Author Archives: Wick

Saba Marine in Colchester VT is a FUCKING NIGHTMARE

I have a 2004 15HP Honda Outboard — BF15, popular model, they are all over the place. Several years ago I decided to branch out & try Colchester area marine repair shops. This year was Saba Marine’s turn. They fucked … Continue reading

Posted in awful customer service, nautical disasters | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

Streaming Video To iPhone/iPad App Review

I have a Drobo FS. It’s a great backup solution, but not the most media-streamable NAS out there. I needed something that could stream video, starting out in various Apple-unfriendly formats up to 1080p, from my NAS to my iPhone. … Continue reading

Posted in tips, video | Tagged , , , , , | 4 Comments

MS Access ODBC with Windows 7 64-bit and Perl

Just writing that headline’s enough to make me cringe. Hell, I almost gave up at the thought of dealing with the ODBC error in the first place: Can’t connect to Access database: [Microsoft][ODBC Driver Manager] Data source name not found … Continue reading

Posted in perl, Windows 7 | Leave a comment

China & The South China Sea: Are You Fucking Kidding?

Apparently China was absent for the “Sharing The Ocean” lesson during country kindergarten. Their claims to the South China Sea are fucking ridiculous: The UN Convention of the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) sets a 200-mile limit on sea territory … Continue reading

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Gladinet Cloud Desktop Can’t Handle Amazon Cloud Drive

More accurately, Gladinet Tech Support can’t fix a three-month-old issue that completely breaks Gladinet Cloud Backup’s reliability as a backup tool when using Amazon Cloud Drive. The root issue is simple: your Amazon Cloud Drive login credential expire after 48 … Continue reading

Posted in awful customer service, bugs | 5 Comments

Samsung Series 7 Razor-Sharp Wrist Rest

I researched the Samsung Series 7 Chronos for several days, reading glowing review after glowing review. Not one mentioned the wrist rest edge is literally sharp enough to hurt. Either the reviewers all have very small hands, or they completely … Continue reading

Posted in awful usability | 3 Comments

Samsung SE-506AB Blu-Ray Burner Comes With Ancient Software

Initially I thought the Samsung SE-506AB unit I bought was defective — it would not play Blu-ray discs. I had purchased it along with a Samsung Series 7 Chronos laptop. The Samsung Blu-ray burner comes with CyberLink PowerDVD 9. The … Continue reading

Posted in awful customer service, Samsung | Leave a comment

404 Not Found Abuse: oggiPlayerLoader.htm

In a refreshingly proactive turn of events, one Amazon AWS abuser replied to me directly. The oggiPlayerLoader.htm 404 errors detailed in my previous web abuse post were courtesy of Oggifinogi, a rich media provider based out of Bellevue, WA. Directory … Continue reading

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Web crawl abuse from Amazon AWS-hosted projects

I’ve been keeping an eye on the CarComplaints.com error log lately, watching for phishing attempts, misbehaving bots/scripts, & other random stupidity. Turns out the major offenders have something in common — they’re hosted on Amazon’s AWS platform. One Amazon AWS … Continue reading

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Lost Connection To MySQL Server on MediaTemple Grid Server

I’ve been a MediaTemple Grid Server (gs) customer since it was released. From the beginning, Mediatemple has had MySQL problems with “Lost connection to MySQL server during query at [script name] [line number]” errors. I have several system update Perl … Continue reading

Posted in bugs, MediaTemple, mysql, perl | 2 Comments