Category: Aaron Nelsen

  • DHL = Fail

    Earlier this week I placed an order for a new toy, something I was greatly excited about getting. Thus, you can imagine my dismay when DHL began to ship the package in the wrong direction.

    Seriously, it started out in Fort Worth, TX and instead of shipping it to their Kansas City Hub, they sent it to Wilmington, OH… that’s not even in the general direction of Nebraska! What the crap?! To illustrate their failure I have prepared this map:
    Google Map

    Sure, it’s their money they’re wasting… but still. The good news is, that despite going the wrong direction, the package did make it within the scheduled delivery time.

  • iTunes Error -9808

    A friend of mine suddenly couldn’t access the iTunes Store after upgrading to the latest version, every time he tried to purchase something he kept getting the following error:

    “We could not complete your iTunes store request,an unknown error occurred (-9808)”

    I couldn’t find anything online about it, so here’s how we fixed it under Windows XP. Go to Start -> Control Panel -> Internet Options -> Advanced Tab, make sure that both the SSL 3.0 and TLS 1.0 options are checked. Then under Security make sure that the “Check for server certificate revocation (requires restart)” is unchecked. Then click ok, restart and fire up iTunes.

  • The 10yr Rule

    The theory is that every ten years your investment doubles in value, and now I have proof!

    So I haven’t exactly been actively investing in the stock market for ten years, but unbeknownst to me just under ten years ago my Grandfather took out an Educational IRA (much like a 529 plan) on my behalf, at the time he invested $400 in an American Century fund and set it up with a DRIP (Dividend Reinvestment Program)… Now ten years later, even though the fund has dropped significantly in value, his original investment is now worth $903 thanks to that DRIP. Pretty cool.

    Now the 10 year rule is a nice thought, but I’m sure it doesn’t always apply. And in todays market, it hard to imagine any investment doubling in value.

  • Hulu Goes Public

    Hulu is set to go public tomorrow, during the course of the private beta they’ve added quite a bit of content from various networks and content partners… here’s the full list their content partners.

    • FOX
    • NBC Universal
    • MGM
    • Sony Pictures Television
    • Warner Bros. Television Group
    • Access Hollywood
    • AST Dew Tour
    • BNET
    • Bravo
    • Broadway Video
    • CenterStaging
    • Chic.tv
    • Chiller
    • CHOW
    • CNET
    • Comedy Time
    • E! Entertainment Television
    • ExerciseTV
    • FEARnet
    • Ford Models
    • Fox Atomic
    • Fox Movie Channel
    • Fox Reality
    • Fox Searchlight
    • Fox Sports
    • Fox TV Studios
    • Fuel TV
    • FX Networks
    • G4TV
    • Gamespot
    • Gamespy
    • Hidden Universe
    • IGN
    • Image Entertainment
    • Lionsgate
    • LX.TV
    • MEN7
    • Mojo
    • Movieola
    • My Network TV
    • National Geographic Channel
    • National Geographic Digital Shorts
    • NBA
    • NBC Sports
    • NBCU TV
    • NHL
    • Oxygen
    • Paley Media
    • Red Bull
    • Reveille
    • Salient Media
    • SciFi Channel
    • Shout! Factory
    • Sleuth Channel
    • SpaceRip
    • Speed
    • Sundance Channel
    • Taste TV
    • The Fight Network
    • The Golf Channel
    • The Onion
    • The Style Network
    • Thought Equity
    • TV Guide
    • TVG
    • Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation
    • Twentieth Century Fox Television
    • Twentieth Television
    • Universal Pictures
    • USA Network
    • Versus
    • Vuguru
    • WatchMojo
    • Wine Library TV
    • World Wrestling Entertainment
  • Firefox 3 Beta

    A forum post on another website I run reminded me that not everyone has been enjoying the awesomeness of the Firefox 3 Beta, so if you fancy yourself a tech savvy internet user, go download it!

    New download manager: It now sports a more streamlined look and incorporates a search function.

    OS Specific Themes: Firefox now looks like it’s native to your operating system. Never been a huge issue for me since Firefox is theme-able, but it’s a nice touch.

    New Address Bar: It now searches your browser history as well as your bookmarks as you type a web address. My main complaint is that when searching your bookmarks it only displays the full URL, and not the root domain as well as the full bookmarked URL (does that make sense? Like if you have hulu.com/recent/episodes bookmarked and you type hu into your address bar, you might expect to see hulu.com listed as well as hulu.com/recent/episodes… but it’s not).

    They’ve also added an outline of a star to the address bar, clicking it results in adding the page as a bookmark, the star will now display as solid blue. Clicking it again brings up a prompt with the option of editing bookmark details or removing it.

    Non-intrusive prompts: I really like the way Firefox handles offering to remember a password for you, it displays as a bar along the top of the page and no longer steals focus.

    Improved memory usage: Firefox not only starts faster, it uses up less resources. Yay!

    If you’re at least marginally good with computers, I would recommend at least giving the beta a try. The rendering engine can be a little weird at times, and there are very few compatible add-ons right now, but it’s coming along nicely.