The party was 9pm – 12am.  We arrived at exactly 9pm to find two REALLY long lines; One for Will Call and the other to get in if you have the tickets in hand.  When you are done with Will Call, you still need to get in the other line to get in.  My wife and I decided to split up to hopefully save time.

At around 10:30pm, ~1.5hr worth of waiting, I was only half the distance closer to the front of the Will Call line — there were only two alphabet-challenged staff working the Will Call table.  Luckily, the event folks finally decided to accept printed receipts from online order and my wife was at the front of the entrance line.  We pitty the fools who didn’t bring a copy of the receipts.

After a few more moments of cluster-f*ness, we finally got in (around 10:45pm I think).  The place was packed with people all with the same mindset — rush to the bar and stay there to get their monies worth.  I think we had 4 – 6 drinks a piece because we took turn ordering non-stop.  By 12am, open bar was over … $145 and 1.25hrs worth of drinking later, we had no idea what The Pool look like or a moment to dance because we were too busy trying to get drinks.

If you are a single, it might be worth looking into because there were a lot of folks looking for “action”.  However, for everyone else, save your money and do/go something else!

I have been a New York Yankees fan for a long time. I grew up in NYC and so it was naturally either the Yankees or the Mets. I picked the winning team as my fav (no brainer). Over the years, I’ve heard various arguments on why the Yankees is evil with Steinbrenner “buying” the players being the final blow.

If you are a member of that camp, I would like you to answer the following questions truthfully…

• Do you think it’s acceptable for a business to hire talented individuals with substantial financial offer?
• Have you ever considered working for a different company (or even changing line of work) because they (it) offer a high pay?
• If a competing business gives you a job offer with a big paycheck, would you join them?
• Do you feel talented individuals (you included) should be paid what they’re worth?
• Do you believe in supply and demand?

If you answer yes to all five, you my friend, might be evil as well.

In short, the Yankees haven’t done anything that you and I wouldn’t do in a heartbeat. So if you still feel strongly that because “buying” to win is wrong, then I say you’re just bitter your favorite team(s) couldn’t pony up the dough.

Congrats to the NYY for their 27th World Series Championship!

Most:

• Being off the “grid” for a week
• Key West: Been wanting to to go KW for a long time. Key Lime anything…key lime pie on a stick at Kermits(?!) sounds like a winner
• Cayman: Stingray and seeing first hand just how expensive thing are. A little perverse I admit.
• Casino and craps: Not big rollers but love craps. Been reading up on the slot tournament so might have to give it a try as well.
• Breakfast food. I love breakfast food but not breakfast per se (not morning person, hardly up early enough to cook). There is nothing better than waking up to room service on the balcony on sea days wearing nothing but my underwear. That’s right, I said it! :

Least:

• Potentially long wait to embark at FLL.  Our flight is scheduled to arrive at 1:30pm so it should be interesting.
• Jamaica: People calling us “Mon” wanting to braid our hair and/or sell us a cab ride to nowhere. We will see Dunns River Falls through an excursion but probably not much more. I’ve heard there is a cool Margaritaville near the port so might check that out.
• End of the cruise

I kept getting this error in my Vista Enterprise install.  I tried a bunch of stuff including turning off the firewall, going to a different network, and at the end of it all, the error had nothing to do with “Timeout” — The product key I’ve entered was bad.  Arrgh!

–

- Domain: $14.99/yr
- Private Domain Registration: $8.99/yr
- Email: $19.99/yr (which reduces your domain to just $1.99)

Total: $30.99/yr

The tricky part (while not really tricky at all) is configuring thr DNS of the Google App to point web hosting to the 3rd party while retaining email and everything else on Google.

To configure DNS for your Google App to work with a 3rd party web host:

1. Go to the admin dashboard for your domain
2. Click Domain Settings in the top navigation bar
3. Click the Domain Names tab under Domain Settings
4. Click Advanced DNS Settings and following the instructions on the next page
5. Once you’re logged in, click on your domain name
6. Click “Total DNS Control and MX Records” in the middle column of the top box
7. Once you’re in Total DNS Control, remove all the A Records and put in a single A record with @ as the host and IP pointing to your 3rd party web host.
8. In CNAMES, modify the www record from being pointed to ghs.google.com to @.

That’s it! The changes might take up to 48 hours to propagate but your job is done.

If you are planning on going to the Cabo San Lucas area, I highly recommend that you STAY AWAY from a restaurant called “Los Ajos“. Why you asked? While the service was good and the food tasted pretty good, the “aftermath” from the place can be a danger to your health.

My wife and I, along with two other friends, visited Los Ajos in early September. After our dining experience, which consisted of the smell of sewage from the open windows and an overly-friendly-borderline-creepy-waiter whom almost held a napkin to my wife’s nose so she can blow her nose friendly service, we were all sick to our stomach that night. While three of us survived the experience with a short visit to the bathroom, my wife was not so fortunate; She was sick with E. Coli symptoms for 7 days straight.

1 out of 4 or 25% of getting sick is not good especially while on vacation. You’ve been forewarned.

Upon calling Samsung, our case was dispatched to a local repair shop. Just keep in mind, my beef is not with the local repair shop but rather with Samsung’s ability to help diagnose problems and the subsequent process involved. Each time the local repair technician came out to the house he would call Samsung tech support to assist with the diagnostic. And each time Samsung would pin-point to issue to a different part of the fridge. The process when something like this:

Visit 1: Called Samsung and was told to order 2 parts ($85)
Visit 2: Installed Defrost Thermistor and Main Control Board ($248.63)
Visit 3: New parts didn’t do anything. Called Samsung and order 2 more parts ($0)
Visit 4: Installed Thermal fuse and Evaporator fan motor ($117.83)
Visit 5: New parts didn’t do anything. Called Samsung and was told to order yet another part ($0)

WTF??

Visit 6: Tech came out with new parts but did not install because he didn’t think it will work. Called Samsung and was told to order yet a different part. ($0)
Visit 7: New parts came in. Senior tech was not convinced it will do anything because he believed the issue is with the sealed system.

Apparently, the symptom is pretty normal by Samsung’s standard. The prescribed route is to replace parts in certain order until the problem goes away. In my case, the problem never went away and the local repair shop gave up. As a result, the unit is reported as “unrepairable” due to issues with the sealed system. The good news is the sealed system is warranted for 5 years and any issues due to sealed system to receive a prorated refund on the original cost based on a 10-years ownership. Since we’ve own the fridge around 2 years, we will be getting 80% of the original cost as a refund. The bad news, we’ve spent 4 months without a working fridge and put out over to $400 to reach “unrepairable” status, and ultimately have to go buy a new fridge.

Note to self, don’t ever get another Samsung Refrigerator. And if I am dumb enough to do it again, make sure to have extended product warranty in some shape or form.

Update: I’ve been thinking about this a bit more this last few days, and I want to make sure my feeling is clear — I have been very impressed with the way Samsung customer support been handling the case with professionalism and care. So I would buy other Samsung products in the future. However, I just don’t have the guts to buy another Samsung fridge from them in the near future in fear of the same outcome.

Go to a Circuit City near you (assuming it has EDGE) to check it out!

Anyone that know me well will know that I “like my coffee like I like my women.” Okay, not entirely true but I still use the statement whenever I can because I enjoy strong, dark, bitter coffee.

In any case, back to the point of this post. I saw a bag of Starbucks Morning Blend at the office this morning and can’t understand why anyone would bother with a coffee that is said to be “mild”. Wouldn’t you drink the strongest cup of java money can buy in the morning?