Archive for April 18th, 2006
Ok, since I have my personal site; I think I can use it to rant. I absolutely hate Dish Network. Remember my earlier post about Dilbert? Well, I think they are a bunch of ‘drunken lemurs’. Thats how much I hate them. Yesterday when I go to turn on my TV; the dish receiver wasn’t working properly. Any channel that I would try to view it would print out an error message: “You are not authorized to view this channel.”. Thats funny; because I remember being authorized last night when I was watching the same channel. So I go through the all too familiar process of ‘hold down the power button, wait 10 seconds, and then wait for it to reestablish connection”. So I do that, and then I wait about 5 minutes while it tires to ‘download the TV GUIDE’. Mind you I only have about 60 channels. So I thought all is good now. Boy was I Wrong!!
It somehow decides that it is only going to let me view the local channels (about 5) and my 5 High Definition channels. All other channels it is still saying the same error message. So I decide to call Customer Service. I wasn’t really looking forward to it since it was about 7pm and I knew I would be on hold for a long time. Thank god for speaker phones!
Anyways; first time I call, a girl answers. I explain the problem and then she says: Please hold on while I transfer you to someone who can help you. Ok, why didn’t that person just pick up the phone in the first place. I knew what was coming up next. Against my better judgement; I said: “Ok, transfer me”. As soon as I said that; I heard this nice voice message: “If you would like to make a call, please hang up and try again.” AGHHHH! She disconnected me! This was not going good. I decided to call again; wait another 15 minutes on the phone. This time a tech picks up the phone (another girl). I explain the problem and she says: “Oh, it seems like you don’t have any reception”. 
Gee.. thanks.. Anyways; she offers to send someone to my home to “fix it”. So I ask how much is that going to be? $99!! But I have a warranty. Oh, because I have a warranty; now it will only cost me $29 to have someone from Dish Network come out and fix their Dish. I am sure glad I bought the warranty. Anyways; I decide to give it some time and call them tomorrow to schedule it. So I turn off the receiver and leave it unplugged.
Fast forward to this morning; we plug in the receiver.. and it WORKS! The damn thing just works. WOOT! Saved $29 (which will take me a year to make using adsense). Anyways; I am really pissed at Dish since they could have just told me to just turn off the receiver for a few hours but they just saw an opportunity to make some money and jumped on it. I can’t wait until my contract is over with them and I can go get Cable instead.
April 18th, 2006
As you may have noticed; I put Google adsense on my site about a week ago. The purpose is not to make money and retire early, although that would be nice. The main reason was to learn how this whole adsense thing works; and why people are raving about it. You must have seen those ads on the web where it says: ‘I made $16,000 on adsense in a month; learn how you can too!’. So it was ads like that which got my attention. I thought I might try this out and see how well it goes.
I have been trying a lot of adsense formats and colors lately to see what fits my site’s theme best. I think the key is to blend in the ads so that they don’t take away from the user experience. The best one I think is these ‘ad units’.
I think I have done a good job of that so far. Of course, the user is the ultimate judge. I have not seen the traffic go down; so I guess they are not that annoying. Anyways; let me just tell you that I am not making $16,000 a month! Its a few cents here and there; but the experience has been worth it. So now if any of my friends asks me: “Hey Nav, what is this adsense thing all about?”; I will be prepared to answer it.
So the title of this post contains “Darts”. You might wonder why that is. Well; ever since I posted bout those ‘USB controlled darts”; Google seems to think that my site is about darts. All the ads on the front page are for darts. Its amazing how this adsense text search works. Anyways; I should stop obsessing with this adsense thing and focus more on content; rather than the layout and color scheme of the ads. I think a lot of newbies make that mistake.
Edit: Now the blog is about Eminem. I am having too much fun with this.
April 18th, 2006
My review of Kulwinder Dhillon’s Video: Pailli from his album “Velli”.
Continue Reading April 18th, 2006
Intel has been taking quite a beating this year. This year started with so much fanfare: the new logo, new tagline, new apple machines. The stock is down about 25% for the year. Currently it tads a little above $19; and god knows where it might head after tomorrow’s earning news. As depressing as the stock price is as an employee; whats more of a concern is the negative media reporting. Everywhere you read, people are just writing about how much of a beating Intel is taking compared to AMD. Even Mr. I LOVE INTC (Jim Cramer) has switched sides. Jim Cramer is the host of wildly popular Mad Money show on CNBC. On one of his recent shows; he compared AMD to Toyota, and Intel to GM. If you haven’t noticed; GM isn’t doing too well.
Amid all this negative press; I was surprised to find a favorable review of an Intel chip. Tech Report reviewed Intel’s latest and greatest: CoreDuo chip. CoreDuo is basically two Centrino chips on one core. How good is the CoreDuo? Well, it was good enough for Apple to put inside their MacBook Pro, iMac and Mac mini. You can read the 16 page review for yourself. Tech Report not only rated CoreDuo as a superior mobile chip; but also as a viable alternative as a Desktop performer.
April 18th, 2006