I’ve ordered a few things online recently. The first I ordered on the 10th, and it finally showed up just a few days ago. This isn’t the fault of the retailer, as they shipped just a day or two after I ordered. This is the fault of the shipping company (or companies), just look at the route my package took:

You’ll notice that my package was actually in Denver on the 15th, but what happens next? It goes all the way out to Los Angeles! And then finally gets back into Denver on the 20th, five days after it was already here. You would think that the shipping software would have features build in to prevent this very thing from happening. Not to mention the added weight that was unnecessarily transported all over the place, costing extra money for fuel. And what really stinks is I just placed another order from the same company and it is taking a very similar route as the last one. According to the tracking page, the package is in Denver today, but who knows when it will actually be in my hands.

Normally I would apologize for all of the downtime recently, but believe me when I say that it frustrated me more than it did you. For the first time since we moved to Denver, my IP address from Comcast changed. Normally I wouldn’t expect this to cause a huge amount of downtime, but this case was different. Just like I typically would, I updated my nameserves at zoneedit.com first. In the past this was all I ever had to do and the site would be working again within a few minutes. This time I was not so lucky. After making the changes, everyone on the outside world was probably still without access to my sites for hours. Inside my network, I could access my router admin page, but that was it. In fact anytime I tried to go to any of my sites, I was redirected to the stupid admin page. Perhaps this should have clued me in to the problem, but it didn’t. Instead I spent the vast majority of the day making changes to my apache configuration, trying to get another IP address, uninstalling software, and anything else I could think of. I got nowhere.

Finally I decided that I would try making changes to my router configuration since the admin page seemed to be the first problem. After a couple of hours of banging my head on the desk, I finally clicked this little button on one of the admin pages that says, “DHCP Renew.” At first I was a little concerned, because after I hit the button the page tried to refresh but never came back. Later I would realize that this was a good sign, since I was actually edit the router config while my address bar still said edpaffjr.com. After a hard refresh on the page, VIOLA!, everything was back to normal. The bad part is that I changed so many things throughout the day, I now have to make sure I didn’t break anything else. Don’t you just love computers?

Our DVR has been acting up recently. Late last week, when I first noticed the problems, it would frequently pause for a few seconds when watching a recorded show. The frequency of this problem seems to be increasing, and I’m starting to lose out on some of my favorite shows. Before it gets any worse, I am going to take the defective box into Comcast and exchange it for a new one. I wonder if they have new and improved versions available, or if I’ll just get a new one that is identical to what we already have. Has anyone else had any problems?

Today is yet another woot-off. I just bought an iRobot Roomba Discovery SE, the intelligent floorvac robotic vacuum. Kim and I are often too busy to clean the house thoroughly, plus we really hate cleaning, so hopefully this little device will help us out with the floors. We’ll see. There will definitely be a ton of other products on woot.com today, so keep your eyes on the site.

Yesterday morning I caught a glimpse of an Airbus A380, the largest passenger airliner in the world. It was doing low speed, low altitude flyovers near General Electric in Cincinnati as I was driving to my parents house. I wasn’t sure what it was at first, all I knew was that it was huge! So big, in fact, that modifications had to be made on a runway at the Cincinnati Northern Kentucky International Airport so it could land there for tours. Hopefully I’ll be able to take a ride on one of these in the future.

I finally have the swamp cooler working again! For those of you who aren’t familiar, a swamp cooler, or evaporative cooler, is a device to cool the air that is common in low humidity climates. So you wouldn’t use one in Cincinnati or Kansas City, and therefore I had never heard of such a thing until moving into our house in Denver. Instead of central air, we have this monster machine up on the roof that magically cools the air.

Well it was cooling the air fine at the beginning of the summer, but over the last couple of weeks it suddenly stopped being effective. It was blowing air, but the air was not cool. So instead of hiring someone to come in and take a look at it, I do what I often do and consulted the web for any information I could find. After some research I was convinced that the filter pads needed to be replaced. The pads are continuously sprayed with water and the evaporation there is what cools the air as it comes into the cooler.

First, I had to get a bigger ladder so we could get up there and see what the problem was. So I am now the proud owner of a twenty foot extension ladder. The fourteen or sixteen footer that I bought first wasn’t tall enough to reach the roof. Once we were finally able to get up on the roof, we removed the huge pads from all three sides of the cooler and immediately went over to the local hardware store to get some new ones. We put the new pads in on two sides, but before putting the last one in, I wanted to test the system.

