The EPA wants to get HFC-134a regulated like freon

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Today I learned something interesting.

As part of my job, I get to periodically read the Wolters Kluwer Law & Business’ Workplace Guide to EPA and OSHA.

Oh yeah. It’s exactly as fun as it sounds.

Anyhow, something on page 17, first paragraph got my attention…

“The EPA prohibits the sale of Freon to anyone other than a certified technician. The EPA is in the process of developing a similar restriction for HFC-134a, although none currently exists.”

In other words, the EPA wants to ban WalMart, Target, Pep Boys, Auto Zone and every other car-accessory place from selling those A/C recharge units.

Granted, a lot of people don’t even know or care where the automotive section is at the stores, but if the EPA gets this idea through, getting the gas to repair, seal or recharge an A/C unit won’t be possible unless you’re a “certified technician”.

Scam much?

Those recharge units usually sell out during the summer months, and HFC-134a is supposed to be 100% safe for the environment too. This regulation is either a power grab by the EPA, or worse, HFC-134a isn’t environmentally friendly as first thought and the EPA wants to quietly pull it off the market.

Either way, it’s going to be up to WalMart, Target, Pep Boys, Auto Zone and every other car-accessory place need to fight this and get to the “why”.

And for the record, I’ve used those HFC-134a rechargers on my car, and they do work.

Finding batteries and flashlights when they’re sold out at WalMart and Target

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Living in the Texas valley has given me firsthand experience with dozens of hurricanes. From the moment they change from a tropical depression to a category 1, it’s time to get ready for the worst.

Every single time a hurricane heads my way, the WalMart and Target stores throughout the valley quickly sell out of batteries and flashlights.

Seeing bare shelves at a mainstream store was pretty intimidating when I first moved here, but I’ve since found there’s plenty of places to go to get flashlights and batteries before a big storm hits.

  • Hunting and Outdoors stores! This is actually my first stop when a hurricane is coming in because they carry a massive variety of flashlights, lanterns and batteries. (Cabelas, Academy)
  • Hardware stores! Tons of batteries and construction-level flashlights abound! (Lowe’s, Home Depot)
  • Kids toy stores. Often overlooked, these stores always have lots of batteries and some passable flashlights. (Toys R Us)
  • Arts and crafts stores. A seriously overlooked stash of batteries can always be found here, but they carry mediocre flashlights at best. (Michaels, Hobby Lobby)
  • Home accessory stores. They have a massive battery wall, but they’re usually hidden somewhere in the store among the appliances and bed accessories. (Bed Bath and Beyond)
  • Office supply stores. They do have most batteries and they’re usually on an endcap display near the front of the store so you can run in and run out. (Staples, Office Depot, Office Max)
  • Radio Shack. Yes, their custom batteries are overpriced and stink on ice, but they usually do have a lot of them.
  • And finally, “scent and body” stores. Places that have soaps and candles and things that smell usually have a wall dedicated specifically to candles. Yes, they’re all probably going to be scented, but they’re also all massive glass encased urns of solid wax, they will burn for hours, and these places always have plenty of stock. (Bath and Body Works, Yankee Candle, Williams Sonoma and Cracker Barrel)

If you have around $300, though, I highly recommend investing in a generator from Sam’s, Costo, or one of the home improvement stores in the area. You can get a decent generator in the $300 price range, and with a few gallons of gasoline, you can have actual plug-in power. Fans, microwave ovens, and lamps are awesome to have on when the rest of the city has been dark for over 12 hours. If you do get a generator, be sure to…

  1. Get a high-gauge extension cord since the generator will be outside your home and you will need to run an extension cord inside to your home to plug everything into.
  2. Set up the generator BEFORE the storm! There’s some small things to put together before a generator can be run for the first time, and you definitely don’t want to be unpacking one of these things in the dark with no A/C.

Hope this little trivia helps.

Fixing the Firefox “…due to mozilla’s security features error” pop-up

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I upgraded to the most recent version of Firefox, and for awhile, I was getting a “…due to mozilla’s security features” pop-up error on a lot of websites I visited.

I found the solution to get rid of this highly annoying “feature” from a user named Castaign buried in the Firefox forum.

