Senthil's Space

Web 2.0 and other web sites are springing like wild flowers in every conceivable area of human interest and around the corners of the globe. Most of them require you to identify yourself. If I take a casual look at the number of passwords that I have to remember it would easily be over 50! and I don't expect this number to be going down.

Well, If you are wondering whether there is a solution to this problem of having to remember a userid and password for every site that you login then you are in luck.

There are some people over at http://openid.net/ who are trying to solve this problem. If you had a single identity and a single place to verify that identity then wouldn't that be sweet. For example, lets say that hotmail, gmail, and yahoo are all openid "enabled". First you have to create an openid identity at any of the openid "provider" sites. This id looks much like an internet address (mine is http://senthilr.myopenid.net) and use this id to login to all three of the openid "enabled" mail providers, instead of typing in different username/password combinations on the three sites. This may sound something like MSN passport but hold on, you can have an openid identity that is based on your own domain name, if you are domain owner i.e., and are happy to run your own openid server.

Got your interests piqued yet? Here are some more links that give you detailed information...

https://www.myopenid.com/tutorial

How many sites are openid enabled you ask ? Take a look here,

https://www.myopenid.com/directory

Looking to hack an together an openid enabled site or app ? Go here,

http://www.openidenabled.com/openid/libraries/

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You don't have to pay a re-stocking fee on open box computers or laptops at Fry's electronics!

Last weekend, I was in the California valley area to catch up with some of my old buddies from school. All of a sudden I had this urge to check out the Macbook Pro which I have been hearing so much about. I was staying at the Palo Alto Super 8 and believe it or not there was a bright red Fry's Electronics Store sign board sticking out through the alley opposite my motel! It was close to 8:30 PM on saturday night and I found out that the store closes at 9:00PM. I walked in to the store and noticed that they had a special on a 2GB Intel Core 2 Duo version of the Macbook Pro. I did a little bit of googling and found out that the mac memory upgrades are a bit pricy. I also did a casual check on the Fry's return policy and learned that they had a 15 day return policy.
At the check out counter, I realized that the sales dude brought me an open box item after he created a receipt for the sales counter and since I didn't have much time I went ahead and took their $100 discount anyways.

Happy with my purchase, I played around with it a bit and really liked it. All the stuff that I installed and configured is the subject of another blog.

However, the open box "caveat" bugged me a bit and I wanted to try my luck and see if Fry's would take the Macbook Pro back.

I walked into the Fry's Electronics Store on Brokaw Road two days later, prepared to explain myself. Twenty minutes later, after a service tech went throught the box, I got a full refund back on my credit card. Thats right! no re-stocking fee (my friends told me that some stores charge10-15% etc.,) or other charges.

Fry's rocks! I hope they keep up this great service/attitude.

[p.s - Fry's did not pay me to do this blog nor do I own any of Fry's assets directly]

Fry's Electronics Fry's Return Policy Macbook Pro