Pauls Rants and Revelations

From what little I have seen from this man, I must say that I like him a lot. If the election were today, I would vote for him hands down. He is articulate, well schooled, and has a (seemingly) good plan for what he would do in office.

Now, I am by no means a politics nut. In fact, I hate politics with a passion. This is in no small part related to work, as one of the biggest pains in my life was having to work on a client site for a republican candidate for the Oregon governorship (who ended up losing btw). But when I see someone like Obama come on and start talking about shit that needs to get done, I cant help but listen. I am trying to keep a neutral opinion about all of the candidates until I hear what they all have to say, but it is really hard to do so what with my penchant for snap decisions and judgments that later come back and bite me in the ass. At the very least I will listen to at least one of each of the candidates’ speeches.

More info on Barack Obama: http://www.barackobama.com/

Even though the elections are well away, he is getting an early start. Im not even sure who else is running at the moment, but I’ll bet they are going to have to play catch-up to Obama the whole race.

Cheers

I received a letter from my Sallie Mae telling me that I am behind on my payments. This, in and of itself is not a strange occurrence. Except that I don’t have any loans currently with Sallie Mae. So I ring them up and ask WTF.

They said that my loans are past due for repayment. I told them that I don’t have any loans and they said that I did. They told me that they were for the last school I attended, which was Westwood College. Erg.

For those of you who don’t know, I was royally screwed over by Westwood College in early 2006. I was attending their online courses for 3 months when all of the sudden they called me saying that none of my student loans were approved and that I owed them $12,000 (yikes). I asked why the didn’t see fit to tell me this when I enrolled in the school, and they said that they were having issues with their systems and they were just getting to my screwed up record. I told them that 2 months was quite a long time to be caught in an error and they said “Tough shit, pay us and continue or pay us and leave”. So I promptly un-enrolled myself, saying that since it was their grievous error, that they can suck up the 12 grand as a loss since they are not only a school, but a business; and loss is a part of business. I also instructed them to return to Sallie Mae the moneys they received for classes that I was not going to take anymore.
Fast forward 2 months, and I get a letter saying that I still owe them money. This time it was for $7000. I hocked a loogey on the letter and FedEx-ed it back to them (Priority overnight no less).

A month later, I receive another one saying I owe them $4000. A month later, it was $1800. Its been about 4 months since I heard from them last so I’m hoping that they realized that I was not going to pay for their mistake and decided to cut their losses (I was going to wipe my bum on the next one they sent me, so that was a wise decision on their part).

Then I get the Sallie Mae letter. It seems that Westwood only gave back about a third of what was given to them and I was to pay the rest. Well, thats not likely to happen, so it looks like I am going to get to have a nice long (and probably loud) chat with the finance folks at Westwood. Hopefully, after I get through yelling at them for their near illegal business practices, they will pony up the dough. If not, then my lawyer can have them (and she is quite vicious when it comes to schools, having been screwed over by them herself).

If I can, Ill record the conversation and post the audio. It should be worth a laugh at least to hear what they have to say.

-Cheers

At the time of this writing, I am working on the site of a client that wants to add FedEx shipping estimates and options to their checkout. It sounds simple enough, right?

Wrong. Very, very wrong.

The API that one has to use to ping the FedEx servers to get a shipping quote is fairly painless to install. The documentation even provides links to downloadable examples in several programming languages. I got the ASP examples and threw them in the test folder. Right off the bat the scripts start throwing errors. I call support and as WTF is wrong. They say that our site has to be approved before we can make transaction requests against their servers. Fine. I tell them to start the approval and they will email us once this is done.

Several days pass and not a word. I call support again and they say that due to some error our request didnt go through. I resubmit and 2 days later the approval notice comes in. I test the scripts again and still get errors, only now they are new errors.

On the phone to support again, they said that we have to be added to their beta servers before testing transactions will go through. Erg. I ask that they add us. They said no more than 48 hours and it will be done. 2 days later, it is still not done. I call again, and they resubmitted the request again, and I hand up again with a very potent feeling of foreboding.

We get the email saying the clients site is added to the beta servers and we can do test transactions. Woo Hoo. I start testing and tweaking and get to a halfway decent progress on it (this is over several days) and then their servers start throwing back errors again. AAARRRRRGGGG.

