TradeKing - Waste Of Time

Zecco and TradeKing recently merged and people using Zecco were asked to migrate their accounts to TradeKing. After I went through the process to do this, I click on the link to fund my account and I'm told I don't have access.. no reason given. After an email, it turns out TradeKing don't support non resident US citizens. It would have been nice of them to point this out rather than requesting I migrate my account and waste my time.

Read More

Free Morningstar Premium Access

Update: Free Morningstar Premium Access used to be available from T Rowe Price, but the link seems to be unavailable now.

You get access to the following Morningstar services:

Portfolio Manager (Formerly Portfolio Trackers) Portfolio X-Ray Asset Allocator Portfolio Instant X-Ray Portfolio Watchlist

Read More

Fix Wireless Limited or No Connectivity Error Message

I was getting the dreaded Limited or No Connectivity Error Message recently when setting up a computer for a friend. Using a wired Ethernet connection to the wireless router worked fine, but I could not connected properly to the wifi connection I had set up.

It turned out that the problem was that the key number was not set correctly. This defaults to 1, but I had used 3 because for some reason the D-link wireless router would not let me changed the WEP key on the first key, so I ended up using key 3.

Once I set this in the wireless connection settings on the PC, it connected correctly and I no longer got the nasty Limited or No Connectivity Error Message.

Read More

The boot selection failed because a required device is inaccessible

"The boot selection failed because a required device is inaccessible"... not the kind of message that brings a smile to one's face.

I had used Ubuntu loaded off a CD to resize my Windows 7 RC installation and shrink my Windows XP partition. When I rebooted I was greeted by this nasty message.

My Windows 7 partition would not boot at all and I had to go through a chkdsk boot check twice before I could get back into XP.

Read More

Tower Defense Games

Desktop Tower Defense is an example of a Tower Defense game. It is pretty amusing and quite simple in concept, but takes some skill to get right. These games rely on old school fun rather than flashy graphics.

The idea is to funnel waves of enemies that are trying to get from one side of a map to another. You have to set up your defenses to funnel them through and make the most of your spenditure. As you do away with more badies, you get more spenditure to increase your defenese or upgrade them.

A website with a bunch of tower defense games is Tower Defense. Have fun.

Read More

Fantastic Contraption

Fantastic Contraption is a fun engineering puzzle game. You are provided with some different wheels and options to join them together. You build your contraption in a starting area and then you can start it running. The idea is to get these pink shapes (your payload) into the pink zone. It's quite a fun little game.

Read More

'error opening file for writing' ImgBurn.exe

I got the message, "error opening file for writing" when trying to install ImgBurn.

I rebooted and noticed a message about security from windows. It turns out I had disabled Comodo Firewall (although it was still running, just in disabled mode). If you right click on the Comodo shield and then go to "Firewall Security Level" and select something like "Custom Policy Mode".

It was either this or the reboot that fixed my problem with ImgBurn not installing due to "error opening file for writing".

Read More