Stop stealing my credit card!

This past Saturday afternoon I received an automated call from my credit card company saying that there were some suspicious charges that they wanted me to verify. The computerized voice dutifully read off the past three transactions and asked to confirm that I recognized all of them.

Unfortunately, there was one I didn’t: a $1 pre-authorization charge from a travel agent in Nebraska. I indicated this by pressing 2 as directed and was told I would be transferred to an agent to discuss the next steps. After being on hold for 8 minutes, the automated voice said no agents were available and I would be called back later, click

Nice.

By Sunday afternoon I hadn’t received another call so I called the customer support number as listed on the web site. After punching in my credit card number into the automated system, I was asked, again, to validate some transactions which turned out to be the same ones as before (including the bad Nebraska travel agent one). I was eventually connected to a live human who informed me that their “systems were down” and they would be unable to pull up any account information until after 6pm and I should just call back then.

So last night I called back a third time and again the automated system asked me to verify some transactions. This time there were two new transactions I didn’t recognize for about $38 each. Up until now I had been hoping the Nebraska travel agent thing was just a fluke, but now I had that sinking feeling that something was indeed up. I spoke to a rep, who had me validate the same information again and then confirmed that it appeared that my credit card had been compromised and they would cancel it immediately. sigh

I’m glad my credit card company is actively monitoring this sort of thing and can stop it before any major fraud occurs (it’s in their best interests, after all). What’s frustrating is this is the third time since October 2007 that my credit card information has been stolen and used in a fraudulent manner. It’s really creepy!

Sure, I use my credit card a lot online … but I’m not new to e-commerce, or protecting my personal and financial information on the internet. I only use my credit card at trusted merchants (over encrypted connections). If I’m going to buy from a site I don’t necessarily know a lot about (or trust) I’ll use a secure one-time card generated by the PayPal plugin (and I use my Verisign PIP token to further secure my PayPal account). I still wish I knew how the theft was occurring so I could take measures to stop it. I’ve got to believe it’s not due to any direct action (or inaction) of my own, but due to things like third-parties with lax security measures over which I have no control.

Anyway, now I have to wait for my new card to arrive and then I can start calling my various service providers to update my card information. At least I have a comprehensive list of who to call/update (compiled from the last two times this happened) so I won’t miss any important items.

I love slickdeals.net

I subscribe to the slickdeals.net RSS feed and have found quite a few great deals on it (for example, the 20% off coupon that helped me get a new Dell PC for under $500) and the occasional cool gift idea.

Today’s gem: a tiny USB Bluetooth adapter for $3. I’d been thinking about getting one of these to leave connected to my Eee PC. The one I have now is large and sticks out pretty far so I can’t leave it plugged in and slide it into its neoprene carrying case. I leave it in the sleeve and am always worried it’s going to fall out and get lost. The little Kensington model I had been considering was $27 but for $3 (with free shipping), I’ll give this one a try.

Windows 7 Beta

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Last Friday Microsoft released the public beta of their next operating system, Windows 7. I tried several times over the weekend but was unable to download it (and I wasn’t alone). Finally this morning I was able to grab the 2.1gb ISO, and the download was surprisingly fast.

I did a clean install of Windows 7 on an old spare laptop here at work (which was below the minimum requirements as it only had 512mb of RAM). The install was just like Vista: answer a few initial questions and then the OS is installed from the DVD, relatively painless.

As expected, after the initial boot into the new OS, I found quite a few components not working properly. Windows Update installed a driver for the ATI Mobility Radeon 9200 video card so I could up the screen resolution. Windows Update also tried to install a new audio driver but it keeps failing, so I have no sound. Worse, I can’t get the wireless to work. Sony never produced Vista drivers for this old S Series unit and the drivers I downloaded directly from Intel didn’t work either. These kind of problems I expected, though, running beta software on older hardware (a colleague at work installed the beta on a newer Sony SZ series laptop and everything worked just fine, including his wireless).

Most of the corporate apps we use at work installed without any problems (Office 2007, Reflections, pcAnywhere, Citrix, etc.). One notable exception was McAfee Antivirus 8.0i which was blocked “due to compatibility issues.” This could be another beta thing, but I recall Vista had a lot of antivirus and firewall problems initially as well. AVG installed just fine.

Except the new, improved taskbar (and the neat new boot animation), Windows 7 looks a lot like Vista (and IE8 looks a lot like IE7). I need to play around some more and maybe check out the release notes to see what else is new and different.

Easy Peasy upgrade on the Eee

I’ve been running Ubuntu Eee on my Eee PC for just over a month and am really happy with it. Earlier this week though, the new version of Ubuntu Eee, now re-branded Easy Peasy (as in “easy PC”) was released. I can’t say I love the new name (the new logo even has a lemon slice in it!) but it’s still Ubuntu underneath, customized for netbooks.

Since I’d spent a lot of time tweaking Ubuntu Eee and had it just the way I liked it, I decided to try an in-place upgrade (after making a full backup first, of course). It took a while but went smoothly and I’ve now got Easy Peasy 1.0 (or Ubuntu 8.10 Intrepid Ibex) running on the Eee.

Everything seems to be working just like before, with two exceptions:

  • I can connect (authenticate) to the VPN at work, but the routes don’t seem to work so I can’t actually connect to (or ping) any of my servers. Apparently a lot of people have issues with the new Network Manager in Intrepid so this is not something specific to Easy Peasy.
  • I can’t print to my Epson AL-CX11NF laser printer at home. The error says the pstoalcx11.sh “driver” is missing, but it’s there under /usr/local/bin where it was before.