Another call to support says that they are upgrading their servers with some new functions and that intermittent (in other words, drastic) errors may (will) occur but it will be all better and functioning by Monday (today). With trepidation, I pull up the testing scripts. I try it out and I get, not an error, but a positive response from the transaction query. Rock!

So this evening I start testing and tweaking again because this project is WAY overdue and WTF happens? I get an error. And not just any error. Its an error that is not mentioned anywhere in the dozens of pages of documentation and no where to be found on any website or development forum. So, here I am, 11:30 at night, tired, stressed, more than a little perturbed, and ready to murder the next FedEx Customer Care Representative that tells me that “everything is fine”.

I have spent the last 2 hours pouring over the documentation PDFs and nothing is coming. Nothing that would explain this error let alone anything that would solve it. Maybe I got some code wrong? Maybe I swapped some object IDs? I have not idea at the moment. So what would anyone in my position do?

Thats right! I am going to get up, go to the kitchen, make me some chocolate milk, and dive back into the docs and the code. This project may take my sanity, but it will never take… my… um… well, I’ll just hope it doesn’t take my sanity.

Cheers

So I find Blogsvertise while doing a search for getting paid to blog. I was looking for a fairly easy way to generate some extra income and this was one of the better services that I found. If you want to signup too (or just check it out), head on over to http://www.blogsvertise.com and give it a go.

I signed up at about 11am. By 11:50 my blog was approved (even before I finished writing this post!). When an advertiser has something they want to promote, I get an email and all I have to do is write up an article, submit it for approval, and once approved, just sit back and collect my payment. I’m waiting for my first assignment now.

What’s your excuse? Get paid to write blog posts now!

Also, if you want to advertise your goods or services, you can sign up to do so by going to the Advertise Signup Page.

-Cheers

:This post was NOT paid for by Blogvertise. I wrote it because I think it is a cool service.

OK. So my wife is sick with something (she still won’t tell me what). She was in bed all day yesterday and most of the morning. She was pretty much immobile except she did make french toast because I wasn’t feeling so hot this morning myself. Anyways, she is moving rather slowly and, well, sick.

Then her sister calls wanting to know if she wanted to go to Seattle today. Of course, she says yes. So an hour later she is off to Seattle to do research for their business. One minute she is barley moving, the next, she is out the door. For some reason (and I’ll explain it in a bit) I am a bit perturbed about this.

My reason is that yesterday I was supposed to go to an event to finish building my longbow. I had it planned and been looking forward to it for 2 months. The day finally comes and I end up taking my kids to the doctors office. I don’t mind a bit about going to the doctor’s because it is my kids health. But I do mind that my wife is dragging around one day near death and the next she is off to another state!

I understand it when she said that she feels ill all of the time. What I don’t understand is why, if she is feeling so bad, does she take off when the opportunity presents itself? For someone feeling so bad, she was certainly happy enough when she said bye.

Its really starting to get on my tits about her complete lack of respect for me and her utter lack of interest when it comes to anything that I have planned. Perhaps I’m being a bit selfish. OK, probably a lot selfish, but dam it I really wanted to go to that event!

Erg, I have no ideas at the moment about how to proceed. But yelling really really loudly is looking like a good plan at the moment.

-Fin

Once again, my whole family is sick. And I, for some reason, escape the germ warfare (so to speak) uninfected (knock on wood).

My wife woke up this morning in a bad way. She was nauseous and not at all feeling like getting up. The one time she did get up she immediately regretted it and laid back down. I was to take the kids to the doctors today to get them checked out, so my sister in law Dana took Elizabeth to the urgent care while I saw to the kids.

My son has a rather large, red, infected looking bump on his forearm that may or may not be a spider bite (the doc couldn’t tell for sure). My daughter has a possible ear infection again. The doc said that it was either just getting started or was not completely gone from the last one she had a few weeks ago. They both got anti-biotic prescriptions and Duncan got a bouncy ball from the treat basket.

