instead.

It seems like the email wording was composed by a lawyer who doesn’t know much about the internet… I was almost tempted to let the legal action proceed… just to see if the lawyer(s) behind this would shoot themselves in the foot. Unfortunately, I could not see my case as being as winnable as the 2clix/whirlpool case.

Well, as some of you already know, I believe that all litigious companies deserve the same fate: Bankruptcy. I think the time spent in obtaining legal advice would be much better spent improving the quality of a companies services and products. The word “microsoft” springs to mind with situations like this…

Posted by Computer Help as Business, Rant at 1:12 AM UTC

5 Comments »