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Advanta Shutting Down Credit Card

For those who have an Advanta credit card, you might want to switch to a new card after June 10th, 2009 May 30th, 2009. Apparently they’re shutting their credit card business. According to their press release:

Since the securitizations will not be permitted to fund new receivables after June 10, the Company will shut down all credit card accounts to future use at that time. Neither Advanta Bank Corp. nor any other Advanta-related entity will fund activity on its balance sheet from the accounts. Therefore, the Company will not take any off-balance sheet receivables onto its balance sheet. Shutting down the accounts will not accelerate payments required from cardholders on existing balances.

Here’s a few other articles/threads that may interest you:

To my understanding, you won’t be able to make any new charges after 6/10 5/30, but you do NOT have to pay off your existing balance. Whatever terms/rates still apply for those who do carry a balance on the card.

If you’re looking for a replacement card for your business, I suggest the American Express SimplyCash Card (which I’ve blogged about here). Unfortunately, the cash back have since decreased a bit.

If you’re looking for a Visa/MasterCard, you may want to check out the Chase Freedom For Business. You get 3% back on the top 5 categories you purchase in and you even get a $50 sign up bonus. However, I believe there’s an annual cap on how many points you can accrue. Hope this helps!

Update: Looks like they bumped up the close date to 5/30. Here’s the copy of the email I just received:

Dear Customer,

Your Advanta Business Card account is funded by an independent trust which owns the balances you owe on your account and provides funding for new transactions. We expect the trust to stop funding activity on our accounts. The trust also restricts our flexibility to fund activity on your account. Unfortunately, as a result, effective May 30th all Advanta Business Credit Card accounts, including your account, will be closed.

This means that you will not be able to use your card or account for new transactions, including purchases, checks and balance transfers beginning on May 30th. We understand that you may have written checks on your account before May 30th and we will make every effort to honor those checks that are presented to us for payment by June 3rd. If you use your Advanta card to make automatic recurring bill payments, you will need to make alternative arrangements for those payments promptly.

It is important to understand that you are not required to pay your entire balance at this time. You may continue to pay down your account balance over time, as allowed under your Advanta Business Card Agreement.

You will not lose the rewards that you have earned. If you participate in a Cash Back program, you will receive a check for the amount of any accrued rewards more than $1.00 as long as you make the required minimum payments and your account remains in good standing. If you participate in a Business Rewards program, you will have at least 60 days to redeem your points as long as you make the required minimum payments and your account remains in good standing.

We deeply regret the impact this action will have on your business and very much wish it was not necessary.

We are committed to assist you through this process. Additional information will be available at www.advanta.com/notice. If you have any other questions or concerns, or if we can assist you in any other way, please feel free to contact our Customer Service Center. You can email us your questions 24 hours a day at www.advanta.com/secure or call us toll free at (800) 705-7255, Monday – Friday 8:00 am to 8:00 pm and Saturday 8:00 am to 5:00 pm Eastern Time.

Sincerely,
John F. Moore
President, Advanta Bank Corp.

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How to cancel a download in iTunes

I’m shocked at how difficult Apple makes it for the user to cancel downloads from iTunes. Being a freebie junkie, I am sometimes addicted to downloading iTunes freebies. That’s when I discovered just how hard it is to cancel a download in iTunes. I had queued up several large video clips to download which I’m no longer interested in:

iTunes Downloads

That adds up to about 4.8GB, bandwidth I don’t really feel like wasting given how hard ISPs are cracking down on high bandwidth users. So I tried to pause and delete the downloads. It appears to work, until I restart iTunes, which then immediately resumes downloading when I log back into the iTunes Music Store. I search online for solutions and found the following 2 threads:

Sorry, but you can’t yourself remove an item from your download queue. Contact the iTunes Store customer support department through the form linked from the bottom of their Download FAQ web page (I recommend that you use the form, not the link in your Purchase History as they advise; that’s not proven to be very reliable) and explain the problem to them. They may be able to clear the download queue for you.

Good luck.

So I just got off the phone with Apple tech support and the representative seemed very interested in this problem… He said there wasn’t any solution that he (or his associates) knew of, but that he’d bring it to attention at a meeting this afternoon. I referenced a number of forums to stress that many users have this problem.
So I guess we’ll have to wait and see if it becomes an update in a future version of iTunes.

Anyways, at this point I’m just going to let them download completely and then delete them. Sucks.

Apparently there is no way for me to do it myself and I have to contact customer support (either on the phone or through the webform). You can go to the contact form directly.

I can understand why they make it difficult, given the fact that iTunes doesn’t allow you to re-download and they want to make sure you actually did complete your download of any items you purchased (or in my case – obtained for free). However there should still be able way for me to stop/cancel any of my downloads, even if I have to go deep into my account and find that delete button. This is very unlike Apple, which typically tends to make great UI/UX. Then again, iTunes is a disaster waiting to happen. The only reason I even have it installed is because of my iPod Nano.

