I just received a new Giesemann Futura LED light fixture for my new 60g reef aquarium, straight from Germany. Taking out the beautifully crafted fixture evoked high expectations for the performance of this device. It was sad when I realized the instructions did not work well. See, this is a high tech unit. To use it you need to program it. No switches, not even an on/off switch. It works via Bluetooth. So I set up everything as per the instructions only to find to my dismay that the password is not accepted. This is not a cheap device, so I was highly upset when the code they gave me did not work.

Waiting patiently for midnight PST time (09:00 CET), I called Giesemann in Germany. A guy picked up and responded to my request for support. He also noted that I was the one sending in a support request via email as well. He listened to my issue, and asked me (in English) whether he could call me back. Two minutes later the phone rang. It was him. He gave me the correct code and all was well. It is a stupid thing - a mistake on their part, but it is about appearances. I was terribly upset that this device would not work as expected considering its cost. However, the top notch service I received from this German guy impressed me beyond belief. I just wanted to mention this if anyone is considering buying one of their products - their service (at least for me) exceeded my expectations.

I have Roxio Toast 11 on Mac OS X 10.9 (Mavericks), and was trying to burn some Blu-Ray BD-R DL disks on my new Pioneer BDR-XU03 burner tethered to the USB 3 port on my MacBook Pro Retina. Unfortunately, even with fast Verbatim CD-R DL 6x disks, it took over 2 hours to burn each disk, and another hour to verify the 50GB of data. This translates to a write speed of between 1x and 2x.

Eventually I found the culprit - Mavericks' App Nap and PowerNap features. Turning off PowerNap in System Preferences, and right clicking Toast Titanium in Finder, and in Get Info disabling App Nap fixed the issue. It now burns at 4x (about 45 minutes for a 50GB disk) and does not stop mid way. It used to pause reading / writing the drive every 1 minute if Toast Titanium was not the active app.

Clearly this is a major issue that should be stated clearly on Roxio's web site, but as far as I know it is not.

Coral Magazine Jan/Feb 2014

I advertised my Sigma 180mm f2.8 APO Macro EX DG HSM OS for sale on Craigslist. I want $1600 for this lens that costs new $2100. That sounds like a reasonable deal, right? I mean the lens is only a year old.

So how insulting is this response I got:

Only at $140.

Sent from my iPhone

On Jan 12, 2014, at 4:11 PM, "craigslist XXX" XXX@sale.craigslist.org wrote:

You still interested?

Hi,

I assume you meant $1400 and not $140?

Waldo

On Jan 10, 2014, at 23:10, Sean XXX@reply.craigslist.org wrote:

Do you still have this lens please? If so, would you consider $140?

Thanks
Sean