Mike's Thoughts

So, my PS3 of not even 1 year, pooped out on me last week. I thought it was just a fluke, but when I went to watch my brand-new BluRay movie, my horrors were confirmed. For some reason, the system froze mid way through playing a game, and ever since restarting it, the system will not recognize any disk whatsoever: not BluRay, not DVD, not CD. I had just installed the 2.43 firmware, so I am leaning toward pointing fingers at that….

Matters only got worse after calling Sony. First of all, you have to sit through AN AD on your phone for some stupid game. Then, when you finally navigate through 90 menus, the system reads you the same crap you can get online. Uh, thanks, but no thanks. Finally, you are prompted to press 0 to talk to a rep. The rep was clueless, and was baffled as to why my contact information would show up in there system! Hmmm… maybe because I registered the stupid thing half a year ago! The rep was all over the place, and told me that I needed to find my receipt, otherwise I would need to do an “out of warranty repair,” though he never said what that was. He gave me a reference number, and I proceeded to hang up, furious. I called home, and discovered that I had scanned the receipt…it’s like I knew something like this was gonna happen. I then called Sony back, and got the most insulting rep ever. After giving him my reference number, he asked why I was calling… um, read the damn info! The rep was extremely rude, and was obviously upset that I, the sucker who bought the piece of junk, had to call in. He then read off some crap about another form I had to fill out online. Fine, thanks for that.

So now I wait… supposedly they’re gonna send me a box or something. I am shocked at this situation, and believe me, if my system doesn’t come back in impeccible shape, I’m gonna do a lot more than rant on my blog! Sony, you’re on notice:

PS. If you want to make your own On Notice board, check out: http://www.shipbrook.com/onnotice/

So I recently discovered the wonder that is tinyurl. If you have never heard of this service, allow me to elaborate. Think back to a time when you wanted to send a friend a link to a webpage, but the URL looked something like this:

http://www.microsoft.com/events/EventDetails.aspx?CMTYSvcSource=MSCOMMedia&Params=~CMTYDataSvcParams^~arg+Name%3d%22ID%22+Value%3d%221032340737%22%2f^~arg+Name%3d%22ProviderID%22+Value%3d%22A6B43178-497C-4225-BA42-DF595171F04C%22%2f^~arg+Name%3d%22lang%22+Value%3d%22en%22%2f^~arg+Name%3d%22cr%22+Value%3d%22US%22%2f^~sParams^~%2fsParams^~%2fCMTYDataSvcParams^

Kinda mind boggling and a bit annoying, right? Enter tinyurl. Tinyurl is a service that allows you to create a ridiculously short URL that redirects to some ridiculously long URL, for free. The URL can be randomly generated, or you can attempt to make your own. What’s more, the URLs supposidly don’t expire, so when your friend decides to hide out in a cave for three years, you have the comfort of knowing that when they return to civilization, your tinyurl will be there, waiting for them!

I made a tinyurl for the link above, and it came out something like this:

http://tinyurl.com/3vkaen

Now sure, that looks a little conspicuous, but if you really want to be sure where it goes, just stick “preview.” before tinyurl, and it will take you to the tinyurl site, where you will see the entire link that it will redirect you to. (In this example, http://preview.tinyurl.com/3vkaen)

Sound good? Now go make your own at http://tinyurl.com!

So I officially received my new Nikon D40 digital SLR camera today. Here’s the thing…I bought my LG Dare with the thought that I would consolidate my devices by carring around a camera and a cell phone all in one. Let me tell you, despite being a 3.2 megapixel camera, it’s still a really bad camera on a camera phone, and it just wasn’t cutting it.

So, I took the plunge and bought Nikon’s entry level SLR. It’s only a 6 megapixel camera, but it’s miles beyond anything I have ever used. For more information on it, check out this site.

Right now, I’ve take about 115 really bad photos! I mean come on, for an entry level SLR, this thing has a ton of features, and I’m just beginning to wrap my head around them all. However, I was able to come up with a few that I thought were ok, given that it was my first time out.

I have created another page on my actual web site where I will post pictures that I find interesting. To check it out, simply go to gallery.mikebruckner.com, or click on the link at the top of my blog, or at the top of my main site.

So, after doing a ton of searching on the RIT site for instructions on how to use RIT’s LDAP address book on my local machine, I finally came up with the settings.

If you, like me, use Mozilla Thunderbird (grab a free copy from http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/thunderbird/), then you will most likely want to be able to search the RIT directory for fellow students and professors.

To configure Thunderbird:

1. Click on the Address Book icon in Thunderbird
2. Click Tools -> Options
3. Click Composition -> Addressing, then click “Edit Directories”
4. Click the Add button
5. Enter the following information:
Name: RIT Directory
Hostname: ldap.rit.edu
Base DN: ou=people,dc=rit,dc=edu
Port Number: 389
Bind DN: uid=<your RIT username>,ou=people,dc=rit,dc=edu
Ensure the SSL checkbox is UNCHECKED
6. Click OK
7. Click the Directory Service checkbox, then click RIT Directory in the drop down box
8. Click OK.
9. Close Address Book, and restart Thunderbird
10. Click Write
11. Start entering a student’s name (like Michael). You should be prompted to enter a password. Enter your RIT account password, and if you choose to, select the remember my password option
12. You should now be able to use the auto complete feature to query the global address book
13. You can also search someone by clicking Contacts in the new message window, then selecting RIT Directory from the drop down window

Just thought I’d point something out…

It doesn’t matter if you have dirty cloths up to the ceiling of your dorm room, or if you have more empty pizza boxes than shirts.

No, if you’ve got the right stuff in your room, you’re set.

As a “hero” of the Colbert Nation, I give you a perfect example