Zero_Dogg's blog » Bugs :( http://blog.zerodogg.org Geeky comments on geeky things Tue, 02 Mar 2010 14:42:01 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=abc en hourly 1 The happy travels of a postal parcel http://blog.zerodogg.org/2009/02/18/the-happy-travels-of-a-postal-parcel/ http://blog.zerodogg.org/2009/02/18/the-happy-travels-of-a-postal-parcel/#comments Wed, 18 Feb 2009 14:07:33 +0000 Zero_Dogg http://blog.zerodogg.org/?p=117 Last year, the 21st of December I had to send in my GF’s cellphone for repairs (bought online), incredibly enough the repairs went smoothly and fast, and on the 29th of December it was shipped back to us, using the Norwegian postal system. Little did we know that it wanted to go on a round trip around the southern part of Norway. This is its story.

29.12.08 – Sent from Drammen, Norway
29.12.08 – Arrived at a terminal in Oslo
30.12.08 – Arrived at a terminal in Stavanger
31.12.08 – Arrived at a terminal in Haugesund
02.01.09 – Beep! Still in Haugesund, and the post office realizes that we have moved and that we have bought a service to forward our mail to our new address
02.01.09 – Arrived in Stavanger. Gah! That’s the wrong way!
05.01.09 – Registered at a terminal in Bergen. Yay! It’s getting close!
06.01.09 – Arrived at our local post office in Bergen. Hurray.

…However, they never sent us any packing slip, and we didn’t have the tracking number so we didn’t know.

16.01.09 – Beep! Still in Bergen, and the post office realizes…something and decides to ship it somewhere else.
16.01.09 – Registered at a terminal in Bergen
19.01.09 – Registered at a terminal in Stavanger?!
20.01.09 – Arrived at a post office in Haugesund…again
31.01.09 – Beep! Still in Haugesund, and the post office realizes, once again that we have moved and that we STILL have purchased the service to forward it to our new address.
02.02.09 – Registered at a terminal in Stavanger…yet again
03.02.09 – Registered at a terminal in Bergen
04.02.09 – Arrived at our local post office in Bergen…again. Hurray!

…But they STILL hasn’t sent us any packing slip stating that the package has arrived and that we need to pick it up.
We contact the retailer, which contacts the repair shop, which provides the information that it is here! At our local post office!
So we go to our local post office, I present my ID and that there’s a package for me, aaand… they can’t find it. We go home and yet again mail the retailer, which contacts the repair shop which then gets hold of the tracking number.
Armed with this brand new information, we head to the post office again…

18.02.09 – We get the package.

And no, they still haven’t provided a packing slip.

This is true Norwegian efficiency.

]]> http://blog.zerodogg.org/2009/02/18/the-happy-travels-of-a-postal-parcel/feed/ 0 Proprietary webcam driver wonders http://blog.zerodogg.org/2007/12/10/proprietary-webcam-driver-wonders/ http://blog.zerodogg.org/2007/12/10/proprietary-webcam-driver-wonders/#comments Mon, 10 Dec 2007 07:56:10 +0000 Zero_Dogg http://blog.zerodogg.org/2007/12/10/proprietary-webcam-driver-wonders/ My girlfriend has a builtin webcam on her new x86_64 laptop.
The webcam has no free drivers, but there is a proprietary one available on linux-projects.org.

Pay 10EUR and you get the driver. Okay, doesn’t sound /so/ bad. But the driver is only available for x86 ubuntu gutsy, no other arch, no other distro, no other kernel. If you want it for /your/ kernel you have to pay 100EUR. Wonderful. There’s no way I’m paying 100EUR for a proprietary webcam driver. Buying a new, working, webcam would even be cheaper! She runs x86_64 so there’s no way to get that driver working there, without paying that 100EUR. The camera is Bus 005 Device 002: ID 0c45:624f Microdia.

If someone does decide to write a free GPLd driver for it, I’ll donate some money to that person (I don’t have 100EUR to give away, but I can do at least 30-50EUR).

