darkoshi: (Default)
I dislike it when the inside edges of fork tines are rough; it makes eating unpleasant, unless I'm very careful not to have the fork touch my tongue. That's one of the reasons my favorite fork is my favorite, because its tines are smooth. But how to know, when buying cutlery, if the tines are smooth or not? Most of the loose individual forks I've seen for sale, as at Walmart or World Market, have rough inside edges. Not to mention, the tines also generally have thick squarish ends which I don't like either. When they are part of a box set, it is hard to tell if the tines are smooth or not.

The same could be said for spoons... sometimes, spoons have rough outside edges, but it is not as common as with fork tines, and tends to only be the very cheap brands.

This online store says that smooth tines are polished more:
Higher-priced patterns will have more care given to polishing the fork tines. While it's very subtle and subconscious, your lips and tongue will feel the slight roughness. When you eat with a pattern that has well-polished tines, it feels smooth all the way through.

Point of Reference:
This Ikea Fornuft brand (marked with number "223 32") which Qiao bought has lovely spoons, and the knives are ok. They all have a nice shiny finish. But the fork tines are rough and unpleasant on the inside. The Ikea website lists them at ~$8 per 20 pieces (clearance price, perhaps?), while Amazon lists them at ~$15 per 20. So apparently I need to look for ones which are more expensive than that.

These look nice from the photo. $25 for a 5 piece set, though if one buys the forks individually, they are $18 each!

.

I previously posted about iTunes charging me an extra dollar for a song I bought back in early June. The first time I contacted them about it, they said it was an authorization charge and that it would "drop off". I waited another month to make sure, but it didn't drop off. After that, I had trouble getting through to their customer service again, and when I finally did, they said that Paypal should have refunded it to me. So I contacted PayPal, who promptly refunded it to me with no hassle. That was mid-August.

So imagine my consternation, when in mid-October, my PayPal account showed that iTunes had now also refunded me $1. Two weeks later, iTunes sent me an email. It didn't mention my prior communications with them; it only said:
You may have recently noticed that your PayPal account was erroneously charged for one or more authorizations from the iTunes Store, iBooks Store, App Store, Apple News, or iCloud, in the amount of $1.00. This issue has been resolved and all applicable charges have been reversed. You should see the reversals on your PayPal account within five business days.

So perhaps it wasn't only me with the problem, and perhaps they refunded everyone who was erroneously charged. Now I feel slightly bad that PayPal gave me a dollar too, when apparently it wasn't their fault after all.

.

A new browser for me to try out: Vivaldi. It's not open-source, though.

.

Dirk Gently, season 2, continues to be amazingly good and entertaining.
darkoshi: (Default)
Remember that song I bought on iTunes, which was so much trouble to buy?

Not only that, but in addition to the price of the song I bought, iTunes charged me an extra $1 which they are now refusing to give back. When I initially contacted them about it via their Report a problem link, they replied by email that it was only an "authorization hold on my credit card" and that it would automatically drop off in an unspecified amount of time. I was dubious, as the $1 had been taken from my PayPal balance (which I told them), not from a credit card. However, I found a PayPal page which indicated that those kind of charges might take a month to get refunded, so I decided to wait that long to see, before bugging iTunes about it again. The $1 never got refunded.

After the month was over, I tried contacting iTunes again via the same link (twice!), but even though upon submitting the report, the confirmation page states that they'll get back to me within 48 hours, they haven't, either time. I didn't even get the immediate "We'll be in touch" email response like I did the first time. So it seems like their system is purposely ignoring me now. (Why? I can't figure that out.)

I had also tried disputing the charge via the PayPal site, however none of the choices PayPal provides for the reason of the dispute seemed applicable. I clicked what seemed the most relevant one and chose answers to the remaining questions that were presented to see what would happen, even though none of the answers were applicable. I thought I'd be given an opportunity to either Submit or Cancel at the end, and that I'd choose Cancel and maybe then try a different initial option. But after selecting the answers, I was only shown a message like "Well, you said you received the thing you ordered (ie. the song), so you can't dispute the charge."

Now when I try clicking the link to dispute the charge again (thinking that maybe I'll select a different initial reason this time), the link doesn't work ("Sorry — your last action could not be completed"). I suspect it is because they previously decided that I have no grounds for dispute.
ARGH.

I do still have the option of calling the PayPal customer support phone number. Maybe I could find an iTunes phone number.

It is only $1 they stole from me. It's not worth the hassle. But it's not right.

Update, 2017/08/19:
I still wasn't getting any response via Apple's Report a Problem page. So instead I contacted Apple support via chat (from that support page, I selected the links for: iTunes - iTunes Store - Purchases, Billing & Redemption - iTunes Store Account Billing - Chat). During the chat, the Apple rep reiterated that the $1 charge was only an authorization hold, and told me to contact PayPal; that PayPal should credit me the $1 back.

