since i was under a time constraint (the current custodian of my aunt’s pension gave me 30 days to process a rollover, otherwise it would have been paid out as a full payout to me), i decided to walk into a wells fargo branch locally (my issues are with BOTH branches in pottsville, PA) and explain the situation to them. i had already researched it, and found through their website that they did in fact offer inherited IRA accounts (that was a major problem, also…not every bank or financial institution does).

i figured, there’s no way they could possibly mess this up…even if they didn’t know how to do this, they’re a major US bank with branches in nearly (if not entirely) every state in the country. surely, they’d at least be able to direct me to the right person to talk to if they didn’t know how to set it up. apparently, i was dead wrong.

the banker at the local branch called his corporate HQ to figure out what to do. they walked him through the process, and we filled out some forms. i signed and had notarized the form to have the current custodian transfer the money into my shiny new wells fargo inherited IRA account. he said the new account should be set up in 3-5 days, and the money transferred from the old custodian shortly thereafter. problem solved.

except, it wasn’t. not by a long shot. when i hadn’t heard anything a week and a half later about what was going on, i decided to call wells fargo’s 800 number. after being transferred around several times to several different areas, they finally found my new account somehow. i don’t remember if they found it through my SSN, or my mortgage (which, after this debacle, unfortunately is still with wells fargo). they said they could see that the forms were received by their processing department and were being processed. yes, this was 10 days later. still being processed, after i was told the account would be set up and ready to go in 3-5 days. i called again the following monday. still being processed…now we’re 14+ days after i filled out the paperwork.

fast-forward ANOTHER WEEK. i speak with wells fargo again, after not hearing anything for yet 10 more days. this time, we’ve got an update. after transferring me all over the place, again, and keeping me on hold for almost an hour, they finally find me in the system. the paperwork has been sent back to the current custodian. it was sent out earlier in the week. they’re waiting on them. i think to myself: “excellent, we might finally be getting somewhere.”

until yesterday, when i called the current custodian to check on the status. “we have no record of any forms being received.” the bankers at the branch where i filled the forms out initially can’t find anything. not under my SSN, not under my aunt’s SSN. they have no idea what’s going on. i have a call into another banker at that branch. i’ll update here when i have a better idea what’s going on.

as of right now, we’re at 32 days since i filled out the forms at the branch on good friday. THIRTY-TWO. after i was told the account would be set up and ready to go in 3-5 days.

to add to this whole story – they also severely bungled my mom’s inherited IRA. both mine and her’s are coming from the same custodian, same pension account. with my mom’s “account” (and i use that term loosely), the branch also has no record of the forms ever being sent anywhere. nothing can be found with either SSN.

i’m very glad i don’t have any banking accounts with wells fargo…but unfortunately, my mortgage is stuck there. if you have any money there, i’d strongly recommend you consider moving it elsewhere as soon as possible. their incompetence knows no bounds…

earlier today, i found an article that explains why – they simply don’t care.

apple stackExchange

On Mac Rumors, sla252 says:

Just got off the phone with Apple tech support. They admitted there is no way to remove yourself from an iMessage group chat. The tech guy says the best thing we can do is go to http://www.apple.com/feedback

in addition, lifehacker reported on this back in december – although it doesn’t appear they caught the even larger implications. still, the bug they reported on and this issue are certainly related and intertwined. the fact that iphone users are replying to everyone in the group is what causes this mess in the first place.

people need to stay on apple’s case about this and demand that it be fixed. we’ll keep you updated if any progress is made.

source: lifehacker, Cory Watilo blog

As it stands right now Netflix is spending $4 billion on licensing fees for the next few years and CEO Reed Hastings foresees them spending billions more. They are currently working on developing original content starting off with “Lilyhammer” which you can watch now, “House of Cards” which is being produced by David Fincher and stars Kevin Spacey, and have made a deal to revive the much loved show “Arrested Development”. While this is a good effort, it’s not going to be enough to keep people subscribed.

The other problem is that the content providers still willing to provide content want much, much more money now that they see how successful Netflix has been. The original Starz deal had Netflix paying $30 million per year, but when it came time to renegotiate, Starz demanded $300 million annually, which Netflix was unwilling to pay. Netflix may be able to get more content for their streaming library, but that would likely require them to raise their rates, which is something I seriously doubt they are willing to do after the major backlash from the 60% price hike a while back. Also, I don’t think anyone would want to pay more right now with the way their streaming library looks.

