Welcome to MageLair Systems. We're glad you stopped by for a visit. On your left you'll find the links to the various sections of the site, as well as a few links to other sites.
URGENT WARNING?!
The following email was recently sent to me. I find it rather humorous and rather pathetic, to be honest. If the content were true, the email would not exist. No "target" is warned before the contract is carried out. If for no other reason, this advanced warning would leave a loose end that could lead to the capture of the so-called "hired man." Anyway, here's the email:
Attention: I felt very sorry for you, that your life is going to end this way if you fail to comply, no matter how much security you can acquire, everything will depend on you to choose you own path, i was paid to eliminate you and I have to do it within 5 days. Someone wants you dead by all means, and the person have spent a lot of money on this, the person came telling us that he wants you dead and he Provided us your names, photograph, and other necessary information we needed about you. If you are in doubt of this, then I will have no option that to carry out my duty immediately. Meanwhile, I have sent my boys to track you down and they have carried out the necessary investigation needed for the operation, but I ordered them to stop for a while and not to strike immediately because I just felt something good and sympathetic about you. I decided to contact you first and know why somebody will want you dead by all means, probably I believe you have done something very terrible to him/her. Right now my men are monitoring you, their eyes are on you, and even the places you think is safer for you to hide might not be. Now do you want to LIVE OR DIE? It is up to you. Get back to me now if you are ready to enter deal with me, I mean life trade, who knows, and I might just spear your life, $20,000.00 USD is all you need to spend. You will first of all pay $15,500.00 USD then I will send the tape of the person that want you dead to you and when the tape gets to you, you will pay the remaining $3,500 USD. If you are not ready, then I will have no choice but to carry on the assignment, after all I have already being paid before now. Warning To You Do not think of contacting the COP or even tell anyone because I will extend it to any member of your family since you are aware that Somebody wants you dead, and the person knows all members of your family as Well as employees of CRIME FIGHTERS. And For your own good I will advise you not to go out alone once it is 9pm until I make out time to see you and give you the tape of my discussion with the person who want you dead then you can use it to take any legal action. Good luck as I await your urgent respond. Do response to me on this email… If also you think you can ignore this mail and feel all is well then let’s see. You’ve less than 24 hours to reply this mail. REGARDS: RAZAK AKIN (HIRED MAN) EMAILrazak.akin@btinternet.com
OCZ Technology Support
On Wednesday, May 6, 2009, I submitted an RMA request for my OCZ700GXSSLI power supply. My support ticket was created at 2:23pm (11:23am where OCZ is located). The support Web site indicated a response to my ticket would arrive within 24 hours. On Friday, a little over 48 hours later, I submitted an update to my ticket adding additional information that had not been requested and expressed my dissatisfaction with the delayed response (my main system was down due to the failed power supply). I added that I would appreciate a response before I had to take negative action. I did not hear from them until Monday at 10:09am. They had plenty of time before the weekend to have come back with "we need your mailing address," which was information that was not requested by the support ticket form. Limping along on low-end systems, I provided my address which finally resulted in an RMA code. After getting the RMA code, I finally located the packing list for when I purchased the power supply. I informed OCZ that I had located that document, which proved my 36 month PowerSwap warranty still had 3 months left. With the RMA code issued on the 11th and today being the 14th, I am a little put off by the fact that they have still not shipped the replacement unit while I have shipped the defective unit. Of course, I was never asked about whether or not I was interested in an advanced replacement (usually secured with a credit card in case the RMA'd product was not shipped).
I had always considered OCZ to be a decent brand name, but I find myself hesitant to purchase another OCZ product for fear that I will have to resort to making their sluggish response known to the public before getting service if/when I find myself in a similar situation again. Customer satisfaction seems to be lost with far too many businesses these days. While I will admit that some customers take advantage of businesses, the action of treating all customers like they are unworthy of prompt service only serves to make more customers feel they have the right to take advantage of any business they can.
Got a LinkSys WRT55AGv2?