So I turned the water pump on, which should soak the pads, but instead nothing happened. Crap! I didn’t even think to check the water pump before replacing the pads. Anyway the motor in the pump must have died because all it was doing was producing a light hum and no water was flowing. I later took the pump into the store and asked if they had anything to replace it. Fortunately swamp coolers are very popular in this area, so they had just what I needed. And finally, $30 later, the swamp cooler is working again and probably better than ever with some brand new pads too!

In just over an hour I am going to get the brake light switch replaced in the Jetta, which I hope will be the last time. As I mentioned earlier, there is a recall out to replace the part and we finally got our recall notice in the mail. I had to schedule an appointment with a local dealer to get the part installed. When I did this the guy at the counter told me it would take around an hour. An hour?!?! I can replace the part myself in less than 15 minutes. I know because I’ve done it twice already. I asked if I could just get the part and do it myself. His response was that I would have to pay for the part since it is only done for free by the service technicians. At least the recall notice can with a form to fill out for reimbursement of expenses related to the recall. I am definitely going to attempt to get the money for the parts reimbursed, and maybe I can figure out how to bill them for my time and labor.

A couple of weeks ago I made a big purchase at Circuit City using $200 in gift cards. This all started when they overpaid me for rebates that I submitted months ago. And it doesn’t stop there! I was browsing the Sunday paper over the weekend and while flipping through the Best Buy ad I found that their price for the mp3 players I bought was $50. When I bought them from Circuit City I paid $60. After checking out Circuit City’s price match policy, I took the ad and my receipt into the store to get my credit back, which is 110% of the price difference. Since I paid with gift cards, they had to load the money back onto a gift card, but that’s okay. I’m sure I’ll be buying something else soon…

Yesterday I finalized my purchase using the $200 in gift cards from the Circuit City screwup. I decided on buying two Sansa Express 1GB mp3 players and one pair of Sennheiser CX300 headphones. I got all of this for $199.25, after using a $15 off coupon. So far I am extremely happy with my selections and I think Kim will be as well.

The Sennheiser headphones aren’t nearly as expensive as what I was first looking at, but they are amazing! They were the highest rated headphones available in the $90 price range. The medium sized adapters fit into my ears perfectly and form a tight seal that not only blocks out noise, it also provides amazing bass. I don’t have much to compare them to, besides crappy ear bud headphones like the ones included with the mp3 players, but these are going to be tough to beat!

The Sansa Express mp3 players have just about every feature that Kim or I wanted. They have a digital FM tuner. They also require no software to transfer files, and as an added bonus, the end cap comes off to reveal a USB connection that can plug directly into the computer. No extra cables are needed! It also has an expansion slot featuring microSD, which will be great if we ever decide we need more than the 1GB of internal space. The entire package is about the size of a small pack of gum, the packs with 5 sticks in it not the ones with 25+. I just loaded Kim’s up with tracks to keep her entertained on her business trip to Montana next week.

Back when I bought a cable modem from Circuit City for Comcast internet service there were a bunch of rebates valued much higher than the price of the modem itself. There were two check rebates, one for $20 and one for $60. In addition to that, you could get a $100 gift card with activation of Comcast service. The total rebates available totaled $180 and the price for the modem was $80, if I remember correctly.

I received the $60 rebate very quickly, and was expecting the same for the others. Well after weeks went by, I finally decided to contact Circuit City to see what was up. First they had a hard time finding any info from my order number. I actually had to call and get a new number and then get everything verified again for the rebates. The process didn’t make much sense to me at all. I waited for another couple of weeks, and guess what finally shows up today? That’s right, my remaining rebates!

It gets better though. I received each of the remaining rebates twice! That’s right, two $20 checks and two $100 gift cards. I’m not sure if my original request went through along with the second one from the new order number, but I am not going to complain. I’ve verified the remaining balance on both cards, and they both have $100 on them. The total value of the rebates I’ve received is $300!

Now my question is what should I buy for $200 from Circuit City? I have to use the gift cards within 90 days so I don’t want to wait too long. I’ve been considering getting some high end headphones that I’ve always had my eye on. Are there any audiophiles out there who can help me make a decision? The other option I’ve been kicking around is getting a couple of smaller sized mp3 players for use while exercising. I definitely want an FM tuner, flash memory (around 1-2 GB), and anything non Apple. Suggestions? Feel free to suggest something else as well.