I used to use and recommend KDS monitors not only because they had fantastic specifications at a fantastic price, but because they had a great warranty.

HAD a great warranty.  Things have changed.

Almost one year ago exactly, August 30th to be exact, I bought a KDS 24" LCD.  This weekend, there was a *pop* and the monitor stopped working.

Now, in the past KDS always had a three year warranty.  That hasn't changed.  But they used to give you an RMA number based on being within 3 years of manufacture date if you can't find your invoice and they used to do advance replacements.  According to their website (as of this blog) none of this has changed.

Under "Warranty Help Desk", KDS states "If a copy of the original proof-of-purchase is not available, the warranty period will be considered to begin on the date of manufacture".  Under "Getting Help", there's a paragraph titled "Arranging a Product Replacement" and in that paragraph, it states "The KDS representative will need your name, address, serial number, product number, purchase receipt, description of the problem and signed replacement agreement. The customer's credit card number is maintained at KDS for collateral purposes only; there is no charge if the defective product is returned to KDS within 30 days."

Well... I can't find my invoice.  So I call and I'm told that I can't get an RMA.  I then find the verbiage on the website that states that they can use the date of manufacture and call back.  I finally get an RMA number, but they're still unwilling to do an advanced replacement.  I then manage to find my invoice AND find the verbiage on the "Getting Help" page, so I call back.  Nope.  No dice.  This time I'm told that because the verbiage isn't found on the warranty terms page specific to my unit they will not do an advance replacement.  The lady on the phone also made sure to point out where it says "the warranty is subject to change at any time without prior notice."

Now, I'm not going to say KDS sucks or that I'll never buy another KDS.  And I'm not going to say KDS performed "bait-and-switch" or anything like that.  That's what those whacko customers that send letters to the BBB do and I've had to deal with those jackasses and the only word that can be used to describe that kind of customer is "unreasonable".  But I won't be going out of my way to buy another KDS.  It better be a damn good price and I'll make sure it's a monitor that I can do without for 3 weeks if it does die on me.  Good thing there's plenty of other brands out there competing for my business.  Brands that stand behind their product and have good customer service.  Hello, Dell?

I've had the VeraCruz for almost two years now and decided to do my own oil change this time.  I went to Pep Boys to buy supplies to do an oil change before finding out what kind of filter I needed.  The book of filters at Pep Boys had 2007 Hyundai in it, but no VeraCruz.  All of the V6 engines in the book said that I would need a Purolator L14460, a standard filter, so I assumed that's what I needed.

After about 15 minutes under the car, I realized that the VeraCruz does NOT have a standard filter.  It uses a filter cartridge. Guess where I found it?  Under the plastic engine cover....

Nice. So I'm not going to change the filter right now. I'll do it next time. Also, I wont use the ramps next time either. I almost crushed the ramps with this beast. Can I use the filter I bought on my 2005 Elantra? Nope. That uses a L14459. *sigh*

I decided to quit caffeine cold turkey.

BAD IDEA! 

There's this thing called caffeine withdraw headache and I've found out two things while looking around the web:

1. You can't quit cold turkey without considerable headaches.  And...

2. There is no pain killer that can help the headache... unless of course the pain killer has caffeine in it.

I had a headache like no other I've ever had.  It lasted all day and even double doses of Tylenol, Advil and aspirin didn't help it.  I had to cave in and drink a Pepsi to make the pain go away.

But that's ok.  That's still 1/8 the caffeine I normally have in a day.  I read that the painless way to quit caffeine is to take one caffeinated drink out of your diet every week until there are no more.  I think I'm going to deal with the headaches and just drink a Pepsi whenever the headaches become unbearable.  As long as I'm still reducing my caffeine intake and it takes less time than taking one drink away every week for the next eight weeks, I should be in good shape.  We'll see.

Full disclosure:  I missed being able to use this credit by three months because I couldn't/didn't sell my home in Tampa right away.  So although I rented an apartment three years ago, I do not quality for this tax credit.  DOH!

