verbosity

eBay - how not to manage your accounts and customers

Dear eBay, here is an example of how NOT to manage your accounts and customers:

I just spent 50 minutes on the phone with Ebay customer support. All I wanted to do was update the phone number on my account, as I was about to make a purchase. I don't use eBay much, once every couple of years, but I've been registered since 1999.

The web site let me log in, let me update my shipping address, but gave me cryptic errors about confirming my registration when trying to update my phone number, which is odd since I've been a confirmed and registered customer for 12 years. When I tried to have the confirmation email re-sent, I received a generic error message that looked like technical difficulties on their end, not that anything was wrong with my specific account.

I called tech support, and the first guy took 20 minutes to determine that my account appeared to be marked for pending deletion, but had to transfer me to another department to get my deletion cancelled and my account reinstated. Fine, I haven't used it in a while, guess you can delete my account...I'm sure that 10KB that my profile takes up is really straining your disk usage...

The second support department took 5 minutes to tell me that my account is already deleted, and there's nothing they can do. Um...I can still log in? That doesn't seem very "deleted" to me. Oh, and you say you sent me an email notification back in May that said you were going to delete my account unless I logged in within 30 days? Yeah, I'm absolutely certain that didn't look like spam at all, and made it past Google's spam filters into my inbox. Second tier could tell I was a little miffed; they were quick to end the call.

Frustrated, I searched the eBay account closing information on the support section of their site. It says I have 180 days from pending-delete to full-on deletion. Okay, May + 180...I should still be OK?...

I called customer support back. This time, an efficient gent took my call, who confirmed my pending-delete status quickly, and tried to fix it. He was not able to, stating insufficient access (and I believe him, he tried repeatedly for 10 minutes). He bumped me to Tier 2. This tier 2 person confirmed my account status. However, instead of telling me that she couldn't help me, she took 10 minutes and actually fixed my account, which the initial tier 2 person said couldn't be done. Hmm...

Thank you competent tier 2 support person Nina. No thanks to the previous incompetent or lazy person. And no thanks to eBay for having misguided policies regarding account preservation. Your customer support image is everything; don't tarnish it.

Preload that game

Alright, I am now fully equipped.

Linksys WRT54G v3.0 reflashed with DD-WRT firmware

Static DHCP entry for Dish TV receiver, because you can't set a static IP on the POS (DHCP only), and it tends to wander about, which makes the Logitech Revue angry because it expects the Dish box to stay on its original IP address. How Logitech and Dish expect the average consumer to not be frustrated by that, I don't know. (Not relevant to downloading games, but something that's been bugging me, and OEM firmware didn't have static DHCP capabilities)

Wake-On-LAN enabled on PC, NAT entry with ARP hack set up on Linksys per http://www.dd-wrt.com/wiki/index.php/WOL

Android WOL app because it's amusing to use my phone to power up my PC, and because it saved me from having to fire up another computer to test my WOL. https://market.android.com/details?id=com.benfinnigan.wol

RDP passthru to home PC.

Never again will I fail to have a Steam game pre-downloaded and waiting for me when I get home from work!

Veeam backups with snapshots

How does Veeam Backup and Replication 5.0 behave with existing VMware snapshots, or snap operations that happen during a backup? These are the results of my tests, which in general show that Veeam and the snapshots behave well and as you would assume them to, with one notable exception:

(These tests were performed with Veeam 5.0.2.230 64 bit against a VMware ESX 4.1 Update 1 patch level 348481 host with vCenter 4.1 Update 1 patch level 345043)

What if I have an existing VM snapshot (Snap1) before the Veeam backup starts?
Veeam will take an additional snapshot (Snap2), lock the disk file from Snap1, stream data from that file plus the base disk, then commit (delete) Snap2 when the backup is complete.

What if I have several VM snapshots open?
Same behavior, all "parent" snapshot files are locked while the backup is operating.

What if I try to commit (delete) my snapshot (Snap1) while Veeam is running?
VMware will throw the error "Unable to access file since it is locked". Then the "Snap1" snapshot will disappear from Snapshot Manager, but it's still there on the disk! Bad! However, the operation to commit that snapshot must be queued somewhere, for when Veeam finishes its backup run, it will not only commit its snap "Snap2", but "Snap1" will also commit as soon as Veeam releases its lock on the file. If anyone has information about this "queued-commit" behavior, I'd love to hear it.

Is Veeam doing a "Delete All" then?
No. If you have additional previous or later snapshots in the tree, they will still exist when Veeam is done.

So...can I take three snapshots, start a Veeam backup (creating a fourth snapshot), then delete snap #2?!...
Yes. You'll get the lockfile error and snap #2 will disappear from the list, and when Veeam is done snaps #4 and #2 will commit, leaving snaps #1 and #3.

Can I take a snapshot while Veeam is performing a backup?
Yes. Veeam will not touch your snapshots. As stated above, it doesn't do a "Delete All", it only commits the snapshot that it took.

If you have an existing snapshot when Veeam starts a backup, does it force Veeam to take a full backup?
No. Veeam happily performs an incremental backup.

Final notes: We've had various problems with Quest (Vizioncore) vRanger's behaviors surrounding snapshots in the past few years, to where we always suspended vRanger when we had snaps open. It's good to see that Veeam handles snaps gracefully. Current versions of vRanger may have improved snapshot behavior; I probably won't have an opportunity to test.

I always knew EULAs were a different language

LPSDO Parking

"LPSDO" is the Lincoln Public Schools District Offices, located at 5901 'O' St. Presumably many of the people who work there are teachers, ex-teachers, and school administrators -- i.e. mostly reasonably smart people. However, at 7:55am, I daily observe a large quantity of stupid. In the below photo, you will observe that the front parking lot is quite small with a limited number of spaces. It is always 100% full by 7:50am, perhaps much earlier (schools start early), with 50 or more cars in the expansion lot. Yet, daily, 'O' St. traffic is held up by people slowing to sub-10mph to turn into the tiny front lot, as it's a tight corner. Hey, smart people, you fail daily for years on end to get a front parking space, give up and go around the corner and stop screwing up rush hour.