The need the price hike to pay for the content, but they need the content to justify the price hike. It’s quite the pickle. And even if they can manage to make this work for a short time, what’s to keep the content providers from demanding EVEN MORE for the content the next time, starting the whole cycle over again. With no clear way to get the content people want to see in the streaming library, Netflix may be in some real trouble.

the problem appears to be with the new kernel, 3.0.0.18. there’s a bug that is causing general protection faults with a good number of applications – i myself have seen chrome, chromium, nautilus, and ubuntu software center all go kaput.

booting into 3.0.0.17 resolves the issue, so we recommend you do that for now. it has been noted on a few sites that the new kernel that was pushed out, 3.0.0.19, resolves this issue. we haven’t had a chance to test that yet, but we will do so within the next few minutes – check back here for an update.

you can set your system to allow you to choose which kernel to boot by doing the following:

- open terminal
- run this command (without quotes, of course): gksudo gedit /etc/default/grub
- change GRUB_TIMEOUT to -1
- save the file
- run this command (again, without quotes): sudo update-grub
- reboot

you should now be presented with a menu at boot, at the top of which (if you haven’t already updated to 3.0.0.19) you should see the faulty kernel – 3.0.0.18. choose “previous linux versions” and boot into .17, until the problem is resolved.

UPDATE: so far, so good on the .19 kernel. we will keep you posted if we have any issues.

http://askubuntu.com/questions/119407/all-browsers-crashing-after-upgrade
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/linux/+bug/972821

one of my friends, an iphone user, sent out a group message and included me (along with several other iphone users). the problem is that even though i’m done with my part of the conversation, i still get every single reply from EVERY OTHER MEMBER OF THE GROUP that is an ios user…which in this case, appears to be about 7 or 8 people. my phone is literally blowing up with a text message every 5 seconds.

the fun part about this is that when i reply, my message only goes to whichever user i reply to…making “group messaging” to non-ios users pretty much useless. how apple couldn’t see this as a major problem is beyond me.

to make matters worse, there’s no way for me to get out of the group. i’ve been advised by my friend (who’s an apple guru) that for ios users, all they need to do is remove the group message to stop any further replies from coming to their phone…i obviously don’t have that option in android. every message comes through to me, in a separate thread (one thread for each person in the group message).

the way i see it, there are two ways apple can fix this:

1) include a check in the group messaging portion of ios so that replies aren’t sent to non-ios users – this seems like it shouldn’t be too difficult. ios already does a check when sending a text message to see if the person on the other side is an ios user, so it can send the message as an imessage. why doesn’t it do the same thing here? again, to a non-ios user, being a part of a group past the initial message is completely useless, since you can’t reply to the entire group anyway.

2) at least give non-ios users a way to get out of the group – perhaps in the same manner you can stop advertising messages from short codes (‘text STOP to xxxxx to stop these messages’, or something of that sort).

i have an unlimited text plan, but i can see an android user who doesn’t have unlimited texting getting hit with a HUGE phone bill because of something like this. actually, this could be an unmitigated DISASTER for ANY non-ios user…not just android.

imagine a non-ios user without a text plan getting included in a single group message that includes 100 iphone users – now imagine each user in that group sends just one reply. that non-ios user without a text plan just received 101 text messages (100 replies + the original). at $0.20 per message, their phone bill for this month just increased by $20 – IN A MATTER OF MINUTES (if not seconds). now imagine five or six people from that group decide to strike up a conversation via group message, over a period of a few hours – then imagine how high that bill might go from there…as they send brilliant messages like “k,” “yep,” and “alright.”

an even more interesting twist is that the messages (at least in the particular group i’m being spammed by) come through as MMS – which cost more to send/receive with most carriers. verizon in particular charges $0.25 per MMS (as opposed to the $0.20 per message i mentioned earlier).

if i’m missing something and there’s an easy way to get myself out of the group, please feel free to add a comment to this story and let me know…if not, this is something that needs to be addressed by apple IMMEDIATELY.