If you have not owned a home in three years, you may qualify for a $7,500 tax credit.

Face it... The economy sucks and a big part of that has to do with the bursting housing bubble.  But it's a buyer's market.  Home prices are down and there's plenty of houses to choose from.  So how do you get the credit?

If you buy a house before July 1st 2009, you may be able to deduct $3750 from your taxes if you file as single or $7,500 if you file a joint return and if you have a total household income of less than $75,000 if you're single or $150,000 if you're married.

So what's the catch?  There's a catch?  First off, it's not exactly "free money".  The money you receive back from your tax return is a loan.  It's interest free and it's not due for 15 years, but it's still a loan.  But if you can't save an extra $41.67 a month ($7,500 over 180 months) to pay back the government, you don't deserve to own a house.  Really.  The second catch is more of a bit of advice than anything.  With the recent bail out of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and the current state of the economy, many banks want to hang onto what little money they have.  Even if you have spotless credit, you may encounter high interest rates.  So make sure you have good credit and that the house you are planning to buy is priced accordingly to the current market state (i.e. been on the market for a year or more, a foreclosure, etc.) so you can get the lowest rate possible yet get a good enough deal on the house to where it is still reasonably priced even with a slightly higher interest rate.  Then hopefully, if and when we ever rebound from this slump, you can refinance at a better interest rate and your property is worth considerably more than what you paid for it.

Here's all the information you need on the "First-Time Home Buyer Tax Credit" website.

As for me... I'm hoping they come up with another, smaller deduction for those of us who haven't owned a house in two years, nine months.

What is a mail-in-rebate?

A mail-in-rebate, or MIR, is a marketing tactic manufacturers use to convince customers to purchase their products.  Products are often advertised as having unrealistically low prices, for example "Platinum Widgets only $1 Each!*" (note the asterisk) followed by fine print that may say something like "* After $100 mail in rebate".  The customer must first buy the product at full price, in my example that would be $100, fill out a form, photocopy their receipt, cut out a UPC from the product box, put everything into an envelope and mail it to a rebate fulfillment center.  If the rebate center receives and approves your submission, they may eventually send a check out to you that you may, or may not, receive.

You'll notice I used the word "if" and "may" a few times in that last sentence.  I'll explain why in a little bit when I get around to breaking down the process.  But first....

Why do companies do mail-in-rebates?

Rebates work as a marketing ploy in the same way coupons in the Sunday paper work.   Let's say you see a coupon for $1 off Poop-Away.  You've never bought Poop-Away before, but maybe you can find a use for Poop-Away around the house.  It may be time to give Poop-Away a try.  So you clip the coupon and buy a can of Poop-Away.  Then again, you may not fall for this marketing.  I know I don't.  I only clip coupons of things I already know I'm going to buy.  Even then, if I get to the store and find some other brand that will substitute nicely is cheaper, even though I have a coupon for the other brand, I may just decide to crumple up the coupon and just buy the cheaper brand.  Unfortunately, that's not the majority of customers.  Most people end up spending MORE money at the grocery store when they clip every coupon out of the paper, for the same reason people that don't make shopping lists and then go to the store on an empty stomach spend more money.

If you see a product that's unbelievably cheap, after rebate, manufacturers are counting on you to buy the product whether you need it or not.  They hope to increase sales by enticing people with incredibly low, after rebate prices.  But it is my opinion that rebates should be treated in the same way coupons are treated.  If you don't need the product, you probably shouldn't buy it.  If you can't afford the product before rebate DEFINITELY don't buy it.  I've seen so many people say "I'm building my computer and it's only going to cost me $500" when the fact of the matter is the computer will cost them $1000 out of pocket to build.  Sorry, but it's like the old bird in the hand, three in the bush adage.  Until every single rebate check is in your hand, that computer cost you $1000.  So if you can't afford a $1000 computer, you need to rethink your purchasing decisions.

How can companies do mail-in-rebates?

