Donald Perreault

Transferring or sharing large files to another computer or person that is not on a local network can be an arduous task. I have found two utilities that simplify this task. FileChute is an application thats sole purpose is to quickly and effortlessly share files and folders between multiple Macs across your LAN via a drag & drop interface. Fetch is and FTP/SFTP client that requires you to connect into an FTP space or web space, put the file onto the remote server and then send a link to the people who the file is intended for. Both utilities perform flawlessly and are highly recommended. I personally prefer Fetch for its FTP/SFTP abilities and its WebView feature.

I found a really cool ScreenSaver called LotsaWater. Up until today my favorite ScreenSaver was Marine Aquarium.

For some reason, maybe it has to do with the fact that I spend much of my time on the internet, I am in constant search for the perfect web browser, does it even exist?  Every time a new browser is released I download it and put it to the test and every time for one reason or another I always end up reverting back to Safari. My main gripe with Safari is that it is slow and crashes frequently. This week The Camino Project released their new open source web browser Camino 1.0. Camino combines an impressive visual and behavioral experience that has been central to the Macintosh philosophy with the powerful web-browsing capabilities of the Gecko rendering engine. The only browser available that combines the rendering power of Gecko with the Aqua user interface, Camino 1.0 offers superior integration with the Mac platform and a focused feature set. Among Camino’s signature features are elegant tabbed browsing, an enhanced bookmarks manager, and built-in ad-blocking. I have been using Camino 1.0 for a few days now and I have to say I am really impressed. The feature set has worked flawlessly thus far and Camino is certainly much faster than Safari. I do not have one reason to revert back to Safari as of yet, Camino Rules!

I have a lung disease and over the years I have spent my share of time in the hospital. Every single day that I spend in the hospital my wife travels 40 miles each way and spends her whole day by my side. This year on Valentines Day I wanted to show my appreciation by getting her something other than just a Valentines Day card. I heard the Vermont Teddy Bear Company advertisement on the Howard Stern show several times this past month, so I decided to check out the teddy bears at VTB. I was unpleasantly surprised at the high price of VTB's Teddy Bears but my wife is certainly worth every penny. I placed the order for the teddy bear on February 9th, 2006 with a guaranteed delivery for the February 13th or 14th. Well, February 14th has come and gone and the teddy bear has yet to arrive. I have been unsuccessfully trying to contact Vermont Teddy Bear Company for the past three hours and the phone is busy. What a disappointment, I really wanted to surprise my wife with a token of my appreciation and VTB fucked it up. 

I have been a loyal customer of Netflix.com for a couple years now. I have been so thrilled with the Netflix service that I often would promote the service to my friends and even gave my mother a gift subscription to the Netflix service. Late last year I noticed a drastic slowdown in service. Originally I had attributed the slowdown to the Xmas season but the service did not speed up after Xmas. I emailed Netflix.com customer service on two occasions complaining of the slowdown in service. The first email went unanswered and on the second I received the following response:

Hello Donald,

Thanks for your message. 

I am very sorry about the inconvenience. Please be assured that Netflix delivery delays are very uncommon. If you're experiencing repeated delays with returning DVDs, we would suggest mailing them from a different location such as the post office.

You may report any difficulties with shipments using the Report Shipping Problem page.

If you have any further questions or concerns, please feel free to contact us. 

Thanks,

Albert,

Netflix Customer Service 

I was livid today when I read the article at CNN news regarding Netflix throttling the accounts of heavy renters. I immediately canceled my account and joined Blockbuster.com's online rental service. I can only hope that other netflix.com subscribers will not tolerate this rental racism and cancel their account at netflix.com.