Category: Miscellaneous

DOUBLE SECRET SUSPENSION: They tested the new Car of Tomorrow at Bristol this week. Two “suspended” crew chiefs were actually allowed at the NASCAR sanctioned test.

The two suspended Michael Waltrip Racing crew members weren’t allowed at the test.

Continue reading “NASCAR’s Sliding Scale of Justice”

The problem with Nextel Cup drivers taking up too many slots in the NASCAR Busch Series was highlighted last year when a full-time Nextel Cup driver actually won the Busch Series championship. In Happy Hour practice for this week’s Busch race at California Speedway, and in qualifying, nine of the top ten drivers are full-time Nextel Cup drivers. In fact, fully half of the 41-car field is comprised of full-time Cup drivers.

Continue reading “NASCAR: A Solution to the Buschwacker Problem”

Well, I got the (finally) free phone adapter today. I plugged it into my router, then plugged the fax machine into the adapter. When I tried to send a fax, I could hear a voice telling me I was using a phone port that wasn’t active. So I guess I’ll have to call Vonage again. I’ll do that tomorrow after I get home from work. Hopefully I’ll get someone who speaks English.

The birds are singing, the sun is shining, and all is right with the world.

In my previous post, I’d concluded that I was just going to out and out cancel Vonage. But I decided to give them one more shot. If they didn’t agree to sending me the free phone adapter, then I was going to cancel.

I made sure to call their number before 9 pm Eastern so I could get through to the people who could deal with it. After navigating their menu structure, and choosing the “cancel my service” option, a fellow named Adam came on the line. This guy had a  slight New Jersey accent, and was friendly from the word go.

I explained the situation, and he took a look at the account. Then he summarized it by saying “you thought you were getting five things but only got three”. Yes! That’s it. So, he put me on hold for a couple of minutes to see what he could do.

Uh oh. This is gonna be the part where he comes back and tells me there’s nothing he can do. Wrong. He offered to send me the adapter in question and set up the fax line when I get it. I didn’t even have to ask. He’s even going to call me back on Monday when he sets up the fax line.

I’m getting ready to hook the phone back up and start using it. Vonage has customer service reps that can actually give great customer service; they’re just hard to get hold of apparently.

So, I’m a happy camper right now. Vonage offers a product that fits my needs, and it was really going to be a hassle to try to find something equivalent. I’m glad they did the right thing. Hopefully they’ll change the verbage on their web site to prevent this type of thing in the future.

We decided we needed an incoming phone line for Fine Art Touch. A friend of mine has been using Vonage for a while now, and he loves it, so I figured why not try Vonage. I went to their web site on Monday night (January 8th) where I started the order, but I had a few questions, so I figured I’d call Vonage directly and complete the order.

The person I talked to at Vonage was obviously a non-native English speaker. But his accent wasn’t that hard to understand, so I didn’t think anything about it. Anyway, I wanted to get the unlimited line ($24.99 month), a toll-free number ($4.99 month), and a fax line ($9.99 month). On the Vonage site, they advertise a “Free phone adapter if you sign up directly from Vonage”. The phone adapter supports up to two lines and lets you plug into any network port and have phone access. It’s portable so you can take it with you and anywhere you can plug into a network connection instantly becomes a phone line. Nice.

Vonage also had a nifty cordless phone available with a base that plugged directly into the network port. I figured that was perfect for what we needed. So, I ordered Vonage’s unlimited service, toll-free number, fax, and the Vtech cordless phone.

Or so I thought.

Continue reading “A Vonage Adage”

The title of this blog, “Loud Music Is a $40 Fine” comes from the title of a Webb Wilder song. The gist of it is that if you’re in Amarillo, Texas, and you play loud music, then you’ll get a $40. Who’d a thunk that it could really happen: Woman gets 20 months in prison for loud music

Just wanted to wish everyone a Merry Christmas.

Here I am on my lunch break at work. There’s nothing going on today. It boggles my mind that they’d go to the expense of having the office open today with maybe 5% of the workforce here.

Anyway, all I’m doing is rebuilding a computer (i.e. wiping the hard drive and reinstalling everything). Sometimes when you can’t diagnose a problem within a reasonable time frame, wiping and reinstalling everything makes the most sense. Why spend 6 or 8 hours trying to diagnose a problem when you can spend half that rebuilding the OS and apps?

I’m still experimenting with the look and feel of the blog. I found out about “Widgets” last night and spent way too much time playing with those and widget-ready themes. I should have been submitting the new press release for Fine Art Touch. We’ve started offering hand-painted reproductions of fine art works, and we’re pretty excited about it.

Guess the next thing I need to do is start adding some links to places I go to. Looks like I need to research what a “blogroll” is all about.

Happy Thanksgiving. Since I have to work on Friday, we didn’t get a chance to go to my mom’s house to eat Thanksgiving “dinner” (from what I hear, her Thanksgiving meal was actually ready around 8 am this morning). Instead, we went to a cafeteria that was jam packed with turkey eaters. Had to wait in line around 20 minutes.

After getting back, I decided to play a little online poker at Doyle’s Room. I ended up winning the 8-handed sit-and-go tournament I entered. FYI, I never bluff; if I bet, I’ve got the best hand.

So I’m still getting all this blog stuff set up and experimenting with things to see what happens when I do stuff. So this entry is part test, part blog post. I haven’t really told anyone I have a blog yet, since this is still more for my use in getting acclimated. So if you’re reading this, how about commenting and letting me know how you found the place.

This is me, testing this newfangled blog thing. Not sure where I’ll take this place, but it should be interesting.