Manufacturers count on you to buy a product with a rebate but don't count on you redeeming the rebate.  There's a big misconception that when a manufacturer does a rebate that they're either losing money or they're making an assload of money ordinarily.  Fact of the matter is, MOST people never send in their rebate.  Even when they do send in their rebates, a decent percentage of them send them in too late or did something wrong causing the rebate to get rejected.  Typically, even a rebate as high as $50 only has a 50% redemption rate.  If that figure is historically true with a particular product, the manufacturer can count on an average discount of $25 per unit sold and NOT the $50 per product discount the consumer assumes there is. 

Manufacturers have to be careful to not have too high of a redemption rate.  $10, $20, $30 rebates are RARELY redeemed.  $100 rebates, on the other hand, get redeemed more often.  It's up to the manufacturer to find the balance between having a decent enough rebate to draw people into buying product and not losing money after the promotion is over.

Why do so many people complain about rebate houses not paying?

This happens for the same reason there are more complaints about companies on Reseller Ratings than there are positive reviews.  I'm guilty of this too.  When We-Be-Gadgets ships me my new pocket theremin undamaged and in a timely manner, odds are I'm not going to post a positive review anywhere.  We-Be-Gadgets did what they were supposed to do.  Thanks, now quit sending me Spam.  But let's assume for a minute I get a dead pocket theremin or the tone of my theremin is not as ethereal as advertised.  What do I do?  I post a negative review of either my pocket theremin and/or complain about We-Be-Gadgets selling second rate products!  The same is true about rebate houses.  If I send in my rebate and in one to two months time get my check, I cash my check and go on with life.  If I never get my check, you better believe I'm going to bitch about not receiving my check to anyone willing to listen!

Now, I'm not siding with big corporate America taking away your hard earned money but about a year ago I had worked for Ultra Products and maintained the customer support forums.  Ultra, being a division of Systemax, had to use the "dreaded" OnRebate, another Systemax company, to process their rebates. A good deal of the posts in the forum ended up being people complaining about not getting paid for their rebates.  Naturally, I would try to help these people get their rebates, but while doing this I would find that these people, despite being a large percentage of the membership base at Ultra's support forums, were in fact a very, very, very small percentage of the people that actually filed for and received their rebates.

Quite a few of these people, yet not the majority, were denied their rebates because they weren't paying attention to what needed to be included with the rebate.  I've had to deal with customers that:

1. Sent in the wrong bar code.  They would cut out a bar code sticker applied by the distributor or reseller as opposed to the one actually printed on the retail box itself.  When in doubt, contact the manufacturer or rebate fulfillment company.  DO NOT take the word of someone working at the reseller on what will work as a valid UPC for your rebate.  I can't even begin to tell you how many excuses I've heard that started with "But the guy at the checkout told me....." 

2. Sent in a packing slip as opposed to an invoice.  Some rebates will take one or the other, while most require only an invoice.  Many products are drop shipped from the manufacturer so the packing slips included with the product do not include a purchase price.  These packing slips are often NOT taken as proof of purchase.  When in doubt, contact the manufacturer or rebate fulfillment company.  DO NOT take the word of someone working at the reseller on what will work as a valid invoice for your rebate.  I can't even begin to tell you how many excuses I've heard that started with "The guy on the phone told me that......"

3. Had different addresses on the invoice and rebate form.  These have to match.  If they don't, you don't get your check.  DO NOT take the word of someone working at the reseller that the address on the receipt doesn't matter when you tell them to put a change of address in the computer.  I can't even begin to tell you how many excuses I've heard that started with "When I told the guy at the register to put in my new address he told me it wouldn't matter......"

4. Forgot to sign the rebate form.  Yes, the rebate form is a contract.  By signing the rebate form you're agreeing to the terms of the contract.  If you don't sign it, it's not getting processed.

How do I make sure my rebate is received, accepted and paid?

1. Make sure you include EVERYTHING that the rebate asks for.  If they ask for an invoice, send an invoice and NOT a packing slip.  If they ask for the original UPC, send the original UPC and NOT a copy.  If you're in doubt about ANYTHING contact the manufacturer or the rebate processing center and NOT the reseller you bought the product from.

