I ordered a garage door remote from Marwest Access Controls (doing business as AAAremotes.com). It arrived in good shape, but -- contrary to the Web site claim -- it doesn't work with my opener. I emailed them, asked for either a refund or a remote that *does* work, and they refused to help, saying my only remedy was a like-for-like exchange of the unit. That won't help. I had paid with PayPal, so I decided to dispute the charge. After filling out PayPal's online dispute form, I got this:

Oh. Thank you very much. I guess. "Not eligible for PayPal dispute resolution"???
 
Maybe there are reasons to stick with credit cards...

My sister's aging iMac G5 video board blew out. AppleCare has expired, and it's too old to be worth fixing; she's now the happy owner of a brand-new iMac.
 
But her backup strategy consisted of "If something breaks, Stephen will fix it." So now I've pulled the old hard disk out of her G5 with the intention of popping it into a handy external housing and transferring all her files over.
 
Unfortunately, all the 3.5" external housings I have use the 40-pin parallel ATA/IDE connector (two rows of 20 pins each). This drive has a 22-pin connector Serial ATA -- 15 in one bank and 7 in another. It's a Western Digital 800, if that helps any. Photo above for detail.
 
Does anybody in Atlanta have a USB or FireWire adapter or housing that I could borrow long enough to suck all the files off this disk? Thanks!
 
(PS -- Yes, to avoid this problem next time, I've ordered her a big external hard drive to use for Time Machine with the new iMac... :-)

Posted in front of the somewhat grandiosely-named "Center for the Enhancement of Teaching and Learning" at Georgia Tech. Perhaps the first thing they could "enhance" is their spelling of ANNOUNCEMENT?

I've always loved Dahlonega. Here's a quick snapshot of the town square illuminated for the holidays.
 
(Taken from the sidewalk in front of the Crimson Moon, where an awesomely pregnant Jennifer Daniels performed a great set of her favorites as well as some new songs from her upcoming album...)

Just received my Clarifi from Griffin Technology. It's an iPhone case that includes a sliding macro lens. Check out the difference with and without the lens in the photos above. Click the image to see the full-size version.  (Random scrap of paper from my desk; no deep philosophical significance.)
 
Well worth thirty bucks from J&R: <http://tr.im/1pqy> . With Evernote's OCR capability, this could make business-card scanners obsolete...