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| If your Lego Mindstorms CPU brick looks like this...you do not have a NXT 2.0..... |
I forgot about the robot kit for the next couple of days, then I went back and checked on the auction last night. I won! I was so excited, I rushed over to PayPal to zip off a payment. Once the payment was off, I started looking around at Mindstorms projects. Hey, why does that CPU brick look different than the one that was in the eBay ad I just paid for?
Turns out I won and paid for an auction for a Mindstorms Robotic Invention System 2.0 instead of a Mindstorms NXT 2.0. I think the fact that they both have 'mindstorms' and '2.0' threw me off. While it's a confusing naming/numbering setup, I basically wasn't paying close enough attention, and my ignorance and greed got the best of me.
I sent a pleading email to the seller, explaining what happened. I offered to pay the shipping ($22) to them if they refund my money and don't ship the product. They don't have to, of course, but I sure hope they do. If I get this 11 year old RIS 2.0 kit, I'll have to turn right back around and list it myself on eBay. PITA!
Moral of the story: use the product numbers instead.
The latest Mindstorms NXT 2.0 kit is # 8547
The shitty old Mindstorms RIS 2.0 that I bought is #3804
2. Had a bit of runaround from Adobe this week. I've been needing image and movie editing software for awhile now. I've been scraping by with the free Microsoft Live products, but I've been wanting way more. I decided to buy the Adobe Photoshop and Premiere Elements combo at the Adobe website.
The full version of Photoshop and Premiere Elements 10.0 is around $140. Looking around a little, I found a Student/Teacher version of the same software on the site for only $119. We've got three students in our house, so that was easy enough. The site even said parents of primary school children could buy a copy for their child, provided they could provide proof of enrollment/name, etc. Fine.
So, I enter the billing information and complete the purchase. In order to get the serial Key, you have to click on a "Prove Eligibility" button. I click on the button and wait...and wait....and wait. I try a few more times....no good. I search the Adobe site to find there is a known problem with the validation system. Its is currently "broken", they are working on it feverishly, but have no idea when it will come back up. This information could have come in handy before the purchase...
I hit the chat support button on Adobe's front page, and lay out the situation to the support 'specialist', Kumar. He tells me the education validation system is broken, and they are working on it. I told him that wasn't a good enough answer, I'd like to just cancel the order. He immediately responds that I can actually bypass the system by sending a copy of the report to edu-verify@adobe.com. After that it will be a few days to receive the serial key.
10 days later...no key. No email either. I kind of forgot about it, but was mostly not looking forward to dealing with the support specialist again. This time they said, 'yes, we screwed up. We got the email, but nobody did anything with it. Please give us 2-3 business days to rectify the problem.' So this time, I really did get the support guy to cancel the order.
Looking at the Adobe site again, I notice they offer all of their products as either Full, upgrade, or student/teacher versions. Thinking I wouldn't be able to get an upgrade for the Photoshop/Premiere Elements package because I've never owned a copy of Premiere Elements, I ignored the upgrade price.
Turns out, my purchase of Photoshop Elements in 2008 made me eligible for an upgrade at the super low price of $119 - yes - same as the Student/Teacher version. So I wasted all of that time and frustration for nothing! Hopefully the software is good...
3. Windows 8 Consumer Preview version is out! I'm not installing it on anything yet, mostly because I don't have a good spot for a Beta OS at the moment. If this were a mature product and/or I had a laptop with a touchscreen it'd already be on my machine.
You can download Windows 8 Preview from Microsoft here, and I think it will actually work until January of 2013. Not a bad deal from Redmond....
