MyWishlist - follow up

If any of you are going to try the MyWish list promotion that I posted about yesterday, be sure to turn off your pop-up blocker (or add the site to your allow list).

I successfully got the 25% off at Borders coupon (whoop-dee-doo) at 11AM, but the site presents the order form in a pop up window.



So instead of an order form, all I got was:



When you click on the bar and tell it to allow pop ups, it refreshes the whole page....resetting the flash animation and losing your claim to the item.

Now this isn't a big deal for a Border's coupon that I probably wouldn't have used anyway, but can you imagine if that happened on the Porsche?

Amex Promo

The American Express MyWishlist promotion begins today and runs through 12/14.

The main Wishlist items are up for sale at noon, 3pm, and 7pm ET. There are very limited quanities, so they sell out instantly (for example...on 12/4, they will be selling 1 Porsche Cayman for $5,000 at each of those times. Obviously fat chance of getting one.

There are also Wish Certificates that will be available one hour prior to the main Wishlist items. For example, today's 11am Wish Certificate is a 25% off coupon from Amazon.com. These Wish Certificates are free if you can get one, but they also "sell out" instantly.

Last year the only thing I managed to get was a Best Buy coupon that I didn't even use (I think it was 20% off of $200 or more)

( you must have an AmEx card to claim/pay for any of the prizes )

Watch out Donald Trump

Congrats to real estate moguls Jimmy and Jakki VanMetre. Jakki sent me this link to a front-page article about their latest acquisition.

(copy of article here in case the other one disappears.)

Have people gone absolutely mad?

Can we go back to being civilized again?


Please?

It's a good thing I know a programmer...

Well, after poking around, I didn't find any tools that solved my specific ID3 tag problem.

I found a very useful .NET library built by Hundred Miles Software which provides a very easy to use object library to read & write ID3 tags. Using that library, I put together a simple little program to create or update ID3 tags based on the mp3 filename.

I stuck it up online so that anyone else that is trying to deal w/ missing ID3 tags can avoid the hassle of typing the tags manually.

Here you go: Version .00001 of EM ID3 Tool

Just extract the zipped folder to your hard drive and run EMID3Tool.exe
[insert usual warning about downloading .exe files here]

VZW...they can't hear me

Has anyone tried to call a VZW store lately? It's damn near impossible to get anyone on the phone.

The new LG-VX8600 came out yesterday and so I tried to call around to find out who had them in stock. None of the area VZW stores would answer their phone if you select option #4 - Sales.

I tried calling 4 local VZW stores and got the same thing at every store...probably about 20 times total between all the stores.

"We're sorry, Verizon Wireless [Insert city name here] is unavailable. Please leave a message."...grrrr

iTunes renaming problem

I just found a decent solution to a problem that has been bugging me since I started using iTunes/iPod and figured I'd toss it up here in case any of you have a better solution for me.

When I download music, a lot of time the ID3 tags are not properly set up. This is ok if you're looking at the file list, because the files are typically named "Artist Name - Track Name.mp3". But when you copy the song into iTunes, it uses the entire filename as the Track Name and then truncates it to 31 characters.

For example, a recent download was a list of Rolling Stone's top 500 songs. After importing to iTunes, this is how these songs looked in iTunes and on the iPod:



As you can see, unless the artist and track info was extremely short, the name got truncated by iTunes. For some tracks, this completely renders the song unidentifiable (#39 - Buddy Holly And The Crickets -"...Can you guess what song that is?).

I just stumbled across Wes Barris' website where he wrote a simple renaming tool called NameToTag. You just point this tool at a folder of files named in the standard Artist - Name.mp3 convention and it will automatically populate the Artist and Track Name fields in the ID3 tags.

One major problem with his software is that it isn't configurable for other naming conventions, so my Top 500 download which uses the "Track Number - Artist - Track Name.mp3" would put the Track Number as the Artist and the rest as the Track Name.

Since this tools seems to be quite limited, please let me know if you have found a (FREE*) tool that has better support for batch ID3 tag updates based on filename.

NOTE: I did a quick virus scan of the NameToTag program above. However, as with any random .exe file that you come across, use at your own risk and with EXTREME CAUTION!

*FREE is defined as meeting any number of the following criteria:

• Shareware


• Freeware


• Cracked software


• Commercial software with registration crack or serial # provided


• Commercial software that requires purchase - but someone else purchases it for me


• Corporate editions of software that do not require registration/activation

Since When?

I just did a quick search for a serial number for a piece of computer software that I "acquired from the internet" as I have done many times in the past.

When I clicked on a link to a serial number website, I was presented with the following message compliments of Google.

This is the first I've seen of Google intercepting a click from their search results.



By the way...the software that I was installing was a certain application to extract and create disc images. I just didn't want the actual program name displayed in the URL...just in case...

