OMFG. So when I went to BoA to ask them to get my money back from Paypal, I thought I actually would. I know how good credit card companies are at fraud. They sent me the affidavit, which I dutifully signed and sent back. A week or two later they reverse the check and I get all of the money back into my bank account. Great! But then I look at my Paypal balance. $-489. WTF? So they totally charged me for the money the bank got. What kind of system is that? I’ve done all that work (well make BoA do all that work) for naught. I call up Paypal who are again stonewalling me. “Yes we’re sorry this is unfortunate. Yes it is the expected behavior to deduct this from your account. Yes our fraud department is doing all they can to get your money back. No we don’t know when you’ll get your money back. Yes, you better hope this doesn’t go into debt collection.” So then I’m like, well, I don’t want a negative balance because I want a working Paypal account (which at this point is debatable). So I’m like, well I want it now, I’ll pay with credit. They have my credit card number on file, so I quickly click through the process. Immediately after I hit the “yes really deduct this from my credit card” button I read the fine print that read something like “this will show up as a cash advance and your credit card company may charge you as such”. Again with the wtf? At this point I’m past the point of no return, so I quickly load up my online banking to see if the charge is pending. It is, but I don’t see any extra fees. Maybe I dodged a bullet. Nope, looking at my current outstanding charges, there’s an extra $15 charge there for “CASH EQUIVALENT TRANSA[CTION]“. Oh for the love. I’m out closer to $505 due to my double stupidity. :(

I finally tonight bought a new computer. I’ve been putting it off for like over 6 months. The price has logically dropped in that timeframe, and only time will tell if the savings were worth the not-enough-ram-for-everthing-I’d-like-to-keep-open-all-the-time and only using one of my 2 really old 19″ crts…

Informal poll: Who thinks I should buy L glass to replace my broken kit lens (specifically the 24-70mm f/2.8L USM)? I’m really starting to jones for it. And if all of my major purchases in the past month weren’t enough, the jonesing for a very large tv is rearing its ugly head again.

is reinstalling his filer yet again. This is like the second time it’s locked up and then decided not to want to boot up after I’ve kicked it. Does not bode well for long term Nexenta stability. Granted I have like zero low level Solaris troubleshooting skills, but I can’t recall the last time it was I had a linux system totally buy the farm. I’ve managed to get myself into some sticky situations, where my linux skills have saved me, but this is ridiculous. Let’s just say I haven’t been impressed with Solaris. Honestly I have no idea why everyone buys their expensive stuff.

In my head this morning: Augustana “Sweet and Low”

During some late night flight back from somewhere to Atlanta, I watched “How I Met Your Mother” on the plane. I must have caught a couple of episodes on a couple of flights. Anyway, it struck me as a decent show, so I finally started watching it. I got through the first season (yesterday?) and through most of the second today. I’m sort of stuck on an episode at the moment (18 to be exact). Which is bad because I was starting to think I might have been able to finish it today (the second season). But it’s getting late, so really I should go to bed. Anyway I’ve like it pretty well and will catch up to current filming (they finished season three). The first season was really good, but about a third of the way through the second season, a lot of the tension was resolved and it seemed to move to more episodic stories. Before there were some longer arcs and long unresolved issues, which I really liked. And of course you can drag those out for too long *cough*lost*cough*. So I understand the need to move on from those story devices, but having episode after episode of everybody getting along and nothing terrible really happening can get a little boring and mundane pretty quickly. Don’t get me wrong, I still like it and plan on finishing it. But it seems like something changed from the first season. Maybe it was that I finally felt like I understood the characters, so little is surprising now about how they act and react and what I expect. I guess I should try and check out the commentaries and see if they’re interesting…

# before
root@filer0:~# zpool list tank
NAME      SIZE   USED  AVAIL    CAP  HEALTH  ALTROOT
tank     1.82T  1.56T   266G    85%  ONLINE  -

root@filer0:~# zpool add tank raidz c2t5d0 c3t2d0 c3t6d0 c2t2d0 c2t6d0

# after
root@filer0:~# zpool list tank
NAME      SIZE   USED  AVAIL    CAP  HEALTH  ALTROOT
tank     6.37T  1.56T  4.81T    24%  ONLINE  -

So besides sweltering in my own apartment due to an air conditioner that I think is working much less optimally than it should, for dinner tonight, I decided that since I didn’t really want fast food, that I would just eat some cereal. Having just returned from two weeks traveling, I of course didn’t have any milk to speak of (well you might assume that I still had rotting milk in the fridge, and you might be correct, but I did have the foresight to throw the milk out before I left). Standing in line to check out with my one item of half a gallon of vitamin d, whole milk, the lady behind me asks me, “how much is the milk?”. Which is a perfectly valid question. You know like, maybe it was on sale, or maybe she’s wondering if the price of milk has gone up with all the transportation price hikes due to gas prices. I had no idea how much the milk was. I felt really bad for not knowing. There was this episode of West Wing, where the press secretary was making a point about how the other side was out of touch because they didn’t even know the price of milk, only to realize that they themselves didn’t know the price of a gallon of milk. The price couldn’t have made a bit of difference to me. I only care in so much that it would have been cheaper than buying a combo meal at <insert your favorite fast food place here>.

Sort of like the price of gas. I have to pay it, and there’s no real way for me to game the system to get cheaper gas, so I just buy it. I buy it at the place where I know it’s usually the cheapest (Kroger). But I did a few days ago look at my gas spending, and while I thought that it was a bit low, it looked like I’m spending $100 a month on it (over the last 6 months). Which seems odd because when I figured it before it was like $125, but that have been over a longer period when I had some additional commuting. Now I don’t have that, but it still doesn’t seem like that would account for the doubling of the price of gas and my cost per month dropping. If it is true, then it’s really a good sign that I don’t really need a new car for the gas. So, if that number is correct, and if the new car doubled the in-town mpg (which would be asking a lot I’m guessing), then the car payment would have to be like $50. Which I don’t think I’d want any car that came with a $50 monthly payment. :)

is sweating in his own apartment. Not cool.

Classic. Definitely a new fave to add to the collection. Sort of reminds me of Chad’s story about “mathsturbatory”, though I only recall the word and not the story. :)

I did buy drives at Frys (3 1TB drives), so I’m looking forward to taking them on the plane and getting them into service in the array. I also called BoA this week and they were super helpful with the whole fraud thing. They should be sending me an affidavit and hopefully after some not short length of time, I’ll get the $$ back.

~One more day left in Cali (um, did I mention I’ve been in California for almost 2 weeks now?) and I’m looking forward to being back, though from what I hear it’s pretty warm there. :)

Don’t you hate writing something you know you’re going to regret later, writing it anyway, and then regretting it later? I sure do.

Times like these should remind me that the grass really isn’t greener over there in talk-more land, and I should just keep to what I know best, being quiet. :)