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Month: October 2010

HSBC’s Fraud Accounting is Silly

Published October 12, 2010

Despite getting a new HSBC credit card after some fraudulent activity HSBC still has my old account listed and accessible on their website with a $0.01 balance. When I called a few minutes ago to inquire about this I was told to ignore this info as “some people can still see it” and the lingering $0.01 is “for accounting purposes” and “won’t affect my credit report”.

This seems very strange to me. I hope it doesn’t result in HSBC attempting to improperly collect on this Purchase Debit Adjustment. Then again, perhaps them doing so would be a good exercise in small claims court.

UPDATE: A second call to HSBC, this time answered by a more friendly man with an Indian accent (as opposed to a Southern-sounding woman the first time) resulted in him looking into the case, and saying that the account is closed, and despite the reflected amount owed of $0.01 that I should just ignore the account, as from HSBC’s perspective it is completely closed.

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River Bends Park Trail in the News

Published October 7, 2010

When checking the mail today I was somewhat surprised to see this on the front page of the Shelby-Utica News. Last week I was interviewed by Kristyne Demske who wrote the article and this past Saturday while doing trail work a photographer was out with us taking some photos, and this article is the result. While a few quotes seem out of context, I feel that the overall article is good and reflects what we hope to accomplish with the trails. I could probably do with learning to talk to reporters a bit better, too; more concise, better quotable bites, and a bit less wordy.

You can read the complete article online by clicking here, or see scans of the two pages of the article here: Page 1 · Page 2

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River Bends Park Trail Map

Published October 5, 2010

After getting the second phase of trails at River Bends open this weekend I set to work creating a map of the trails in the park. Well, here it is. This map lists all of the two track, official single track, and asphalt along with showing the parking lot and the nearest intersection for reference.

To download a PDF of the map, click the image above or here: River_Bends_03-Oct-2010.pdf

UPDATE: The 17-Nov-2010 update of the map can be found here: River_Bends_17-Nov-2010.pdf

UPDATE 2: The 13-Mar-2011 version of the map can be found here: River_Bends_13-Mar-2011.pdf

UPDATE 3: The latest version of all maps of the trails at River Bends can be found at: http://mmba.org/library/maps/riverbends/latest.pdf

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VBScript Function to Check Active Directory Domain Access

Published October 4, 2010

The following VBScript function can be used to check if a given username and password has access to the specified domain. It will return true or false depending on whether or not access was granted.

function fnCheckAccess(strDomain, strUserID, strUserPWD)
 
    const ADS_SECURE_AUTHENTICATION = &H01
    const ADS_CHASE_REFERRALS_ALWAYS = &H60
 
    dim objDSO
    dim objUser
    dim strPath
 
    strPath = "LDAP://" & strDomain
 
    On Error Resume Next
    set objDSO = GetObject("LDAP:")
    set objUser = objDSO.OpenDSObject(strPath, strUserID, strUserPWD, ADS_SECURE_AUTHENTICATION OR ADS_CHASE_REFERRALS_ALWAYS)
    if Err.Number <> 0 then
        fnCheckAccess = False
    else
        fnCheckAccess = True
    end if
    Err.Clear
    On Error Goto 0
 
    set objDSO = Nothing
    set objUser = Nothing
 
end function

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Phase II of River Bends is Open!

Published October 3, 2010

With a total of 39.5 volunteer hours spent during a rainy trail day of bench cutting, installing a new bridge, (which Pete designed specifically for the space), raking, trimming, and generally finishing off the trail, Phase II of the single track trails at River Bends are now open. While the trails are still a bit slippery from the last couple days of rain, they should be quite nice to ride.

Once I was done taking a break after the trail day I then headed back to River Bends and walked the new part of the trail with My Tracks recording the route. This data, combined with stuff gathered on previous mapping trips, allowed me to make this map showing all the park-recognized paths within the park. While just the first revision, I’m still quite happy with how it’s all coming along. There’s now a ridable, cohesive loop of multiple miles of single track.

Now to get to finishing the other loops that hang off of it. They already exist, but need both some cleanup and trimming before they’ll be properly ridable. Right now getting through some parts of them is akin to riding down a corn row.

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Surprise Freezer Defrosting

Published October 1, 2010

When Danielle and I returned from the grocery store this evening we found that the fridge (a Maytag PBF2253HEB) was much warmer than it should be; somewhere around 60°F. When it was still this temperature after eating dinner it was time to try and figure out what’s going on. As the compressor was running and the freezer was still perfectly cold I figured that the duct between the freezer (where the cooling coils are) and the fridge must be misbehaving.

Investigating the fridge portion of things showed that the servo which opens a damper in the fridge (allowing in cold air) was operating, so I started to look at the freezer. Just when I noticed some unexpected frost through the slats at the rear Danielle found this article explaining how the freezer can frost up, leading to no airflow to the fridge and thus no cooling up there.

It suggests replacing the control board to resolve a problem with Adaptive Defrost Control. Before that I decided to do a manual defrost and see if that resolves things. I’ve had the fridge for just under five years with it running non-stop the whole time with a fair bit of ice sublimating in the freezer, so I figure that maybe enough frost could have built up in that time that the automatic defrost couldn’t overcome it.

If the frost issue comes back quickly I’ll look into actually repairing it. I found a copy of the service manual here (mirror) and will just run through the diagnostics and replace the needed bits.

The photo above is the evaporator coils inside of the fridge completely packed with frost. The part that appears to be a frost bottom shelf was a solid block of ice. Here’s a handful of photos taken while defrosting things, including what Danielle feels is an extremely dorky photo of me:

· Wearing a head lamp and defrosting the evaporator coils in my fridge after the fridge stopped cooling.
· Inside of my Maytag PBF2253HEB after the evaporator coil frosted over.
· Partially defrosted evaporator coil in a Maytag PBF2253HEB.
· Defrosting the evaporator coil in the Maytag PBF2253HEB with a hair dryer.
· Shiny, dry, defrosted evaporator coil in a Maytag PBF2253HEB.

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