Mapping battles are fun!

vs.

Remember the good old days of Mapquest and Microsft's TerraServer when you had to click a cardinal direction and load one square of a map at a time? Gee, wasn't that fun?

No...I agree. It wasn't. Which is why the current "Mapping Wars" are so great.

This whole thing seems to have started when Google created one of it's killer apps by acquiring Keyhole.

Now we are fortunate enough to have two excellent products that are constantly one-upping each other.

Between Google Earth and Microsoft's new Virtual Earth 3D we have access to a wealth of cartographic information with an interface that is light years ahead of the old school click and re-load interfaces of just 3 or 4 years ago.

Microsoft's new tool actually bests Google Earth, in my opinion, by packaging almost all of the rich user experience that Google Earth is popular for into a simple web interface.

The one downside to Google Earth was that it required a stand-alone application that must be downloaded and installed.

While Microsoft Virtual Earth 3D still requires a helper application to be downloaded and installed, the actual interface is completely inside of IE.

While it would be nice if they could completely avoid the client-side download and installation requirement, the fact that these applications are so graphics intensive means that a client-side helper app will still be required for some time.

Enjoy the new 3D views of the world.

Oh...and don't forget to go VOTE!

No more Pi/2

Looks like Amazon has stopped their A9 Pi/2 discount (3.14/2 %).

It was fun while it lasted.

I feel old

Nothing makes you feel old like having one of your favorite band start to release "Best Of" albums.

On a related note...next month (12/6) will be the 10-year anniversary of my first DMB show.

Friends and Family Discounts

Here's a couple Friends & Family discounts if you're interested:

PDF Links:

KMart 11/5/06

Sears 11/12/06

Can I get a definition of "anybody"?

On my morning commute, I regularly listen to NPR to hear all about the latest Republican scandals and/or mud-slinging. This morning, I heard the clip of evangelist Ted Haggard denying that he had sex with a male prostitute.

While this would usually just be another November news-bite, what caught my attention was the specific words that Haggard used in his denial:

"I've never said I'm perfect, but I haven't had sex with a man in Denver, and I've been faithful to my wife,"

In the audio clip (which I can't seem to find online), you can clearly hear him qualify his denial that he hasn't had sex with a man IN DENVER. However, if you look at this article at any of the mainstream media outlets, this denial has, apparently, been modified:

According to Yahoo News: "I've never had a gay relationship with anybody, and I'm steady with my wife, I'm faithful to my wife."

According to CNN: "I've never had a gay relationship with anybody. I'm steady with my wife. I'm faithful to my wife,"

Only a few media reports actually contain the quote verbatim.
The Syndey Morning Herald:
"I've never said I'm perfect, but I haven't had sex with a man in Denver, and I've been faithful to my wife,"

Media cover-up? Or simply poor choice of words on Haggard's part? hmmmm....

By popular demand...the Duck Butt

You asked for it, so here it is...


During a weekend trip to Gander Mountain with the southern portion of the Margelefsky family tree, Lauren and I found plenty of items to mock.

Most notable of these items was the "Duck Butt"

For those of you who have never experienced the "Duck Butt" in all of its half-assed glory, it is (just as the name implies) a plastic replica of a duck's posterior.




Here you can see Vanna Lauren posing with a Duck Butt.

And in case you were thinking, "You know, those duck butts sure are nice but do I have to sell my El Camino so I can afford one?" You're in luck. You can have your very own Duck Butt for only $4.99! That'll leave you plenty of money left to go get your mullet trimmed!





When we were done mocking the Duck Butt...and the just-as-amusing 4-foot hunting blind that looks like a giant duck that you can hide inside...we stumbled across this gem of a food product:




You know you're a redneck your career stinks when your product endorsements include your own brand of beef jerky.

Could be the end of the music goldmine

One of the last bastions of unlimited free music could be coming to an end. According to this article at Ars Technica, eMusic will soon be raising their prices per song.

This, in and of itself, does not threaten the free music, but it could be an indicator that eMusic will tighten down their policy of giving away free tracks.

For those of you who haven't gotten in on the free music gravy train, here is how it's done:

1) Go to this website to get 100 free downloads from eMusic

2) Sign up for the trial using a free disposable email address (I use an address @MyTrashMail.com so that I don't need to actually set up an account each time I need a new address

3) Generate a temporary credit card number using your credit card providers website. This temporary credit card number can be for as little as $1 as it will never actually be charged

4) When completing the eMusic registration process, use a fake name. The name does not need to match your credit card. The only actual information that eMusic will require is your zip code, since it is checked against the billing zip code of your credit card.

That's it. You now have 100 free downloads at eMusic. Go nuts, get a lot of DRM-free music, and then simply cancel your eMusic account. Rinse & repeat as necessary.