Another very annoying thing is that when you purchase an HD video, they FORCE you to download both SD and HD. Once again, either they need to allow me to suspend downloads (until I want to download it), or allow me to cancel the SD version from being downloaded at all. It’s just wasted bandwidth.

Here’s the email I sent to Apple:

I have 3 items in my download queue which apparently I can’t remove and have to submit this form according to: http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=7804573

The 3 items are large (several gigs in total) and I’d prefer to not have to download them, but am annoyed by the fact that it keeps wanting to resume downloading whenever I start iTunes. I’m surprised there’s no way for me to delete it from the queue.

The 3 items are:
Order #***** – Truth In 24
Order #***** – Whap – Harper’s Island (SD)
Order #***** – Whap – Harper’s Island (HD)

I’d appreciate if you would remove these from my download queue.

I’ll post back to let you know if this actually works.

Update: Got a reply from iTunes Store Customer Support:

Dear *****,

Thanks for contacting iTunes Store Customer Support. My name is Blaine and I understand you would like some large files removed your download queue. I will be happy to help with this.

*****, please accept my sincere apologies for the frustration this download has caused. I took the liberty of removing the file(s) causing the issue from your download queue.

Thanks for being an iTunes Store Customer, *****!

Sincerely,

Blaine
iTunes Store Customer Support

w00t! Apple’s customer support is still top notch. 🙂

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Next 24?

*** BEGIN SPOILERS ALERT ***

I have a prediction for next season’s 24. (Show)

Similarly for House M.D., is there going to be… (Show)

*** END SPOILERS ALERT ***

Both series are available in HD on the iTunes Store: 24, Season 7 and House, Season 5

Looks like TV is going to suck for the next few months. Good thing I have a pile of anime and Netflix to keep my entertained. 🙂

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Twitter Weekly Updates for 2009-05-17

  • American Idol went overtime into Fringe, and I got to enjoy Adam Lambert’s amazing cover of Mad World: http://bit.ly/duOb0 #
  • Don’t forget to call your mom and wish her Happy Mother’s Day. (^_^x) #
  • Interesting discussion on whether to get a Masters or not: http://bit.ly/4EpD7 #
  • @jscott Reminds me of the cat poop coffee: Kopi Luwak – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kopi_luwak in reply to jscott #
  • @ralphlee Not sure if you hear of this film: Burma VJ – http://www.apple.com/trailers/independent/burmavj/ #
  • Did you ever realize the Arkansas was just Ar + Kansas? Apparently both states derive from the same Kansas Native American tribe. #
  • @bartonjs @ellism What “feature” are we talking about? in reply to bartonjs #
  • @ellism Haha, I didn’t even know this option existed. Would’ve definitely enabled it on my @krunk4ever account. in reply to ellism #
  • bought my first 1TB hard drive to upgrade my RAID 5 file server. 1 down, 5 to go. #
  • @ellism Did you misspell @aChrisSmith? in reply to ellism #
  • has purchased tickets to fly back to LA for sister’s graduation on the weekend of June 13th. Flying back on June 15th. #
  • Book a RT flight on @JetBlue for sometime between 5/19 to 6/23 and get a $50 voucher good between 9/9 to 11/15: http://bit.ly/qzR59 #
  • @dhstatus Is the panel down? I’m getting a “Connection Interrupted” error. #
  • finally succumbed and joined Netflix. The Xbox Live + Netflix Streaming and BluRay access finally pushed me over. #
  • Disney Pixar’s Tokyo Drift parody – “Tokyo Mater” http://bit.ly/1xuoxj (via @Fathi_Haziq) #
  • When you have eliminated all other possibilities, the one remaining-no matter how unlikely-must be the truth. #
  • Why are 80% of my Netflix searches resulting in ‘The Water Horse: Legend of the Deep’ on the first page? It’s not even recommended: 2.9 #

Update:
Looks like YouTube took down that Adam Lambert – Mad World song. Here’s a new link to the studio recording. I also dug around and found the clip of his actual performance.

[Please visit blog post to view streaming video]

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Firefox Corrupting Cookies and Session Info

One of the most annoying thing that has been happening for the past few months was that Firefox appears to corrupt my cookies/sessions. You know those “remember me” check boxes or when your bank asks if you want them to remember this computer so you don’t have to answer the security questions the next time you log in? Yeah, those would be pretty much corrupted after a day or 2. Every few days I would always have to re-sign into my most frequently visited sites and given that I only visit my bank websites once or twice a month, I always had to answer the security questions all over again.

When this happened, I confirmed that the cookie is indeed still there and hasn’t expired. I also made sure that I didn’t accidentally enable a Firefox setting that purged or invalidate all cookies after a certain amount of time.

