Mac Support Pulls a Stupid

To preface this rant, I thought I would tell you a little bit about myself:

1) I've only ever had PC's. My father had a 286 and a 486 while I was growing up, and I've always been very into computers. My brother and I built our own computers for under $300 each while we were in high school. We were never presented with the opportunity to build a Mac.

2) Growing up, my friends and I played a lot of computer games, and I've tried to connect a Mac with a PC over a network... If you want to play a computer game at a LAN party, don't bring a Mac.

3) I'm also very thrifty (stingy even) and never spend more than $1000 for a computer.

Those are three reasons whey I've never owned a mac. Please notice that there isn't a "Mac's are for idiots" reason. I don't have any problems learning how to use a Mac, but I'm not going to drop a couple grand on a computer just to re-learn how to do things. (I use iTunes as my only music playing program.)

Now that you understand that I am pretty neutral on the Mac vs PC issue, here's my rant:

Ordering a Simple Mac Product

I needed to purchase QuickTime 7 Pro to edit some videos for a client, and I needed to get it done in a couple days. No problem, right? On December 21st, I log into the Mac store, and purchase the registration key for $30. Immediately I get an email saying:

Hello Ashton Sanders,

Thank you for shopping the Apple Online Store. Your order is complete and your purchase information is located below.

Be sure to keep a copy of this email for your records. It may contain your software key(s), which you can retrieve at any time by visiting Downloadable software purchases in Your Account.

Visit Order Status to view your order details.

Best regards,
The Apple Store Team

Even though this introduction email refers to possibly containing a software key (like the one I need to activate QuickTime 7 Pro), the order details only says:

Product Name: QT 7 PRO WIN ACCESS KEY-INT
Product Number: D3381Z/A
Price: $29.99
Quantity: 1

Registered to: Ashton Sanders

And then it has instructions for how to use the registration code.

Problem: No Registration Code

Solution 1: Okay, maybe I just need to wait a while. So I waited until lunch time the next day before contacting their live chat support in the Apple Store. I explain my problem a couple times before she said, "We can't help you with that. Go to the support website for QuickTime." Which obviously shows that she still didn't understand the problem I was having.... since my problem is that the Apple Store didn't give me the Registration Key.

FAILURE.

Solution 2: I called the Apple Store Support and they told me, "It usually takes up to 24 hours for the registration key to get mailed to you." Okay, fine. I'll wait till 9:00 at night. I waited till 9:00 that night and still did not receive a registration key. The best part was that the support line closed.

FAILURE.

Solution 3: I called the Apple Store Support the next morning and they told me, "It usually takes up to 48 hours for the registration key to get mailed to you." And you guessed it... still no registration key.

FAILURE.

Finally after 4 days of waiting and 3 calls, someone told me, "It usually sends you the registration key immediately, but sometimes it just breaks. I'll credit your account (it takes 5 days) and you can purchase it again."

Thanks Apple Store for being crappy.
-Ashton Sanders

Dell Synergistic Give Away

Ah ha! I have finally won something! Last month, Dell had a silly crossword-type game where once a day you can get entered into a drawing for some large prizes, and every time you enter, you also get a chance to win instant prizes. I've never won anything and didn't think I would win something, but there's always a small chance.

And Voila! I won a computer mouse! Yea, I know, it's just a mouse, and I thought it was going to end up being one of those crappy, corded dell mouses (mice?) that you get when you buy a desktop from them.

Then today, I got a suspiciously marked package...



It took me a couple seconds to find the "Dell" and then figure out it was my long awaited prize!

Logitech has always been a big favorite of mine, ever since my Logitech mouse died after 2 years, and they replaced it for free. And this mouse is just as awesome as I'd expect from Logitech!

Here's a picture of the mouse:

This is a compact wireless laser mouse. As you can see it's red, but the coolest part about it is that small little black/silver thing in the plastic. That is a USB wireless adapter to connect a computer to the mouse wirelessly. The reason that is so cool is because the USB plug is 3 times as large as the actual adapter.

I gave this sweet mouse to my wife as a late Valentines Day Present, she plugged the USB adapter into her computer, turned on her mouse and it worked perfectly. Plug-n-Play for the win!

If only Logitech had an affiliate program, I'd never stop raving about them ;)
-Ashton Sanders

Jensen HD Radio

I'm a big music buff, and I almost always have music playing on my computer. I really need an iPod... I know, I'm kind of ashamed for not having one yet, but I'm always on my computer so I haven't really needed an iPod.

I've recently run across a number of advertisements for iPod Docking stations that have an HD Radio. This brought me to this Jensen JiMS 525i HD Radio iPod Docking Port. It's a little expensive for my tastes, but it looks cool. The image they have on that page has a iPhone in the iPod port, so I'm assuming that the docking station will accept either iPods or iPhones. I didn't realize there were so many HD digital radio stations out there, but you can find all of the digital radio stations in your area by going to new music stations.

Probably the coolest thing I've seen is the iTunes Tagging. It looks like what happens is while you're listening to music on a HD radio station (on this receiver) if you happen upon a song you want to download, keep or get the info for, you can click the "tag" button on the receiver and it will save the song's information in a play list on your iPod. The next time you connect your iPod to your computer (iTunes), you'll be able to download all of the songs you tagged.

Of course you'll have to pay for them.
-Ashton

mssql_connect(): unable to connect to server:

I have a PHP script that I run locally (on my Windows XP Machine) that accesses a MSSQL server using the mssql_connect() function. I used xampp to get PHP on my machine.

Today I finished getting this to work on my second computer. The first time I did this, I also ran into a million problem - but didn't note any of them. So here I am rectifying my previous mistakes in the hope of not having to search for the same solution next time.

The error I was getting was:

mssql_connect(): unable to connect to server: 'www.ashtonsanders.com'

(Domain changed for security purposes.)

I handled it by replacing ntwdblib.dll with this ntwdblib.dll.zip in these two folders:

xampp/php
xampp/apache/bin

Enjoy!
-Ashton Sanders
(Note: algorytmy.pl was the final website that helped my handle my problem.)

Internet Arguments

Here's a great comic about Internet Arguments.

A little more humanity guys,
Ashton Sanders