I do not like to give negative press to people or companies very often, but once in a while there is a scenario that simply makes my blood boil and I have to let others know just in case they find themselves in a similar situation. This is a rant. If you don't like to read rants on blogs, check out some of my other articles. If you want to save yourself some hassle and you're looking to shop at iBuyPower.com, read on. Here's the gist so you don't have to spend time reading: don't buy from them.

I recently went to www.ibuypower.com to buy a new gaming rig. It's been about 6 years since I purchased a computer that was up-to-spec for playing today's high-power graphics games like Crysis, so I wanted to give myself a little treat. I asked around and someone suggested I check out ibuypower for thier decent prices and configurator available through their website. Admittedly, I did like the ability to change just about every aspect of my future-machine -- the major downside of that configurator is that there is no option to save the configuration that you just worked so hard to perfect and you must start again from scratch when you're ready to buy. But that is not the point of this post...

So I found the box I wanted, specced it to be a little more expensive than a cheap-o gaming rig (just over $1k) and put in my order with standard ground shipping (sloooooow). On Feb 5, 2008 I placed my order and I began the difficult process of waiting. Their progression was not bad and I wanted to give them props where they deserved it (though the story has a bad ending):

• Feb 5, 2008: Order submitted
• Feb 6, 2008: Order received/processing
• Feb 7, 2008: Oops! -- I get a notice from iBuyPower that the power supply I ordered is too low-Wattage for the system I specced. I ordered a 400W and they suggested a 620W. For $60, I said go ahead
• Feb 11, 2008: Materials gathered
• Feb 12, 2008: Materials gathered (again?)
• Feb 14, 2008: Burn-in test (making sure the system works)

Man... that was a difficult week and a couple days. Now they ship it off and, because it's ground, it takes another 7 days to arrive. So 2 weeks after placing my order I got my system. I - was - stoked! I got the box, ran it down to the gaming room (aka basement) and noticed something strange... there was a clunking sound coming from the box as I moved it. I opened it up and pulled off the side of the case to find my Nvidia 8800GTS unscrewed from the PCI-E slot, rolling around the case!!

Oh man I was so pissed. The card is big and heavy so while it was rolling around during shipping it actually snapped the ends off the SATA HDD cables making the system completely useless.

And of course there is going to be some damage to the card that's been rolling around inside under the light-touch management of our fair FedEx carriers.

After some investigation, I saw that the screws they used to secure the PCI-E card were the size of HDD screws, not the normal hex-topped screws for the expansion slots. They card had fallen out because it was never tight against the chassis! Oh man... so pissed. So got an RMA number, sent it back to iBuyPower (they paid for shipping when it's for a repair) and had to play the same game of wait & see.

The big day finally came... Mar 4, 2008 I got the machine back from repair and - was - so - stoked! I picked it up ... and heard a clank. I couldn't believe it. What could it possibly be this time? Sorry for the poor shot, but it's from my iPhone (shitty camera):

See how the HD is just laying on the bottom of the chassis? See how there are screw holes up above where the HD is laying? I wanted to throw the thing out the window ... but then I couldn't get a refund.

I decided I had enough of their shenanigans (that's right, shenanigans!) and wanted a full refund. I called their customer support number (they have 1 receptionist, completely uninterested in anything you have to say) and waited about 20 minutes, seething, for Brian to pick up. Brian was green, I could tell. I was angry, he could tell. I said something along the lines of, "I want a refund and you guys are going to have to pick up the tab for shipping." Brian says something like, "That's not our policy. We only pay shipping on repairs. You pay shipping on refunds." I tell him to stop talking and find a manager. Richard answers the phone (I assume he's a manager) and I tell him something like, "<the whole story>. It is only reasonable that you guys pay for me to ship this back." He says OK, no problem. They pay for shipping, I get a full refund, and I get to wash my hands of the whole ordeal.

The things that make ibuypower hard to deal with are:

1. Poor customer service - if you can actually get through to someone you may get lucky with having your questions answered, but getting through is tough.
2. Incompetent technicians - both of my machines were broken due to carelessness on the technicians' part. If they had simply used the proper screws, none of this would likely have happened.