“This is likely caused by the Web Fixer add on. If you have this add on installed, you should have a small icon on the bottom right corner of Firefox (next to the authentication padlock icon) that says Fix. Click this to access the Web Fixer menu and choose Quick Settings –> Change Settings –> Other Options tab. Uncheck the box labeled “Show message on security errors”. You may need to restart Firefox for the fix to work.”

Thanks Castaign!

Avoid the shiny metal HP v220w USB flash drives

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HP POS

HP POS

Please excuse my looooong absence, but I’ve been extraordinarily busy with hundreds of work projects these last few months.

Recently I purchased a HP v220w USB flash drive. It was on sale at the time and was the cheapest 16gb stick on the shelves, so I figured why not. A flash drive is a flash drive, right?

I first plugged it into my main desktop PC running Windows 7. It mounted, then disappeared, then re-mounted, then disappeared again.

OK, I thought, maybe it didn’t like Windows 7 or that particular PC. I rebooted the Windows 7 PC and tried plugging in the HP drive again, but got the same disappearing mount trick.

So I made the rounds…

  • Plugging it into a MacBook Pro Laptop : Wouldn’t mount five out of five times.
  • Plugging it into a Mac Pro 12-core Desktop : Wouldn’t mount five out of five times.
  • Plugging it into a Windows 7 desktop : Wouldn’t mount first 3 times. Mounted on 4th try and stayed mounted! Unplugging it and then plugging it back in… it wouldn’t mount.
  • Plugging it into a Windows 7 Laptop : Wouldn’t mount first 4 times. Mounted on 5th, then disappeared.
  • Plugging it into a Windows Vista desktop: Wouldn’t mount five out of five times.
  • Plugging it into a Windows XP desktop (the “emergency” spare): Wouldn’t mount five out of five times.

At this point, I knew it was a bad flash drive. So I went back to the store I bought it from and got an identical replacement HP drive. The same size, the same 220w variety.

So imagine my surprise when I plugged this new flash drive into my systems and the Same! Damn! Thing! Happened!

I was impressed. In all the wrong ways, mind you, but I was impressed.

So I looked online. Specifically HP’s own website where they sell this… thing. It’s full of one star reviews and people reporting similar experiences.

SO, in summary, I have to say the HP v220w USB flash drive is junk. Did I say junk? I meant ABSOLUTE GARBAGE. A USB drive that will not mount? That’s a textbook example of terrible engineering and rotten quality control.

HP: screwing up accessories every other company gets right.

Website tanked – PHP and WordPress update to blame

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My site was down because PHP didn’t like the new WordPress 3.2.1.

Long story short, if you get the dreaded “500 internal server error” after the WordPress 3.2.1 upgrade AND you are using 1&1 hosting, here’s what you need to do…

  1. Edit the php.ini file (or create a new one) to MEMORY=128MB (or just bump the number that is there up in increments of 64 MB)
  2. Edit the .htaccess file to force 1&1 to use PHP5 by adding “AddType x-mapp-php5 .php” (thanks TECHNOBLOG)
  3. Upload the changed files and you’re back.

A slight AAAAAAAAAAAAAA is just what I needed to wake me up this morning!

5 gig limits, .99 cent sales and the future

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I am sick of wireless companies saying a 5 gigabyte data plan is “enough for most regular users”.

Bull!

Here’s a perfect example. Electronic Arts and Gameloft are having a .99 cent sale on the iTunes store this weekend. Let’s say I want to spend $10 and get the top 10 iPad games that are .99 right now. The top 10 .99 cent games are…

  • Monopoly – 69.3 MB
  • NBA Jam – 249 MB
  • Battleship – 17.7 MB
  • Scrabble – 15.2 MB
  • Asphalt 6 – 505 MB
  • N.O.V.A. 2 – 504 MB
  • Need For Speed Hot Pursuit – 431 MB
  • LIFE – 13.8 MB
  • Transformers Dark of the Moon – 116 MB
  • Battlefield Bad Company – 265 MB

For $10, I would be downloading a little over 2 gigs (2, 186 MB). That smokes about half of my 5 gigabyte data plan right there.

