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Adventures in Craigslist

October 29, 2011 / Laslow posted in Apple, Hardware, Non-Tech, Rants / No Comments

Recently, after a friend of mine showed off his nice new HP Touchpad (running an early alpha of CyanogenMOD) I decided it was time to make the jump and get a tablet as well. The only problem was, being a broke bloke, it was hard to justify the purchase of one when I really didn’t need it. To solve this dilemma, I decided to sell my laptop, a Late 2009 Unibody Macbook (the 6,1 model) and purchase an Asus Eee Pad Transformer (and the dock).

After checking with friends (who laughed at the prospect of owning a Mac), and spamming the global distribution list at work (no bites there), I restored to posting ads on Craigslist and Kijiji (the latter of which brought in zero perspective buyers). The Craigslist ad, though, prompted a number of replies.

The problem, however, was out of all of the replies I received, only four of them were people who were genuinely interested. I won’t post those replies, but instead, the ones that were almost certainly scams.

So a little background information – when I posted the ad, under all of the specs I very clearly wrote “Cash only – must agree to meet me in person, in a public place that we both agree on”. The ensures that not only do I not have to worry about shipping the thing, but it assures me that I won’t get any fraudulent cheques, money orders, etc…. Unfortunately, the people who tend to perpetrate these scams tend to ignore these warns, as outlined below:

This first example was actually “Sarah”‘s second email to me – the first one was a generic “Do you still have the item for sale?” inquiry.

Hello,

Thanks for getting back to me on time,i will like to buy this item and

Am quite comfortable with the condition of the item since i wont be

making any repairs on it,and i will be very more than happy if you can

help me get this item shipped, and am willing to offer $770 to include

the shipping fees through the USPS Express mail service,and i will be

paying you through my PayPal account so send me your PayPal email

address so i can make instant payment get back to me

…….ASAP….Thanks and GOD bless

Note the “GOD bless” at the bottom – I would imagine they were thinking “If I put that in, they’ll think I’m a god-fearing Christian and they’ll be sure to make the deal!”.

So what was wrong with this offer? Several things:
They ignored my Cash Only – Local Only warning. Never a good sign when they don’t even say “Hey, could you make an exception?”
The sentence structure/grammar are…well…horrible and far too formal. Definitely someone trying to sound on the up-and-up a little too hard.
Offering to pay more than the listed price. I listed the laptop for less than that. All four of the legit, local enquiries first offered less (in one case, far less) than my asking price. By offering to pay more, the scammer is hoping that you’ll be greedy and jump on the offer.

So why wouldn’t I try, take the money, and send it anyway? Well, the problem is that most of these involve stolen Paypal accounts. The person will get the account, not use it, and wait for something like this to come along (a relatively high-value item). They’ll then use that account to pay for it take the item, which they’ll then sell themselves. Meanwhile, the rightful owner of the Paypal account discovers the new unauthorized charge and files a dispute with Paypal. The money gets pulled from my account, and now I’m short both the money and the laptop. Pretty sneaky.

Another “Sarah” (which seems to be a commonly used name for the scammers) contacted me, asking a few more questions (“Do you still have the box”, and “What condition is it in”), before inevitably asking for my Paypal details to send the Payment. I politely replied that as the ad stated, I would only deal in cash and locally because of the chance of a stolen account being used. To this, she replied (in full):

my account is not stolen

Really? Well in that case, sure! I mean, I wasn’t positive, but you’ve managed to convince me!…Not.

Another one (again, the second email after the first “Is it available, what condition, etc…”):

Hello, thanks for your reply. I’m glad you still have the item for sale. Your asking price sounds OK to me. Payment will be make via money order with the shipping fee included. Payment will be deliver to you within 3 to 5 working days. Then pick up will commence immediate by my shipping agent once you have clear the payment in your bank. I will add extra 50$ to your last asking price if you agree to sell this item and hold it for me till you receive my payment. Kindly fill the below data for payment to be mail out tomorrow morning.

