Citizens Bank Not Focusing on it's Citizens

Well if your not one to want to read someone ranting and raving, I'm warning you know that this may be what this post turns into. Anyways, seeing as it's my birthday and all a recieved a pre-paid gift card issued by Citizens Bank from a relative. Great, as I've had past experiences with pre-paid gift card, especially ones that are usable just like a regular credit card and can thus be used anywhere. But after reading through all the accompanied paperwork, I go to find that you must register your card with Citizens Bank at one of there websites if you want to use it online. Great, and I figured that'd be no problem, I mean I'm more than willing to give them my name, address, and phone number if that's what I need to do to use it online. So I go over to the website, login with the proper credentials and find the link to register. Now normally, as with any website, the asterisk (*) denotes the fields that are required. So I fill in the fields denoted by the asterisk and try to submit my registration. But rather than processing my application to register the pre-paid gift card, instead the site throws up an errors saying that I gave an invalid social security number. First off the form I filled out did not denote the field with an asterisk, informing me it was required. Secondly what the hell do they need with my social security number. So I continue to read through all the paperwork looking to see if there was anything talking about the information they need, and of course there was nothing. So I found a number to call to register the card. Called it up, supplied the bank employee with whom I was speaking all the information he he need and continued to explain my problem. In which case I was told he could help me register my gift card. And continued on to first inform me registration was to primarily be used if the card was lost or stolen. In which case I explained it said in the accompanied information I must register the card if I planned on using it online, and as I'm not sure of how I plan ot use the card just yet, I figured I'd get it over with. So he responded by saying he understood but wanted to make it clear to me and continued to ask me the same question the form did starting with my social security number. Now don't get me wrong Citizens Bank may be a trusted bank but I'm not one to give out information like that to people, especially for something that should not even require it. To this I replied that I refuse to give my social security number to him, in which he respond it's required. Well again, how is this required because as of the website it's not denoted by an asterisks, saying it's a required piece of information. Again I told him I will not give him my social security number and that the website said it was not required, in which he said that it was required once more. This is where the conversation ended, as I told him, that wasn't gonna happen and I'll deal with this issue as a later date. Now, where does a bank get off requiring something they don't even need. Especially for something just so you can use a pre-paid gift card online or in case your card is lost or stolen. They where already paid for the card, now stop trying to control it's use, or at least don't make something that should be easy to do more difficult than it has to be. I mean this experience alone, has left a bad taste in my mouth. And to make it even better, any chance Citizens had of ever getting me to use there bank is now gone because of this. Maybe rather than trying to make things difficult for customers and end-users, Citizens need to start thinking about them and making things easier for them.

Business and the Thoughts that Associate it

Here is the first article in a series of many more to come based on "Running a Business Is Not As Easy as it's Made Out to Be!"

Originally when people create businesses they don't just jump out of nowhere and say, I'm making a business today? Well for most of us it's not that easy. In this article I plan to explore the ups and downs of creating a business and breifly touch upon the planning it involves.

So you want to start a business, but don't know where to start. Usually the best place to start is at the local Borders bookstore looking through just about any book you can find about creating a company in the state that you are in. For the most part, these books will lay a lot better groundwork and help tremendously when starting a business. But why do you want to start the business in the first place? That's the question you really need to ask your. Is it that you want to look professional, because your putting a lot of money into side jobs and want the benefits of being a business, or is it just because you want to say you own a business. Regardless of the reason let's look at the amount of time you will be putting into that business. First you have to file paperwork with your local government usually at City Hall stating that you are doing business as (and for the sake of this article I'm going to assume we are talking about a sole proprotiership). This at least in New York State is roughly going to run you about $35-40 last I checked, and this is just the very beginning. Then depending on what type of business this is you need to decide whether or not you have employees, because having employees come with have to pay medicaid, ssi, and many more taxes. So again I'm going to assume it's just yourself for now. Then by apply for your d.b.a you are also olibigating yourself to file quarterly taxes and paying your taxes on your expected income upfront. But do you know what it take to do your taxes as for being a business. I mean a lot of people can do there individual taxes by themself or with the help of TaxAct, Inuit, or insert product name here, but you also want to think about hiring an accountant who knows what he is doing, especially now and days with all the accounting scandals going on, do you really want to be responsible for your taxes. Then after you have that all figured out your ready to go, but wait don't forget what kind of business your in, all the costs you'll end up spending on your business, and even the costs you have to spend just to become or get into the business. And that about wraps up out intial breakthrough in the "Business and the Thoughts that Associate it."

OK, This Isn't the Post I Promised....

