Mark's personal blog

After fighting back and forth with Netgear and their service partner ANOVO Nordic I finally got some good customer service from TNT. Even though TNT says their agreement with ANOVO is that ANOVO needs to supply all the papers to include with the package a very nice lady helped me out and sent me an email with a PDF I could print out. I did so, signed the papers and gave package with the papers to the nice TNT lady that came to pick it up. Netgear: I as the customer do not care if it is you, ANOVO or TNT who is to blame for the issues here. Your customer service was not very helpful at all. I am not going to say I am the best customer you have ever had but I have been a loyal customer since I bought my first network hub in 1997-98. If you had provided me with good service this time around I would have continued buying your products and recommend them to everyone I know but I can not with good conscience do that anymore. I wish your customer service reps had at least been nice, helpful and apologetic for all my problems with this but not even that could I get from them. Sad sad sad.

It looked to be a very nice day for a run and indeed it was. It was a little warm (around 25 degrees C) which also shows on my elevated heart rate. But I enjoyed it. I haven't gotten to do any exercise since Wednesday except for some hard yard work for my parents on Sunday and some more work here at the house today. Distance: 5.33 km Time: 25m:44s Average speed: 04:49 min/km Average heart rate: 180 bpm URL: http://connect.garmin.com/activity/7725802 I need to get back on the bike. Maybe I will on Wednesday. Let's hope the weather will be nice!

I enjoyed my bike ride today very much. There was very little wind, the sun was shining and it was all around just beautiful. I still haven't gotten to increase my distance very much but I am also working on my running and I have seen good progress there so I am not complaining. Distance: 35.19 km Time: 1h:14m:05s Average speed: 28.5 km/h Average heart rate: 155 bpm URL: http://connect.garmin.com/activity/7506055

I did a good run today. The weather was awesome, the sun was out, no wind and it wasn't too hot. The new route I tried was a little challenging with lots of little hills that might be a little more of a strain on my knee. Distance: 7.81 km Time: 38m:24s Average speed: 4:55 min/km Average heart rate: 175 bpm URL: http://connect.garmin.com/activity/7370958

I had a very good run with my coworkers Friday morning. We ran a little further than normal because we are all now aiming at doing longer runs. Distance: 5.79 km Time: 29m:51s Average speed: 5:09 min/km Average heart rate: 175 bpm URL: http://connect.garmin.com/activity/7352989

A not very long ride today. It seems that the wind is always going to be bad on this side of the island. Ohh well, I enjoyed it and had some good struggles up some long hills with the wind against me. Distance: 24.46 km Time: 50m:27s Average speed: 29.1 km/h Average heart rate: 160 bpm URL: http://connect.garmin.com/activity/7282671

I have had Netgear products since I swiched from 10BASE2 to 10BASE-T Ethernet with my friends back in 1996 or so. After using the 10Mbit hub we upgraded to a 100Mbit hub and later on a 100Mbit switch. My home network is running on a ProSafe 8 Port Gigabit Switch (GS108) and I have never had problems. On May 25th I ordered a Netgear WG102 ProSafe access point and I received it the following day. It worked fine for a week and a half but on the morning of June 6th it was dead, no lights, no nothing. I unplugged and tried everything I knew to try to get it working but nothing. Tuesday June 9th I was off from work and called Netgear support in Denmark and after 2 calls they concluded just like me that the device was dead. The lady I talked to said that usually devices that died within 30 days were considered DOA and should be returned to the store where it was bought. Since I had bought it in an online store she agreed that it was probably easier if we did the standard RMA process instead and she would get their service partner ANOVO to contact me with information on how to return the product. 2 days later (yes you read it correctly) 2 days it took ANOVO to issue an RMA number and send me information on how to return the product. Friday I found a box to pack the dead unit in and I did so during the weekend. Monday June 15th I called TNT Denmark to arrange for them to pick up my package and it was agreed that they would pick it up from my work place the next day. I took the package to work, labeled according to the email with shipping address and waited. The lady from TNT arrived to pick up my package but refused to take it since it was missing shipping papers or some such thing. I wrote an email to TNT customer service explaining what had happened and received a reply that they would look into the matter and get back to me. Today Thursday June 18th I had not heard back from TNT yet so I called them again and was told that ANOVO usually sent the shipping papers in an email for people to print and include with the package. I have now written an email to ANOVO about the missing shipping papers but have yet to receive a reply from them. I then went to Netgear and wrote to their support complaining about this poor service to which I get a reply, not saying how sorry they are for all my troubles and they will try to expedite matters but just saying I should return it to the store I bought it from since it was considered DOA. I then contacted the online store who said that their process was the same for them as for me and that they wouldn't send me a new product before they had received a replacement product from ANOVO in Sweden. I then wrote a very sour reply to Netgear asking them if they really think it would be a good solution for me to return the product to the store since I could only see how that would increase the time I had to wait for an access point with at least a week. I have yet to receive a reply from Netgear on this. Well I guess I have learned an important lesson from all this. Netgear products may work fine if they work but when they fail the process for having the product replaced fails as well. I am strongly considering buying 2 D-Link access points which would set me back less than this Netgear AP did. Then I can duct tape the Netgear AP to a large brick and return it to Netgear through their window in Ballerup!!!

