Wednesday, November 30, 2005
Get a Human
Tired of keypad or voice menus when you call a corporation? Just want to talk to a human being?
The IVR Cheat Sheet by Paul English, a listing of corporate support numbers and how to get to a human when calling.
Sunday, November 27, 2005
URL Tweaking
The URLs here have been tweaked. All old URLs should still work. This goes for The Ice Block as well. If you run into any problems, please let me know.
Tuesday, November 22, 2005
System Error or Phone Call Avoider?
Unless you haven’t used the web in a while, you know today is the launch date of the Xbox 360 (pimpin’ Amazon link, even though it’s not available from them yet).
Anyway, I was trying to see if EB Games had some other non-360 stuff in. So I went to the website, found the store locator and to my surprise - it’s not working. EB Games and Gamestop are one in the same now, and use the same store locator, so neither site has it working at the moment.
The real question: is there a system problem, or are they purposely not displaying locations (and possibly telephone numbers) because today is so hectic and 360 supplies are limited?
Here’s an EB Games locations list from Campus Circle if you’re looking to find one by you.
Sunday, November 20, 2005
Newspaper Intertwines With Blog
While looking up some of the latest info about the Florida Everblades, an ECHL hockey team, I went to a website of a local paper I check out, Naples Daily News, from Naples, FL.
The direct menu link on the left for Everblades coverage took me to Bonita Daily News’ page for the Everblades. naplesnews.com and bonitanews.com have always linked to each other, shared stories, etc., and are E.W. Scripps Co. papers. The layout for the Bonita Daily News is vastly different to that of Naples Daily News. Simply different strikes you on the home page of BDN, but when you go deeper into the paper you start seeing columnist blogs and comments available on all articles, and you start to realize that it’s vastly different, and not just because of the look, but the function of the site.
Any blog-integration doubts I had left disappeared when I noticed the standard WordPress/Movable Type-type URLs and the fact that I could get to more RSS files than the ones linked on their RSS page.
This is the type of move I think most papers will start making. Better formats, more interaction with its viewers and better syndication. It seems BDN has had this format for about a month, as the oldest blog entries are from around the last week of October.
I haven’t seen many articles with many comments, but the two hockey blogs from Everblades beat reporter Andy Kent and Ernie Hartlieb, Everblades assistant captain and player, have very active comments section.
Tuesday, November 15, 2005
Time-Lapse Drawing
This time-lapse drawing simply amazes me.
via Boing Boing via Drawn
Friday, November 11, 2005
Server Down
Last night one of my servers went down, and yes, it helps host both my mail and hockeyfights.com. The server is being restored and I will have it back up sometime today. I’ve also ordered another, more beefy server to spread things out across and help prevent any further downtime after restoration. Theoretically not much should be lost (just some forum attachments). I’ll update as I can.
Update 10am: Since I’m being asked - when the server is put back up, I first have to re-setup everything: dns, email, web settings. The OS was corrupted and I’m using a different drive to put a fresh OS on, and then set it up again. The old primary drive is attached as a secondary, and I’ll be trying to save whatever I can from it. As I said above, theoretically there should be little lost, but it may take a bit to do.
Update 1225pm: New server is up and ready. I’ll be prepping it while waiting for the reload on the crashed machine.
Update 630pm: They’re working on restoring the crashed machine now.
Update 830pm: The crashed machine is up and running again. Time to get to work…
Update Sat 3am: Mail was restored a while ago. Things are slowly being pieced back together. ETA on hockeyfights.com being live again is sometime in the afternoon.
Update Sat 4pm: Still working on it. A couple of hours more should do the trick.
Update Sat 7pm: It’s back! Everything’s functional. There’s still work to do, but nothing related to downtime. Unfortunately, depending on your ISP, you might not be able to reach hockeyfights.com right away due to a DNS change. For some, it will be instantaneous, for others it might take up to a day.