2.  Make sure you sign your rebate if they ask you to sign it.  Don't like signing your name to an agreement even if it means you getting your money or not?  Then you must not want your money bad enough.  And you WILL likely get added to a Spam list.  That's one of the perks of running a rebate fulfillment center.  You get to gather the personal information of people from a fairly well defined demographic and can be sold (like someone that sends in a MIR for a carton of cigarettes probably smokes, so it might make sense to sell their information to a company that makes smoking jackets.  No?  Who still wears a smoking jacket other than Hugh Hefner?)

3.  Make copies of EVERYTHING and keep these copies until the rebate check is in your hand. 

4.  Some rebates submissions simply never make it to the processing center.  Can you look me in the eye and tell me that EVERYTHING you've ever mailed was received by the intended recipient?  Of course not!  Because you're reading this on the Internet and don't see my eye.  But that's beside the point.  Fact is, not every rebate submission makes it to the fulfillment center and not every rebate check makes it to the customer.  If the rebate is for a good chunk of change (I would say $50 or better) I would invest a couple bucks in getting signature confirmation (NOT delivery confirmation) or use a carrier like FedEx, UPS, DHL, etc. where you can actually track the rebate from your house to the rebate center.  Even if the rebate center is guilty of throwing half of the submissions away so they can say "We didn't receive the rebate", you have NO PROOF just because you put a stamp on an envelope and stuck it in the mailbox.  Delivery confirmation is worthless because if a business receives a large quantity of parcels and letters (like a rebate house), the post office that services that business will scan all delivery confirmation stickers prior to delivery so the mail carrier doesn't have to stand around at the business scanning a plethora of bar codes.  When I worked RMA for TCWO, this would happen a lot.  People would check the USPS website for the status of their delivery confirmation and find that their RMA was delivered at 5 o'clock in the morning.  They would then call me to find out the status of their RMA when I hadn't even received it yet.  At 5 o'clock, I was NOT at TCWO.  In fact, nobody was.  5 o'clock was the time the truck arrived at the post office and dropped off our packages, not when they were dropped off at TCWO.

5.  BE PATIENT!  You shouldn't go bitching about not getting your rebate only four weeks after you mailed it in.  Fact of the matter is, it takes A LONG time to process a rebate.  Rebates are opened in batches and processed in batches.  This is because rebate processing centers process rebates for multiple manufacturers simultaneously.  It would be very inefficient for them to do one rebate for Company A, then another for Company B, then Company C, then a second for Company A.  They group as many from one company as possible and process them together.  They then take the lump sum that the manufacturer owes the rebate processing center for all the checks that need to go out and put it in an invoice for the manufacturer to pay so the rebate house can then in turn send out checks to the customers.  If it takes the rebate processing center 4 weeks to process 100,000 rebates and your rebate comes in on week 5, you may have to wait until another 100,000 rebates to come in before yours gets processed.  And if more rebates come in than the manufacturer anticipated and they go "over budget", they may without paying some of the rebates until another month goes by and they can take it out of another month's budget.

What's mail-in-rebate's future?

I think it's safe to say "not good".  More and more retailers are refusing to do rebates.  And more and more customers are starting to look at the "hard price" first.  Like I said, MOST people get their rebate checks in the mail.  I personally have received every one I've ever mailed in.  Is it worth the time and effort?  Depends.  $220 off the price of a Blackberry I was going to buy anyways?  Yes.  $100 off an Asus Eee PC I was going to buy anyways?  Yes.  MIR that gets me a free cable modem with a one year commitment to Comcast when I need to get broadband anyways?  Yes.  But I'm not buying a motherboard I don't need just because it'll only be $50 after I get my rebate check.  And, despite all of the Mountain Dew I drink, I'm not going out of my way to mail in a $2 rebate for a 12 pack of cans.  Just remember what you've read here:  Buy wisely by buying only buying what you need and what you can afford, make sure you complete everything you need to complete to get your rebate, sign it and use a delivery method that allows you to prove that it was delivered to send in your rebate.

