Account Lockdown: Unusual Activity Detected

hey, a year ago I lost access to one of my gmail accounts, now I was locked out, and the automated support didn't provide any helpful solution, only thing I know is I'm locked out of my account for the next 24 hours, with no apparent reason. and no phone number to call. I'm thinking more and more in not letting go my ISP provided email service.

richmondlaptop 804 9296610

here is the timeline:

while sending a message:

This account has been locked down due to unusual account activity. It may take up to 24 hours for you to regain access.

Unusual account activity includes, but is not limited to:

1. Receiving, deleting, or downloading large amounts of mail via POP in a short period of time.
2. Sending a large number of undeliverable messages (messages that bounce back).
3. Using file-sharing or file-storage software, browser extensions, or third party software that automatically logs in to your account.
4. Leaving multiple instances of your Gmail account open.
5. Browser-related issues. Please note that if you find your browser continually reloading while attempting to access your Inbox, it’s probably a browser issue, and it may be necessary to clear your browser’s cache and cookies.

If you feel that you have been using your Gmail account according to the Gmail Terms of Use, you can troubleshoot your problem by clicking here.

then...>>> after answering the automated question: what were oyu doing? "sending a message"

Sending limits


In an effort to fight spam and prevent abuse, Google will temporarily disable your account if you send a message to more than 500 recipients or if you send a large number of undeliverable messages. If you use a POP or IMAP client (Microsoft Outlook or Apple Mail, e.g.), you may only send a message to 100 people at a time. Your account should be re-enabled within 24 hours.

If you communicate with the same group of people on a regular basis, you might be interested in

What a nice Service Support! Netzero NETZERO I love how you make money on innocent people.

this is my experience:
I'm at a customer house and she is having some problems connecting through netzero dial up service to the internet.
I discover it's a dollar and 95 cent per minute to get tech support onthat account.
I say, no problem , I will suscribe myself to the service so I can get some free support
I suscribe to the service. two seconds later, "wrong username or password" error (WTF?)
well , calling TS I discover I need to pay near 2 dollars out of my pocket to receive "free" tech support for my account (WTF2?)
well, calling all those 1 800 and 1 866 numbers, still not getting to a live representative.

not good. this people is preying on innocent American old and non savy computer users through all the country, somebody should stop them.

it is outrageous to have to pay to get support for a service it's supposed to be free of charge , because you are actually trying to get help to get connected to their servers (!)

after a few days, I call to discontinue the service, well, not so fast, it is not easy, I get a "promotional pack" backup connection line for just 4,99 a month. just in case if I need the service dial up again. (they were notified I do have broadband so they know I don't need the service)

after asking for a complete disconnection, no way, we can't do that. you have to suck it up and keep the service for at least one extra month , just to be able to discontinue the service for good.

well, I'm not hapy at all. even Verizon or AOL are much better in providing support to dial up.

spread the word, don't use it. you have been warned.
Mario

Man on Fire, my personal version

this is not a tech post, although I can think about a few more efficient devices but probably not so reliable to prevent this.

the technology used in these department ovens is probably more than 10 years old, I wonder what they are putting together in modern ovens as a security devices.

I was trying to reheat some food at home after a nice work day before PPW being sent and OMG! it refused to fire up and somehow the security feature just failed or something happened, the entire atmosphere around me just fired up and in just a fraction of second I was burnt in my forehead and my arms, (I remember thinking "there went my eyebrows" but no, the thing is I ended with both arms and part of the upper side of my hands burned, unable to reassemble a pending laptop, at least for the rest of the day, fortunatelly, a little help of burn jel (CVS no prescription required) moral of the story, do not insist if your oven refuses to start, and wait a little between intents!!!

here is the complete picture series, unfortunately, I forgot to take a picture of the skin after washing , believe me , it was real reddish.
http://picasaweb.google.com/richmondlaptop/ManOnFireLatinoVersion?feat=directlink

and check how the instantaneous heat melted my corn oil and the washer detergent:

wich GPS to buy?

