I don’t have a password

Me: I would like to close this credit card account
Customer Service: Ok, what is the password?
Me: I don’t have a password, I never used this account.
Customer Service: I can’t close the account without a password.
Me: I don’t have a password, I never used this account and I want it closed.
Customer Service: You will need the account number.
Me: I don’t have the account number, I never used this account.
Customer Service: I will have to get you to our fraud department.
Me: I don’t need the fraud department, the account has never been used and I would like to close it.
Customer Service: One moment…
Fraud department: I need your password please.
Me: I don’t have a password, I never used this account and I don’t have the account number either.
Fraud department: What is the phone number you are calling from?
Me: It’s my work number why?
Fraud Department: I’ll have to call you back on that phone.
Me: Umm, ok.
Fraud department: (after calling me back on the number I called in on) Ok we can change your password now.
Me: I don’t need a password I just want to cancel this account.
Fraud department: Oh, this account is already closed. But I can transfer you to our customer service account if you’d like to open an account.
Me: Why would I want to open an account if I called in trying to close an account?
Fraud department: One moment please…
Customer Service: I understand you want to open an account?
Me: (passed mad and now genuinely amused) No, I don’t, I wanted to close an account.
Customer service: I need your password please.
Me: (hangs up)

Barbecued Ribs in Crock Pot

2 cups of any bottled BBQ sauce
1 cup ketchup
1 1/2 cups water
1 medium onion, sliced. (This can be left out without hindering the flavor)
1 1/4 cup brown sugar
Dash of Worcestershire sauce
1/2 cup cooking wine
4 pounds boneless ribs

Mix the sauce together right in your crock pot. Add the ribs (no need to brown first) ensuring the sauce covers them. Cook on low for at least 5-6 hours.

Easy way to get PDF’s into iBooks


I love reading books on my iPad. I really dislike iTunes. I’ve avoided using iTunes to get content onto the iPad using Goodreader since it has Dropbox integration. But I really like using the iBooks app. After some poking around in Dropbox I found I can now get PDF’s into iBooks directly without syncing with iTunes.

Open Dropbox and navigate to the PDF you want. Open the PDF and click the little rectangle box with the arrow in the upper right corner. One of the options is iBooks. This transfers the PDF from Dropbox to iBooks!

Date and 24 hour time batch file variables


I’ve lately been using batch files more and more to do backups and other things.
One of the things that’s given me troubles is using dates and times to add to folders or file names to help with organizing.
What I wanted to end up with is something like 20110211_185530.zip.  The first part is the year then month then date followed by an underscore the hour then minutes then seconds.

For the impatient out there here is the final code I use to get this date and time stamp:
I’ll explain why it looks more complicated than you (and I) might have thought it should be afterwards.

set hh=%time:~-11,2%
set /a hh=%hh%+100
set hh=%hh:~1%
Set dateseed=%date:~10,4%%date:~4,2%%date:~7,2%_%hh%%time:~3,2%%time:~6,2%
echo %dateseed%

The %Time% variable in a batch file will give you a time like 18:55:30.32
The  %Date% variable will give you  “Fri 02/11/2010”.

Since I’m using this to create file and folder names you can’t have slashes and colons etc. mixed in there.
So, being a VB programmer I started out thinking I could use something like the mid function to take the date and time apart and then put it back together in the string I wanted.

I found that you can take just a part of the %date% variable by doing the following: %date~10,4%
This takes the %date% variable starts at the first character after the 10th and grabs 4 characters.
Cool, so you end up %date~10,4% = 2011 (unless you go back in time to last year or forward to next year in which it will be something else and if you can do that then you probably aren’t reading this.)
You can add a negative sign before the first number and it will go from right to left instead of left to right when setting character position.

So with %date:~10,4%%date:~4,2%%date:~7,2% = 20110211 (because today is 02/11/2011).
Take the time and you get %time:~-11,2%%time:~3,2%%time:~6,2% = 191551 (because it’s 7:15 pm at 51 seconds)

Based on these then I came up with:
Set dateseed=%date:~10,4%%date:~4,2%%date:~7,2%_%time:~-11,2%%time:~3,2%%time:~6,2%
echo %dateseed%
This returns: 20110211_191655 and was exactly what I wanted.  So, why is the final code I gave you above so much more complicated?  I started using the above code and had problems when it went to make a folder and the time was like 2 am.
The problem is the hour part of the %time% variable doesn’t return a two digit hour like at 2 am.  The %time~-11,2% would return a 2 with a space before it breaking the whole thing.

So, the first lines in the above code compensates for this by taking the hour and adding 100 to it and then pulling out the last 2 characters of what remains.  So at 2 am you end up with 102, take the last two characters and you get 02.  This makes for a more reliable method of making folders and file names using the %date% and %time% variables.

There might be a much better, shorter way to accomplish this but I couldn’t find it so here’s the final code:
(until someone smarter than me tells me how silly I am for doing it this way and gives me something better)

set hh=%time:~-11,2%
set /a hh=%hh%+100
set hh=%hh:~1%
Set dateseed=%date:~10,4%%date:~4,2%%date:~7,2%_%hh%%time:~3,2%%time:~6,2%
echo %dateseed%

Add bookmark bar in Safari in iPad

I was playing around in the settings in Safari on the iPad and noticed one that said “Always Show Bookmarks Bar.”
It was set to off by default and I immediately thought, “that could be kinda handy actually.” 
So I turned it off and added a few bookmarks that I regularly use to it.  It takes up a bit more of the screen space but I’m finding it pretty handy so far.

HP Envy Beats Audio Wallpaper

I bought an HP Envy 14 Beats edition laptop this week and am loving it so far. I poked around the web for wallpaper and didn’t find too many that I really like so I thought I’d make one myself.

Feel free to save this and use it.

Update: I had a request from someone to post the wallpapers that came on the laptop. Since I nuked it and reloaded it fresh as soon as I got it I’m not sure I have that. I think one of them might be originally on the laptop but I’m not sure.
Here are a few that I have collected. Some of these I’ve tweaked others I found on the internet.
(The links from the thumbnails should now open in a new window and allow you to right click the image and save as. Otherwise, Right click on the thumbnail and select “Save Link As” (Firefox) or “Save Target As” (Internet Explorer) to download the full size.)



  • Camera: iPhone 4
  • Taken: 12 November, 2010
  • Aperture: ƒ/2.8
  • Focal length: 3.85mm
  • ISO: 500
  • Shutter speed: 1/15s

Launch XBMC from Windows Media Center remote

I like Windows Media Center, but lately I’ve been liking XBMC more for streaming media to my TV. I bought a Roku player and love it, but (for now) there are things it doesn’t yet do that I want. Namely Hulu Plus (coming soon) and reliable, easy network streaming of my own content. PlayOn is not bad but just there yet for me plus it costs $49.99 plus $19.99 a year.
XBMC has an excellent interface and works well with streaming music and video from Windows shares.
I have a Windows Media Center remote that also works well with XBMC but the green button on it launches Media Center. A web search came up with Jacob Johnston’s blog who wrote a cool little tool for fixing this dilemma.
Get it here.
Jacob also has a launcher for Boxee if you prefer it to XBMC, available at the link above.

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