So I disputed the charge via the link on the PayPal site again (the link was working ok now - maybe there's a time-out period for how often you can click it?) This time, I selected the option for reporting a Billing issue, and an "issue that's not described". I attached a copy of my Apple support chat, and submitted the report. Within 24 hours, PayPal sent me a reply that they had accepted my claim and credited the $1 back to my account.

So finally, the problem has been resolved.

iTunes and DRM

Sunday, June 4th, 2017 11:21 pm
darkoshi: (Default)
I finally managed to buy that song I wanted from iTunes.

I never want to go through that much trouble to buy a song again, even if, like this one, IAMX's I Come With Knives, I really want to support the artist for making such a wonderful song and video. Maybe, if an MP3 of the song had been available to purchase on the band's website, or on Amazon, it wouldn't have taken me over 4 years to buy it.

The band's website only has the full album available, and only as a CD, not MP3s. Some of the other albums are available as MP3s, but not that one. Likewise, Amazon only has the full album on CD. The MP3 version seems to be a single instead, as it only has 4 songs, of which 3 are different versions of "Unified Field". The only place I found the song I wanted was on iTunes.

The plus of it was that the iTunes price was in GBP, not dollars. So I got to use up some of that GBP balance I still had left over on my PayPal account.

The 2 TV show episodes that I wanted to buy are also priced in GBP, which would have been another plus. But after doing some research, it seems that if I bought them, they'd be in MV4 format, which I'd only be able to play on that desktop computer from inside iTunes. Because of the DRM, I wouldn't be able to play them on my normal laptop (without iTunes), nor even on the TV (no, that computer doesn't have an HDMI port). So I won't be buying them after all. There's only so much I'm willing to put up with. Sure, maybe I could use some software to strip out the DRM from the files in order to play them on my other devices without iTunes, but that would defeat the whole point of buying them legally.

other things

Sunday, June 4th, 2017 02:47 am
darkoshi: (Default)
Still tweaking other things on my new cell phone too.

I found out that one can remove the pages from these old family photo albums (and put them back together again). Which means that scanning the albums shouldn't be that difficult after all (as long as each page fits on the flatbed - one of the albums does just barely. The other one would require using my mom's larger scanner). Which means that's another thing I want to get done.

Firefox addons; learn how to update them to use these new WebExtensions APIs.
Which also shows me that my JavaScript knowledge is woefully out of date. It's changed a lot in 20 years.

I've just installed 2 and a half years worth of Windows updates on one of Qiao's old Windows 7 desktop computers, which we haven't used in that long. Because it has iTunes on it, and I don't want to install iTunes on my laptop. But there are a couple of items I want to get, which are only available to download from iTunes. And of course, that meant I needed to install Windows updates too, right? I dunno. It seemed the thing to do even though it took all day. Makes me think I might even be able to get updates working again on my old laptop too, if I wanted to.
Simplifying updates for Windows 7 and 8.1 - a rollup for all updates through April 2016, with only one prerequisite that must be installed first.

Researching family tree stuff. Old census records. Found out my great-great-grandmother had at least 10 children, and possibly 5 more that didn't survive.
Need to determine what kind of open-source program I should use for doing a family tree, so that the data can be exported/imported in a widely compatible format.

Want to replace all the screws for the door lock strike-plates and hinges with 3-inch long screws. And replace some of the strike-plates with ones that take 4 screws instead of 2.

I finally took down the rest of the xmas decorations and put the boxes away. My mom helped me take down the xmas tree a few weeks ago. She and Qiao are as bad as me - once I made my mind up to take them down, they both said "I think you should just leave them up", making me debate it internally all over again.
darkoshi: (Default)
I watched the season premiere of "The Voice" with Qiao tonight. I was quite impressed by several of the singers. There's one song (a cover of Nirvana's "Come As You Are") that I would even pay to download... the show's website has it for sale on iTunes. Hmmm.

After a bit of research, it seems that all music currently being sold on iTunes is DRM-free, and that it is in the AAC format, which can be converted to MP3. So I should be able to download it and play it on my music player of choice. However, in order to buy a song from the site, you need to have iTunes installed, and I have no intention of installing iTunes on my computer. So I'll just post a YouTube video of the song here instead. It seems silly for a site to require you to have a program installed, in order to buy something from them. Back when the iTunes songs included DRM, it made sense that you needed a special player for them. But I don't understand why buying music from iTunes still requires having the iTunes program installed.


Rebecca Loebe - Come As You Are

Video title: Rebecca Loebe - Come as you are Nirvana cover
Posted by: slowpacedrecords
URL: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y5srJL_HQ_I


Her website (with other songs available for purchase):
http://rebeccaloebe.com/

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