FULL NAME :
PHYSICAL ADDRESS :
CITY, PROVINCE :
ZIP/POSTAL CODE :
PHONE/MOBILE NUMBER :
ITEM AGREED PRICE :

I hope to hearing from you soon with the payment information in order to complete the sales asap. Thanks.

Regards,
Edward Parker.

Nope. Sorry.

There were a bunch more, but all were basically the same. In each instance, my typical reply is this:

As you appear to be illiterate, I well try to phrase my payment requirements in a simpler manner – a haiku:

Cash. Only. I mean it.
Must. Meet. In. Person. Okay?
No Exceptions. Thanks.

So that’s about it. I ended up getting a little less than I asked for it, and now I’m the proud owner of an Asus Eee Pad Transformer. Hopefully it’ll be a long time before I decide to sell anything online again.

Sparkies

September 23, 2011 / Laslow posted in Hardware, Makes Sense / No Comments

This morning, I was called over to the building we keep our Off-Site Backup NAS at. The new tentants had the local Cable Co. over to do an install, and they needed access to the secure room with all the networking kit in it.

I went over to let them in, and explained where the network drops terminated, where their cable run came from and went to, and answered a few other questions. They looked like they had things under control, so I left.

About twenty minutes later, I was called back over. The techs needed to unplug our UPS so they could put one of those dual-plug splitters in (has six outlets on the front and uses the two in the wall), however they ran in to a problem. At some point in the past, the screw had fallen out of the metal faceplate on that outlet.

When they went to unplug the UPS, they bumped the faceplate and it made contact with one of the legs on the UPS plugs, shorting it and causing lots of sparks.

I got there a few minutes after this happened, and the two were trying to figure out the best way to proceed. One of them had a pair of plyers in his hands, and was saying that he was going to just use those to grip the UPS plug and pull it out quickly. I asked if they’d thought of shutting off the power.

Silence.

So went over to the (of course, unlabeled) breaker panel and told them to yell when the UPS switched to battery power, then I started throwing breakers. After making it through all of them, they hadn’t made a sound. Knowing that the wiring in the building was kind of sketchy, and that there were a few other breaker panels, I told them I was going to go try another one. The one with the plyers then said, “Naw, I’ll just try this again.” and then proceeded to rip the plug out using the plyers. Sparks flew, and then the plug came out. He then used the plyers to knock the faceplate off (which was now scortched and had a chunk burnt out of it), and plugged the UPS back in. It showed “0″ for input voltage.

“I think I killed it.”

On a hunch, I walked over to the breaker panel and, sure enough, one of them was tripped. After resetting it, I heard the UPS go back online. Apparently, when I was throwing breakers, they weren’t paying attention.

So now I’m looking to relocate our Off-Site backups.

On Labeling

September 21, 2011 / Laslow posted in "It's a Feature", Hardware, Makes Sense, Networking / No Comments

What is this? I don't even...

HDD Replacement: Acer Aspire One and ZIF Drives

May 27, 2011 / Laslow posted in Hack, Hardware / 9 Comments

I ordered a 30GB 1.8″ ZIF drive to replace the crappy 8GB SSD drive in my old Acer Aspire One netbook. When I got the drive (a Samsung HS030GB) I very quickly discovered that the ZIF ribbon cable that came stock with the netbook didn’t work with it. The problem, it seems, is that Samsung uses a non-standard ZIF connector that is incompatible with 0.35mm ZIF cables (which are the standard). So, I shaved down one end of the ribbon and promptly broke it. Then, being an idiot, ordered a replacement set of cables on eBay without checking the thickness first (the listing stated they were for Samsung drives, although I should have known better than take that at face value).

I got the new set of cables today and, of course, they were all 0.35mm thick as well. I tried a few techniques to try to make the ends thinner but eventually just ended up with a bunch of butchered ribbons.

Remember kids, always review the specs of the drive and cable *before* ordering!

