|Absolute Value|

I purchased an Acer notebook a while back. I purchased it from Simply Computing This notebook is a beast. It has an AMD 2400+ MP processor, 512MB of 333Mhz DDR, a DVD-RW, wireless builtin and all the extras. It cost me a fortune (for those in South Africa, a third of what I made on the sale of my car).

Since then I have had non stop problems. I have had 3 keyboard replacements due to the “B” key malfunctioning. I have also had to send it in to fix the fan and DVD-RW after one keyboard replacement as they made horrible noises. And then I did a very me thing. I stood on my laptop and cracked the screen.

This has now been replaced, but at a horrendous cost. Again Acer to the rescue, one week for a quote, send the quote, wait a week, get told still waiting for the quote, send quote again, wait a week and then get it fixed.

Acer are the worst service level providers I have ever met. I even wrote a letter of complaint that received an apology from them. A written apology. Hahaha. At least now I have someone to complain to directly!

Enough ranting for now though. Grant and I installed a small Gentoo box in one of our cupboards. This little thing serves as a fileserver and torrent downloader. The only problem is that it is slow as hell. And it runs incredibly hot as there is now place for the heat to go.

No requests from Free Gmail accounts yet. Cmon I have invites!!!

One of my Favourite sites: Weebls Stuff

Hmmmmm

In a few weeks time, I will be departing the holy kingdom otherwise known as England, for a few weeks in sunny South Africa. This is because I need a HOLIDAY.I have nearly worked for a year without one, so I think I am due.

I am flying to Johannesburg and then hiring a Caravelle and with Sarah, the parents and maybe the antichrist (politely known as my sister) in tow, disappear into the Kruger Park for 5 days of doing nothing except oohing and aahing at impala. From there its back to PE for a while and whatever I want to do. I cannot wait.

Until then, I am content to sit back and work. I finally got dual-monitors working on my desktop which is nice. Because I am pedantic, I like working at 1280X1024 resolution. Unfortunately this forces the video card into a refresh rate of 60Hz. This rate gives me a headache in about 10 minutes and nausea in about 20. So I needed an upgrade. Today is the day that I receive the video card.

Anyone who reads this blog needs to click on that little Firefox button and download the best browser available. Anyone who puts a comment on this site and is using the browser can get a free GMail account from me. I have lots of invites to give away. So start downloading.

Enjoy the day and come back for more.

As an avid Mozilla user, I have put a new button on my site. Its the little Firefox button. Firefox is the new standalone browser from the Mozilla Foundation. Click on it and download the browser. Its amazing.

Regards
King Kahoona

Having received a gmail account last week, I have had time to reflect. Here are some thoughts of mine.

First off, the interface is amazing. Written completely in DHTML, its amazing. Its like having a webclient like Outlook Express or Mozilla Mail in a web interface. I have heard of some problems accessing it because of the DHTML though.

The second thought that I have is regarding to the sign-up procedure. Invitation only is the way to get these elusive accounts (I have invites by the way). I think that google is never going to open gmail to the general public and only have it via invite. This makes it interesting.

I also set my mail server at work to bcc every email coming in and going out to my gmail account. This caused a few problems as the gmail SMTP servers like to reject a few emails which caused a bit of embarresment on my part (Imagine clients receiving a bounced email with your personal email address on it).

Now that my blog is finally working again, expect some more entries. More interesting than this one at least!

Enjoy