Good luck!

A friend of mine liked my Eee PC netbook so much, he bought one of his own.   Only he bought a 901 instead of a 900, which means he has an Atom processor as opposed to a Celeron and a high-gloss finish that attracts fingerprints.  He also went with 12GB of storage, comprised of a 4GB and 8GB SSD's, and Windows XP.

Well, Asus had this crazy idea to install XP on the 4GB SSD leaving the 8GB wide open.  I'm sure they have their reasons for this, but the fact of the matter is no matter how much registry hacking you do to move Program Files, move the swap file, move My Documents and try to remember to always save programs to D:, the C: drive still fills up pretty fast.  So he gave the netbook to me for the weekend to see if I could get XP installed on the 8GB.

First and foremost, you MUST have a PC already running Windows in order to do ANY kind of recovery on an Asus Eee PC.  If the Eee PC is the only PC in your possession.... how are you reading this Blog?

So what tools do we have available to us....  An Asus recovery DVD?

Well, I don't have a USB DVD drive.  I can take apart a hard drive enclosure and just use the IDE and power adapters from the insides and hook them up to a regular ol' DVD drive.  Optical drive or hard drive, an enclosure simply doesn't care.  It works either way.  Let's just say I don't have anything that converts IDE to USB, or anything I really want to take apart to get the job done.  Let's say all I have is a thumb drive.

How do I make a thumb drive bootable?  Here's what I did because I wanted to partition and format the drives from scratch (if you're not going to re-partition, scroll down):

The software of choice is actually Hewlett Packard's USB Disk Storage Format Tool.  Once you download and install this program on your one working PC that's not an Eee PC (ahem), run it and you'll get a small window that asks what device you want to make bootable (pick the USB thumb drive), what file system you want to use and what label you want to use on the volume.  Check the box for "Create a DOS startup disk", install a Windows boot floppy and point the application to the A: drive for the system files.

Wait... You don't have a Windows boot floppy?

That's ok.  Images of 9X OS rescue floppies are everywhere on the web.  I personally use a Windows 98SE image without the RAMDRIVE option.  Yes, a Windows ME floppy is "newer" than 98, but they got rid of the ability to format a drive and then transfer system files over to it with ME and you're going to need to be able to do that.

When the HP USB Disk Storage Format Tool is done, you'll find that there are still no files on the USB drive.  That's because the HP software only copies over the boot sector, so you're going to want to drag and drop all of the stuff from the floppy to the USB drive.  Don't forget to have Windows show system and hidden files and feel free to edit the CDROM stuff out of the CONFIG.SYS and AUTOEXEC.BAT so it boots up faster.

Now we want our Windows setup files on the thumb drive.  Copy them over from the Asus recovery DVD?  Umm... no.  There's no way to run the install without booting off the DVD, so I used "any old" XP Home OEM (as opposed to retail) CD.  Besides, the Asus recovery DVD just puts everything back the way it was from the factory.  We don't want that.  We want XP on the 8GB SSD!  If you have a Dell, HP or eMachine or something that uses XP Home, you can use that same CD.  If you don't have an XP Home CD, Torrent one.  Is that breaking the law?  Come on.... I'm not asking you to use someone else's COA or anything.  You just need the media. 

Back on track... we want our Windows setup files on the thumb drive.  Just right click on the "I386" and "Send to REMOVABLE DISK (?:)" where "?" is the drive letter of your thumb drive. 

Since we're using an off the shelf XP Home, let's take this time to talk about enabling some of the features of Windows Professional.  I didn't have an extra (legal) XP Pro COA, did have an XP Home COA, but needed to join the PC to a domain.  I found this hack invaluable.  It worked like a charm.

Once that's done, you can plug the thumb drive into the Eee PC and fire it up.