So I’ve ordered another batch of cables, this time making sure that one end has the correct thickness. Hopefully I’ll have a working netbook in a few weeks.

Update: The new ZIF cable came in (ProTip: when ordering ZIF ribon cables, if you need a smaller-than-0.35mm end, look for one where one end is blue (as pictured above), and the other end is white. The white end will be the smaller size)! Surprisingly, it fit, and after making a few modifications to the case (mainly removing the screw mounts for the old SSD) the new drive just dropped right in to place. Xubuntu is now installing, so I finally have a functional netbook again!

Short: A Small Problem with TrueCrypt and Toshiba Fastboot

March 15, 2011 / Laslow posted in "It's a Feature", Hardware, Makes Sense, Short, Troubleshooting / 2 Comments

Yesterday, I decided to encrypt my Toshiba Satellite C650D laptop with TrueCrypt – I opted for Full System Drive encryption, which involves TrueCrypt adding its own bootloader. After answering the usual questions from the setup wizard, it prompted me to reboot to test the settings. After Windows restarted, I was prompted to enter the password I had specified earlier. The only problem was, when I started typing, nothing happened – I also couldn’t use ESC to bypass the password prompt, or CTRL+ALT+DEL to reboot. My only option was to power off. When I turned the laptop back on, though, I was able to enter the password without issue.

After the encryption process finished, I rebooted the laptop again, only to find that keyboard input still wasn’t working when I needed to enter the bootloader password. Again, though, after powering it off and back on everything worked fine. On a hunch, I shut down the laptop completely, then turned it back on, and was able to enter the password without issue.

As it turns out, if you have Toshiba’s ‘Fastboot’ feature enabled in BIOS (allows for < 1 second from power button to bootloader, bypassing the BIOS splash screen and, apparently, some hardware initialization steps), TrueCrypt won’t recognize your internal keyboard (unfortunately, I didn’t have a USB keyboard handy to see if that would work) – but only on a reboot. From a cold boot, the keyboard is apparently initialized differently and works fine.

TL;DR Version: If you use TrueCrypt to encrypt your System Drive and have Toshiba Laptop, don’t use the Fastboot option in BIOS or you will not be able to enter your bootloader password when you reboot and will be force to cold boot every time.

Solved: X-FI Xtreme Audio PCI-E, Windows 7 x64, and a Microphone == No Love

February 8, 2011 / Laslow posted in "It's a Feature", Hardware, Microsoft, Troubleshooting, Windows / 2 Comments

My Realtek HD Audio onboard sound card died the other day, and as my motherboard was out of warranty, I opted to do the laziest thing and simply bought a PCI-Express sound card instead (which was a challenge, as none of the stores where I live that were open on Sundays sold sound cards. Go figure).

Being cheap (and considering that the onboard card did just fine), I opted for a Soundblaster X-FI Xtreme Audio PCI-E (SB1040). I didn’t do a lot of research before making the purchase, which I probably should have, because the ‘X-FI’ in the name of the card is an out-right lie. As it turns out, this is the only card in the X-FI line to use a legacy Audigy-series processor instead of an X-FI one.

As such, there’s a rather large issue with driver support. I was able to install the latest driver from Creative’s website (Web Update 2), and the audio-out worked fine, however I couldn’t get my microphone to work. At all.

On the back of the card, there’s a blue port for Line In which doubles as the Mic port (known, apparently, as a FlexiJack or Flexi-Jack). By default, Windows 7 detects it as only a Line In port with no option to change it. There’s supposed to be an option in the Creative Console Launcher, however the driver update from the website doesn’t install that. No matter, there was a separate download for that. Unfortunately, even after installing it there wasn’t an option to change the Line In jack to a Mic jack.

As it turns out, there’s a specific way to get it working that no one blog or forum post out there has managed to nail down. Here’s the trick.

