Do Not Use NewEgg.com if You Need Something Fast

I’ve had two shopping experiences with Newegg.com in the last 11 months. My first purchase was over $700 in computer parts to build a raging colossus of a machine to rip through code, graphics, and the Internet 14 times faster than my previous metal box. As I mentioned last week, I ordered some laptop memory from them and regretted using NewEgg again.

In December, I paid for 3-day shipping so that it would arrive before my wife’s office closed for a couple of days around Christmas. When I checked the shipping information after getting an e-mail confirmation that it had been shipped, the page said that the shipping information had not been received yet. I figured that the package had missed the scan and was on its way. Bad figuring on my part. It still hadn’t left yet. Two days later, it was picked up by UPS and scheduled to arrive even after her office was empty. We had to go hunt down the UPS depot on the day after Christmas to find out where it was because they didn’t attempt delivery knowing the offices were closed. We had to wait until the following Monday to get my parts, and my week off from work was more than half over, all because it didn’t leave their building when it should have.

Fast forward to this month. On the 11th, I paid an extra $2.99 for priority processing, used free 3-7 business day shipping, ordered before lunchtime, and expected the memory to leave their hands when I received an e-mail around 5pm saying that my purchase had shipped. Once again, no tracking information was ready. Three days later, still no tracking information. I got on Live Chat and they said that happens. I waited through the weekend, and finally got information that it had left Memphis on the 13th and was still in the vicinity at 11pm the next day. I got on Live Chat again, and they said it will arrive in the mail because DHL takes it to the post office for them, and USPS must already have it.

I nicely read them the riot act in the chat that it doesn’t make a darn bit of difference if you pay extra for priority processing and that it was a scam. They said that it will still arrive within 7 business days (which it did), but I stood my ground on the principle that you expect better service time if you pay extra money. If it was going to arrive in 7 business days anyway, they just stole my $3! I got my processing money refunded, but I still had to wait until the 19th for something Tigerdirect.com would have had to me in 3 business days without any contact or extra money.

Big Trial for Cystic Fibrosis – and I’m in It!

The FDA is saying that they need more data to clear the use of ALZI (Aztreonam Lysine for Inhalation), which holds great promise for all of us suffering from the ravages of Pseudomonas Aeruginosa, which I’ve pretty much had my whole life. It’s the cause of multiple sinus infections, monthly sinus maintenance visits, and pretty much the only cause of IV treatments any time I get bad enough to need them.

It’s darn near invincible and causes permanent scarring and other tissue damage to the lungs, and it has become resistant to all but two major antibiotics the doctors put me on. I’ve never been on Aztreonam that I know of, so it should darn near eradicate my ongoing infection.

According to my friend, Aspen, over at Salty and Sweet, Aztreonam is one of the few IV antibiotics that still work for her, so she’s eagerly awaiting it in aerosol form. Since I’m not on any trials now and meet all of the criteria, I’ll be starting the trial in a week or so. It is a medicine-guaranteed study since the FDA only needs data about its results at this point, so there will not be any placebo introduced into the study any more.

If this keeps me off IVs from this point on – more or less – then we’ll be a very happy family! I’m adding a new category to track these posts for you and keep everyone updated about my progress. Please visit Aspen’s site and consider donating because her insurance situation sucks. We did, and you can, too. $65 is an appropriate donation, but anything will help.

Big Thanksgiving Week

Sometimes it’s a big week because of our travel plans, but this year it’s because someone else has big travel plans to come here. My wife’s grandma is coming to Florida from Canada for a visit for the first time in about 20 years, so we’re all really excited to see her.

She flies in Tuesday and we’re going over for a pork roast feast – I love Mom’s pork roast, mashed potatoes, gravy — need I go on? I expect we’ll spend a good portion of the day on Thanksgiving over there, too, playing Wii and spending time with the stranger in the mix. 🙂 Unless we have other plans pop up in the way of tourist-y things, we’ll go shopping at our brand new mall Friday morning and head over again after lunch.

I love a 4-day weekend, especially when it includes that much food!

A Little Gift from the Boss

4GB, Baby! 2GB more than my desktop...

4GB, Baby! 2GB more than my desktop...

I’m sure Cory expects me to work harder now, if that’s possible, but after reaching the conclusion that 1GB of RAM in my MacBook just wasn’t cutting the butter or the cheese (my specialty), I found him a great deal using a site I no longer recommend for 4GB of RAM for $45 after mail-in rebate. The next thing I knew, I was on there ordering an upgrade.

Before the upgrade, I was running on 23MB of free RAM according to my Dashboard. Checking now with Live Chat for iThemes, 12 Firefox 3 tabs open, and TweetDeck, I have 2.5 GB of free RAM. Let’s do some math really quick.

4GB – 2.5GB = 1.5GB used — CRAP! I only had 1GB before! I suppose that’s why the hard drive was always churning. For kicks and grins, I loaded up World of Warcraft and it’s running without a skip or snag. I’m in computing heaven not waiting for windows to wrap up a few more cycles before responding. I will say Mac does a much better job of memory management than Windows, but it still has limitations with a finite amount of RAM.