I’ve been named as an heir

I just recieved this email in my inbox – I can’t believe my lucky stars,it must be true:

Get Back To Me For More Details.

We wish to notify you again that you were listed as an heir to the total sum of Ten Million Six Hundred Thousand British pounds in the codicil and last testament of the deceased. Name now withheld since this is our second letter to you. We contacted you because you bear the surname identity and therefore can present you as the heir to the inheritance.

We therefore reckoned that you could receive these funds as you are qualified by your name identity. All the legal papers will be processed in your acceptance. In your acceptance of this deal, we request that you kindly forward to us your letter of acceptance; your current telephone and fax numbers and a forwarding address to enable us file necessary documents at our high court probate division for the release of this sum of money.

Please contact me via my private email so that we can get this done immediately.

Kind regards,
John McGowan Jr.

It still amazes me that there are gullible people out there that fall for these scams. Not that I got the alleged, first email, but clever that they left out the surname, since I’d been notified before.

Money wasted!

Last year we heard that the IEC (Independent Electoral Commission, who oversee our electoral process ensuring a free and fair election) would have their website overhauled so that it was compliant in all browsers, at a cost of R3million!

Now that might sound like a lot of money, it might not. If it was tax payers money (which I’m sure it was partly/wholely funded – then I’m disgusted and I want my share back!

Just look at these two screenshots of the IEC website and even more shockingly the WorldCup 2010 website supposedly promoting the event for South Africa in 2010.

Independent Electoral Commission website (click to visit site)

South Africa 2010 website (click to visit site)

Now, a quick cursory check in the source of the website revelas that the author was proud enough of his work to put his name in the meta-tags. 

Just take a look at this guy’s “resume” – wonder how he got the job? Pathetic!

I’ve been in this industy and business for a long time now and I know you can achieve 1000 times better quality work for 1% of what was spent – truly shocking to say the least!

If you feel the same way, why not go and sign my petition.

Update: 06 February 2009 – News24.com have picked up on the chatter on the various blogs and forums about the IEC website and the costs associated with building it – you can read more here.

Comments re-opened should anyone else wish to comment on this topic.

HP Printer Cartridges Expiring

Okay, first-off let me begin by saying I’m NOT an HP fan, never have been and never will be because I think their printers are overpriced as most definitely are all their consumables. I’ve always been a Canon fan, and there’s very little out there that will sway me. Don’t even get me started on the crap Lexmark produce regarding printers.

Note that this isn’t actually anything new if you’ve been using HP printers for the last 5 years or so but since a friend has come across this problem I thought I’d share the info with you.

Right, now to the matter at hand. If you’re an HP printer owner, that uses ink cartridges (not laser toner), then you’ve probably seen an error message/light on your printer console which denotes the specific ink cartridge(s) has(have) expired. Now unbeknown to many HP printer users is that expired does not necessarily mean empty! That’s right, you may have inadvertently thrown away (or worse, I’ll get to worse in a second) your apparently empty cartridge because your HP printer told you it had expired.

But my printer won’t use it anymore if it’s expired and won’t let me print either until I put in a new one?

Wrong – most HP printers have a BIOS powered by a battery which stores the number of hours since that cartridge was first put in – irrespective of the number of times you’ve printed and what amount of ink was used on those prints. There is a finite number of hours that can elapse until your HP printer will tell you that the cartridge has expired. Which means you may have inadvertently thrown money in the trash with cartridges that weren’t really empty yet.

Oh, remember earlier I mentioned, “or worse”? Here’s the worse part: in some countries HP provides you with self-addressed and stamped envelopes for you to return your “empty” ink cartridges to HP for “recycling”, which means they can re-use and re-sell your cartridges again (and quite possibly make use of the unused ink left inside).
[Update 14 August 2008 – Here’s what HP really do with returned ink cartridges]

If you just do a quick check on Google you’ll find easily 135000 links relating to the above topic. If you want, simply add your printer model as well to see if others with your model have come up with the same problem and provided solutions but they should be pretty much the same.

As a quick start I’ve added a few links below for you to look at:

• HP Print Cartridge Expiration Work-Around
  article on Real Tech News
• HP Accused Of Expiring Ink Cartridges
  article on TechDirt
• HP Printer Cartridge Expires
  article and letter to HP on The Lawful Path
• JustMakingComments Expired Ink Cartridge Reset How-To 
  YouTube video
• Cartridge Expiration Date Workarounds
  article on CoCo’s blog

Here’s hoping this can save you a few $$$ and put a few less into HP’s pockets.

[Update 14 August 2008 – Here’s a page on HP’s website which you can see which printers and cartridges have the expiration date feature and whether or not it is overridable through the printer software.]

{Update 4 November 2007 – Lifehacker have just posted an article on “Is your printer wasting your ink and money?” which may be worth a read as well on the same topic as above.