I purchased a Clear Alternatives Sequential Integrated LED Taillight Kit (8096143-001) from bike bandit and after one run in the rain at the Ride for a cure somone told me that my tail light had water in it. I am pretty dissapointed because my only option is to return it..pay for shipping back…and whatever. I guess I am going to let clear alternatives know. On a positive note.. I guess I can look for one that fits inside the tail so I can remove the rest of the tail.

Heres HIGH RESOLUTION pics. Beware of size, they are 4 meg files a piece at 4752×3168 (gg canon camera) If you dont want them to open in the same window, right click and open in a new tab or middle mouse click on the pictures.

Well after much trouble it looks like the site is running quickly again. I cant believe the response I got from the community. I was amazed at the speed at which everyone submitted comments and gave proof that it wasn’t just my fault. I realize my code isn’t the best out there and I link to many outside sources. I posted to only three different places. (Yahoo answer, Hardforum, and katriders.com) and I got over 30 responses in an hour. I was amazed at how helpful everyone was except for the actual host.

After I got all the responses they still only wanted me to ping the site and if that wasnt the problem, there was no problem. It was really ridiculous and caused me to actually have to call the support team on 1and1.com and asked to speak to their manager. Why did I do this? Because even with the proof they sent me an email saying “everything’s fine on our end, must be you.”

Finally the support person told me they would forward the ticket to the admin team.. if they did that or not I dont know. Regardless the problem is fixed for now so we should be good.

I still am very proud of the Internet community helping out with all the comments. Hopefully I can get back to just submitting articles.

As of 10:27 PM Central time the site has been performing as expected. Hopefully the problem was resolved!

I have contacted 1and1 support many times about this load time problem but they keep assuring me that its my fault and on their end everything loads fine.

I find it hard to believe both work/school/and home have the same load problems and its still my fault.

PLEASE! Load this page and count out how many seconds it takes to load. Just hit the refresh key and give me an estimate in a comment. I need something to prove to them its not all in my head.

EDIT: Heres the convo so far.

My Email:

Its been three weeks since the router issue that occured for
teamxw.com and at one point the websites load speed was back to
normal. 
However every day after that has been taking over 30 seconds to load
a indexed folder such as teamxw.com/temp from multiple locations. What
really concerns me is that the tracert for the site indicates no
pinging errors. Is the machine i am on not able to process the traffic as
well as it should? 
I am frankly out of ideas and if this cannot be resolved i will be forced to change hosts.
Any ideas what would cause this would be greatly appreciated.

Dear Paul
Thank you for contacting us. 
As we tried to access the site externally, the load time is ok, it
loads within 3-5 seconds. Please try to ask if your friends or any anybody that visits the site experiences the same issue? If you have any further questions please do not hesitate to contact
us.

My Reply:

The average seems to be 20-40 seconds for everyone: 
http://iamkraze.com/website-load-times#comments

Dear Paul
Thank you for contacting us.

It seems that the site is loading fast in our end. However, we will
monitor this case. For the mean time please try to restart your router.

If you have any further questions please do not hesitate to contact us.

EDIT:

Im getting nothing but the workaround. They asked me to get average load times from friends… 30 of you posted, I posted the link to the comments section and they started with the “seems to be fine on our end, can I get a traceroute?” I told them its not a networking issue.. most likely hardware because its more frequent with PHP where different peices have to be loaded before the page is rendered.

I then called them, asked to speak with there manager, they wanted to know why, i told them for the answer. They asked me to stay on hold for 2 minutes, 5 minutes later she told me she was looking over the history of the support ticket and everything was fine. I then asked again to talk to her supervisor. She then told me after I was put on hold again they werent available but she would forward the ticket to the system admins if I sent a trace route. I did, and I will be very amazed if it is forwarded.

My host has been working on this for two days.. if they dont get it fixed soon I will be looking for yet another host.

Sorry for the downtime.. PS. My helmet cam is working.

PPS. I won a helmet cam from katriders.com

Apparently selling funny shirts wasnt enough for deezteez.

Check out there new site, promoting online strippers!

http://www.deezteez.com/CWHgirls/

So I was debating on ordering a pizza for dinner since I skipped out. With the president being here I thought it might not be a good idea, but I still went to the site just to look. Well what did I see on the front page?

What the hell is this?

EDIT: I looks like somone actually bought one here: http://consumerist.com/5152896/papa-johns-love-pizza-is-a-lie and it looks more like a regular pizza with a part smushed in. Gotta love it!

This has been a roller coaster of disappointment except all the falls  don’t cause me to throw my hands in the air and scream. No bike for me.. apparently the 5000 dollar loan disappears when you buy a more expensive bike and have cash to cover the rest. Apparently they will only loan me half when it increases in value. The absence of credit really tosses this for a loop. I guess I am screwed again by the banks. I guess I am just going to save up for a used bike and pay for it in cash.

Funny thing is, if I was 18, they would have thrown credit at me since they assume parents would just cover the bills. Now that I am making a great amount of money and have the ability to pay for things, I cant even get a loan.

Wonderful. I guess it really doesn’t matter since riding season is almost 4 months away.

Every year there seems to be a product that everyone wants during the Christmas time. This is the first year that I cant think of anything new that would have people fight over and stand in the cold for new shipments of.

