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Cory Watilo

Software designer in Orange County, CA

Tax hikes in the Senate Healthcare Bill - if passed, this bill will destroy our country

I beg you to take a few minutes to listen to this bit from the Glenn Beck Radio Show from yesterday. (Just let it play in the background while you're working on something else if you need to.) This will open your eyes about just how absurd this healthcare bill actually is. We can't just sit back and let these people in the Senate destroy our country.

For more of Glenn Beck's Radio Show, visit his website.

Twitter Spam

This is so meta. I just got spammed from somebody telling me that since I've posted my email address on Twitter, spammers can find my email address and spam me. The irony is that this spammer used that very method.


---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Emails @ Risk <emails.at.risk@gmail.com>
Date: Sun, Nov 15, 2009 at 8:59 PM
Subject: Emails use in Twitter
To: corywatilo <heycory@corywatilo.net>


Dear corywatilo

We have found that your email is shared in tweets. We advise you to hide your email from spammers by sharing email address as an image or hide it behind a url.

Visit  us at : http://emails-at-risk.appspot.com?e=nj5 to find how you can do this.

Happy Twitting !!!
"2 million  emails are sent every second. About  70% to 72% of them might be spam and viruses."

Palm's Web OS could easily be the winning smartphone platform, if only...

I was one of the first of the public to own a Palm Pre. I got up early and was at the local Sprint store a couple hours before they opened so I was sure to get one. But within a week, I returned it, a little disappointed. It wasn't the first time I returned a phone. I am on my 26th phone now, if that explains anything. It's simple: I don't have much tolerance for mediocre devices. I gave up on the Palm Pre for two main reasons: the sub-par keyboard amd the lack of any decent 3rd party applications.

Having had recent stints with an iPhone 3G S, the HTC Droid Eris, and now the Blackberry Tour, I am missing my Palm Pre more than ever. I just really liked Web OS. It's too bad the keyboard was so terrible, and there were no apps because Palm didn't release their SDK to more than a handful of developers. And back on the hardware front, now with the Palm Pixi, I hear Palm cut back on the stuff under the hood to release a less-than-perfect experience of their new OS - in my opinion, not their best move ever, despite the reports that the Pixi has a better keyboard.

So how long will it take for Palm to come up with something with a little bigger keyboard and powerful hardware that will work on anything other than Sprint? And the bigger question: when will Palm get their act in gear and really start pushing developers to make apps for the Web OS platform? With the way Palm engineered the platform, apps for Web OS should be easier to build than the same apps on either the iPhone or Android platforms, since it doesn't require much in terms of a learning curve. And yet, Palm is significantly trailing the iPhone and Android platforms in terms of available apps.

I'm really hoping Palm has a good reason for taking so long to really release their Web OS SDK. Some might argue that Palm is past the point of being able to compete with app libraries like the iPhone's or Android's. But it's really time they get the thing out there, doing whatever they need to do to get developers to start developing for their platform, even if it takes cash incentives for creating great apps.

I really hope Palm can start pushing forward in both the hardware area and the 3rd party developer market. Web OS is pretty innovative. I just hope Palm can start moving so they can get some significant traction before their lunch gets eaten by somebody else who understands you've got to have it all together to really start selling devices.

NERDS ONLY: My fabulous 4-monitor display, thanks to the NVIDIA QUADRO NVS 450

Okay, so I don't geek out this hardcore very often, but I make the occasional exception, and this is well worth it.

It's taken a while to figure out over the past several months, including 4 video cards, 2 operating systems, lots of drivers and cables, and a lot of clearing of desk space, but I finally found something that works.


I am now using the Nvidia Quadro NVS 450, a graphics card that is equipped with 4 DisplayPorts. This card lets me run four displays of a single PCI-Express slot, and it works flawlessly. I am running my two horizontal monitors at 1920x1080 and my vertical monitors at 1200x1920. Now I can have code in one vertical window, the website I'm working on in another vertical window, with two other screens for IMing, email and Zune or Arrested Development marathons.

Overkill? Maybe, but with my workflow, it will help out a lot. I'm thinking it will only get harder to work anywhere else but right here in my home office.

LA Computer Center (lacc.com) is shady - don't buy from them

If you hit this article from a Google search of LA Computer Center at lacc.com, then I have done my job.

(I previously posted about Newport Lexus and landed on the first page of search results on Google when you search their name, so I'm hoping for the same thing here.)

About two weeks ago, I placed an order from lacc.com. I got an email confirmation saying my order had been placed, then later saying my credit card was authorized (whatever that means). After that, I didn't hear anything.

I waited patiently - over a week - before I sent LC Computer Center follow up email. Heard nothing. Then I sent another one. Nothing.

Today I tried to send them IMs, because they provide their screennames on their website. No response from all 3 reps. Their online chat was offline too. Calling them led to a voicemail system. What a joke.

Shortly after, I sent them an email asking for my order to be cancelled. It wasn't an hour later that I received the confirmation (below) that my order was cancelled. Gee, thanks for all the replies to my emails before...NOT.

Moral of the story: don't buy from lacc.com (LA Computer Center). Save your time and go buy on ebay like I did. Yeah, I had a UPS tracking number within an hour after my ebay purchase.


- Cory Watilo
http://corywatilo.com

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: service@lacc.com <service@lacc.com>
Date: Thu, Nov 12, 2009 at 4:42 PM
Subject: Re: Feedback from LACC Website


Hi Cory,

This is to verify that your order has been cancelled.

Thank you,
Jeremie Sidle
LA Computer Center


On Fri, Nov 13, 2009 at 5:51 AM:
emailadd = service
orderno = 1256944742
rmano =
email =
msg = Please cancel order 1256944742 that was placed almost two weeks ago. I don't see that I've been charged, but if you continue this order, I will send it back (if I ever receive it) and will do a chargeback.
submit.x = 29
submit.y = 14