Ok, I know that this isn't exactly the post I promised to write next but that post, isn't quite finished yet. So without further ado, I bring to you this post....Ok, enough with the fun and games and on to the content. Well my old 1.67 AMD machine has been with me for quite a while and I figured it's about 5 years old and time for an upgrade. So I went to Newegg to browse around and ended up upgrading from a:

1.67 ghz AMD Athlon XP Processor
512MB of RAM
Geforce FX 5600
A Huge Server Tower (For those that saw it you know what I mean)

to the following system:

2.25 ghz AMD Athlon 64 Bit Processor
1GB of OZC High Performance RAM
Using the Same Geforce FX 5600 (and replace it in the old system with an old ATI Radeon 9600 I had laying around)
And a Desktop Case with Blue Neon Fans and a Front Panel LCD screen to help keep track of the temperature, time, and more.

So there you have it, as for the new machine, it will becoming my primary machine while the old machine will be running Ubuntu as soon as the new machine is all setup and running like I want it. This brings the PC count, to a Windows, Linux, and Mac (PowerPC) Machine, as least for more up-to-date machines. So until next time....and again I'm sorry I didn't get the promised article done yet...it's on it's way.

A Quick Update on Life

Well, not too much has happened lately. I have added Google Adsense to RockyRoad Entertainment's website just for fun. I'm pretty sure that RockyRoad Entertainment won't get a lot of revenue through Google's Adsense program but I guess we will see. In fact I've had this on the RockyRoad Entertainment website for at least a couple of month now, as well as Google Analytics. And suprisingly the site does pretty well for attracting visitors. I was suprised to see the number, which I won't release just yet, as I'm sure if everything that is in the works, works out those number can grow.
As for an update with Cingular Wireless, I have to say I'm still impressed. You see about a week and a half ago my speaker, on my Motorola Razr V3 Black Edition, started cutting out during calls where service was at least 3 bars or more. These places included school, home, and even on the road. So I called up Customer Service and they tried to send some stuff to my phone, and had problem. In fact my phone was so stubborn they said it was one of the most difficult phones they have ever tried to work with. So they had asked me to stop by a Cingular store and have them check the SIM card. Seeing as there is a Cingular store less than two minutes away from school, I stopped by in between classes and told them what the CSR said. They took out the SIM card and continued to put some updated for the phone on it before putting it back in the phone and having me on my way. So I continued to try and use my phone and the problem continued, except that this time the speaker volume liked to go from low to high on it's own and high to low on it's own, usually being very low. Now I know that the Razr's volume is set very low from the factory but this was worse than when I first got the phone. So again I'm on the phone with Customer Service, but this time the contact LockLine, my phones insurance coompany, to issue me a brand new one. So the new phone arrived today and I must say the new one is nice, and feels like it was built better than my old one. So once again I'm satisfied by Cingular and their Customer Support Representatives. The thing I'm not satisfied with them about though is that they told me that, unless I had my phone for my contracts duration, or paid full price, they can't unlock my phone. This is all good and dandy but I can find numerous account on the internet where you have to be with them for three months and they will unlock your phone for free. I mean that would be the right thing to do, especially since if I cancel service within my two year agreement they anally rape my in New York for $240.
Stayed tuned for my next blog post titled - "Running a Business Is Not As Easy as it's Made Out to Be!" Till then so long.

Linksys PAP2-NA

Ok, well back when I ordered ViaTalk Service I was given a free Linksys PAP2 for being a beta tester of the service (basically, all we did was get everything before it launched, we still had to pay for it and all although I got like 2 1/2 months for free for doing it). Anyways when I received the package a while back, I noticed that the box the VoIP adapter came in said Linksys PAP2-NA. And after much research and snooping around I've come to find that ViaTalk, does indeed ship out UNLOCKED PAP2 adapters to it's customers. But wait, don't get your panties in a bunch just yet. These adapter that they ship out are UNLOCKED but they hold the Admin password in which you can get if you pay them $50. Well as I was sitting around tongiht, I decided to see since I no longer have ViaTalk, if I could hack the PAP2 to stop it from having an Admin password. And after searching on the net, found the perfect solution. Originally found here, I'll also list them below:

1. Hook up you PAP2 adapter as you normally would but DO NOT PLUG IT IN TO YOUR NETWORK just yet
2. Unplug the power cord from your cable modem
3. Now plug your PAP2 adapter into your router
4. Pick up the phone it's connected to and dial ****
5. Then dial 73738#
6. When it prompts you for a password use one of the following: 7756112# or 8995523#
7. Press 1 to confirm and the press # to hang up

After you do this you should be able to the WebAdmin portion of your Linksys PAP2 and all of the configurations should be reset to what ViaTalk gets from Cisco. And when you click on the upper right hand link called "Admin Login" you should not be prompted for a password and you should eb able to change any settings you want.