I recently sent an email to "Justitsministeriet" (Ministry of Justice or something) here in Denmark with a very simple question. What my question was is besides the point and so is the answer. It was the way they replied to me that left me kinda baffled. I received an email with the text: "Se venligst vedhæftede fil." (Please see the attached file). And what had the moron working there done..... attached a Microsoft Word document. Why on earth text cannot be included in a standard email is beyond me. Dear retarded person at Justiministeriet! I know that it is very common belief that email was designed to transfer Word Documents, Excel Spreadsheets and Power Point Presentations but it is quite capable of including text. Actually the SMTP protocol that transfers email was designed to transfer text and nothing else. I don't want to go into the specifics of 7-bit ASCII and MIME encoding but just know that it wasn't a Microsoft invention to transfer their broken proprietary file formats. At least if you need to send attached files to people then don't use broken proprietary formats that requires a Microsoft Windows to view. Well if you do need to use something broken then at least use PDF which is more widely supported on different platforms. Sincerely A pissed of Linux user PS. I thought we here in Denmark were supporters of open standards. Why on earth don't you use open standards when communicating with the public.

A very nice morning run with 3 coworkers. It started out slow but as we paced each other it got faster and faster. I think I will go back to run with them a couple of times a week if possible. Distance: 4.14 km Time: 20m:08s Average speed: 04:51 min/km Average heart rate: 178 bpm URL: http://connect.garmin.com/activity/7212955

When I bought hard drives for my server I searched around and decided to buy Western Digital green power disks. I bought 3 750GB disk and set them up in RAID 5 so that I would have some security. I installed smartmontools and added the following lines to /etc/smartd.conf: /dev/sda -a -d sat -o on -S on -s (S/../.././01|L/../../6/02) -m myemail(at)nospam.dk /dev/sdb -a -d sat -o on -S on -s (S/../.././01|L/../../6/02) -m myemail(at)nospam.dk /dev/sdc -a -d sat -o on -S on -s (S/../.././01|L/../../6/02) -m myemail(at)nospam.dk /dev/sdd -a -d sat -o on -S on -s (S/../.././01|L/../../6/02) -m myemail(at)nospam.dk sda being my OS disk and sd[abc] being my storage disks. I thought everything was fine with this until I started pondering the other day why the hard drives never went into standby mode. server:~# hdparm -C /dev/sd[bcd] /dev/sdb: drive state is: active/idle /dev/sdc: drive state is: active/idle /dev/sdd: drive state is: active/idle I then started trying to setup hdparm to spin down the drives after 10min of inactivity. But for some reason it did not work. I searched and searched on Google trying to come up with a solution to the problem until I finally stumbled on a post somewhere where a person mentioned that spin down on his/her Western Digital disks didn't work until he had set up smartd and done a short test on the drive. I ran a short test on the drives but this didn't solve the problem but in the process I found that smart tests had never been run on either of the drives. I pondered this for some time and looked into it and finally I realized that if /etc/smartd.conf has a line starting with DEVICESCAN all other device lines are ignored. I commented out the DEVICESCAN line, restarted smartd and waited until next day. Voila, all of a sudden my disks had spun down as I had requested. I checked up on the specifications of the drives. According to Western Digital the green power disks use 2.8 watts in idle and 0.40 watts in standby. 3 disks * 2.4 watts = 7.2 watts. 7.2 watts * 24 hours/day * 300 days/year = 51840 Wh/year or 51.8 kWh/year. This equals to roughly DKK 100,- per year. This may not be a lot but DKK 100,- saved here and another there will sum up pretty fast, and it didn't really cost me anything except for some time to fix it. Besides I like being a nerd like this. I enjoy it tremendously.

I had originally decided to ride to Kalundborg and then turn towards Slagelse but the wind made me change my mind and I took some of the small roads in my usual area instead. I had lots of energy and felt I could have kept going but no point in hurting myself in the process of getting in better shape. Distance: 32.95 km Time: 01h:07m:33s Average speed: 29.3 km/h Average heart rate: 160 bpm URL: http://connect.garmin.com/activity/7133306 My Forerunner 405 said I used 1,228 calories. I doubt this is correct but who knows.

The rain was coming down and the wind was rough today so not the optimal setting for a good run but I had to go pick up the Monza so I decided to combine it with a run. I did my normal round plus the just over 2km to the train station where the car was located. I ran in my old running shoes and experienced no pains but towards the end I could feel that my muscles aren't used to running more than 5km. Distance: 7.50 km Time: 38m:31s Average speed: 05:08 min/km Average heart rate: 175 bpm URL: http://connect.garmin.com/activity/7038042 I do think this was a good test and proves that I can start increasing my distance. Next run will be a 5km though..... I think!

I had a very interesting ride today. I started out really well and had no real problems but after around 20km I started to get cramps in my right calf, this is not something I have experienced before. Maybe I didn't stretch or right after my run yesterday, who know but it sure was annoying. Distance: 26.39 km Time: 55:43s Average speed: 28.4 km/h Average heart rate: 163 bpm URL: http://connect.garmin.com/activity/6852715 I really want to start increasing my distance both running and cycling but I also know I need to be able to do what I am doing without problems before I start worrying about distance.

A rainy and somewhat windy run. No problems though besides being a little slower than normal. Hope I can start increasing distance soon. Distance: 5.34 km Time: 26m:49s Average speed: 05:01 min/km Average heart rate: 175 bpm URL: http://connect.garmin.com/activity/6791666 The GPS had lower accuracy during this run. I guess that was the weather's fault.

A good day if a little cool and with some wind. No technical difficulties but I could definitely feel last weekend in my legs. Energy level is still somewhat low but I also lost almost 3 kg. Distance: 26.85 km Time: 56m:26s Average speed: 28.5 km/h Average heart rate: 165 bpm URL: http://connect.garmin.com/activity/6601928 Some oddities regarding my heart rate this trip. It was recorded up to 224 bpm which I doubt is even possible for me (last time I did a max heart rate test it said 198).