Short story

• I ordered the laptop on 06/11/08.
• The initial estimated ship date: 07/02/08.
• In around one week they told me that my laptop will be shipped on 06/28/08.
• After 06/28/08 I found out that my new shipping date will be in the week of 07/07/08 or 07/13/08.
• On 07/03/08 the shipping date is updated on Lenovo website to 08/06/08.
• On 07/03/08 I cancel the order.
• After I canceled the order, the laptop is shipped (on on the same date: 07/03/08).
• The laptop was delivered by UPS on 07/07/08 and it works properly.

Long story

On 06/11/08, I ordered a Lenovo Thinkpad R61 laptop from Lenovo.com website. After the order was processed, I saw on the status page that my estimated shipping date is 07/02/08 as you can see in the following screenshot.

After one week (around 06/17/08) I called customer service to check up my notebook status and the lady whom I spoke to told me that the notebook will be shipped around 06/28/08. On 06/30/08 I called again because the status page wasn’t updated and I find out that my shipping date was delayed to sometime around the week of 07/13/08. But on Lenovo website the shipping time was the same (07/02/08). After I talked to the lady, I wrote them an email (on 06/30/08) and in the email that I receive on 07/01/08 they told me that they estimate the shipping date around 07/07/08.

Quote from their email:

We apologize for any frustration we may have caused. We have contacted our supply team about this issue and they have updated your estimated ship date to July 7th, 2008.

On 07/03/08 the status on Lenovo website was updated. To 08/06/08. So almost two months after my order. See the following screenshot.

After I saw the new estimated ship date, I wrote them an email in which I canceled my order, but they didn’t answer my email. Around 3pm (07/03/08) in the same day I called them and I ask them to cancel my order. They said that it will take 24 hours to confirm the cancellation. Around 10pm (07/03/08) I checked my email and I receive an email from Lenovo in which they told me that my laptop was shipped, even though as I told you, I already canceled the order. See the following screenshot.

So after all these, they were late with my shipment by only one day.

On 07/05/08 I receive an email response to my email in which I cancel my order. The answer at my cancellation was this:

We see that your order has been shipped already with UPS tracking number xyz. You may track the progress of your delivery in the UPS website using the track number provided.

We sincerely apologize for the inconvenience .

On 07/07/08 UPS delivered me the laptop. Everything was ok with the laptop and it works properly. The funny part is that UPS try to deliver the laptop to apartment #3 instead of apartment #5. Luckily nobody was home and I heard them knocking on the door of apartment #3. I checked to see if they come and they did.

In conclusion, I think ThinkPad laptops are very good, but Lenovo shipping and customer support suck big time.

În data de 24 mai 2008 Grupul pentru software liber trebuia să țină o prezentare în cadrul Concursului de informatica aplicată (etapa națională). Subiectul prezentării era avantajele softwarelui liber și ale sistemelor deschise în educație. La această competiție printre sponsori este și microsoft. Ei bine, microsoft a cerut să se renunțe la prezentare altfel renunță ei la a mai sponsoriza evenimentul. Normal, Inspectoratul Județean Cluj a ales banii, iar prezentarea s-a anulat.

Mai multe detalii în postul publicat pe softwareliber.ro

>>> import this

The Zen of Python, by Tim Peters

Beautiful is better than ugly.
Explicit is better than implicit.
Simple is better than complex.
Complex is better than complicated.
Flat is better than nested.
Sparse is better than dense.
Readability counts.
Special cases aren’t special enough to break the rules.
Although practicality beats purity.
Errors should never pass silently.
Unless explicitly silenced.
In the face of ambiguity, refuse the temptation to guess.
There should be one– and preferably only one –obvious way to do it.
Although that way may not be obvious at first unless you’re Dutch.
Now is better than never.
Although never is often better than *right* now.
If the implementation is hard to explain, it’s a bad idea.
If the implementation is easy to explain, it may be a good idea.
Namespaces are one honking great idea — let’s do more of those!

Scumpii nostri parlamentari romani au decis sa cumpere elevilor stickuri de memorie (4 Gb) pentru a-si stoca pe ele manualele scolare. Valoarea proiectului: 30 milioane euro. Sunt curios ce-or face cu ele elevii de la tara care n-au un wc in care sa-si faca nevoile sau aia care n-au calculatoare sau aia la care le pica tavanu-n cap pentru ca scoala n-a mai fost renovata de pe vremea lui Ceausescu… Important e sa aiba stick!

Aici se poate observa un grafic cu cuvintele “obsecene”, care exista in kernelul Linux. Aici sunt unele exemple, desi e cam veche pagina.

via

1. sudo apt-get install sshfs
2. sudo modprobe fuse
3. sudo adduser $USER fuse
4. sudo chown root:fuse /dev/fuse
5. Logout -> Login
6. mkdir /media/servername
7. sudo chown $USER /media/servername
8. sshfs user@server:/path /media/servername/

For /etc/fstab:
sshfs user@server:/path /media/servername fuse defaults 0 0

• An American in Romania
• Unix Toolbox
• The Linux Cookbook: Tips and Techniques for Everyday Use
• Virtual Hosting using Apache

I was calling to sign up with a new DSL provider. When the guy asked what operating system I was using, I said, “Linux.” I was put on hold for five minutes, and then a supervisor came back and told me, “You can’t use Linux to connect to the Internet. It’s a hacker tool, anyway.” I almost fell out of my chair.

• Friend: “I heard about this thing called ‘Linux’.”
• Me: “Oh, I use Linux.”
• Friend: “What is it?”
• Me: “An operating system.”
• Friend: “Like Firefox?”

I saw two older looking ladies trying to figure out the computers at a local store. I knew one of them would say something that I could send to Computer Stupidities, so I tried to listen in.

• Woman 1: “What is that little trash can on the screen?”
• Woman 2: “My son says that is call the ‘recycle bin’. He tells me when I don’t want a Word document anymore and I delete it, it really goes in there.”
• Woman 1: “Why in the recycle thingy? Can’t you just erase it?”
• Woman 2: “Oh no, Word wouldn’t work for very long if I did that, I would run out of blank pages.”
• Woman 1: “Why?”
• Woman 2: “Because it cleans the words off the pages, then sends the blank sheets back to Word so they can be used again. That’s why it’s called the recycle bin.”

More jokes…

• Google Code University
• Curriculum Search

• South Park online
• HowTo TorrentFlux
• HowTo Prism
• Run Windows Apps Seamlessly Inside Linux