So I’ve still got a little cleanup/tweaking to do.

Oh, one other “benefit” of doing the dist-upgrade instead of a fresh install: I’ve still got all the old Ubuntu logos, boot screens, etc. instead of the new Easy Peasy graphics. 🙂

Palm’s new handheld is Pre-tty cool

Today at CES, Palm unveiled its new smartphone: the Pre, running webOS (formerly code-named Nova).

The Pre has a 320×480 high-resolution touchscreen display, built-in 3G/GPS/WiFi/Bluetooth, a 3 mega-pixel camera, 8gb of user storage (the most on any Palm handheld ever), an accelerometer (for screen rotation), and the Treo’s familiar keyboard (it slides down from under the screen, or rather, the screen slides up). Though I hate to say it, it’s basically Palm’s version of the iPhone. The market seemed to like what it saw … shares of PALM jumped 34% today!

webOS looks slick … and finally Palm has a multi-tasking operating system! I just hope it’s faster than Windows Mobile (my Treo might not have 3G or be able to run two applications at once, but the user-interface speed blows away any WM6 device).

So, any bad news? First, the Pre will initially be available only on Sprint (CDMA), in the first half of 2009. Hopefully other carriers (like AT&T) will follow. Next, and I couldn’t confirm this, it doesn’t look like there’s any backward compatibility with PalmOS. There is a huge library of third-party applications out there and none of them will run on the Pre. I’m sure developers will jump on the platform relatively quickly, though, and it’s probably better to leave the legacy of PalmOS behind (how about a PalmOS emulator for webOS? 😉 ). No Flash support either. I’ll bet it has cut-and-paste though!

There’s a lot more good information over on Engadget (except pricing, which hasn’t been announced yet) and some videos of the Pre in action from Gizmodo. For now I’ll have to wait and hope that my next smartphone is going to be a member of the Pre family.

Heh, there’s already a wiki page.

Is AT&T quietly downgrading its EDGE network?

I manage a lot of AT&T mobile phones at work, mainly Treos (plus a few Centros) and Windows Mobile devices like the Tilt. Starting about a month ago, the Treo users (myself included) started having data coverage issues. Areas of the office that were fine before were suddenly dead zones and phones would drop data coverage (even while outside!) and not automatically reconnect.

Since this was only affecting the Treos, it seemed obvious that it was a problem with AT&T’s older EDGE network (the current generation of Palm OS-based devices can’t do 3G). When I called AT&T Mobility’s technical support earlier last month, I was just told there were “network issues” in the area and they were being worked on. But a month later, the strange coverage problems persist.

Then today I came across this article on Open for Business, via Engadget:

In an act affecting owners of 2G cell phones on AT&T Mobility’s network, including the highly visible, and originally highly expensive first generation iPhone, Open for Business has learned that AT&T has been quietly sacrificing 2G signal strength in an effort to speed up the build out of its next generation 3G network.
…
While previously the company had been primarily relying on the 850 MHz band that offers a more robust signal, including superior indoor reception, company technicians confirmed to OFB that transmitters for the 2G signal used by the original iPhone and most other handsets, including most AT&T offered BlackBerry and RAZR models, have been shifted to the weaker 1900 MHz band in some areas.

Are you kidding me? It makes sense, from a conspiracy standpoint (get people to upgrade to newer, more expensive 3G devices like the iPhone) and could explain our current coverage problems, but from a business standpoint it seems like you’d end up with a lot of angry customers who suddenly have non-working data connections on their phones, not to mention a looming PR nightmare.

Now this whole thing could be heresy, so as usual don’t believe everything you read on the internet (just check out the comments to the OFB post and you’ll see what I mean).

Fortunately, my desk at work seems to be a “good” area because usually when someone brings their phone to me, it’ll start working. Then I take it back to their own desk and it drops the network connection again. sigh

I can play Wii during a power outage …

… for about 10 minutes anyway.

Last night I tested my new APC J15 home theater power conditioner and UPS. A neat feature of the unit is the front VFD that shows various informational screens, one of which is the total watts being drawn. With everything connected turned on (receiver, DVD player, TiVo, Wii, and plasma display), I’m pulling between 560 and 570 watts:


Which according to a different screen on the display gives me roughly 7 minutes of battery run time (again, with everything running). “Normal” usage (one component and the TV) is about 340 watts, most of which is the plasma. I ran the calibration test (which puts the unit into battery mode until the power runs out) and confirmed everything was able to run off of battery. Pretty cool.

Ok, so I’m not really going to be watching TV (or playing Wii) during an extended power-outage, but at least my equipment is protected from the occasional brown-out or surge.

I did find an irritating bug in the firmware of the J15 during my testing. There are separate options in the setup to control the brightness of the status LEDs and the VFD. Each of those options has either High, Low, and Off. Since the unit is in a closed cabinet, I don’t really need either one on, so I tried setting both to Off. What I discovered though is that when both are set to Off, the display will blank (no text) but the backlight will not turn off. So the status LEDs are off, the display is blank, but it’s a big glowing blue rectangle. If I leave the status LEDs on Low and set the display to Off, the display properly turns off after a few seconds of inactivity. Also, you can’t turn off the circular blue light around the power button which shows you the unit is on. Again, nothing earth-shattering especially since my equipment is all behind the doors of a cabinet, but in a normal family room setting those blue LEDs could be annoying. I’ve used small pieces of electrical tape in the past to cover up those annoying “standby” LEDs on other equipment, but it’d be hard to nicely cover up that circular glow.