Monthly Archives: February 2007

Identifying fake SanDisk Ultra SD cards

A while ago, I picked up a 'cheap' 2GB SanDisk Ultra II SD card for my (then) shiny new Canon IXUS 80is on eBay. The price was a bargain, the seller had good feedback, and the photos of the product showed that the item was brand new and boxed. So, I had no hesitations in buying the card.

Last week, the card failed on me. I took a bunch of photos of Aimee on it, ejected the card from the camera and popped it into my desktop. Debian etch's Gnome usually automounts SD and USB media, so I was surprised when it didn't automagically appear on my desktop.

I had a load of error messages in dmesg, saying that the kernel hadn't been able to find a valid filesystem on the device, and the ominous DriveReadySeekComplete messages confirmed to me that the card was toast.

Annoyed, but unconcerned, I pointed Firefox at www.sandisk.com and set about claiming on SanDisk's generous 10 year warranty. I emailed them with details of the card, like the serial number on the back, and a brief summary of what's wrong with the card – asking for advice as to how I'd have the card replaced. To my utter disappointment, I received a reply telling me that the number given was invalid, and that it was highly likely that I had purchased a counterfeit card.

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Getting on a bit

It dawned on me the other day that I am advancing in years and that my tastes and opinions are slowly changing. I guess it happens to all of us, but I never expected it to happen to me.

For example, I’ve recently switched to listening to Radio 2 in the afternoon when driving home from work. I just found myself constantly cursing Radio 1′s choice of music – it wasn’t so much the DJ’s (in fact, I still listen to Moyles for the morning commute – I can’t yet bear to bring myself to purposfully listen to Terry fucking Wogan), but the music.

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Gig Review: Kaiser Chiefs @ Doncaster Dome 9th Feb 2007

Now, I have to admit that I’m not the world’s biggest Kaiser Chiefs fan, but when I found out they were playing a last-minute gig a few miles away I asked the good lady wife if she’d like to go. Of course she would!

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YAB, YAG.

Yet another blog, yet another geek.

This’ll be my, <counts> fourth attempt at entering the unbelievably wankily named ‘Blogosphere’. I’m sure it’ll be interesting, informative and fun. A journey through the mind of an addled sysadmin, bored-beyond-belief with the politics, wankery and machiavellian antics of his cow-orkers and colleagues.

Of course, it won’t always be about work. There’ll be nice stuff too.

We’ll see.

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