I have learned some hard lessons from ordering expensive (to me) items from Amazon.

In the past I’d buy something from Amazon that I’d needed, but not really wanted right now and used the Super Saver shipping, and then always felt surprised when it arrived earlier than I had expected and/or they estimated.

This time my weeks and weeks of planning and reading reviews meant I knew what I wanted, Amazon had all the parts in stock, and at good prices, thus I was quite excited. So again I ordered the first lot with Super Saver shipping, and then proceeded to review the shipping process details 3+ times a day, and this slowed the internet down, and thus I’m getting results like this:

This first item arrived last Thursday June 16, but was ordered on the same day the following items:

These will not arrive until tomorrow (Tuesday June 21), and

did arrive on Saturday June 18th.

The first of the two being the key thing I was wanting… so having learned my lesson, that the free shipping was not that free - the cost of faster shipping is not that much more especially relative to ticket price and I could have had it earlier.

There were some other items that I was wanting, so I ordered them. I noticed one of these items got put in the larger shipping bundle of the first order (that hadn’t shipped at that point of time), but again the key item of this new order was delayed.

So inspired by paying more to get it earlier, I changed the shipping to normal shipping (3-5 business days vs. free shipping 5-8 business days) and then split the items for faster shipping to avoid the key item waiting for the non-key item and I’m now greeted with:

The non-key item that originally appeared to be delaying things has shipped and the key item

Has not even left Amazon (they show it in stock) and it’s estimated to get to me tomorrow. This I’d like to see, given that every other package has taken 3 1/2 days to get to me, after it leaves Amazon.

I’m quite grumpy that when I changed to paying for shipping the delivery dates changed from ‘30 June - 16 July’ to June 23.

The real kicker is I have ignored the free 1-month Prime two days shipping trial for so long, I didn’t think to use it and I could have gotten the-lot much quicker. Arg, or just paid <$50 on the important stuff and got that sooner.

Maybe it’s just better to buy from local shops, because if they have it, they have it. Where-as Amazon, wait a week before we even startis shipping model, makes me grumpy. Or maybe this is just the first time I’ve really cared, and thus watched the process and am sensitive to the ‘normal’ process. Or I’ve just never ordered 9 things in the same week, and thus seen the chaos.

Anyway, my key purchase is due for delivery tomorrow, and I’m quite excited.

[Update: 21 June] Shipping got a little messed up today, but Michaela rang local US Postal Service office, and they found the package, and did a special delivery. The only reason I’m updating the blog right now, and not playing is I’ve lost possession of my new toy, or I’m a good preschooler and sharing toys.

Wow, this is good news for the development team (I assume), and good news for the SageTV product. I hope this means expansion of what has been happening, and integration with newer and greater Google TV type products.

I’ve been very happy with my SageTV setup, and I wish all the best for the development team.

I was looking at some old blog pages and noticed “Technorati Tags” at the bottom, turns out for nine whole pages, I went all wild for the Technorati Tags. Gone now.

I noticed this funny SSI based cartoon advertised on the Google Ads today, and thought it looked pretty funny, read a good half of the comics, they are pretty funny as far as I’m concerned, nice digs at old school D&D games.

Back in May I flew to New Zealand for a work summit, and I normally track the movies I watch, as there’s not much else to do on the flight. I had written blog posts on the WordPress iPhone App, but not uploaded them to the blog. So here with a four month delay is the movie report in order of enjoyment.

Kung Fu Wing Chun

Kung Fu Wing Chun was a fantastic Kung Fu movie. Lots of great action with ridiculous plot. Lots of cheesy humor also made this a great film.

The Company Men

The Company Men was a great film, really enjoyed the darkness. Working for the man.

Minority Report

I had resisted watching Minority Report due to reports of terrible VR scenes and weak plot. Not sure if it was the poor air on the plane or what ;-) but I quite liked the  plot really. Yes the VR acting/hand waving was obnoxious but I liked the movie none the less.

TRON: Legacy

Now, this was a cheesy film. Very bright suites. Plot was a little weak. Funny to see the ring on the fathers back while they are on the mission to reclaim it.

Listening to the radio on the way to the airport, there was an ad for Trojan Fire & Ice condoms with all the oh & ah noises.

The next ad started with a male voice ‘oh my mouth is on fire’ hmm that’s not how you use them. Turns out it’s an ad for spicy meat sticks. Not much better…

I came into work today and everything seemed fine, but then I couldn’t log into the email server, or the issue list, or see the code repository.

All my co workers are fine, but I’m not, everybody else uses local company servers, and I use server from another company in another country. I can VPN ‘home’ and can surf the Internet, but not talk to my infrastructure.

Turns out there was a fire in the NZ office, and weirdly enough it’s still the middle of the night in NZ. Now the neat part is, if things are not good enough for those workers to work on their new day, they will be sent home, where-as, I’m here in a perfectly good office, cut off from my normal work tools. So do I go home, or just tidy my desk, or just edit lots of code, and have to manage the multiple check-ins later. Sigh

Oh look it’s IIS7

Since installing the Service Pack 1 for Visual Studio 2010, my .sln files for Visual Studio 2005 have not been opening.

This turns out to be, because I had VS2005 set to need Admin Privileges to run, to allow some remote debugging. But I also needed to set this for the Visual Studio Launcher, as this is what chooses which Visual Studio to open the solution file. In applying the service pack, it appears the need Admin Privileges setting was lost.

To test this, I found the VS2005 executable and remove the Admin Privileges requirement, and then my 2005 solutions opened.

But I couldn’t find where the Launcher was, so searching registry for .sln I found the file uses:

VisualStudio.Launcher.sln

looking for this you find it at:

HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\VisualStudio.Launcher.sln\Shell\Open\Command\

which for my machine points to:

C:\Program Files (x86)\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\MSEnv\VSLauncher.exe\

Now knowing the Launchers name/location I can set needs Admin Privileges and everything works as it was.