Customer Service: Chase vs. Citibank

Posted on May 8, 2008 by ergut

I would like to share my unpleasant experience with Chase with the intention to help those who wants to apply for credit cards.

My payment to Chase was returned when I was out of country due to insufficient funds since I had an unexpected payment posted to my account while I was away. Long story short, I was charged total of $109 as return fee and finance charges from Chase. This was the very first time something like that happened for the last 7 years that I owned Chase credit card. Most credit cards or banks forgive the first time mistakes. However Chase customer service would not reverse the finance charges as a courtesy.

This reminded me my pleasant experience with Citibank a year before. I got a loan from them and set my bank account to automatically pay the minimum monthly balance. There was a problem in the setup and Citibank did not get payments for two months so they called me to warn and I immediately made payments on the phone. Late payment fee and finance charges for two months added up to more than  $500, but they kindly reversed all the fees since it was the first time.

When I compared the service of Chase (my credit card for 7 years) vs. Citibank (their treatment even after 2 months), I decided that I will not use their credit card and keep my interaction to the minimum.  Since I always pay full amount in full, I never paid close attention to the interest rate. I noticed that my Chase card charges ~15% while Citibank card charges only ~9%.

What is your experience with these cards?

Filed under: shopping-reviews | Tagged: , , | No Comments »

How to switch desktops on Ubuntu

Posted on May 2, 2008 by ergut

This is how I switched my desktop from Xubuntu to Ubuntu. Different combinations are done with a similar approach. See the reference below for a detailed explanation.

  • sudo apt-get update
  • sudo apt-get install ubuntu
  • sudo update-alternatives --config usplash-artwork.so
    • Select artwork for the boot and shutdown screens, enter the following two commands in a Terminal window:
  • sudo update-initramfs -u
  • sudo dpkg-reconfigure gdm
    • However both Ubuntu & Xubuntu uses gdm, following step will resolve this problem
  • sudo gdmsetup
    • If this fails to launch a GUI window, first run sudo su and then type gdmsetup
    • Go to “Local” tab and select the Ubuntu theme

When you logon next time do not forget to select the “gnome” as the current session.

In my case compiz caused Ubuntu to consume a lot of CPU power so I uninstalled it:

sudo apt-get –purge remove compiz* libcompizconfig*

Reference

Filed under: linux | Tagged: | No Comments »

Secure VNC with SSL

Posted on April 1, 2008 by ergut

A detailed explanation of how to make VNC work over SSL can be found here. Reading that and the e-mail discussions here, I’d like to summarize the procedure:

SERVER

  • Create the certificate stunnel.pem (Follow the instructions given at the link above)
  • Run VNC server: vncserver :5
  • Create a secure tunnel: stunnel -d 5950 -r 5905 -p /path/to/stunnel.pem
  • Download the source code of x11vnc. Copy the VncViewer.jar and SignedVncViewer.jar into a folder accessible by the webserver, e.g. “/vnc“
  • Create an index.html file with the following content (replace YOUR-HOSTNAME with your hostname): 
    <html>
<body>
<applet code="VncViewer.class" archive="VncViewer.jar" width="800" height="600">
<param name="PORT" value="5950" />
<param name="HOST" value="YOUR-HOSTNAME" />
<param name="Open New Window" value="no" />
<!-- the following helps in Opera:
<param name="Cursor shape updates" value="Disable" />
-->
</applet>
</body>
</html>

CLIENT

From a web browser you can access to the following address:

http://YOUR-HOSTNAME/vnc

Even better, if you setup the directory under SSL domain:

https://YOUR-HOSTNAME/vnc

Filed under: linux, remote access, vnc | 1 Comment »

Remote access to your parents’ computer

Posted on April 1, 2008 by ergut

You can’t always be there for your parents when they need your help desperately for their computer problems. I resolved this issue with some basic software that I’d like to share. I’d like to give the basics first and I will provide more details when I have more time.

What is the problem?

  • Remote computer (Possibly Windows PC) do not have a public address.
  • You have a Linux server with a public IP address.
  • You want to be able to securely access the remote computer.

What software?

  • Putty
  • TightVNC

How?

  1. Install TightVNC and launch TightVNC server
    1. Set a password
    2. Optional: Only allow connections from localhost for security
  2. Install Putty
    1. Create a session to connect to your Linux server
    2. In the SSH options click on the tunnel and create a remote port forwarding. (Source: 5900, Destination: localhost:5911, Remote option selected)
    3. Save and connect to your server
    4. Optional: You can create keys to login to your server without a password. One less password to remember for them.
  3. At the Linux server, launch vncviewer to port 5911, i.e. vncviewer localhost:11

Some security tips

  • We are using putty because tunneling VNC over SSH makes it secure. You can also setup VNC over SSL and access their computer from any browser. Check out this post.
  • Allowing only local access makes it more secure against external attacks. TightVNC server only responds if the Putty is running.

Filed under: remote access, vnc | Tagged: , , , | No Comments »

WordPress vs. Blogger

Posted on March 16, 2008 by ergut

After using Blogger for awhile I decided to switch to WordPress for the following reasons:

  1. WordPress provides free source code and you can easily migrate your blog to your own web server anytime.
  2. WordPress supports hierarchical categories as well as tags.
  3. “…wordpress.com” is cooler than “…blogspot.com”.. :)

I will report my experiences..

Filed under: online services | Tagged: , , | No Comments »

Howto disable visual bell

Posted on March 16, 2008 by ergut

Just type:

xset -b

You can find more information about  visual bells at: Visual Bell mini-Howto

Filed under: linux | Tagged: , | No Comments »

Latex Turkish Characters / Türkçe karakterler

Posted on March 16, 2008 by ergut
  • \u{g} - ğ
  • \u{G} - Ğ
  • \c{c} - ç
  • \c{C} - Ç
  • \c{s} - ş
  • \c{S} - Ş
  • \”{u} - ü
  • \”{U} - Ü
  • \”{o} - ö
  • \”{O} - Ö
  • {\i} - ı
  • \.{I} - İ
  • \^{a}
  • \^{A}

Filed under: latex | Tagged: | No Comments »

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