I was questioned by a friend today about GPS devices and I will post my answer here, of course this is my personal opinion and I'm not paid by any company to say this, this is based in my personal experience only. although I can talk a lot about this thechnology (material for another post) and I have been using GPSs since I bought an add on for my palm sprint in 2006, I handled like 4 systems so far, and broke and dissasembled three of them. also I fixe one on the route because I was lost and I'm navigational challenged (really)
ok let;s go with the answer:

that one, tomtom ONE is the one to go, affordable and pretty intuitive. we have that and a Garmin , the Garmin has more precision (by half a mile or less) and sometimes it finds some addresses (the street numbers, mostly) the tomtom can't but it's a pain to use due to the poorly designed interfase and menu. there was one for 56 dollars at www.tigerdirect.com but I think it was a refurbished one :) . I'd recommend you if possible to get the extended warranty (2 years or so) if not so expensive, my second tomtom fell so many times from the windshield that it started to malfunction after 6 months of crashes, now I still use it but I had to take the battery out ( http://picasaweb.google.com/richmondlaptop/TomtomDissassembled?feat=directlink)
please do not hesitate to ask any more questions about that. I would gladly help you to choose one.

BTW, I wouldn't go for the expensive ones with voice command or so, because I find that feature useless due to my strong accent LOL, and hwo needs streets names? I just need left of right directions, I can see the street names by myself.

of course, due to human nature, there is a lot of folks out there really loving their GPSes and hating probably my choices here, but that, again , is material for another post, (natural affection by human beings and attachment to gadgets due to continued use of tech gizmos)

how to dissasemble a TomTom GPS

my loved GPS just went crazy this morning, this is my third one, (long story short, they keep falling down from the windshield) , well , on this one I noticed the GPS was having trouble to get a fix on the satellites signals, and the only way to go was to wait for the battery to drain itself out and then start over, ( a soft reset and a reboot and a restore factory settings didn't seem to work )
so I said to myself, let's see what are you made off, ok?

nah, my real thinking process was "well, if your battery makes me wait between 5 minutes and 2 hours to get you back operational, then I'm taking your battery out, then I will have an instant hard reset everytime I pull the plug off WOW, I'm SO smart! :)

for the complete series of pictures, click here:

I found really interesting the same type of touchscreen is used for this and in the palm 3XE models. at least it looks pretty similar, I mean, the kind of technology. I have been trying to figure it out how they manage to sende an entire screen with just 4 cables?

new TV install, for ZIP work orders, piece of cake

this is not my regula line of work but I had a free day so I said to myself, why not? for a person who is fixing laptops a TV install might look like asking a nuclear physicist to repair some plumbing, (he may not know, though) and the payment was good, 133 Dollars for a couple of hours? lets go for it!

t!

Thermal inertia, thermal avalanche, thermal breakdown, thermal design for failure.

I'm not sure if it's me or every equipment I happen to put my hands on these days is working on the edge of the design? at leat thermally speaking (I know, silicon has a very high working temperature on the die level,although some 95 celsius is considered normal sometimes, I had a few graphic cards tested and running around 60 to 75 degrees, and a CPU heatsink in a IBM compact desktop model around 56 degrees celsius, I have this little gem I use every day to check on my equipment, but is my believing the manufacturers are (and this could sound machiavellic) plotting to get your system to get thermally exhausted byt the first year so when your warranty is over, so it is your chip. :) , anyway, check the picture, and let me know if you think that's normal.

thank you.