But let’s say I had a $20 bill burning through my pocket and I wanted the top 20 .99 cent games on the iTunes store. The next 10 are…

  • Dungeon Hunter 2 – 467 MB
  • Tiger Woods PGA Tour 12 – 259 MB
  • FIFA 11 – 1.24 GB
  • Dead Space – 427 MB
  • Tetris – 29.8 MB
  • Yahtzee – 18.3 MB
  • RISK – 21.3 MB
  • StarFront Collision – 605 MB
  • Sim City – 93.1 MB
  • Madden NFL 11 – 327 MB

For the top 10-20 games on the iTunes store, that would mean I would have to download over 3 gigs of data (3,487.50 MB).

To sum up, spending $20 for 20 video games for the iPad would also mean burning through a total of 5,673.5 MB, which is slightly beyond a 5 gigabyte wireless data plan “for regular users”.

With Verizon and AT&T putting data caps in their DSL and cable plans, I expect to see similar 5 gig plans as the “limit for regular use” coming soon to every internet plan regardless of connection medium.

So my question is, who exactly defines “regular use?” The gatekeepers collecting the money? The top four companies who provide internet access to the US? Ah, no, that’s not a good idea at all.

There simply MUST be a national average that is ADJUSTED over time that is set as a national benchmark. Think of the pricing of natural gas as an example. The rates vary per usage and per quantity delivered. The rates are fixed based on a true usage average and amount of supply available.

The internet is not a supply based medium that requires delivery and transportation (in the semi-truck to a warehouse sense). The only thing the internet takes up at a telco is a room full of computers. So logically, the only thing to determine is the true national data usage average as defined by the data use by individuals.

How hard would that be? Take the data use form the top 4 companies that provide internet access to the US. Divide the data usage by the number of users. Bam. There’s your target average for the next calendar year. Call that number the new “national average” and move on.

Of course the telcos will bitch and complain to high heaven about this. How dare we want a reasonable opportunity to have fair internet access? How dare we want a connection plan that adjusts for leaps and bounds in technology and education?

I hate to say it, but congress will have to get involved with this one. There just isn’t any way I can think of to ask for a modern telco company to do this on their own.

So the next step is finding a member of congress who understands the internet, who doesn’t mind pissing off all the major telcos, and can present this in a comprehensive bill to their peers.

Wish me luck, kemosabe. I’m going in.

[EDIT 07/03/11 : I am not in favor of government regulation of the internet. I am not in favor of government mandated tiered pricing or of tiered pricing in general. I do believe the current “data caps” are a scam from the telcos to squeeze money from consumers the same way the old style long distance charges were for land lines. (Why are long distance calls free on wireless phones and not on land lines anyway?) The infrastructure for internet data access is already in place. I truly wish for a return to the “drink from the fire hose” unlimited internet access from a few years ago, but I would compromise on a a sensible pricing plan for a reasonable amount of monthly data access. $10 for 30 gb of data is a baseline for what I have in mind. Putting a limit in internet access through exorbitant pricing is like saying you can only have so much electricity per month because it costs $500 per kilowatt hour. Make the pricing for internet access more realistic and let us, the consumers, decide what is “enough for regular usage”.]

[EDIT #2 07/03/11 : When (not if) data caps for internet use hit all the DSL and cable internet access subscribers, I  can guarantee all the “free WiFi” access will dry up inside of a year. No more open WiFi for neighbors to share when they’re costing you $200 a month in overage fees. No more mom-and-pop WiFi coffee shops when it is a direct hit to their bottom line every month. The only “free WiFi” access points I think will remain once this cap is in place will be the state sponsored WiFi (if there’s any available in your area) or from retail locations that have worked out a special corporate hosting-data management package deal with their internet providers. Seriously!]

Yale’s digitizing collection and some quick math

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Yale recently announced they are going to scan and post very high res images of their “collections of art, natural history, books, and maps, as well as photos, audio, and video documenting people, places, and events that form part of Yale’s institutional identity and contribution to scholarship”.

There’s 250,000 images out there already to start with, but there are 12,000,000 items left to scan. (And all of this is supposedly coming from only ONE of their museum collections!)

