New CR-48 Discovery – VGA-Out

On July 20, 2011 By Michel McDonaldIn CR-48, Google Chrome, Movies, TVLeave a comment

I’m not quite sure when they fixed the VGA-Out but my CR-48 is now able to hook up to my television. This is very cool because I’ve been wanting to get it hooked up for a long time so I can watch Hulu on my TV.

There is one little issue though. When I plug the VGA cable into the chromebook, the screen stretches. It basically goes from a widescreen, I’m not quite sure what the exact resolution is, to 1024×768 which is a 4:3 screen. So if you have a widescreen 16:9 HDTV like I do, you will have to set it to 4:3.

When you watch a video on Hulu on your TV with the CR-48 or I assume any chromebook, you will notice that when you click the full screen button, which sits next to the volume button, your screen won’t look the same as it does when you watch it on your netbook. Instead, it will cut off the right side of the video and you will see a small video on your screens. Not exactly the effect I was hoping for. To fix this you can click the pop out button on the right side of the video instead of the full screen. You will see a small 320×240 box pop out on the bottom right of your screen. Just resize it so it covers the entire screen. It’s not the ideal situation but I’ll take what I can get until they fix the issue, if they ever do.

You can watch YouTube videos with better results. Just go to YouTube, browse the videos until you find the one you want to watch and go into full screen. Your video will be normal, however since you are still in 4:3 mode on your HDTV it will be as if you are watching a program that is in letterbox mode. No problem if the YouTube video isn’t in widescreen format.

Those are the only 2 websites that I have checked so I’m not quite sure how it will be for every website, or every HDTV for that matter. I highly doubt that a 4:3 TV would even have a PC-In so if you don’t have an HDTV then this most likely won’t apply to you. But I’m not positive. If you have a 4:3 flat screen then it might have a PC-In. If that is the case then no problem.

The reason I want to watch web videos on my TV is for the simple fact that sometimes a video that I am watching doesn’t have a high enough volume for me to hear it and the best way to get around that is to use the tv’s speakers. Also, I get to see it bigger when it’s on my tv rather than my little 12″ netbook screen. I’m sure anyone can appreciate that.

I don’t know why it took me this long to check to make sure that it worked but I’m glad I finally did. Now if Netflix would just get their service working on the Google Chrome OS, I will be set.

Spoke Wrench

On June 23, 2009 By Michel McDonaldIn BikeLeave a comment

I just came back from Snider’s Cyclry, I had to get a spoke wrench for my bike. I was going to wait until I got my check then have them “true” the wheel but I wasn’t sure how expensive it would be. The guy at Snider’s told me it would only cost $17 but probably more depending on how bad it was and it’s pretty bad lol.

He asked if I’ve ever “trued” a bike before and I said no but I’ve been doing a lot of research on how to do it with watching YouTube videos and reading tutorials and stuff because I’ve read if you don’t do it right you can screw it up and you’ll have to buy a new wheel. He said yeah and he showed me how to do it which was nice.

He said that a truing stand would cost like $75 or so which I don’t have that kind of money but he told me that you can put the wheel in your front fork where the front wheel goes and put a zip tie on the fork about where the top of the wheel is as a guide so when you are moving the wheel near that zip tie you will be able to see if it needs to go in which direction.

I’m not quite sure I remember everything he told me but I’m going to do my best. I just want to save the $17 or so so I can buy my seat next in 2 weeks.

Well, I’m off to go try to “true” my back wheel in the front fork hehe. Wish me luck. And as always I will edit this post when I’m finished with a YAY I did it or oh crap I screwed it up and now I can’t ride my bike until I can get a new wheel lol.

Edit: I am happy to say that it worked out. I didn’t totally 100% true my back wheel but it doesn’t wobble anymore. I tried doing what he said by putting the back wheel on the front fork but it’s not the right size because of the freewheel (the thing that the chain goes on) made it too big. So what I did was I put the zip tie on the fork for the front wheel and did a little practice test on the front wheel. That worked out perfectly because the front wheel needed to be trued a little too. So then I put another zip tie on the back wheel and I trued that as best as I could and then went out on a test ride and perfection. Well, 95% perfection lol. I didn’t want to mess with it too much and end up screwing it up. But it was much easier than I thought because of that zip tie.

RapidShare AG Scam

On April 25, 2009 By Michel McDonaldIn ScamsLeave a comment

Today I was sitting at the computer looking at YouTube videos and my email program told me I had email. So I went to look and here is this one email from a business called RapidShare AG showing me my account information. Then a 2nd email which came at the exact same time from PayPal showing that I had been charged €29.99 EUR.

At first I thought it was just another email phishing scam asking me to click a link and give up my password so I just opened a new browser and manually typed http://www.paypal.com. I entered my password and sure enough there was that euro dollar charge and they did the exchange rate thing so the total that will come out of my checking account in 3 business days is $37.34.

So without hesitation I searched for the PayPal phone number and called them and told them “I DID NOT AUTHORIZE THIS!!!!” I told the guy on the phone that I don’t even know what RapidShare is and he said it’s a file sharing website. How did he know that? Perhaps PayPal knows about this yet they are still allowing people to be charged for this? I don’t know. He walked me through the process of disputing the claim but said it could take 10 days.

10 Days? It only takes 3 days for them to take the money directly out of my checking account. I only have $18 available until my next check. So I called Bank of America and told them what happened and I told them that I talked to PayPal about it and I wanted to make sure that they don’t get their money from me through my checking account which should be in 3 days. Well, that costs $20 and like I said, I have $18 available so now I gotta put $2 in the bank to cover my ass because if they take $20 and I have $18 they’re going to charge me $20 insufficient fund fee lol. That’s $40.

Why should I end up having to pay $40 when I’m the one being scammed?

OK so I went to the Google search engine and found out that this is indeed a scam. Someone didn’t just sign me up for this website or service, this company somehow got my PayPal password and they charged me for an account that I never asked for.

I was going to call them because PayPal has all the details but they are in Switzerland. I can’t call Switzerland! First of all they would probably put me on hold for 20 minutes and my phone bill would skyrocket. I could use my PSP with Skype but then I’d have to pay Skype more money to make an international call. The details also provide the company email address so I emailed them telling them that I disputed the claim with PayPal so they might as well just reverse their charge because they are not getting any money from me.

So now with all that out in the open, I have to go to the ATM machine to deposit $2.

UPDATE: This transaction did go through to the bank on that Monday which means the stop payment thing through Bank of America didn’t take. In fact when I called them they said that it wouldn’t have worked anyway because that is supposed to be for a monthly stop payment, not for a 1 time stop payment. I don’t know why they were going to use that then if that wasn’t for what I needed. Gawd!

Our dog Flower had a medical emergency so Darrin had to call his brother to ask him to NOT cash my rent check which means that since it did go through to my banking account I didn’t go in the negative so I don’t have to worry about insufficient funds fee… for now.

The refund did go through with PayPal and the money is back in my PayPal account. However, they didn’t put it back in my checking account. I wish they just put it back where they got it from. But, I think I’m going to just leave it in there just in case something happens like this again. Also it’s good to save money right?

So everything worked out in the end.

Xanapus` Lair

Tag: youtube videos

New CR-48 Discovery – VGA-Out

Spoke Wrench

RapidShare AG Scam

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