Ticketmaster really pisses me off

Rebecca and I were going to go see the Bravery on Sunday, but tickets were like $25 each with charges. So when 94.7 FM here in Portland emailed a chance to buy tickets to their December to Remember series, cheap $9.47 ticket concert for the Bravery, we were psyched! But, Ticketmaster charges a 45% "Convenience charge" for... what? If my tickets were $125, like they are for Bon Jovi (No, I would not go see Bon Jovi, just wanted to compare expensive tickets) the $17.60 convenience charge is only 14%. Unacceptable in my opinion. My sub-$25 evening if I could purchase the tickets in advance at the door turned into a ~$32 evening. I know, it's only $7, right... but that $7 is 37% of the ticket price.



Not only that, but Ticketmaster will charge me $2.50 to print my own tickets? So they'll print out and send them to me via post for free, but they'll charge me 13% per ticket to save them the cost to print, stick in envelope and mail.



I would like to see this change in the future. It's bordering on unfair.

Lenovo Power Cords are FAILing Me

I've been very happy with my Lenovo Y650 Ideapad. Well, much happier after I installed Ubuntu 9.10 beta (tangent...) but I noticed last week that the power cable, from the brick to the computer, was fraying. I've only had this laptop a few months, so this is definitely strange behavior.







I called in and Lenovo quickly sent me another one. But within a few days, it started doing the exact same thing!




This is totally unacceptable, so I'll be calling Lenovo now and we'll see what they say.

Update: I'm on the phone with them now, and when I started handling the cord to look at it closer, I could see sparks. Not cool!

Facebook now supports Twitter-like tagging

Just saw this when posting a message:

Audio stopped working in Flash on Ubuntu 9.04 Jaunty

I've been having some audio problems on my new laptop over the last few days. Totally annoying. When I finally got it working again (don't ask me how) audio in Flash stopped working correctly. I reinstalled, which did not help. Finally, I found a thread that suggested this:

sudo apt-get install libgstreamer-plugins-base0.10-dev

That worked for me in Firefox. I think I'll have to re-setup Flash in Chromium, but still, better than nothing.

Want an Intel SSD Drive?

Apparently that's undefined.

The Fray - Heartless

So you might not like Kanye, or you might not like The Fray. Maybe you just don't like the song Heartless, that's cool. Maybe you don't like music in general... well that's messed up. Regardless, if you like animation, watch this video. It's a cool concept and well executed.

I'm on my own

Today was my last day at Swipht. It's kinda crazy to think I started working for them 4 1/2 years ago. For being in the tech business, a few people have said I stayed there too long. That may be the case, but it's still a bit sad for me. When I told Brian and Jeff last week that I was thinking of leaving, I could barely get the words out. I have a lot of respect for both of them and for what they've accomplished with Swipht. Having been with them since almost the beginning, I've gotten another opportunity to see how a business is started, what steps they can take, and how people come in and out of that sphere. It's been an interesting and ultimately rewarding experience.

I'm setting out for myself now though. I have a few of my own ideas I'd like to see through, and a few partnerships that could work out. It's time to see what I'm made of and do what is going to make me happy.

Wish me luck!

Get Flash to work in Chromium Linux 64bit

Finally, an article that works! Check this article