Assuming they’re going to scan 15 pieces an hour on a high-end scanner, that means it’s going to take 800,000 hours to scan 12 million pieces.

Scanning 15 pieces an hour for 8 hours a day straight will take 100,000 days.

100,000 days divided by 365 days in a year would make it a 273 year job… for for one person.

Add 99 more people scanning at the same rate and the entire 12 million piece archive can be done in 2.7 years.

That is a LOT of artwork left to scan.

The main search window for the Yale collection is here. A sample list view of what is already online is here.

Cannot start the download because the file is missing or invalid – iPad fix

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If you’re subscribing to a Conde Nast magazine and are downloading copies to your iPad, there’s a small bug to watch out for.

After consecutively downloading 6 issues in any Conde Nast magazine app (New Yorker, Wired, etc), you will get a “ERROR DURING DOWNLOAD : Cannot start the download because the file is missing or invalid.”

Restart the iPad and you can download more issues. (Closing and re-opening the app doesn’t fix it.)

Hopefully the next Conde Nast magazine app release will fix this (or increase the cache/timeout).

Wall Street Journal – Final South Texas delivery resolution

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I just got an email from the the Senior Manager of Customer Care at The Wall Street Journal this morning.

The solution to that delivery problem I’ve been having?

“Dear Subscriber,

I am writing to inform you about changes in our production and delivery operations that will impact the delivery of your Journal subscription.

At Dow Jones and Company, publisher of The Wall Street Journal, we work very hard to provide our customers with the highest quality delivery service.  However, recent changes in transportation logistics have made it impossible to continue delivering your Monday – Saturday Journal on the day of publication.  Effective for the issue date of June 9, 2011, your weekday Journal subscription will be delivered by carrier or by the United States Postal Service, as it is today, but one day after publication date. ”

Well, shit.

Getting the newspaper in the mail? And assuming they mail it immediately on the day of production, that’s still going to take 3 or 4 days after the publication date to get here.

I wanted the newspaper on the same day it was printed. That’s why I skipped out on the Washington Post and the New York Times postal mail delivery and chose The Wall Street Journal home delivery. After all, old news is… well, old news.

The email also had a link to a 30 day subscription to WSJ online, but if I wanted that format, I would’ve signed up for it on my Kindle.

So that’s the end of it. The only “real” newspaper’s delivery in deeeep south Texas is now kaput.

The fact I can’t get a real newspaper delivered every day to my home address tells me three things…

#1: Transportation logistics? That’s the reason the newspaper quit this area? There’s no internet-and-print option to a local newspaper printer? They’re still delivering newspapers on trucks? I’m going to feel pretty rotten if I was the only reason some poor semi truck driver had to come all the way down to the Texas valley!

Which brings me to…

#2: There’s a wide open market down here for a company that will print and deliver “real” newspapers. The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, The Washington Post, The LA Times and (shudder) USA TODAY are newspapers I’ve read before that are completely unavailable down here in the Texas valley. The local rag is a sad joke, and maybe a “city hub” newspaper printer could sell and distribute a bundle of the top 5 papers to the local schools, libraries, bookstores, etc.

#3: I may need to move since no major newspaper delivers to the area I live in. That’s a pretty big “WARNING! DANGER WILL ROBINSON!” sign right there.

Seriously, thanks for trying Wall Street Journal. It was great while it lasted. I’ll get your print edition again. Someday.

No Wall Street Journal for 26 consecutive issues!

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Just a quick status update on the original Wall Street Journal delivery article. As of May 2nd, I haven’t received one single newspaper. That’s 26 consecutive Wall Street Journals I’ve missed because of “production issues”. (I get M-Sat only. Sundays were never an option and there was no Memorial Day delivery.)

Every damn time I call customer service I am told I will be credited the issue, and the missed issue will be delivered with tomorrow’s paper. The “urgent matter” is also escalated to the regional distributor for kicks.

I’m tired of paying for something I haven’t received. I’ll keep posting these updates going until this mess is resolved.

Texas valley subscribers beware! Delivery of the Wall Street Journal is not reliable!