Trading Issues with Facebook [UPDATED]

[UPDATE 11:44AM]

There is a huge demand for FB stock, but the problem is with Nasdaq, marketmakers, and brokers. Orders are not going through. People who put in orders this morning are having their orders stuck in limbo, which means their cash is also stuck. You cannot cancel these orders, nor can you get updates whether the order was executed.

Possibly millions? of orders are in stuck causing widespread confusion and frustration. The bottom line is that there are people out there unable to trade Facebook stock right now. Whether or not Nasdaq cancels these orders, or screws over retail customers at a ridiculous execution price, is what I want to know.


[UPDATE 10AM]

Just got through to Zecco, and it looks like many brokerages are not getting updates from the marketmaker on orders that may, or may not have been filled. This is due to the high volume going through, so they cannot cancel or modify existing orders. You will just have to wait and see.




9:35AM Zecco Trading is having issues with either Nasdaq or having issues within their own servers for trading Facebook stock. For now, I cannot cancel a FB order, nor is my FB order going through.

Phonelines are full, and no news on their website....

Update from Zecco: "Extremely high traffic related to the IPO activity. - Due to extremely high traffic related to today’s IPO activity customers may be experiencing slower response times on the Zecco website. In addition, there are general market issues causing delays in order processing from the exchanges and market centers. We are actively monitoring the situation so the proper user experience can be restored as soon as possible."

Facebook IPO Delay

I'm waiting like the rest of you for the Facebook IPO. There is speculation that there's too much volume for Nasdaq to handle? You tell me.

Anyway, I'm excitedly sitting here anticipating the opening price. This will be one for the history books! Good luck to you!

Update 8:30AM
According to the WSJ


"Traders said they were having trouble changing or canceling orders they had submitted to Nasdaq’s queue starting at 7:30 a.m. Traders said the orders were accepted normally, but the usual process for canceling or altering an order wasn’t accepted, suggesting problems with the queue. One trader said it wasn’t surprising given the number of institutions involved, but signaled reasons why trading was delayed. A representative for Nasdaq wasn’t immediately available for comment."

This morning, I ran into issues canceling an open order. It took several minutes for the order to finally go through, which could mean that there is so much retail demand that Nasdaq is having issues meeting the demand.

Clearwire 4g vs. Netzero 4g Comparison [WIMAX]

Netzero Apollo 4g Hotspot

Netzero brings back some good memories. Remember the free 56K dialup? As long as you had their ads displayed on your computer, you'd get free net. Then some nifty folks created hacks to disable the ads. Good times! Well, Netzero is still alive, and they're rolling out 4g Wimax based on Clearwire's network. They offer a 200MB a month plan for free for 1 year, as long as you purchase a $120 Netzero Apollo 4g device (shipping included). However, keep in mind, Netzero will charge you after that 1 year period is over.

How much data will you use?

Now if you only use text messaging, light browsing, and you rarely use Youtube, Pandora, then Netzero could be the right choice for you. On the other hand, if you're a heavy data user like me, Clearwire will be a better choice. Reason being, for $50/month, you get truly unlimited data from Clearwire, whereas with Netzero, 4 Gigabytes will cost you $50/month. None of that unlimited-until-you-hit-5GB crap from Verizon/ATT. Either way you go, the great thing with Netzero/Clearwire is there's NO CONTRACT, and you can cancel any time!

Speed & Coverage

Maximum download was hit at 8 Megabits/sec, and Max upload capped at 1.5 Megabits/sec. This is in the San Jose/San Francisco, California region. There are some dead zones where I travel, so do check the service coverage maps before you purchase.

Devices

$99 Apollo 4g - Capable of external antenna, LCD, 6 hours battery, bigger, heavier

$99 Voyager - No external antenna, no LCD, 5 hours battery, very small profile, very light

My Usage

So I purchased a Netzero 4g Apollo Hotspot with the idea of staying within the free 200 megabyte a month allowance, but I quickly reached that limit within a few hours. I then figured I could cancel Netzero and switch over to Clearwire, since Netzero's network is based on Clearwire. But that road led to a deadend because Netzero devices will not work on Clearwire's network. There's something built into the firmware preventing users from switching to another network. I called into Netzero's customer support, and to reactivate my account, I would have to pay $10 for 500 MB, $50 for unlimited--this is what happens after your free 1 year 200 MB a month service is over. Long story short, don't be like me, know what your needs are and get Clearwire devices for Clearwire, and Netzero for Netzero.

In the end, I purchased another hotspot, a Clear Voyager 4g device. The Apollo 4g hotspot is going up for sale. For one month, I've used 9GB of data. The Voyager provides internet access to my VOIP phone and laptop, so I am able to get work done on the go as well as enjoy a rich media experience. Speed has been excellent for my usage. Service coverage is okay when I'm on the move, and excellent when I'm in the city. 

Clearwire Voyager  Hotspot $99 at Best Buy

Beats Audio & Xloud for all Android phones

On 3/1/12, RockoDev and team have successfully created a flashable file to install Beats Audio on any android phone. Beats Audio may provide better sound quality, and this can be heard especially when listening to music on high quality headphones. Whichever ROM you're running can now have Beats Audio installed via a flashable package or installed manually. Enjoy!