Please note that this was done on a PAP2 with the firmware version: 2.0.12(LS)
DISCLAIMER: This article is for reference only and if followed I take no responsibility for your actions (which include but are not limited to Violation of ToS, Rendering your PAP2 unusable, or any other damages you may cause).

Please note that here are some other useful links to check out:
Yahoo - Linksys PAP2 Group
Voxilla Forum Thread on PAP2-NA Firmware
Linksys Download Page for the PAP2
Sipura - The technology maker Cisco licensed technology from to make the PAP2 before buying them
VoIPSupply.com - Buy everything you need for VoIP

Life, Technology, and College...(Not Particularly in that Order)

For those who don't know, I will be attending my second semester at Erie Community College - North Campus starting on January 23rd, 2006. During my first semester I had no gripes or complaints other than the fact that some of my teachers who will remain unnamed, lacked the knowledge of the course material and was clearly not prepared to teach the class in which they were assigned to teach. But of course, for a community this is understandable. Now going into my second semester I must say the Associates Degree which should have only taken me Two Years to recieve is slipping further away. But wait...It's not due to me failing any classes, especially when I finished the first semester with a 3.44 GPA with nothing below a B. But instead it comes to the fact that all classes rely on classes in which I can't take yet. This is mostly due to me scoring not as good as I should have on the placement test in math last summer but there is more. Then I since I need to fill up credit hours I'm looking into other fields to try to find a suitable minor, since I'm majoring in Computer Science, when I come across TeleCommunications. This would be great or so I thought, but it turns out it was not. First off all the classes are at South Campus, which isn't a problem since I can drive to class, but the problem lays in being they are not offering the Prerequisite to the class I want to take at all this semester. Which is kind of dumb in my opinion, teach the follow-up but not the class before it. So there are some gripes and growing pains about college to start.
Next off Technology. While doing my normal scan through Digg today I ran across this story How Go Daddy Lost A Longtime Customer to A Phisher. The only thing I have to say is that after reading this it really makes me want to have my own dns servers setup here for the company. So fi anyone has any ideas on how to go about with an easy Windows Based DNS server drop me a comment. Other than this I've been doing a lot of work and dealing with life, so that's all I got for now. And in case you didn't know yet, I'll be unavailable for the next couple days as I am taking care of family issues after the recent death of my Grandmother.

Making the Switch

After two years of having Verizon Wireless out here in the Alden area I've made the switch and it couldn't come at a better time. My contract with Verizon Wireless ends on January 17th, 2006 so instead of renewing it I decided to try Cingular Wireless out one more time. I previously tried it when it first rolled out service in 2000 and was less than impressed. Back than I had dropped calls in places I had full service and less that admirable sound quality on my phone. But it's been about 5 years since that time and GSM technology has come a long way since then. So first before we get into my review of Cingular's Service let me list the reasons I decided to drop Verizon Wireless in the first place.
Verizon while it's touted as have great reception, prices, and customer services, I find it falls short in some of those areas. For instance when I first got my phone I had great reception in my basement where my room is, where as now I get crappy reception, frequent dropped calls, and shady reception in other areas around town. And yes, I'd always keep my phone with the most up to date prl's. The prices I can't agrue about but the customer service I found to be very bad and difficult to deal with. I mean I'm paying the bill here but whenever I had to take to Verizon on the phone they didn't even care to talk about any issues I've had or at least the CSR I've gotten had been that way with me.
Now on to Cingular! First off Cingular has begun to put themselves in a position that helped Verizon get to where it is today. Cingular starting January 2nd, 2006 had begun selling Phones and Service in RadioShacks WorldWide, replacing Verizon Wireless. Then I decided to get the Motorola Razr V3 Black which yes, I know Verizon has a CDMA version but Verizon cripples their devices which Cingular so far and to my knowledge has not. Next is the GSM network, which to my understanding works in 3 parts. The first part takes up part of the tower to connect to the call, when that is done it move on to part two and frees up more space for other people to connect to the tower to place and recieve calls. The second part is when you are actually connected to the call and having your conversation. And finally after that it frees up that part and moves to part three which disconnect the call. So this is done to allow more people on a tower at a time and compared to what I've read it allows up to twice as many people on a Cingular tower comapred to Verizon and their CDMA technology.
Now after getting Cingular again I was skeptical but after playing around a bit I must note that the sound quality is fantastic, the Motorola Razr is fantastic, and customer service is very helpful and willing to work with you on various issues. So hands down Cingular so far seems to be a great buy and even better when they launch their Ringback tones equivalent AnswerTones sometime this Spring.