The things that make ibuypower interesting:

1. Their configurator and selection
2. Their willingness to listen to reason in special cases and do what is right for their customers (1 case study)

(Not so) lately I have been hearing the cry of the frustrated, exhausted masses for certain public officials to be impeached. Every time I heard that, I started thinking, "What does it take to impeach a president?" So I started asking people and the interesting thing about all the answers is that they started with, "I think..." Now, thinking is terrific. Thinking is essential! Free, independent thought is not only what started this country, but also what maintains any level of virtue that is left within these borders (of which there remains a great deal). When discussing something as serious as impeachment, it seems to me that calling for something blindly is a bad idea and that some very quick fact-finding can go a very long way.

I am a political retard -- I am only catching up on my Constitutional awareness this late in life, but it's better now than never. For this reason, it did not occur to me to actually look in the Constitution for the answers I was looking for. I quickly found other people say RTFM and so I checked out www.usconstitution.net. There I found Article 2 (Executive Branch), Section 4 (Disqualification) which states:

Ok, that looked like a good place to start! Unfortunately, that site didn't contain all that I was looking for, so hunting a little harder I came across http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0764613.html. Paydirt. So it turns out that:

1. Impeachment is a formal accusation of wrong-doing with an intent of removing the official from ever serving in "any Office of honor, Trust or Profit under the United States" (god I love that language!). An impeachment trial follows the accusation.
2. The trial can result in either an acquittal or a conviction -- the conviction requires a 2/3 vote of the Senate.
3. Our country has witnessed the impeachment of two U.S. presidents: Andrew Johnson (numero 17) for violating the Tenure of Office Act and Bill Clinton (numero 43) for grand jury perjury and obstruction of justice. The Johnson conviction failed by a single vote, resulting in his acquittal. The Clinton acquittal was not so tense with a vote of 45-55. It is noteworthy that 10 Republicans sided with the full body of Democrats for Clinton's acquittal.
4. Richard Nixon (numero 37) was not impeached, but saw his doom looming on the horizon and resigned before it became an issue.

Adrian Crenshaw of www.irongeek.com does the public a service by detailing how to use GPG and the FireGPG Firefox addon to encrypt and digitally sign letters from Internet-based email accounts.

http://irongeek.com/i.php?page=videos/using-GPG-PGP-FireGPG-to-encrypt-and-sign-email-from-gmail

Update from the Wehe/Mitten's:

Well, we finally have some telephone service (house line still out but Peter's is working) and electric.

I am facing the removal of most of my grove. The experts are telling me to wait 2 months, however, it is pretty clear that a large number of them have been severely damaged. The grove fire was from wind blown embers.

SDGE is removing the palms along the road at the front of the house. They have been assessed destroyed and a danger to the electrical lines, and the house across the road. I am happy they are doing this removal as it would be very expensive for me.

The grove irrigation melted completely. The gentleman who picks my grove brought in his crew - who are now out of work picking avocados as so many groves have been destroyed - and has completely replaced all of the sprinklers and risers and repaired damaged lines and shutoff valves. So the trees were watered yesterday for the first time. The house irrigation was very damaged as well and all of the hose bibs were melted and that is being repaired as I write.

The fire came within 3 feet of the back and burned some ground plants but never entered the retaining walls to the front and around the back of the house. All buildings are in great shape and aside from washing everything down and probably having a lot of dirt for several months we are in superb shape.

The overall cleanup, removal, fence rebuild and outside damage to furnace/ac and exhaust fans will probably take 3 months. The insurance adjuster was here Saturday and has assisted in fulfilling my deductible so that some money can come to take care of the growing "to do" list.

Our road was lucky and each house survived intact.

The State of California has wildfire fighters who are contracted with from county to county. These are the fighters who come into areas that cannot possibly have the manpower to fight the blazes. They are called Cal Fire and they are amazing. We had an engine and team at each of our homes. They congratulated the neighborhood and N.C. Fire Dept. for a job well done at clearing and maintaining clean areas around our homes. We met and talked with firefighters throughout the weekend. They came to our homes to meet us. It was very emotional to shake their hands and say thank you. Most of them were from the Sacramento area and each of them mentioned that this is what they are trained to do and have little opportunity to use the skills they have worked so hard to build.

