Peter’s Soapbox

Bowflex SelectTech Customer Service – Kind of Lacking

Three weeks ago I ordered myself a set of Bowflex SelectTech dumbells. Because our house is relatively small and space is lacking, I liked the compact form factor that these things boast.

When I placed the order via their web site, I received a “print this page for your records” screen. This page contained my order info, except it contained no order number. The page also said that I would receive a copy of my order via email. That never happened.
Of course, when I called after two weeks to find out the status of my order, the first thing they asked for was my order number, which they wanted me to enter, followed by the # key. Not having one, I just pressed #. The automated response said “You entered an order number of… zero.” Not being able to process that, I got kicked over to a human, who informed me that I would receive an email when my order shipped.

A few days later, I received the stand for my dumbells and the bench. But no dumbells. I called them again today, three weeks after ordering, and they told me my dumbells should be here on the 6th. I should think if there was going to be such a delay that I would have had some form of contact from these folks, but I didn’t. Disappointing.

Switch Update

So, it turns out that the root cause of all of our problems that we were troubleshooting with the new content filtering software that was deployed. Somehow, it was instructed (or just decided) to install itself onto our two domain controllers, among others. This resulted in our DCs sending all traffic out to our content filter, which is a hosted service on the Internet, for perusal, before sending it back to the client. No wonder we had so many delays and disconnects.

This really was a comedy of errors, which included a faulty NIC in one of the servers, as well as a poorly-configured switch cascading setup. Throw the content filtering debacle into it, and we had a real mess.

How I Enabled Dual Displays with nVidia GeForce MX cards on Ubuntu Feisty Fawn 7.04

1. Backed up /etc/X11/xorg.conf to xorg.conf.bak
2. Copied the section entitled
   Section “Device”
   Identifier “nVidia Corporation NV18 [GeForce4 MX 440 AGP 8x]”
   Driver “nv”
   BusID “PCI:1:0:0″
   EndSection
   
   and pasted in then modified so that I had a second section as follows:Section “Device”
   Identifier “nVidia Corporation NV18 [GeForce4 MX 5200 AGP 8x]”
   Driver “nv”
   BusID “PCI:2:0:0″
   EndSection

   Note, the Identifier doesn’t need to actually be the name of the card, as it’s just used for your reference. I don’t even know for certain that I have an MX 5200, and I know it’s not AGP, but I was in a hurry, so I left it as is. The important part is the BusID section. Since I knew my working, default monitor was in PCI slot 1, and the second card I had was in the next slot, and that both cards were using the DVI ports, I simply changed BusID “PCI:1:0:0″ to read BusID “PCI:2:0:0″ in the second “Device” section.

3. Copied the “Monitor” section so that I started with
   Section “Monitor”
   Identifier “UltraSharp 1800 1″
   Option “DPMS”
   HorizSync 28-51
   VertRefresh 43-60
   EndSection
   
   and then had, in addition,Section “Monitor”
   Identifier “UltraSharp 1800 2″
   Option “DPMS”
   HorizSync 28-51
   VertRefresh 43-60
   EndSection
4. Copied the “Screen” section so I started with
   Section “Screen”
   Identifier “Default Screen”
   Device “nVidia Corporation NV18 [GeForce4 MX 440 AGP 8x]”
   Monitor “UltraSharp 1800 1″
   DefaultDepth 24
   SubSection “Display”
   Depth 1
   Modes “1024×768″ “800×600″ “640×480″
   EndSubSection
   SubSection “Display”
   Depth 4
   Modes “1024×768″ “800×600″ “640×480″
   EndSubSection
   SubSection “Display”
   Depth 8
   Modes “1024×768″ “800×600″ “640×480″
   EndSubSection
   SubSection “Display”
   Depth 15
   Modes “1024×768″ “800×600″ “640×480″
   EndSubSection
   SubSection “Display”
   Depth 16
   Modes “1024×768″ “800×600″ “640×480″
   EndSubSection
   SubSection “Display”
   Depth 24
   Modes “1024×768″ “800×600″ “640×480″
   EndSubSection
   EndSectionthen had, in addition,

   Section “Screen”
   Identifier “Default Screen”
   Device “nVidia Corporation NV18 [GeForce4 MX 5200 AGP 8x]”
   Monitor “UltraSharp 1800 2″
   DefaultDepth 24
   SubSection “Display”
   Depth 1
   Modes “1024×768″ “800×600″ “640×480″
   EndSubSection
   SubSection “Display”
   Depth 4
   Modes “1024×768″ “800×600″ “640×480″
   EndSubSection
   SubSection “Display”
   Depth 8
   Modes “1024×768″ “800×600″ “640×480″
   EndSubSection
   SubSection “Display”
   Depth 15
   Modes “1024×768″ “800×600″ “640×480″
   EndSubSection
   SubSection “Display”
   Depth 16
   Modes “1024×768″ “800×600″ “640×480″
   EndSubSection
   SubSection “Display”
   Depth 24
   Modes “1024×768″ “800×600″ “640×480″
   EndSubSection
   EndSection

5. Finally, I added the italicized line to my “ServerLayout” section
   Section “ServerLayout”
   Identifier “Default Layout”
   Screen “Default Screen”
   Screen “Second Screen” RightOf “Default Screen”
   InputDevice “Generic Keyboard”
   InputDevice “Configured Mouse”
   InputDevice “stylus” “SendCoreEvents”
   InputDevice “cursor” “SendCoreEvents”
   InputDevice “eraser” “SendCoreEvents”
   EndSectionto add my new, second screen to the right of the default screen.
6. I rebooted, and then BAM! It worked. Took about five minutes.