Earth Class Mail vs EarthMailFree.com???

I was reading this blog tonight and couldn’t believe my eyes! EarthClassMail.com is claiming that EarthMailFree.com is infringing on their copyright because of the use of the two words EARTH and MAIL in the domain name!

The irony at least for me, is I watched several entrepreneur TV shows that specifically talked about Earth Class Mail! I was quite interested and excited of what the company and CEO were doing.  Sure they had their problems with the start up.  Not to mention they rewrote their entire site to Microsoft’s ASP.NET barely finishing and pulling off fixing bugs before the start of a conference they were attending.  I was sorry to hear yet another company were accepting “offers” from Microsoft with no significant technical merit to back their decision.  Rather than perfect their product, they instead wasted precious time getting to market in fixing a new ASP.NET website written in haste! Still, I must admit, I watched the show.

Then I come across this blog, and find that Earth Class Mail is actually suing the domain name owner of EarthMailFree.com! Are you kidding me? Maybe Earth Class Mail are borrowing lawyers from Microsoft as well?

Let me say one thing to this new company.  Piss off enough of us “little” people, and it will spread like wild fire…see you back on the streets in a couple years!

Mini Cooper Tires Part III

After spending two hours on Friday to get my front tire replaced (due to a screw). I returned on Saturday to get the left front tire replaced (due to a nail), I also discovered (the dealership didn’t discover this); that my back two tires were badly worn. I paid ($500) to have the two rear tires also replaced and balanced on Saturday. I spent another 2 1/2 hours at Global Imports BMW Mini.

Mini Cooper Tires

I was leaving work a bit early yesterday, when the tire warning light came on.  Rather than just reset it as I had done this morning when driving in, I decided to call the dealership and stop by on my way home.

Upon inspection we discovered that the right front tire had a screw in it.  The head was missing, but you could still make out the threads.

The Global Imports BMW MINI dealership estimated one hour, it took two hours to replace the tire.  In talking with Brandon the service rep, he was very nice and helpful.  He told me to watch my tire pressure, as we talked about my tires having uneven wear.

On the way home, I stopped and picked up a digital tire gauge and checked the air pressure in my tires.  That is when I noticed a nail in the left front tire.  Frustrated I called the dealership and now today, I am back at Global Imports BMW to have them replace the front left tire.

I asked Tara, the service rep. I am working with now if they could inspect the back tires for foreign objects while they had the car up in the air.  Just as I was saying it, I walked behind the car to look at the rear tires and noticed the steel belt barely visible in the center of the tires only.  Crap!

Well Tara has been very helpful.  She apologized that they let me even leave yesterday with tires looking like that and offered me a discount.  Since I have the wheel and tire warranty, the front two tires are free.  But the back two tires I have to replace, they are worn out and even if they had a foreign object in them, they are below the minimum tire tread wear for a free replacement.

Things I’ve taken away from this experience:

• I need to monitor my tires much more closely.  They are high performance tires and if not watched closely, even a small amount of air pressure will cause uneven tire wear more dramatic than any other vehicle I have ever owned.
• Tara and Brandon are excellent service reps at Global Imports BMW.  They are professional, provided me with free food and drinks.  This isn’t something that even my wife’s Saturn dealership provides as adequately.
• I have strong concerns with the maintenance technicians who are working on my car downstairs.  Why didn’t they take a quick spin of the other tires and check them yesterday? This isn’t the first time they have made me unhappy.  The first time I brought my Mini to them, they left the drain plug too loose and I was leaking oil!

April Fools

Loving the April Fools jokes today:

•  Google releases their latest approach to email with Gmail Custom Time
• ThinkGeek sent out their usual April Fools mailer, my favorite is the Defendius Labyrinth Security Lock

Gluon Web Framework

I saw this new web framework and couldn’t pass it up to write about it and link to it. There I’m done.

Netflix saves me money

Wow…how often is it that you receive a note, letter, email from a company that the price is going down…

	Dear Mark,Great news! We’re lowering the price of your 1 DVD out at-a-time plan to $8.99 a month plus applicable taxes. Now you can enjoy Netflix for less! You don’t need to do a thing – except pay less. Your membership will automatically move to the lower price and be reflected in your Membership Terms and Details. The lower price will take effect beginning with your statement on or after July 23, 2007. Your $8.99 plan not only gives you 1 DVD out at-a-time but you can also watch 9 hours of movies and TV episodes instantly on your PC each month – for no additional charge. Enjoy! Your friends at Netflix

Now if the electric, gas, water, garbage, car payments, mortgage companies would all fall in line and offer an amazing discount as well…

Personal Blogging Sites and Comments

I have a few friends, co-workers or other acquaintances who have their own blogs.  Great!  A lot of them even go on to use WordPress as the blogging engine of choice.  Great!

The problem is they are hosting their WordPress blogging engines on their own website, rather than using WordPress.com (as I do).  This causes a problem for me and other visitors.  We have to create a new login (register) with each site before we can post a comment on their blog.  Why? Because their blogs are running in what I like to call Disparate mode!

You guys know who you are.  Can something be done? Can you not have your user list sync. with WordPress.com or some other Blogging API that keeps one central database of user logins?

Do this…and I will write more comments (heckling may be involved).  And me writing comments means you will actually know that someone took the time to read and respond to your blog. 

It was just a thought…

5 things that would shock you

…maybe not.

Here I am having to talk about myself again — thanks Martin. When I saw your post, I didn’t think I could find five things. But here it goes…

Vacation Part I

Happy New Year to family and friends!

It has been over a week that I have been off work, and I felt like I have accomplished more than I have all year long!

I celebrated one of the most mysterious days in a young child’s mind, Christmas, with both children. They were in awe, and I was rubbing my eyes with one hand and my little girl was holding the two fingers of my other hand gently guiding me down the stairs.

Going with the smaller guys, sometimes you lose out

My backup solution for years consisted of storing the media on a large hard drive and backing it up on DVD’s. That all changed in 2006, when I found some spare time away from work, I set up a small RAID 1 (mirroring) solution using Debian.

I’m not one to love the idea of having six computers in my home office and updating them, validating nothing broke each week or month. It becomes a task similar to doing bills over time. My other major concern is, what happens if something did happen to me? How is my non-technical wife going to manage technical affairs?

So, while I decided my mirror RAID was sufficient, I didn’t think it would be large enough to last me through all of 2007. I did what any geek would do and ordered larger drives. However, this time I slowly begin convincing myself that I should take a look at the wife issue as well. I looked into several off the shelf and free RAID solutions with colleagues.