The fire has removed all brush from the surrounding areas of our homes. This will now permit many of us to begin spraying Roundup and Stumpbuster to maintain these bare areas. We are lucky to have a native plant that we call sugarbush - sumac family - and it is fire retardant. If we keep the ground clear and encourage the growth of these bushes that become trees, the birds will continue to have a living space and we will be much more protected in the event of another fire.

As we view our moonscape, we now imagine what will be encouraged to grow back that we haven't seen in many years. Wild lilac predominated the bowl behind the house 10 years ago but the underbrush pretty much choked it out. I am hoping the lilac will return as it was beautiful.

It is definitely smelly and sooty and our white dog, Jake, will be gray, but we are all celebrating our good luck and blessings.

Thanks for the calls and the prayers, we have appreciated each one.

Kathy

I tried to embed it into my page here, but it screwed everything up:

http://view.break.com/233191

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Offering a grammar lesson guaranteed to make any English teacher cringe, President George W. Bush told a group of New York school kids on Wednesday: "Childrens do learn."

Bush made his latest grammatical slip-up at a made-for-TV event where he urged Congress to reauthorize the No Child Left Behind Act, the centerpiece of his education policy, as he touted a new national report card on improved test scores.

The event drew New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, Education Secretary Margaret Spellings plus teachers and about 20 fourth and fifth graders from P.S. 76.

During his first presidential campaign, Bush -- who promised to be the "education president" -- once asked: "Is our children learning?

On Wednesday, Bush seemed to answer his own question with the same kind of grammatical twist.

"As yesterday's positive report card shows, childrens do learn when standards are high and results are measured," he said.

The White House opted to clean up Bush's diction in the official transcript.

Bush is no stranger to verbal gaffes. He often acknowledges he was no more than an average student in school and jokes about his habit of mangling the English language.

Just a day earlier, the White House inadvertently showed how it tries to prevent Bush from making even more slips of the tongue than he already does.

As Bush addressed the U.N. General Assembly on Tuesday, a marked-up draft of his speech briefly popped up on the U.N. Web site, complete with a phonetic pronunciation guide to get him past troublesome names of countries and world leaders.

Spin is powerful. Beware of spin and try to use it to your advantage when you can. Right now the spin on the war in Iraq is that, with the successes recently claimed by U.S. President George W. Bush and General David Petraeus, we will be able to bring home 30,000 troops to their families and loved ones waiting for them back here State-side in mid-2008. What none of the "news" sources seem to be talking about is that the troops surge that began earlier this year (I don't remember when the surge began, but it was voted on in Feb '07) deployed 21,500 extra troops to Iraq.

Let's do some math: 30,000 - 21,500 = 8,500. Damn, I'm glad 8,500 troops who were not involved in the surge are coming home. I'm not going to go so far as to say they should all come home, though I am of the opinion that we (being a uni-lateral U.S.) should never have gone into Iraq. The math is easy -- thinking critically about what's actually happening in this country is hard.
The headlines I've been seeing suggest that these 30,000 troops are a significant reduction in forces over in Iraq. That's spin people! It's a significant reduction of POST-SURGE troops! Keep everything in context; remember this war for the future. I'm paraphrasing Bill Maher in saying that the stupid are hasty and over-confident where the intelligent are hesitant and self-doubting. Our president was hasty and over-confident going into Iraq in 2003. Do you think that means he is stupid? I do.

+ =

Slashdot contributor Tech.Luver made me aware of a study today that correlates the IQ of high school age students with those students' sexual activity. Finding: fewer (approx 50%) avg. intelligence (IQ 70-90) students are virgins while those significantly above or below the average are more likely to be virgins during high school.

I have to say, nerds look a certain way and run with certain packs, so I think that may have something to do with it. But with great power comes lack of fashion sense and social skills.

Here's the link http://www.gnxp.com/blog/2007/04/intercourse-and-intelligence.php.

Pure Pwnage has released episode 14. Check it out... it has a scary ending!!!

XKCD r0x0rs!