dear samsung saga creator

did you ever thought I need the weekday names in the calendar?
and what about NOT having to press a bunch of buttons or clicks to get where I want? I didn't tried the new web OS but I remember my pleasant times using a palm kyocera 6035, black and white screen and real felt touch screen, not the thing I have in my habds now, where the touch feels like half an inch below the glass, urgh. of course in those times I was unaware of the things these little microprocessors are capable of, but right know, knowing the power and the real kind of power I can have in my hands, that I feel half betrayed and half dissapointed by the design engineers teams and think tanks and the people who build our phones, I can't talk about the iphone or the palm pre, but I'm sure the thousands of compliants about the battery life on the pre and the lack of certain features in the iphone aren't irreal, and worst of all, they are both proprietary arquitectures, meaning not everyone can do whatever they want, some areas of these OSes have boundaries, more loosen on thighten, depending on how that feature interfere with their manufacturers business model. well, why just don't go the bazaar way and let the people have what they want? is that too hard?

about solar powered refrigeration

so the new prius has solar powered air circulation and cooling? well, I know the time to market from idea to a product is more than a year, at least for this kind of products or "features" well, I (and probably another million of inventors out there before me) had that idea between 6 and 12 months ago (others surely years ago), somewhere in the middle of a awaken dreaming about using my just arrived peltier modules to cool down my old car , or at least to manage to keep it a little cooler when not inside and the car is under direct sunlight. I thought a piece of new generation solar cell could help me, in a way to maintain the system independent of the car's electric system to be able to maintain the battery charge.
well, solar powered AC? well, at least I know my dreams CAN become true! hahahaah it doesn't matter if it's me or prius, it doesn't even matter if it's me or somebody else the one who develops or implements it, the only important thing is: the world must be helped. I hope I will have the strong will to maintain my position and keep dreaming till my last day in life.
the story doesn't end here, I sold my old dodge neon and got a honda civic instead, but i still have the plan to put some passive cooling system in it. this might help me.

to tatoo or not, HP

I was requested a "suplemental" disc today while doing a HD swap in a KT334AA HP Media center system. I wonder if the previously required tatoo procedure was performed in background by the HP restore system. I will know in a couple of minutes. if I get no purple screen, then I'm good to go. although I'm required to stay just until the recovery procedure is at 33 percent, I love to stay so I'm sure the computer is useable before I leave.

why is not safe to trust any online service for too long

I went over my email and membership list and discovered avantgo is not more an available service, despite the promises made by sybase, as the company said in this article: http://www.brighthand.com/default.asp?newsid=11906

anyway, another surprise was to find msn groups are no longer something you can use, now the site redirects you to windows live or somewhere else.

well, I remember a lot of similar cases, for me, there will be never more reliable things as my backups and my NAS and my hard copies (yes, a piece of paper) of the info I consider valuable enough.

cloud? oh my cloud. :) ...dear cloud, I'm not ready to be "clouded" yet.

www.richmondlaptop.net/contact.html

how the things should be in 2009, part 2

the AIR intake in any laptop should be always on the sides and the exhaust pointing away from the user, common sense, it looks like the manufacturers want your laptop's life to be over after your warranty expires and before you have some more time to enjoy it. LOL

this suffocating action is easy to accomplish, just drop your laptop on your bed and watch the temperature rise to dangerous levels. easy uh? , I might post a video some day later.

www.richmondlaptop.net

got a broken HD WO today

a Customer called to find out what's going on with his DELL inspiron, I almos missed the subtle "neec...neec...neec" sound coming from the HD head while trying to read a sectod again and again, most curious thing with this WO is the fact that the HD passed a lot of tests from the manufacturer, even SMART and confidence test, just to fail to pass the read test on 5 percent, this was causing the system to be able to boot in safe mode but never in standard mode. so DELL is sending a new HD with OS preinstalled and preactivated. well, kinda nice service, although we had to stay on the phone for a while to get to the right person.

and now on twitter!!

