Horrible web site - Citi Commercial Cards / Citimanager

Corporate policy now dictates that we use a Citibank corporate card... replacing the very functional 'First Card' we previously used. No problem... until one is forced to use their website to view bills etc.

1. Horrible login security

A password that needs to be between 6 and 9 characters long.
- What if I want a password with 10? Doesn't fit in their database table... too bad.
The password can't have any repeated characters in it
- Why not?
It must have mixed case and numbers
- Ok, that I can live with
After logging in with a password that fits all those requirements... it wants to know in which city I was born
- Why? If someone can remember the password that fits all the requirements... good luck to them in looking at  the price of the dinner I paid for on my company card

2. Horrible layout

Try to understand how much you need to pay - good luck

3. One way messaging

Yes, every time I login, I have a new message in my inbox about some system downtime.
But, try to send a message to customer service, with an enquiry about your account... no way. You need to call to a call center, remember a whole other set of authentication details, and hope that the person on the other end can answer your question

Customer first... not a chance.
Move into the 21st century Citibank.

XBMC on Fedora 15 (upgrade from Fedora 14)

After upgrading from Fedora 14 to 15, XBMC stopped working with the error below -

/usr/lib64/xbmc/xbmc.bin: error while loading shared libraries: libopenjpeg.so.2: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory

An update of xbmc didn't solve the problem.

However, a subsequent update of vlc did -

Installed Packages

vlc.x86_64                                               1.1.11-1.fc14                                               @rpmfusion-free-updates/14

Available Packages

vlc.x86_64                                               1.1.11-1.fc15                                               rpmfusion-free-updates    

Actually it may have been a broken spotify repo, that led to such updates not happening automatically.

HP Laserjet M1005MFP on Fedora 15

All looked good for my printer on Fedora 15 - on plugging it in, it was detected and some installation occurred. Unfortunately when trying to print it failed, and lpstat gave the info below -


[steve@aspireone753 ~]$ lpstat -t
scheduler is running
system default destination: HP-LaserJet-M1005
device for HP-LaserJet-M1005: hp:/usb/HP_LaserJet_M1005?serial=KJ18MKN
HP-LaserJet-M1005 accepting requests since Fri 05 Aug 2011 17:43:13 CEST
printer HP-LaserJet-M1005 now printing HP-LaserJet-M1005-8.  enabled since Fri 05 Aug 2011 17:43:13 CEST
/usr/lib/cups/filter/hpcups failed
HP-LaserJet-M1005-7     steve             1024   Fri 05 Aug 2011 17:42:16 CEST
HP-LaserJet-M1005-8     steve             1024   Fri 05 Aug 2011 17:43:13 CEST

A further check in /var/log/messages revealed -

Aug  5 17:43:14 aspireone753 hpcups[5262]: prnt/hpcups/HPCupsFilter.cpp 418: m_Job initialization failed with error = 48


From which google found the solution below -

https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=611255

Fedora 15 on Acer Aspire One 753

My new Acer Aspire One 753 arrived. Somewhat to my surprise the performance of it with Windows 7 was not great, so I shrunk the volume, and installed Fedora 15. This went quite smoothly, except for the installer wanting/needing internet access. As the built-in WIFI device isn't supported by GPL drivers, I needed to plug in a cable to complete the install.

I then set about getting wifi to work as follows -

Black list acer_wmi
echo blacklist acer_wmi > /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist-acer.conf

Install broadcom driver
rpm -Uvh http://download1.rpmfusion.org/free/fedora/rpmfusion-free-release-stable.noarch.rpm
rpm -Uvh http://download1.rpmfusion.org/nonfree/fedora/rpmfusion-nonfree-release-stable.noarch.rpm
yum update
yum install kmod-wl

Fedora 15 is performing very well, and the new interface is nice.

Microsoft tax

My original Acer Aspire One sadly died recently, so I decided to replace it with an Aspire One 753. I'm anticipating it's arrival. One of the reasons I bought the Aspire One originally was that it came with Linux installed. Unfortunately this is no longer an option (the Cromia isn't available here yet), so I began to investigate if it's possible to get a refund for Windows 7. The posts below show that it is -

Getting a Windows refund from Acer in the Netherlands
Windows tax refund for Acer notebook (Acer Aspire 1410/1810T)

but I don't have the patience to go through the difficult process. Whilst I'm not a Microsoft hater in general, their monopolistic practices have clearly left a legacy -  and sadly this time they will be taking a cut from me.

Chrome unresponsive for gmail and yahoo mail on Fedora 14

Some time back I switched from Firefox to Chrome on my Aspire One (running Fedora 14). I was impressed by how fast it is, and became a convert. Unfortunately, after some time it became unusable, with gmail and many other pages leaving Chrome unresponsive.

I tried many workarounds and 'solutions', removing my cache and configuration directories but still no joy.

I then began troubleshooting with strace - and noticed that the problem went away. This lead me to some more googling, and I found this post -

Issue 77274: Chrome 11 hangs on linux due to gecko-mediaplayer

The solution was as simple as removing gecko-mediaplayer


$ sudo yum erase gecko-mediaplayer

D-LINK DHP-307AV Powerline AV

Although my apartment is wired with CAT-6, unfortunately where I have the TV and HTPC now, there is only one outlet. As my TV provided via IPTV, my set-top box needs it's only Ethernet feed from the 'triple-play' switch (XG6745). The HTPC needs a good connection to my NAS... so initially it got the CAT-6 connection, whilst I figured the IPTV could be sent over HomePlug AV.

So I bought this kit - D-LINK DHP-307AV.

Initially, I was very impressed - the setup was very smooth, just plug-in, and press a button on each unit... and my IPTV was up and running. 

However, after a couple of days, my the TV would occasionally freeze, and break-up. After some resets, and moving outlets... the problem remained.

I then switched the TV back to Ethernet, and connected the HTPC over the powerline. Whilst it works fine.. the throughput was around 30Mbps - somewhat disappointing. I had hoped based on google research to be in the range 60-85Mbps.