Download and install the latest driver from Creative (1.04.0000)
Reboot.
Download and install the Creative Console Launcher (Beta – 2.61.49).
Reboot.
Open the Creative Console Launcher (should be in the Start Menu under All Programs -> Creative)
Click on the last icon (shown below) called ‘Jacks’.
On this screen you should be able to change the ‘FlexiJack’ mode to Microphone (also shown below).

The Two Missing Options

That should be it! If this doesn’t work, there’s one more thing to try. Remove all of the Creative software, then install Windows 7 Service Pack 1 (at the time of writing this, still in Release Candidate form) and try the above again – I already had the SP1 Release Candidate installed when I did this, so it may or may not be required.

Good luck!

Update: I ended up returning this card because it lacks some very basic features that even generic onboard Realtek audio chips have, like Stereo Mix and Microphone Boost support. If you’re thinking of buying this card, think again!

Apple Needs to Attend (to) Bootcamp

September 15, 2010 / Laslow posted in Apple, Hardware, Software, Windows / No Comments

My primary workstation at work is an Apple iMac 9,1 (in Apple terms, an ‘early-2009′ model), and spends 99% of its uptime running Windows 7 x64 (which actually isn’t supported on this model – you need to manually run the x64 Bootcamp .msi on the disk to install, as the setup.exe reports that 64-bit Windows isn’t supported).

During the installation of Bootcamp, though I noticed something — Apple although Apple appears to check which model of computer you’re using for compatibility purposes, it doesn’t do the same when determining which drivers to install. As such, the installation take approximately eight-billion times longer to complete than it should (sorry, I’m no good with numbers), and leaves Programs and Features looking like this:

I mean, really Apple? Is it really that hard to add a simple WMI call (WMIC BIOS Get SMBIOSBIOSVersion, perhaps?) and compare it to a simple CSV-file and only install the drivers required for that system?

It’s a good thing they stopped making the I’m a Mac commercials, or Justin Long would need to put on fifty pounds to account for Apple’s bloat.

An HTC DoA: Part 4

July 13, 2010 / Laslow posted in Android, Google, Hardware, Support, Troubleshooting / No Comments

Continued from Part 3.

So the unthinkable has happened – I actually received the shipping label from HTC yesterday! I immediately boxed up the phone and dropped it at a nearby FedEx box, and then proceeded to hammer the F5 key on the FedEx tracking screen.

Also to my surprise was the fact that the shipping label was for Priority Overnight shipping, and that the package reached its destination at 7:45am (PST) this morning! I’ll update this post later on when HTC contacts me regarding my refund.

Update (07/16/2010): Still no contact from HTC. However, after re-reading the initial email they sent, it does state:

Once we receive the items we will review the condition and we will contact you by phone or email if we have any further questions. If no additional information is needed a refund should show on your credit card within 14 business days of receipt of the return.

So at this point I’ll be sitting back and waiting for my credit card balance to update. I did end up ordering the replacement phone from Google on Tuesday, and it arrived (in working condition, no less!) this morning! Good thing, to, because I hear that this is Google’s last batch of N1′s that they’ll be selling through the web store….

Concluded in Part 5.

An HTC DoA: Part 2

July 8, 2010 / Laslow posted in Android, Google, Hardware, Rants, Support, Troubleshooting / No Comments

Continued from Part 1.

Day four of the return process and no real progress to report. According to the details given to me by HTC on Monday (see part 1), I should have received a shipping label in my email the following day. When I didn’t, I called HTC support back. The agent I spoke with told me to check my spam folder (already done – nothing), and then said that she would ‘escalate the ticket’ and a label sent out right away. I thanked her, disconnected, and waited.

And waited.

End of day Wednesday rolled around and still no shipping label. I called HTC again and was told that it can take an extra day when things go through the escalation process and that I should expect it to show up in my email no later than Thursday.

Well, here we are on Thursday and still no label.

I called HTC yet again, and was told that yes, I should have received the shipping label today. The agent then proceeded to tell me that he update the ticket, ‘increase the priority’, and that I should keep waiting.