This again goes to show the pain of proprietary drivers. I don’t mind *paying* for drivers, but when the drivers cost more than the device did, and a device working equally well would be cheaper than buying the drivers it has gone too far. I would have easily donated money if the page said “here’s the driver, it’s GPL so do what you want, but please donate 10EUR if you can” (and I have donated to FOSS projects before).

Update, see: http://blog.zerodogg.org/2008/04/27/microdia-0c45624f-webcam-on-linux/

]]> http://blog.zerodogg.org/2007/12/10/proprietary-webcam-driver-wonders/feed/ 4 The joys of netshop.no (part two) http://blog.zerodogg.org/2007/10/08/the-joys-of-netshopno-part-two/ http://blog.zerodogg.org/2007/10/08/the-joys-of-netshopno-part-two/#comments Mon, 08 Oct 2007 14:16:55 +0000 Zero_Dogg http://blog.zerodogg.org/?p=77 Well, I called the idiots AGAIN today. And they suddenly found out “hmm, we can’t get parts for it”. So, they’re sending back the box without a working mainboard. How fun. So I’m still without a proper laptop, and it seems like it’s going to stay that way.

So, they can’t get parts for a laptop bought 22/08-05. Wonderful.
So I’m pretty much screwed. Yay.

]]> http://blog.zerodogg.org/2007/10/08/the-joys-of-netshopno-part-two/feed/ 0 The joys of Netshop.no http://blog.zerodogg.org/2007/09/26/the-joys-of-netshopno/ http://blog.zerodogg.org/2007/09/26/the-joys-of-netshopno/#comments Wed, 26 Sep 2007 20:13:08 +0000 Zero_Dogg http://blog.zerodogg.org/?p=76 I turned in my laptop for repairs this January (under a month after the last repair). The screen was broken. Then they informed me that the motherboard was also borked, due to moisture, so I’d have to pay for the repairing of that. Okay, that’s fair enough I guess. So I told them to go ahead and repair. Months passed, until I finally got ahold of them again in April. They then told me that there had been some kind of mistake somewhere and that they would get right to repairing it and that they would do it for free because of the excessive wait. Fair deal, though I’m getting grumpy waiting for my laptop so long, but NOW it must soon be here, as they’re on it again.

Not so, now they tell me that the spare motherboard they had in stock for the laptop was also broken, so they needed to order new ones. More waiting. Yay. Then suddenly it was vacation, so I couldn’t get ahold of them. Waiting for supplies from Denmark. Right. Well, I need a motherboard for it to work. So I wait.

Now it’s September and I have yet to see any laptop, the technician doesn’t reply to my queries, and the people in phone support are about as much help as talking to my wall. I need that laptop.

So what can I do? I can contact the idiots and probably demand that they send the laptop to me now. But what good will that do, I’ll have a laptop without a working motherboard. So that’s the same as right now, really. Complain? Right, that’s what I’m doing, they don’t seem to care much. So I’m at a loss. Just want my laptop back.

For the record the laptop is a Zepto Znote 6515WD. I believe that’s just a rebranded Compal laptop, though I have no idea which model.

]]> http://blog.zerodogg.org/2007/09/26/the-joys-of-netshopno/feed/ 3 Where is the madness police?! http://blog.zerodogg.org/2005/12/16/where-is-the-madness-police/ http://blog.zerodogg.org/2005/12/16/where-is-the-madness-police/#comments Thu, 15 Dec 2005 23:30:16 +0000 Zero_Dogg http://blog.iamaturtle.org/?p=33 Okay, I was just made aware of the Brazillian Mandriva store by Claudio. The DARNED THING USES ASP! AFAIK it isn’t Mandriva that runs it (duh), but STILL!
For a little more clarification:

[0 zerodogg@drizzt html]$ HEAD mandrivastore.com.br
...junk...
Server: Microsoft-IIS/6.0
...junk...
X-Powered-By: ASP.NET

Someone tell me I’m dreaming! *cries*

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