Previous examples can be easy to remember:

• PS3
• Xbox 360
• Wii
• Iphone
• Furby

Not all of those were released around Christmas, but there has always been something awesome for sale..

What is it this year?

You know when you know something is wrong but cant put your finger on it? You know that feeling that just lets you know something is up? Well I got that feeling today and I decided to check in on my money. You see I am thinking about getting a small loan ($8,000) to purchase a bike. You see I think its time that I get to living life.. and living life requires money which I don’t have. So I applied for the loan on a Saturday morning about 3 a.m. out of curiosity. I filled out the quick approval section and seeing it as only a “hey why not try” thing with no real intentions. The funny thing was I got an email again that morning at 8 a.m. with a representative from my bank saying they wanted to touch base about the loan. I was actually pretty amazed that they even wanted to let me borrow money from them. Granted the rate is 6%, I still thought no one would let me with only having one job on my resume and that only being about 6 months.

That was all fine and dandy but I wanted to check in on some of my stuff so I checked the good old student loan I have been hiding in the closet. Since the email for reminders is in my mothers name, as well as the mail being sent to a P.O. Box that no one ever checked I had an outstanding balance. The dreaded time has come that I have to pay for the student loan that was more of a waste of money than anything else. I didn’t get an education in the formal sense.. the school sucked hard.

The school was supposed to be the top dog of all the gaming schools. I guess since I chose such a horrible degree it made sense. I would still love to create games for a living but I couldn’t handle the school. It was as simple as this:

• I wanted to chose my roommates after one semester and myself and my old roommate wanted to live with someone who had the exact same lifestyle as us but there was a problem, she was female. We were allowed to because she was already living with a guy, despite him pretending to be female. Once he moved out and another female moved in apparently administration caught word of the situation and demanded I move out during our finals week / my birthday. Pretty shitty.
• The new roommate was previously homeless… literally..and smelled. I couldn’t stand it.
• The teachers were former industry workers; they had no formal teaching ability. I actually had a teacher in the middle of a lecture, stop talking and leave class for about 30 minutes. I cant give them all greif however, there were some pretty memorable teachers there as well.

Stinky however was my last draw. I upped and left the beginning of the semester in the middle of the night. There was no way I was going to feed somone who washed there clothes with the same soap they washed there bodies…

With all of that I am stuck with a $27,000 loan for a few semesters of a wonderful city and a horrible education. Apparently looking at my bill the interest over time if I were to finish paying it in 2018 would be $57,000….what…the…fuck…

I made my first payment today. I guess I could always defer it again for school when I start up again. Apparently there isn’t any interest when you defer that way.. thanks government.

Oh I forgot to tell you, I am going back to school. How is that possible with my current schedule? It isnt. Good thing I got a new job in IT on the weekends as a help desk representive! The title isnt that, its actually really long and convoluted. It doesn’t matter.. I get the entire week off and I only have to work the weekends from  6 a.m. till 6 p.m. and my pay makes it so I make almost exactly the same as I do now with only 24 hours instead of 40. Gotta love “professional jobs” paying more!

So I guess my plan is as follows:

1. Get A motorcycle loan @ $8,000
2. Buy a motorcyle
3. Pay my current school loan for the rest of my life
4. Go back to school
5. Start selling artwork, web design, and t-shirts on my free time
6. Take advantage of that advertising budget I have never touched
7. Perhaps start my gaming clan back up even if it is a money pit

Is it crazy to manage 2 loans at the same time? Whats your guys experienced take. I live with my parents and my car is paid for.. the insurance on the car is also payed for in a family plan. I dont have any current bills, but in the future I might have them.

I get about $800 bi-weekly from the job, the bike payment will be about 300, the loan is about 400. That would cover one check and the other for extra things… what do you think?

I remember when computers were the only systems to have video games… I guess developers forget this. Essentially a console system is a pc. Especially the newest consoles.. they use INTEL processors, and ATI or Nvidia graphics cards… hard rives…ram…wireless networks… and tons of other things. To say a console is “better” than a pc or better or vise versa is ignorant.

Thats not my problem here.. its that great games are becoming “exclusives” to consoles or they will be released months to years after the console version. Yes, in order to sell your console to the more general audience you need to have exclusives, I get that. It just sucks when developers who started in the windows world, and excelled thanks to us, completely give us the cold shoulder. A list of these companies off hand?

Lionshead studios… releasing fable 2. I still play black and white (which never made it to a console) and its an amazing game.

Rockstar games… Grand theft auto started on the pc, and people are still playing it on the pc. VICE CITY and SAN ANDREAS had mods to make the game multiplayer long before Rockstar even wanted multiplayer in their game… funny huh?

Bungie… They promised us HALO then got bought out by Microsoft to “never be released” for the pc. Eventually they did..

Hell, if Microsoft was smart they would co-release their stuff and promote shitty vista (I use vista and love it for being shiny).

If Valve (steam) leaves us for consoles next year I will officially burn their building down. Yes Valve, its a threat, I love you that much.

I refuse to buy a console to play my favorite games. I so badly want to play them, but fuck it, I have a pc because it offers me superior resolutions, voice and other interaction, that only a console could wish for. I will wait for the games to make it to pc and if they dont, I wont play them. Mods always make up for the wait. Counter-strike anyone?