At first I thought it was some add-on/extension causing the issue, since I do have a large array of extensions that I use and since extensions are all-powerful, it was very likely to be the case. However, even with all my add-ons disabled, I was still experiencing the issue.

After awhile, I just decided to live with it.

Fast forward a few months and I saw that Firefox had just released a new version (3.0.10) and wanted to play with it without waiting for it to automatically upgrade. I was shocked to find out I was still using 3.0.1… I’ve always thought Firefox would notify me when there’s a new update, which is the case if you’re running as an Administrator. However, I always run as a regular user (non-admin) and only elevate when I need higher access and more privileges. Can be a pain sometimes, but it’s not that bad once you get used to it. And over the course of a day, I probably need to elevate between 0 to 2 times.

So with Firefox never ever telling me to upgrade, I’ve been using 3.0.1 for who knows how long and 3.0.1 was apparently riddled with these annoying bugs.

After upgrading to 3.0.10, all my cookie corruption problems have since disappeared.

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Twitter Weekly Updates for 2009-05-10

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Pepsi Natural vs Pepsi Throwback

Awhile back I tweeted that Costco was now selling Pepsi Natural. I heard Pepsi was releasing a version of the soft drink using real sugar instead of HFCS (high fructose corn syrup). It was now available at Costco.

Pepsi NaturalPepsi Natural at Costco

I was surprised at how Pepsi Natural turned out. It tasted very different than regular Pepsi. It was definitely less sweet and a lot lighter than regular Pepsi. I’m not even sure which one I liked more, regular Pepsi or Pepsi Natural. If I had to choose one, I would say regular Pepsi wins by a bit.

Later I read someone had tried and enjoyed Pepsi Throwback. Wasn’t sure what Pepsi Throwback was, but it turns out to be another variation of Pepsi with real sugar. At first I thought it was just 2 different names for the same product used in 2 different markets, but it turns out there is a real difference!

According to Lucrative Investing:

The difference between Pepsi Natural and Pepsi Throwback is Pepsi natural has natural caramel and kona nut extract, while Pepsi Throwback has all the regular ingredients but with sugar instead of HFCS. Pepsi Natural will also be sold in glass containers.

So whatever they removed from regular Pepsi in Pepsi Natural, has given it a lighter and less sweet taste. I’ll definitely need to try Pepsi Throwback one of these days.

Of course Mexican Coke still beats all.

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Twitter Weekly Updates for 2009-05-03

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4 Day Weekend

First, I wanted to thank Andrew’s parents again for treating us to an awesome dinner at Tavolàta. If what they told me is true and they do in fact still read my blog, they’ll see this.

Now onto the topic at hand. For the past month, our whole team has been working crazy hours trying to get Geneva products to beta 2 ship quality. And the task at hand was completed last Friday (4/24).

This Friday (5/1) is our move day (we’re moving from the 5th floor to the 4th floor), just regular office shuffling that happens once or twice a year. The move apparently starts around noon, “inconveniently” just about when I usually get into the office.

So my lead is giving everyone a day off for the extra hours we’ve put in. Initially I was given Thursday (yesterday) off, but I wanted to wrap some stuff up this week and decided to take the following Monday off. So tomorrow might be a semi-work day depending if I get access to my computers. And of course I have the next Monday off.

Given the late notice, I thought about flying back home. But I’m going to be there in June for my sister’s graduation, so didn’t really feel that was worth it. Oh well.

But wait! It gets better! 2 days next week are “morale” days.

On Wednesday, we’re having our ship party at some fancy hotel. On Thursday, we’re going to watch Star Trek at the Bellevue Squares IMAX (I didn’t even realize there was an IMAX there).

So yep… things look great this coming week. 🙂

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Shiny Toy Guns – Major Tom

I’ve been seeing the Lincoln MKZ ad on television for a few weeks and I’m starting to dig the song. After a quick search, it turns out the song is a cover of Major Tom (coming home) by Shiny Toy Guns:

[Please visit blog post to view streaming video]

Generally, I’d just tweet this but it turns out that Shiny Toy Guns is giving away the song for FREE: TRANSMISSION TO MAJOR TOM. YOURS. FREE. They require you to register, but that seems like a small price to pay for getting the song for free. After registering however, it appears to just redirect you to Lincoln’s website, telling you to look for the download link in the lower right corner.

Unfortunately, I couldn’t find the download link. Looking at the comments back on Shiny Toy Guns’ website, people were saying it was pulled because they were planning for an official release. However on Lincoln’s website, their source still links to the song:

function downloadSong() {
    [...]
    window.open('/extras/asset/majortom.zip', '_blank', 'height=100,width=200,top=200,left=300');
}

If you input javascript:downloadSong() into the location bar or just open this download link, you should be able to download the song. It’s a 10MB file with a 320kbps encoded MP3

Enjoy!