Once you boot up in Windows 98SE via your thumb drive, you can run FDISK to remove old partitions from the two SSD's and make new ones. Make the 4GB drive active (you can't make the 8GB active because it's a slave.  If the SSD's in the Eee PC were SATA, you could do that, but they're not.  They're EIDE), reboot and the USB drive should change it's drive letter from C: to E:. Now you can do a "FORMAT C: /S", then "FORMAT D:" and your SSD's are now blank and bootable (well... at least the 4GB is bootable).

But wait!  You just partitioned these drives as FAT32 and XP works best on NTFS!

No big deal.  It's faster and easier to dig up a Win 9X boot disk and use the CONVERT command built into XP to convert the drives into NTFS then it would take for you to find a drive utility that could partition a drive as NTFS right off the bat. 

Copy HIMEM.SYS and SMARTDRV.EXE over to the C: drive and run EDIT from the thumb drive.  Type in "DEVICE="C:\HIMEM.SYS", hit "ALT+F" and the FILE menu should drop down.  Go down to "SAVE AS" and save this as "C:\CONFIG.SYS".  Now "ALT+F" and then "NEW" and type in the edit window, "C:\SMARTDRV.EXE".  "ALT+F", "SAVE AS" and save this one as "C:\AUTOEXEC.BAT".

Now we want to copy the "I386" folder over from the thumb drive to one of the SSD's (doesn't matter which one).  You can do this with XCOPY from your 98SE thumb drive, but I've found that working in a 32-bit environment is a lot faster. 

Here's how you run a 32-bit OS off a thumb drive and where you should start reading if you didn't want to re-partition the drives:

There's a great little program on the web called BartPE.  It's like Microsoft's WinPE except the Bart's is a GUI as opposed to Microsoft's text based program.  You'll need the Windows XP installation files from an original XP CD to create a BartPE boot image, but everything else you need is on the web (well.. I guess the XP CD is on the web too, but I digress) and linked in this forum post from the Bart Man himself.  Once you make your BartPE bootable thumb drive, copy the I386 folder from an XP CD over to the thumb drive.  Make sure it's a Windows XP CD with a "WINNT.EXE" in the "I386" folder.

Once in Bart's environment, you can use the file management tool to format the two SSD's and copy all of the "I386" files over from the thumb drive to one of the SSD's.  Pop out the thumb drive, boot off the SSD and change directories to the "I386" directory.  Run "WINNT.EXE" and off you go.

If you used the Windows 98SE floppy image to FDISK and format the SSD's, you're going to want to convert the drives over from FAT to NTFS.  During the first part of the XP installation, you'll be asked if you want to convert the partition you're installing on over to NTFS.  Answer yes and on the next reboot it'll do the conversion which takes about a minute.  Once you have XP up and running, you can do the other drive using the CONVERT.EXE program that comes with XP.  Just go to a command prompt and type "CONVERT ?: FS:NTFS" (Where "?" is your drive letter).  Keep an eye on the screen because it's going to tell you what the volume label is and then ask you to type it in to confirm you want to do the conversion.  If you're trying to convert the boot sector, CONVERT is going to tell you the drive is locked and has to reboot before it can do a conversion.  This is totally normal.

Since we're talking about Windows CD's and I386 and all, I figured I throw in a plug for Magic ISO.  This program lets you take ISO images and edit them before burning them to CD or, create a whole new ISO with your changes.  How is this relevant?  Well, when I hacked my XP Home to have XP Professional features using the aforementioned hack, I created a bootable ISO of that version of Windows for future re-installs.  I simply made an ISO image of my XP CD, opened it up in Magic ISO, grabbed the "I386" folder, edited the necessary files, saved, copied the files back over into the ISO and burned a new CD.  Keep in mind that the free version of Magic ISO only works up to 300MB of data, so if you have to burn a full CD or ISO image of a full CD, you'll need to pay for the software.  I'm telling you that IT'S WORTH IT.

So I needed to run a third monitor and purchased one of those Evga UV12 USB to VGA adapters.

It didn't work.  Don't know why.  I tried different USB ports, different USB cables.  I'm using it on an XP desktop so I'm not really sure what the problem is.  The drivers seem very beta as the title of the window is "My Project" and it never really tells you when it's installed or anything.  The window just disappears when the status bar hits 100%.