Really, HTC? I’m normally a pretty patient guy, but come on! I’ve heard of American customers getting new, replacement phones within days, but we Canadians need to go through this gong show of a return process and then re-purchase the device because otherwise we end up a refurbished phone instead of a new one. This is bad PR, people. It’s time to start spreading the news.

Find out what happens next in Part 3.

An HTC DoA: Part 1

July 6, 2010 / Laslow posted in Android, Google, Hardware, Support, Troubleshooting / No Comments

When Google first offered the Nexus One in Canada (by making a GSM version for AT&T, which is compatible with Rogers, Telus, and Bell in Canada), I jumped on. I had my order in the day the web store was updated, and in my hands by the end of the same week. Despite the cost, I consider it the best gadget purchase I’ve ever made.

Fast-forward to last week. With my wifes birthday coming up, I thought it would be nice to surprise her with a trip to the local Telus dealer (her carrier) for a shiny new phone. After looking at their offerings (the only two real considerations were the Motorola Milestone and the HTC Hero), she decided that she’d come down with a case of Phone Envy and wanted a Nexus One as well.

So, no big deal – we ordered the phone and waited. Unfortunately, due to the stat holiday on July 1st, the phone didn’t arrive on Friday like expected and instead came in yesterday (the following Monday). I left the phone plugged in to charge, and when the light turned green to say all was well I fired it up.

And waited.

And waited some more.

The Boot Screen on my other, unlocked (and functional) Nexus One

After about five minutes of staring at the above picture (minus the lock on the bottom, as I hadn’t gotten around to doing that yet), I got the feeling something was wrong.

I powered off the phone by pulling out the battery, then booted in to HBOOT mode (hold down the VOLUME DOWN key while pressing Power). That worked fine, so I tried to enter recovery. Unfortunately, I was met with the same screen. I tried several more times for both normal mode and recovery without success. Then I gave up and called Google.

At this point, I’d like to point out that I’m fairly certain it’s just a software error. Unfortunately, the only way I could really do anything about that would be to Unlock the phone, which voids the warranty. As such, the call to support was warranted.

I called the number listed on the Google Phone Contact Support page (1-888-48-NEXUS) and after a few quick IVR choices I was greeted nearly immediately by a tech. He asked about the problem, what I had tried, and immediately agreed the phone was D0A and would need to be replaced. That’s when things started to go downhill.

The problem is that I live in Canada, and HTC has a different policy for international orders than their standard ‘send you a replacement and then send the old one back’ policy for domestic ones. If you live in Canada and get a DoA phone, you have two options:

Send it back via their normal repair process and get a refurbished phone (no option for a new one)
Initiate a ‘Buyers Remorse’ return, get a refund for the device, and then order a new one.

The choice was fairly obvious – I ordered my wife a new phone, so that’s what she was going to get. After gathering a little more information, the Google tech transfered me over to HTC support to process the return order.

As the new tech was going over the specifics, a thought occurred:

Me: Okay, so I do the return, and within 14 business days of you receiving the device and okay’ing everything, you credit the purchase price back, correct?

Tech: Yes, that’s correct.

Me: So what about the duty charge that I had to pay CoD?

Tech: Oh, that. Hang on. –Pause– Okay, I checked on that, and what happens is you’ll get some paperwork from us once the refund has been processed. Once you have that paperwork, contact Customs and they’ll be able to issue a refund.

So at this point, I may have to wait three weeks for credit from HTC (although apparently it usually doesn’t take that long), and then I can file a claim to get my ~$70CAD that I paid for taxes back.

All was said and done, and I prompted received a confirmation email repeating what the agent said. However, as of posting I still haven’t received a FedEx shipping label in my email as promised. I called HTC back, and they escalated the ticket and said they’d resend the label, so now I’m waiting on that. Once I’ve got the label in and the phone sent away, I’ll order another N1 and see what happens.

The pain begins in Part 2!

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