apple support discussion

here’s the great thing, though – if you send it back, you’ll get a brand new 6th generation nano in return. i sent out my two 1gb first generation nanos to apple last week, on tuesday. today, i received two brand new 8gb sixth gen nanos. for free. apple paid shipping both ways.

anyway, if you’ve got a first gen nano yourself and want to get in on this, the link to the replacement program will be included below. all you need to do is go to the website, and enter your serial number (the site will tell you if you’re eligible or not). if you’re eligible, apple will send you an envelope with a pre-paid shipping label on it. all you’ll need to do then is put your nano into the envelope and take it to any fed ex location to be shipped back to apple…a few days later, you should have a brand new nano in your posession.

here was my timeline for my two old first generation ipods:

march 5 – filled out the form online
march 6 – received pre-paid packages to ship nanos back in
march 27 – dropped packages off at fed ex location to be shipped
april 2 – received two brand new nanos

if i had lived closer to a fed ex location, i probably could have had the two new ipods in less than a week and a half total.

i’m thoroughly impressed with the quick turnaround on this. kudos to apple (and those of you who know me know that’s a difficult thing for me to say – i’m an android guy).

apple support: first generation ipod nano replacement

here are a few that are on my list:

iPod touch, iPad, mac mini, macbook pro, iMac – okay, sure this is more than one thing. but i’m going to have more money than i can conceivably spend in a lifetime…why not splurge a bit? while i’m not a fan of anything apple really (i’ve got an android phone and tablet, and love both of them), i’ve always been intrigued by their technology and wanted them as toys to play with. so, why not?

ps vita – while i rarely turn on my ps3 (other than to use it as a blu ray player), i’d like to have a handheld gaming device. hell, let’s throw a nintendo 3ds in there while we’re at it…and a game boy, if i can find one in decent shape on eBay.

dodge viper – drool. ever since i was a kid, i always said i’d own a viper no matter how much money i had to save to do so. if i win mega millions, obviously money is no longer a concern. throw a lamborghini and a ferrari in there too, for good measure.

spelling manor, los angeles – it’s in LA, and there’s a bowling alley inside the house. enough said.

interestingly enough, i haven’t found a good write-up on how to do this anywhere on the web – so i decided to write my own.

i stumbled upon this while trying to get the website that runs the sling player for my google tv box to load on my PC (running ubuntu 11.10). i tried everything i could think of in chrome to try to trick the page into thinking i was actually a logitech revue, with no success. a bit later that day, i found this…and it works.

the key lies in sling media’s new “embedded slingplayer.” this is a flash based player that can be inserted onto any web page, and played in any flash capable browser (at least we assume so, we’ve only tested it in both chrome and firefox in ubuntu 11.10 – it works in both).

to test the theory, those of you who are running linux can head on over to nerdalerts’ slingplayer for linux. this page should open the embedded slingplayer, and allow you to log in and select your slingbox and have full control over it.

of course, there are restrictions – not having access to the guide the PC version gives you is one that comes to mind. still, this will enable you to do most things you’d want to do with your slingbox. you can change channels, change inputs, perform any of your home remote functions, go full screen, etc.

if you want to do this yourself, just save a HTML file on your computer with the following code in it…

<iframe src="http://slingplayer.slingbox.com/embedded/slingplayer.php" frameborder="0" width="768" height="800"></iframe>

now, whenever you want to watch your slingbox, just open that file in your web browser and you should be good to go. or, you can use our sling player. the choice is yours. considering where we’ve come from, it’s nice to finally have a choice when it comes to watching the slingbox on a linux system!

source: embedded slingplayer

we’ve owned this domain for a while, and recently i noticed that we hadn’t been doing much with it. actually, we hadn’t been doing ANYTHING with it.

so, i’ve decided to start fresh. all the previous content is here, but from this point forward we’ll do our best to keep you updated on tech news we find interesting. we’ll also give you a chance to communicate with us and other users, and help them make informed decision on their own tech issues (or potential tech purchases).

so for now, i’ll just say welcome! if you have any suggestions for us, please feel free! if you’re interested in potentially blogging along with us, let us know that too! we hope you’ll enjoy the new ideas and content!

stay tuned for our first new content in quite some time: a new solution to a long-standing problem concerning ubuntu (or linux in general) and sling media’s slingbox…