www.twitter.com/richmondlaptop

my webpage

www.richmondlaptop.net

searching for ideas about motion sensing if that's the name

I just drop my laptop by accident, just a couple of feets, it's a Thinkpad T43 full upgraded (memory, hardrive and docking base) , and after a quick survey I found just the plastic bezel sustained some damage, all the rest is working just fine, now, my question is, i heard some macs and other laptops have some kind of motion sense control to be able to sense the fall and park the hardrive plates in case of a fall, my question is: how do you "sense" a falling situation and distinguish it from just a movement? coz a laptop can fall in just any direction, so it looks like more that a engineering problem for me. I will try to keep considering possible solutions for this, although the new "solid state" drives will probably make this post obsolete as soon as they loss some weight in their special price tag .

about me

hard core IT lover, geek by election, field tech by fate, I'm proud to be a person with a deep understanding of electronics, networks and technology in general, also mobile tech, and gadgets, robotics, mechatronics, microcontrollers, etc.

born and raised in Argentina, arrived to the USA two years ago, teached myself to read English just because I was eager to read "JRR Tolkien's Lord of the Rings" coz found no spanish copies at that moment, that is, before the movies and before it was cool to love ring stories, I came here with my scientist wife so she can pursue her career, I fix laptops for living in Richmond VA as a side job and I drive all around VA as a Field Service Tech doing service calls for an Elkton based tech company.

my own home based business, supposedly a escalable one, is called Richmondlaptop.net

my name? ...Mario

PS: BTW, I was recently called "a texting freak" by my french friend, dear Mathieu, I took that as a compliment, I'm glad you said that, LOL.

the way the things should be in 2009, part II of who knows?

I just read this, and I'm still shaking my head, after the first part of this post, it might be just a coincidence, or an answer to my prayers, the thing is I found this post , and I cannot less than admire the crude reality this person depicts. and how much truth her/his words accumulate.
being a light palm programmer, I'm still forcing me to NOT make a list of that wishlist and start coding. too much work, so little time, anyway, my geeky unknown friend : KUDOS to you!

how the things should be in 2009, part I of who knows

if I have my laptop resting connected to a docking station (call it ultra port, expansion bay or whatever you want) and I'm listening some nice music,and I eject my laptop the least I expect is the sound to failover to the local speakers, or, if it's the case, and I happen to have another USB earphones connected, please direct the sound right to this output source.

well. may be a dialogue like this "it looks your actual reproduction device is no longer available, would you like to switch to 1)local speakers? 2)your recently installed Logitech USB headphones?
3) the stereo earbuds I'm detecting in the proximity of this laptop and are paired?

thank you.
may be I'm totally wrong and this is not the year before 2010, just another flavor of 1993.

some of my projects...

1 get a stepper H bridge working with high torque for a CNC class robot arm or a joystick guided cart.

2 setup my quad core with everything inside so I never have to ope again and I can dedicate to really "use" my computer.

3 setup a "data closet" in the house to be able to take my NAS devices off the office room.
too much noise and no space.

4 hopefully, start developing with my new atmel stk500. will post some more progress here.

5 with some luck , invent something amazing and become worldwide know hahahahaha :)

too much trust in timing?

I was sent today to install an ADTRAN T916 in a business location , the freaky part begun when I discovered the T1 line wasn't on place, it was still on the outside of the building, then , to further amazement, the T1 line was inactive, so why this people send a field tech to make an install when nothing is ready to test operate or switch to production?

well, I think I will never know.

my first was a networked printer install, where nobody took the time to add those two printers to the server, and then as I stayed calmly at home waiting for the call, somebody was just unable to understand the fact that it is pointless to be onsite before the printers are added to the domain. so, I just remained calm , tried to explain the situation, the other side was like "this is ridiculous, then just hung up" well, I think I will never be paid for that time spent making just a few 6 calls to get this sorted out.