In mid-April of 2005 (it's now mid-November), I had a drive failure in my home router, a Linux server. Rather than buy a new drive and spend hours installing the OS and configuring iptables (Linux firewall), I made the mistake of buying a LinkSys broadband router. As I had a WAP11 on loan from a friend, I figured I might as well just get a wireless router and return the borrowed product. Since I had no issues with the WAP11, I decided that LinkSys would be a good choice (I now wish I'd gone with a Netgear unit). I decided on the WRT55AG because it listed the best wireless support for the hardware I have. Little did I know that I would end up with a v2 unit, the newer series that also happens to not be Linux based. The result is that I had a router that, when it wasn't locking up, worked for everything except the manual port forwarding I was defining. After an email exchange with LinkSys tech support, I get sent the 1.40 beta firmware. Well, now port forwarding was working and I experienced far fewer lock up conditions (few enough that I didn't mind). At the end of October, barely over 6 months after the initial purchase, the router stopped getting an IP from my ISP. I emailed tech support and was told that a new 1.60 beta firmware was available to address certain cable service provider conflicts. Up until this point, the router had been working fine with both Comcast and Charter cable providers, with the initial 2-3 lock ups a week on the 1.10 release firmware down to 1 lock up in 1-2 weeks on the 1.40 beta firmware. As soon as I flash in the 1.60 beta firmware, my lock ups appear to all be gone, however I get full router resets (all the lights do their initial power-up deal) at least once a day (generally 3 or more times a day). Contacting tech support leads me to making a voice call to LinkSys. That call leads to another call, and suddenly they think that it's defective hardware and simply needs to be replaced. When asked if they could justify replacing the unit because of required beta firmware causing this issue, they merely fell back to "well, it must be defective hardware." I asked if they could guaranty 100% operation of the new unit, with the same required beta firmware, only to have that question go unanswered.
The moral of my story? Caveat Emptor seems to fit the best when dealing with LinkSys.
Update: It's a couple days until December and I've still not received official "yes, we can guaranty 100% operation of a new router" or "here's a new beta firmware that we'd like you to try." Perhaps LinkSys is unaware of the fact that this page is found when WRT55AGv2 is plugged into Google's search engine.
Looking to get or have a Netgear Router?
After the fiasco with the LinkSys router and tech support, I made the misguided decision that Netgear would be a much better choice. This came from the fact that I had previous not had ANY trouble with Netgear products. I started using Netgear when I was using ISDN for internet, and their ISDN router was an excellent product. I later had great results when using Netgear network adapters, too. So, I bought the Netgear WNR834B. It had all the features I was needing, according to the box. The only issue I initially noticed was the complete lack of ability for my iBook to even authenticate on the wireless network. Now, that was annoying, but my first thought was an Apple issue on that, and so I've never even bothered to mention it to Netgear "support". However, I soon discovered another problem that I KNEW was the router. This router does not always recover from a connection reset. I am, at the time of this writing, a Charter Communications customer for both TV and internet (though they're trying to get me to use their phone service, too). As a result of this, and this is now verified to be a Charter issue and not me as this has happened with 2 routers at 2 completely different locations for me, as well a friend of mine that's about 30 miles away. The Netgear router does, at least, handle this connection reset smoother than LinkSys. The only part in this router that doesn't like all of this is the DNS process. Not all the time, but still almost every day, I have to reboot the router (unplug and plug it back in) to be able to turn domain names into addresses and, thus, be able to use the internet. Already established connections will remain operational, which is a small step above the LinkSys, at least. For anyone interested, you can read the "support" thread by clocking here.
Can you help?
A while back, I had a Micropolis 4345NS drive in one of my systems. The drive failed before I was able to get all the data backed up. Basically, all I lost was all my old DOS programming source code. I am currently in a situation where I would like to have that data recovered (and I finally have reliable backup devices, multiple CD and DVD burning drives). If there's anyone with one of these drives collecting dust, please contact me. MageLink is one of the programs I lost the current source for, and anyone that helps me recover this data will get a copy of that source (and any other source on the drive, if they like).
Update: I do have a functional drive mechanism and am currently working towards getting a clean room for the process of opening up both drives and transferring the platters from the bad mechanism to the good unit. As I do not know if the platters are required to be synchronized, I am planning to transfer them as if they are supposed to be synchronized. While I only need the drive to function long enough to copy off the data, I would rather not lose all hope of data recovery by failing to orient the platters correctly.
Dangerous Intelligence?
Recently (it's October 20th, 2005), something was said on the radio. It was regarding the term "computer" being antiquated, to which many had sent in letters explaining why it is still valid. This morning, another letter was read which claimed, albeit indirectly, superior knowledge on the subject. This letter was written by someone only claiming to be a PC technician, not a programmer. Perhaps that is why the author doesn't realize that while email is just information to be read, so are trajectories that are calculated on a calculator. The use of the result, and it's format, does not negate the fact that a computer is still computing to perform every task it's assigned to do. People use calculators for balancing their checkbooks. Should we stop calling them calculators and start calling them "money tracking systems"?
Math is used for so much, these days. Just because we may not think of it as a calculation doesn't mean it isn't. Maybe it's just that I have been a PC technician for 12+ years, but a programmer for 24+, which gives me a different perspective on the subject.