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eBay Permanently Suspends My Account, Won’t Discuss It

By on Dec 4, 2013 in Blog Posts, Internet | 3 comments

When I created my account with eBay back in the halcyon days of 2004 I had no idea that almost a decade later the company would shut it down and refuse to discuss it. My “membership” started out as many do, with a casual interest in the site and learning how the online auction system worked. I won my first auction in 2005 and since then I’ve used the site to purchase and sell a dozen or more items, accumulating a flawless record of ratings for items sold to other members. I would consider myself a lightweight in the eBay world, but I’d be willing to bet there are a lot more people like me in their database than not. In June I received an Email from eBay notifying me that my account had been suspended. It was titled “MC999 Your eBay account has been suspended”, which I have since learned is a death notice. I didn’t even see the Email at the...

My Name is Scott Carter and I Suffer From Resting Bitch Face Syndrome

By on Sep 9, 2013 in Blog Posts | 0 comments

For years I’ve wondered why people steer clear of me in public. I had eliminated the obvious possibilities such as body odor and dress with assurances from my friends, who I do have, that my fragrance is agreeable and fashion acceptable. One day while sitting in a coffee shop working I noticed a certain strain on my face. After a few hours of being in public, my eyebrows and cheeks were aching. It dawned on me that I wear a near constant scowl in public.This is my face as I am typing this post. I’m not doing it on purpose and can’t make it stop.I posted about this on Facebook and was quickly informed that I suffer from resting bitch face syndrome. From Urban Dictionary:resting bitch facea person, usually a girl, who naturally looks mean when her face is expressionless, without meaning to.I’m 31 years old and this is the first I’m learning of this. My face...

How To Renew Your Expired Driver’s License in Virginia

By on May 22, 2013 in Blog Posts | 0 comments

Over a year ago my driver’s license expired and I was too lazy to get it renewed. Because I’m a hermit I rarely use the thing, I didn’t put renewing it high on my to-do list. Then I got pulled over by the coppers because I didn’t have a front license plate (someone hit my car and it broke off, then I was too lazy to fix it) and they ticketed me for that and my expired license and took it away.Then my little journey began. Now that I didn’t have a license, I could no longer (legally) drive. My lovely girlfriend was kind enough to ferry me around for the next two weeks until I was able to get my license. Before going to the DMV we did some research and found out what I needed in order to renew my license. Come to find out that because my license had been expired for over a year I would need to start from scratch, including taking the road signs, knowledge...

Stellar Phoenix Refuses to Honor Money Back Guarantee

By on Jan 25, 2013 in Blog Posts, Internet | 1 comment

Recently a customer was having a problem with Outlook; their PST file had become corrupted. This happens from time to time, especially with larger Outlook files, and the first thing to try is Microsoft’s own scanpst repair utility. When that doesn’t work or causes other issues, one goes Googling for specialty applications. That’s how I found Stellar Phoenix and their Outlook PST Recovery utility. I ran the PST file through a scan with the trial version and it found quite a bit of data to recover – over 45,000 Emails – so I decided to purchase it. After the scan was complete I noticed that Emails were corrupted, with foreign characters and bizarre time stamps and headers. The real problem wasn’t the corrupted Emails, but the massive amount of missing data. The original 4.5GB file was reduced to under 4GB by the Stellar Phoenix recovery utility, as see...

A Fellow Fedora Lover Beats Me To Supreme Nerdom

By on Jan 17, 2013 in Blog Posts | 1 comment

Today my girlfriend shared this with me, which Cheezburger posted yesterday:Now, this is clearly hilarious but completely unfair to those of us with the style and grace to wear a fedora properly. Someone has gone and done an exact search in Google which means that the sentence “i love men that wear fedoras” did not currently exist on the Internet in that precise way.That is, until +Radu-Sebastian Amarie took matters into his own nerdy hands by creating a webpage with the phrase in the title and URL. Kudos, my man. Now there will be at least two results.

How to Setup Your Company Exchange Server on a Windows 8 Phone

By on Dec 12, 2012 in Blog Posts, Software | 0 comments

I had a Windows Server SBS 2003 w/SP2 box with Exchange 2003 SP2 installed. The certificate on IIS was expired, but it pointed to servername.local. The internal domain name meant that I needed to use a dynamic DNS address for external access and also allow webserver/SSL ports through the company firewall. That part was easy, but the connection didn’t work.I was trying to connect a Windows 8 phone to the Exchange server, but it failed because the certificate name didn’t match. I was using a dynamic DNS address such as example.dyndns.org to attach to the server remotely. https://www.testexchangeconnectivity.com/ told me the problem lay in the certificate file.My problem: I wanted to set up the company IIS/Exchange server to allow the remote connection from a Windows 8 phone to the Exchange Server which wasn’t going to work with a mismatched SSL certificate.Turns...

I want my Nexus 4!

By on Nov 20, 2012 in Android, Blog Posts | 0 comments

For the first time since I got my original Motorola Droid more than three years ago I was excited about a new Android phone. I had read enough about the Nexus 4 to feel like I already owned it, and like many other Android fanboys I stayed up late on the night of the 12th hoping it would go on sale after midnight. The precious. It didn’t, and it wasn’t on sale at 3AM either. Since Google wasn’t telling any of us when the webstore would allow purchasing I went to sleep and woke myself up around 10AM to check the site. Still not live, but by this time Google had told everyone it would go on sale at noon EST, 9AM PST. Great! I refreshed the page every few minutes while I worked and was surprised to find the device for sale at 11:30. I already knew from the overseas sales that it was going to sell out in a hurry, so I placed my order immediately and had the order...

Why Internet dating is stupid and I hate it

By on Nov 16, 2012 in Blog Posts, Internet | 1 comment

For almost ten years I’ve maintained an on-again, off-again relationship with online dating websites. As I’m still single it should be obvious that it’s not working for me. I’ve been trying to determine the first time I ever opened an online dating account and as far as I can tell it was in 2003 when I created a profile on Yahoo Personals. I vaguely remember browsing for free and coming across a profile that intrigued me, which of course meant I had to put down some cash to send a message to whatever vexing minx shared my lack of social skills. Over the years I’ve had a number of wonderful relationships with people I’ve met online, but none of them have lasted any significant amount of time. Somehow the magic hasn’t been there for me. Maybe it’s a coincidence or perhaps meeting someone online just doesn’t have the romantic...