Check out the thread on XDA Forums.

VOIP Echo Test Phone Number

VOIP echo test phone number. Nobody will answer, so speak into your phone, and you will hear an echo of what you said. Great for testing volume and call quality of your VOIP system.
909-390-0003

Drobo Detected a Hard Drive Failure [RAID]

tl;dr Had a drive failure. Wasn't sure if the issue was due to my Drobo or the Western Digital drive. Turns out it was the WD drive that failed. Installed a new 2TB drive. All is well. RMAing the WD drive. Drobo 1 : Data Loss 0. Yay Drobo.

Yesterday, I began a scheduled backup from my Drobo to tape drive, and when I woke up this morning, I had the Red Blinking Light Of Death. At first, I thought the WD 1TB green drive was just old, so I took it out of the Drobo to plug into my computer. The drive booted up, formatted, and held data. With years worth of photos and video adding up to 1.4TB of data, I'm a little nervous about touching the Drobo.

First step will be to research this issue, and then back up my data. Then troubleshoot the Drobo from there. I will update this post when new developments arise. Wish me luck.

Update 2/15/12:
http://support.drobo.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/207/kw/drive%20failure

"Why does a drive work in my computer when my Drobo storage device flags it as a bad drive?

It is understandable that you would be confused or suspicious if your Drobo product flags a bad drive when the drive works fine in your computer.
If a drive produces a lot of errors in a short amount of time (it's going bad soon), Drobo storage devices display a red blinking light to indicate a failed drive. Your computer may not catch the bad drive as early in its failure process as your Drobo product can. This difference in perception is especially exaggerated if you format the disk before testing it in the computer and/or it has just a small amount of data. Eventually, the computer will also flag the drive as bad."

Update 2/16/12:
I downloaded Data Lifeguard Diagnostic for Windows and performed an extended test. The test results showed some bad sectors. Then I did a "repair sectors." Shut down, and tried the drive in the Drobo, but the drive did not work.

I've ordered another WD 2TB Caviar Green drive from Amazon, and it should arrive in a day. Amazon Prime rocks.

Update 2/20/12:
The new WD 2TB drive arrived. I popped the drive into the Drobo, and the Drobo started rebuilding the array. A day later, my drives show all green, so my data is safe once again.

The failed WD 1TB drive is still under warranty. I've created a RMA from Western Digital, and I hope to see a replacement within the next few weeks.

Overall, I will continue to use the Drobo alongside my scheduled LTO2 tape backups. Btw, my Drobo is around 4 years old now.

Best features:

• seamless rebuilding process
• early drive failure detection
• easy as pop in a drive and wait
• still have access to the data during a drive failure

The Drobo worked great for me, and the Drobo protected my data throughout a drive failure.

Update 3/1/12:
Western Digital approved my RMA warranty request, and they've sent a new drive. Big thumbs up for the ease of Western Digital's warranty process. Excellent customer service and communication.

Update 3/2/12:
New WD warranty replacement drive arrived. I'm now using the 1TB drive in my Drobo.

Adobe CS5.5 Mercury Playback Engine [NVIDIA CUDA Acceleration]

Adobe and Nvidia worked together to include Nvidia CUDA support in CS5 and CS5.5, which gave birth to the Mercury Playback Engine GPU Acceleration. Essentially MPE GPU Acceleration drastically cuts down video encode times and enables real timeline editing with multiple layers of video and effects! No more choppy video playback, no more render to preview, and no more transcoding because it can be done in real time. What this means for us normal folk is that the price of a professional video editing machine is now attainable, and all for the price of a video card upgrade.* 

For some real world usage, at the beginning of 2010, I took a backpacking trip through Vietnam, and I wanted to video blog the entire trip. Armed with an Asus G60VX w/Nvidia GTX260M laptop and a Canon 5D Mark II, I was able to capture 1080p footage and import the raw files straight into Premiere to edit. Recording was done during the day, and at night the footage was edited, encoded, and uploaded. The encoding times were unbelievably fast. Yes, and all on a portable laptop! If you were to ask me to do this 2 years ago, I'd tell you I'd need thousands of dollars worth of equipment and a team to lug it around.

Fast forward to today, I upgraded my old trustworthy Dell XPS 420 rig with a Gigabyte Nvidia GTX 560 1GB DDR5/336 CUDA cores/256-bit and a 600 watt OCZ ModXStream Pro power supply. I took a video project that I encoded before, which encoded via CPU around 20 minutes, and with GPU acceleration encoded the project in under 5 minutes. The yellow render bar was racing to the right to completion--this still amazes me today.

Dell XPS 420                                                      

Intel Q6600 2.4GHz CPU

4GB RAM

Western Digital Velociraptor 10K 300GB drive

Transcend 32GB SSD

Tandberg TS400 LTO2Tape Drive

*Upgrade must be to a base system that's decent i.e. at least Quad Core CPU, 4GB RAM, 7200RPM drive. You may need to upgrade your power supply to power the new graphic card. Check out Studio 1 Productions for all the info on card comparisons, instructions to enabling GPU accleration, and more.