I then decided to use the USB cable that came with the UV12...

....that didn't go well. 

So then I bought this "generic" USB to VGA adapter bearing Tiger Direct's house brand "Power Up".  Much to my surprise, it worked as soon as I installed the drivers and plugged it in.  Yay cheap generic stuff!

So I decided to do a little research on this device and it turns out that the Power Up branded unit is made by Magic Control Technology.  It also turns out that MCT patented USB to VGA technology... which is kind of funny because it's not like the invented or even manufacture the USB to VGA bridge chip... so now they're suing other companies for patent infringement.

Speaking of patent infringement and exploding retractable cables, it turns out that retractable cables are patented too.  This one is weird because it seems like the device was invented by, and patented by, a couple folks in Taiwan back in 2002.  In 2004 a U.S. patent was issued to Ultra Products, but apparently they transferred the patent back over to Transpower Technology in Taiwan.  Transpower then gave exclusive U.S. license to Retractable Technologies LLC and now they're suing Belkin, Radio Shack, Fry's Electronics, Targus and... Ultra Products!

I guess that's what you have to do to make money in today's poor economy... patent things and sue people.  I have to wonder where this puts Evga, seeing how they put two patented devices in one box.. neither of which state a patent number, so I'm pretty sure they're not paying for licensing. 

If you didn't know already, Ultra has a patent for modular computer power supplies.  If you don't know what a modular computer power supply is:  It's a computer power supply that allows you to remove unused cables to help keep the inside of the case tidy.

Specifically, Ultra has a patent on putting the modular interface that the cables plug into directly on the housing.  This is how modular power supplies, like Performance PC's modular power supply mod, are not considered "prior art".  Now, some of you might be saying that there were modular connectors on power supplies for years, like when you have redundant power supplies that have an interface that slides into a housing and connects to another interface.  Well, that's where the application in which the patented invention is used.  Since the application of the device is different, the modular interface on a redundant power supply is not considered prior art.

It's quite evident that Ultra is moving forward with legal action against those power supply manufacturers that don't want to pay their licensing fees.  This case against Enermax just popped up on Justia a couple of days ago.  In the short term, this means Enermax is going to have to either prove that Ultra's patent is invalid by producing evidence of prior art or pay up.  What this means in the long term is either Enermax finds a way around the verbiage of Ultra's patent so that NOBODY has to pay licensing fees or fear getting sued or everyone else is going to end up paying licensing fees because Enermax gets taken to the cleaners.

Back in April, we saw something similar to this with a longer list of defendants.  This broke on jonnyGURU.com in a news post.  Enermax wasn't named in that suit, but I personally think the suits are a bit different just due to the timing.  You see, about a year ago, after Ultra got their patent, Ultra asked every manufacturer they knew were selling modular power supplies in the US to either pay a licensing fee or stop selling power supplies.  Nobody listened, so they filed the aforementioned suit in April.  This was followed up with a request to have the ITC investigate said "infringing" modular power supply product so importation could be stopped at the border (also broke on jonnyGURU.com). After that, people started discussing licensing more seriously with Ultra with a number of companies signing onto their licensing agreement.  Now here we are four months later and this new suit pops up.  How odd.

I'll keep an eye on this one, although court cases can often get very dragged out. 

I feel like Chicken Tonight, like Chicken Tonight!

Ok.. but I don't feel like simmering Chicken in a bunch of Ragu sauce.  Time for the grill again!

I think I'm going to grill every night this week now.  

I love working with chicken.  I can be really creative with it.  This one's easy.  Grill the chicken, when it's almost done throw a slice of ham and Swiss on top.  Take off the grill as soon as the Swiss starts to melt.  Pour a little sauce on top consisting of 2 parts Mayo, 1 part Dijon mustard and two squirts of lemon.  Drape three or four asparagus across the top.  Done.

My plan here is to make you hungry every time you come to my website.