reading a dead man blog

NO! I'm not dead, I was reading this and suddenly realized after checking the first posts, that this man started blogging only after his disease appeared, providing a timeline of his fall to death, although I find this an experience which makes me feel so humble when thinking about death and life, I was startled by the fact I was unable to reach any prior blog or posts, I was trying to find out who was this man before knowing he was going to die, I admire him for what he did and his family for how they keep remembering him and supporting him. but what strikes me the most is the fact that EVERYONE should allways post blogs entries and behave around our lives as like we are going to be dead tomorrow, that would contribute a lot to the peace in the world, and to the planet life and ecology. ..sorry no tech in this post. just some thoughts.

the whiner

I will make my smartphone history public later, by now, I just felt like sharing my thoughts (not the good ones, if any) about my recently purchased palm treo 700W , yes, W , with windows mobile 5 , (and the polar caps didn't melt , uh?) ok, the point is, I like to be defined as a power user, may be not so heavy user of a smart phones, and repeating myself, I code palm OS software for myself for fun, and I know what these devices are capable of, believe me. now, after using my treo like I was saying,, well, after a few glitches in the sync feature, fixed , I recently discovered that after using the phone as a camcorder to shot a 7 mintes film of my cat (will post it later here) when trying to sync I get the horrible "out of memory" not in my laptop screen but IN MY PHONE!!. it looks like still in this 2009 year, after the terminator and star trek premiere, programmers from the past (they are busy working now coding the 2011 memory leaks) it is still possible to have your smartphone frozen and that little message "please choose which app to close to free some memory" URGGH! KISS (keep it simple, stupid) is a rule they don't follow at least not in a visible manner. anyway, now I'm heading one more time for another platform still in the quest for a nice and decent and reliable phone, don't worry , I know we are talking about a high fidelity chain here, it's not a single point of failure, we can blame the provider, the service , the software, the OS , the neighbored applications in the same device, etc etc. still dreaming of android or some other heavily tested and full featured smarphone for the masses.
talking about problems, next post, ATI radeon problems. call me a whinner if you want, but I'm still an idealist. tech in this world should be something simple and massive, not a flawed business waiting for the current wave to extinghish before launching the next wave of tech to the masses. (did I said masses twice?)
www.richmondlaptop.net

verizon times looking for a decent smartphone

I just can't believe my beloved ISP , (internet provider for the non techpeople) cable provider and cell phone service provider was unable to provide me with a decent working smartphone like or at least with a touchable (this meaning not online) smartphone, after a few calls and a long wait I doscovered the top most expensives phones were not available to purchase in any store because: (as per employees said)
1 "are not the top demanded phones"
2 (kind of similar) "are not mainstream phones today"
3 are quite expensive and nobody ask for these phones.

let me explain, although I assume I might be a little biased towards palm made phones, I will never forget the day I walked in 5 different stores (4 corporate 1 franchise) with 700 hundred dollars in my pocket and was told "no Sir, we are sorry , but the only ones we have are the palm centro and these blackberrys, what? wait a moment, I'm trying to get rid of my blackberry, what, world edition? ok can you tell me the processor speed for that unit? "wait a second (furious googling) no sir, that is a 200 mhz processor (actually it was a 250 some I just forgot now), C'mon Verizon, oyu are a big monster but you can do better, I also called a representative and requested ( dreamer and idealist me) to be called by a representative and told in wich of all the verizon stores in VIRGINIA (no, not Richmond, I was willing to go everywhere in VA) carries that particular phone (a samsung saga or a palm 755 I think) and I was answered in the most cordial tone :we don't do that sir, would you like to order one by phone , we can order it online for you and have it delivered to your door" NO, I just wanna touch and 'feel" the phone, that's all, call me old school, but that's the way I buy, I do a lot of online research about products aqnd actually I buy computer parts online, even laptops, but not a phone. I will try to calm down now, I just got an old treo 700p off eBay and I'm happily living until the new palm pre arrives, but calling customer service again? not for a few weeks, I think.

another test blog.

sorry I need to check my new "social" browser for compatibility. thanks for the patience.

