2006 April 27

Turns out, my MSN Direct account is set to autorenew itself unless I cancel the account (which I hardly used, admittedly). Here's the irony: “If you would like to cancel or discuss your account, please contact MSN Customer Support at the number listed below for your subscription type – For all other services, such as Hotmail Plus, Outlook Live, MSN Radio, etc, please call: (866) 672-4551.”
First, there is NO PHONE NUMBER LISTED BELOW. Second, why do I have to call someone to get this done? WTF? Is this 1983 or something? Did someone forget to program the “Cancel” module. Be forewarned, when you sign up for certain Microsoft services, you may have to make a phone call at some point in the future – introducing operator error and trackability nightmares. I thought we were beyond this, folks?

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I was in an office store yesterday, picking up supplies for our (duh) home office, when I spotted a new Linksys product. As I've been relatively happy with their home networking hardware (except for the A/G/B router that's flaky as dandruff), I decided to take a closer look. They're selling a high-gain antennas for your wireless routers now. You can unscrew your stubby antennae and fasten better broadcasters in a heartbeat – easiest hardware installation / upgrade ever. They've got two High-Gain Antenna Kits: HGA7S and HGA7T, depending on your router. If you've had signal degredation or other issues with your Linksys wireless network, pick up these badboys: “The High Gain Antennas increase the strength of outgoing signals and the receive sensitivity for incoming signals. This added signal strength and sensitivity not only extends the range of your wireless network, but also improves close-range communications reliability by reducing re-transmissions due to weak signal reception errors.” They say the height of a man's antennae is inversely proportional to his… signal.

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As revealed in last night's report, I like My Canon PowerShot SD700. This time, however, I've protected its screen with a WriteRight – even though it seems a speck of something snuck in beneath the skin. Even with that layer of protection, visibility and usability is normal. I'm sure they'll release an SD750 a few months from now – with higher resolution and a few other tweaks. The SD700 is about as close as it comes to perfection in a sub-compact point-and-shoot digital camera: guidelines (for rule of thirds), high-res movies, widescreen photos, A/V output, optical image stabiliztion, 6MP images, 4x optical zoom, ISO 800 speed, etc. Those are the reasons I upgraded to the SD700 yesterday – leaving me to figure out market value for my SD550. Kudos to Canon for making a great product line even better!

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A social service organization I work with lost it’s connection to the internet. It was more critical to their operations than they realized. Listen to the show: MP3…

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Tonight on The Chris Pirillo Show, we’re joined by author, Eric Sink, talking about his new book, Eric Sink on the Business of Software. Eric led the team at Spyglass that developed the original version of the browser now know as Internet Explorer and went on to found SourceGear. We’re giving away three copies of the book, so be sure to tune in. Later on the show we’ll hear from Rob Hyndman and Stuart MacDonald…

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Tonight on The Chris Pirillo Show, we’re joined by author, Eric Sink, talking about his new book, Eric Sink on the Business of Software. Eric led the team at Spyglass that developed the original version of the browser now know as Internet Explorer and went on to found SourceGear. We’re giving away three copies of the book, so be sure to tune in. Later on the show we’ll hear from Rob Hyndman and Stuart MacDonald about the upcoming mesh conference as well as their take on the role blogs play in influencing politics and society.

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Just got 'em today. I have three full Sticker sets (with two full Initials sets and one full Magnet set) from two boxes. Will be eBay'ing / selling these dupe sets soon, so if you have a silent bid to pass along… I can be bribed with B3, B4, B5, B10, B11, or any new ANS5 bonus cards. Seriously, I'm looking for those Garbage Pail Kids Bonus Cards to complete my collection. Don't ask me why I didn't score 'em before now, but… at least I have a couple of sets to sell to other collectors. Assuming, of course, that I'm not the only GPK freak in the blogosphere. Ponzi says she thinks the Wacky Packages are “cooler,” so I scored a few complete ANS sets from eBay, too. I need a bigger binder now. I'm a CHRIS Mess – a CHRIS Hiss, if you will.
I posted the full set (minus the collector's items) to Flickr a few hours ago, too. I wish the image wasn't so muddy, but using the flash on the “shiny coated” stickers wasn't the best idea – even after editing. Then again, perhaps it's best that I don't have higher quality scans of the Garbage Pail Kids – otherwise, bootleggers would go nuts. Personally, I'd much rather own the originals. Obsessions are natural. Obsessions are natural. Obsessions are natural.

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