So here are the details:
I ordered a Holley remanufactured 2bbl carburetor for my poor lonesome 1976 Camaro. A box arrived a little while later with a “U.S. Carburetors” reman unit in it. Huh? After some arm twisting the guys says, “I’ll take it back less 25% restocking fee.”

Oh no…. Not $50-something for bait and switch….

Ah! I paid through PayPal!
Sent them a note.
“Sorry, can’t help you. Transaction’s over 30 days old.”
I whip out my fingers and toes, 12th to the 24th is 13 days…
Another note.
“Sorry. We don’t get involved in matters of attributes or quality.”
Attributes? Quality?
So if I order a 17-inch Sony WEGA TV, pay for a 17-inch Sony WEGA TV through PayPal, and get a 17-inch Lensaki DP17 TV via UPS a short time later, it’s no big deal because it’s just a change in attribute?
Another note.
Waiting on an answer. (This one will probably say, “It’s not dead. It’s just sleeping!”) In the meantime, I’ve disputed the matter through my credit card company. Which brings me to the point of this tale:

Never, ever, ever use PayPal to send money from your bank account. I know, if you switch to a credit card they flash that, “oh c’mon, you didn’t really mean to do that, look at everything you might get if you let us stick our hands into your bank accont,” screen at you. Forget it. You have final recourse to your credit card company if PayPal declines to get involved. If not a credit card, and they do decline, you become a slotted self-threading fastener in motion.

Word to the wise.

So what’s going on here? HP just announced that it will dump its line of Itanium (Intel) workstations in favor of other designs that include both 32- and 64-bit compatible solutions (AMD).

Ordinarily, a company’s switch from one CPU to another is a big, but not necessarily great, deal. The problem here is that HP partnered with Intel to develop the Itanium. HP insisted that it would still deploy Itaniums in its server line.

“We’ve been talking to our OEMs (original equipment manufacturers) a lot about this, and right now, we’re not planning to productize (Wireless Connect) in the 91x and 925 platforms this year,” said Bill Leszinske, director of Intel’s Digital Home initiative. “The OEMs came back to us and said, ‘We don’t think we really need this right now.’ So we decided to step back.”

The move, which gives a nod to the prolific nature of Wi-Fi access-point competitors such as Linksys and NetGear, also shows a shift in Intel’s digital home strategy. Instead of aiming to provide all of the nuts and bolts of the digital home–where Intel and PC makers envision that a wide range of devices will share multimedia files and Internet access provided by a PC–Intel will stick to efforts such as designing new kinds of PCs–its Entertainment PCs, for example–and to driving digital home standards through efforts such as the Digital Living Network Alliance to help foster the sharing of content between PCs, televisions and other devices. Devices that use DLNA standards will begin appearing soon, Leszinske said.

Gee… And here I sit with ASUS A8V and K8V motherboards (for AMD processors) with WiFi capability thanks to a VIA chipset. Did VIA make a mistake in getting to market first?

Remember the 1987 movie Wall Street? Bill and I loved it for the fact that Michael Douglas places a cell phone call using one of those HUGE walkie-talkie Motorola bricks that were state of the art back in the day. We also loved the green text-only monitors, (back when you could choose from green, off -white and amber as your screen font color,) but what we overloooked until today was the cocktail serving robot at the Gordon’s Hamptons beach house. That was the future, after all.

Well, time has marched on. According to a Greenville hosipital, they have dispatched a robotic nurse named EMMA short for Electronic Materials Management Associate (Isn’t that like sanitation engineer? –Bill) due to a shortage of staff. According to the hospital, “She may not be the sexiest nurse around, but EMMA delivers the goods (such as pharmaceutical supplies, meals, lab samples, supplies, etc) throughout the hospital (including elevator rides) while politely informing people when they are obstructing her duties. 24 hours a day.”

(Two things: One, nothing like that is going to give me a sponge bath. Two, anyone who’s seen Runaway already knows what the future with this sort of thing would be like. -Bill)

Everybody, get up out of your chairs, stretch, rotate your shoulders, and now do something you’re not accustomed to doing and probably never thought you’d do in your life: Cup your hands in front of your mouth and, at the top of your lungs, yell, “Way to go, Microsoft!”

“Microsoft said it filed a lawsuit last week in Washington state’s King County Superior Court against Web-hosting company National Online Sales and its owner, Levon Gillespie, for offering services advertised as “bulletproof” for those seeking to send marketing e-mail. Microsoft also targeted those who used the services.”

Aaron Kornblum, an attorney for Microsoft, said that by taking legal action, Microsoft is “trying to change the economics of spam” by making it costlier for spammers to continue their activities.

Somebody give this guy the URL for this blog. We said that here months ago!

Just when you thought it was safe to pursue your virtual girlfriend on your cell phone, word comes that somebody may be watching you. “On the leading edge of the trend is Nextel Communications. The wireless provider began selling its Mobile Locator service last November, giving bosses an easy way to find employees who carry GPS-equipped cell phones,” says the news.com story.

So do they tell you if they slip you a finda-fone or not? Better check. Wouldn’t want to be caught in the wrong place, at the wrong time, with the wrong person –especially if it’s also a picture phone.

“A British design graduate has come up with a way to make the road a safer place for motorbike riders, using technology originally developed for jet fighter pilots. Piers Tucker, 24, of Yorkshire, has created a motorbike helmet that is fitted with GPS technology, which displays information about what speed the bike is traveling. The device means that the driver does not have to take their eyes off the road to monitor their speed. Tucker says the idea is based on “Heads Up Display” systems used by fighter pilots.”

That’s the plan. Here’s the problem. Most people don’t check their speed if they’re driving in traffic. They tend to travel at the speed of the traffic around them, keeping distances between vehicles relative. In the meantime, the HUD becomes a distraction. When they’re alone on a road, many driver’s will check their speed to determine how much they’re exceeding the speed limit –some to keep from doing it by too much and others for the other reason entirely. In the later case, the HUD becomes an enabling device and still a distraction. Driving on a highway is infinitly different than flying a plane.

Nice try, but sometimes technology isn’t the answer.

Comments

Thank you, Google, for giving him the tribute he deserves. You’re still just a search engine, but you’re a nice one in my book.