Safari vs Firefox tabs persistence

I have my firefox setup in a way whenever it crashes (almost never) or I close it, after reboot or reopening i can get all my tabs again in the same way it was before the issue or restart, now, I was loving Safari until I got to the point of trying to make it behave in a similar way, then I would have it with my most visited pages in it , with different themes in each browser , let's say :mozilla for email and research and safari for news and fun, and voila! just discovered only Mac users can use such feature and only through a third party app, not native, urgh, I'm counting with safari developers to fix that if they want to be a little bit closer to a browser for the masses.

may be not , who knows.

TOMTOM GPS vs all the others

after somebody broke my driver side glass to get my loved tomtom "3rd edition"GPS, I went to the nearest bestbuy to get another (no I'm not a millionaire, I have a "disease" called navigational blindness) and as I can't work going places without gps, although i use google maps and mapquest from time to time, the point is : my eyes were wide open when I saw garmin and other brands gps users were forced to pay for updated maps even around 75 dollars for garmin SD card, I was WOW , and I can get my updates for free!!, so therefore I kept my fidelity and reliance on tomtom gps, only to find, a few months later , when I finally connected my new tomtom "one" that the company screwed up with the previously seamless and easy process to upgrade OS and maps, now I'm required to pay to get upgrades, because it looks like I have only a few "quarters of years" free upgrades, I thought it was for life, hey, you know you can get more and more customers by allowing free upgrades, may be it was never free, may be I just let the device to go too much time without connecting it to my computer and upgrading, anyway, it should be not a problem and a easy process. not the little nightmare of errors I got. thank you.

blackberry vs treos

visited a few verizon stores (retailer and corporate) in Richmond looking for a replacement for my new Blackberry Curve 8330 to not avail, none of the stores carried a samsung saga , not even a dummy phone, aargh! I have been a Treo user for the last 5 years and maybe more(I'm a Palm OS user since 1993, even a kyocera 6530) so I know what these devices are capable of and what not, the problem is: Blackberry throw me the "app 200 error" and some "java unhandled error" also after disabling java and scripts I still got the out of memory error, never had that issue with treo 650 or 680, anyway, I discovered (after the switch to BB) that the reason for treos for sudden reboots was some kind of buffer error, like having too many SMSs (which is normal for me) it looks like the routine to get rid of the old SMSs wasn't so good after all, it's supposed to erase old messages as needed. anyway, still in my quest looking for a phone which serves me well, I might even consider some treo with non Palm OS in it. what bothers me is that customer service and sellers at the stores were SO non versed in smartphones, even the managers, and BTW, when you are buying a smartphone, you KNOW you are getting a little computer, right? then why nobody mentions the cpu speed when disclosing the tech specs about those phones? I had to search in forums , google it and research by myself (although I know in smartphones not always the fastest cpu gives you the fastest phone) to find out at which speed was a certain phone running. I was offered a "world edition" blackberry to replace mine, replacing actualy nothing because speed is the same, not a good deal. best buy didn't helped neither, and I'm not going for the too commented iphone, not ready yet, i need the actual (real) keyboard for high speed texting, not a virtual clumsy keyboard.
thank you , more posts on mobile smartphones next time.

new info, reboot

I'm setting up a single machine with 10 different drives with a different OS each one, including various flavors of linux.

pictures will be posted in a few days.

I'm a big fan of OS testing and howto learning

also some networking , coz last week I found a little issue I couldnt resolve.
I was able to ping and print wetween three different computers, but not to browse those same computers through the network, not even access a shared directory in one of the computers.

.. and well.. nothing..just testing.

note to myself, February 6th, 2009 , Richmond VA

(1.7 miles from richmond, coming from Norfolk)...never forget to set the odometer to zero the exact moment I get the "low fuel" signal from my car. fortunately, triple A and two cops were helpful (5 gallons and two visits, "just checking on me" ), second note, don't forget to buy or build that flashing light for emergencies on the route I always planned.