Tomasz Korwel
programmer, administrator, engineer – my everyday fights with reality

Recently we went to visit our folks in Poland. As our better half is not a flying lover we decided to take a rental car on our way to and from Chicago.

As a person who likes to do thing using fire and forget method i reserved both cars at the time of buying airplane tickets. It was more or less two months before out trip (at the beginning of February. Prices were OK, I made the reservation and forgot about the whole thing.

But… As the trip approached we started to thing if maybe there is something else we would like to get done in Chicago when we were there. On our long list of things we would like to buy for our home there was one particular item that was waving at me for a long time – bed frame from IKEA. Timing seemed great, frame was in stock and the IKEA itself is more or less on our way back from the airport. The only problem was a car – we needed quite a big one – frame was packet in a box over 60 inches long and 30 inches wide.

So I went to budget.com to try to change our reservation from midsize sedan to mini van or big SUV. To my disappointment they were sold out. But something else caught my attention – it was a rental price – it dropped down almost 20% for midsize car! More – the same price was for fullsize. Not thinking long I changed my reservation to a fullsize thinking that maybe I’ll be able to upgrade it at the pickup location manually.

I also made a mental note that maybe it’s worth to recheck it again just a day before our return. And so I do. To my greater surprise price went down again! And again the saving was quite substantial – at the end the price for a fullsize car was almost half of the original one for the midsize. The way marketing people work at budget.com is a great mystery for me. One would thing that early reservations should be the cheapest. More – if I already selected and accepted higher price the system should block it and do not offer me a lower one even if prices at the company dropped. Anyway – I’m pleased with results so don’t change Budget!

P.S. Of course Budget’s location at O’Hare airport is so busy and (not to offend anyone) so positively unorganized that our (prepared for us) fullsize car already disappeared from the lot. As usual we were offered to pick up any car we liked within the same parking area (same price range). And there it was – nice blue Ford Explorer – perfect for our transportation needs. This way we saved a lot of money – both on rental itself and eventual shipping of the bed frame – and time doing everything on our way back from Poland.

Note: Newer version of the procedure is here

I use it all the time. I’m taking it everywhere with me together with my laptop. Thanks to it’s wirelessness it’s easy and nice to handle. I like this mouse a lot. The only problem I have encounter is dirty roll. It slowly stops working – first in down direction. if you press it a little bit dipper it still works, but only for a moment. Then other directions stop working too. Apple’s provided method of cleaning usually works only for couple of minutes.

So out of desperation I started to look for methods to disassemble it. Unfortunately Apple decided to glue it together so you can’t disassemble it without breaking things. Although some say you can glue it back I don’t like this solution at all.

Some googling later I think I have found the solution. If Apple’s cleaning method doesn’t work for you anymore proceed to second step. Find a flat surface and lay a sheet of white printer paper on it. Then turn your mouse upside down and, for about 1-2 minutes, do this:

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After some time you should start seeing small dirt leaving your mouse and staying on the paper. Don’t expect too much – there isn’t much space inside the mouse for dirt to accumulate, yet it’s enough to prevent it from working. Anyway judging from amount of dirt my mouse left on paper it should work like new – and in fact it does!

Technorati Tags: wireless, mouse, Apple, cleaning, working

I’ve just received a phone call from a guy who claimed he is FBI agent. He said that my email server has been compromised over a year ago and used in crime activity. Then he started to ask some very detailed questions (like if it’s company server, if this server is used in government related activity, what type of software is on the server). Despite I’m quite knowledgeable person regarding my servers and I’d rather notice it being compromised, detailed nature of those question made me suspicious.

Why would he ask such detailed questions over the phone? And why is he asking about informations he could easily get by himself just from using Google and web browser? There is more – he reached me under the number which is not listed anywhere in connection with my domain – so he apparently didn’t even used whois service.

Considering all that I asked him why does he need all those informations? He replied that he’s trying to build a case and he wants to check if I was a victim (my server was compromised and used in some illegal activity without my knowledge) or if I was taking active part in this activity. Wait a minute – since when FBI agents call you in advance telling you that they are thinking about building case against you? So I kindly replied to him that I’d be more then glad to give him all those information in person as it’s apparently a big case. And here even bigger surprise was waiting for me – he said that Iowa is to far away from him and he hung up.

Unfortunately I didn’t have a chance to get his name or town from which he’s calling. Whole call lasted less than 2 minutes and my thinking in English is still to slow to quickly react. But I suspect that all those questions were leading to some identity theft attempt.

The only thing that’s bugging me – how did he get this phone number?

Technorati Tags: phone call, FBI, agent, identity theft

Do you remember Dangerous Bay series? It was quite popular in late 80s (at least back in Poland). The stories are loosely wrapped around live in Vancouver Aquarium. We visited it couple of weeks ago. Here are some views from that visit:

New boy arrived yesterday:

And this is how my work place looks now:

Yes, the second one (double monitored) works under XP, and it’s not going to change anytime soon. Thanks to Synergy I’m controlling MacBook using same keyboard and mouse I use with windows desktop – it speeds my work quite a bit.

Technorati Tags: Synergy, MacBook