My wife, well, she wouldn’t tell me what the doctor said or what was wrong with her but I was guessing that it wasn’t pleasant. At least she doesn’t have shingles again which is what she thought it was. Most of the day she spent in bed but we all watched a movie on her laptop which was nice (BTW, Clue the movie is fraking hilarious). The doc also said that she doesn’t have to stay home for a week like last time so that also brought some relief to her.

I’m just curious why I keep escaping the family illnesses. I get sick occasionally but its only when everyone else is healthy. Its weird but I guess it works out since both parents cant be sick at the same time. Except the one time my wife and I were both sick and her sister had to take care of Duncan (Katen wasn’t here yet). That sucked ass on many levels.

A word of caution though to all parents: never make a Saturday appointment at the pediatrician unless you have all day to spend there. We were in the exam room and waiting at 10:30am (our appointment time) and the doc finally made an appearance around 12. At least she was friendly about the whole thing.

Cheers

Well, It looks like I spoke too soon. I bought a pack of smokes last night.

Maybe I need one of those shocking collars or something so that everytime i light a smoke, it causes pain or an annoyance.

No, not my life or job or anything. I quit smoking today.

Mostly, I quit because I didn’t want to get my kids or wife sick (even though I never smoked around them). But a major contributing factor was the cost (even a pack a week was $20 I dont have).

Why did I decide today of all days you ask? Well, besides the fact that its unhealthy and for the family and all, I ran out last night and don’t have money to buy more. Being broke is always a good starting point I think when trying to save money. Because if you don’t have money, you can’t buy smokes. So what better time to quit?

Also, if my rants and rave become a little more harsh than usual, please know that I am probably taking out some frustration from lack of nicotine. And if I offend anyone, well, don’t take it personally (or do, its your choice).

Cheers

Here is an update to my rather heated rant about my wifes decision to leave me that I wrote earlier this week.

On Monday evening, late, my daughter got ill. She was throwing up (which is not at all pleasant coming from a 1 1/2 year old). As soon as I heard this, I was picking her up and cleaning up things. She got sick again and again. In total she threw up 4 times, causing an equal number of sheet changes before I finally laid her down on our bed to sleep between me and my wife.

In the morning, my wife took our son to school and left me and the baby girl home to get better (it was easy since I work from home). I just called my boss and told him that I couldnt work too much that day due to our daughters sickness. He was cool about it, said no problem and hope she gets better. So basically all day I just took care of her.

In the evening when my wife got home, she said hi to her and asked how everything went. I told her the events of the day (Katen threw up majorly once; my sweater will never be the same color again I also told her that I got the unflavored Pedialite because they didnt have the grape flavor. At this, my wife went slight off the handle at me. “Why didnt you go to the other store?”, “I know they have it there.”, and so on.
Anyways, after dinner and everyone was down for the night I did a couple of quick projects and went to bed around midnight. This morning, she said that Katen was staying home again. I wasnt surprised because it was what we had agreed upon.

What was surprising is that my wife did not at all say anything about me giving up 2 entire days of work to take care of our daughter. I mean not even a ‘Thank You’ or anything. I know that her taking a day off is disastrous since she is paid hourly and I’m on salary, but even though I have an extremely flexible employer, missing 2 days of work is no small thing. I would have been glad to do it, and I’m still glad to do it, but not getting so much as a ‘Thanks’ is just plain wrong.

Its like she is seeing me not even as a human, but as a constant annoyance to her. Aside from the fact that she is technically living in My apartment, that I make most of the dinners, that I take whole days off several times a month to attend to family needs (including when she was sick a few times), and don’t even mention the other household tasks like dishes and laundry and cleaning up, or giving her back rubs whenever she asks, she is fast becoming the most unappreciative person I know. Am I expected to just go on like this; pretend to be invisible so as not to piss her off? Frankly, Im wondering if there actually is merit in her and I divorcing. If shes going to be like this the rest of her life, I sure as hell not going to just take it anymore.

I really though that this was going to be a really huge deal. So much was toted about both new browser versions that I was near foaming at the mouth for the releases. I am an avid Firefox user and promoter but please don’t take my opinion as biased (even though it probably is). I installed both browsers and gave them a fair shake. But honestly, after testing both browsers, I must say, that I was disappointed.

Not by just one, but both browsers.

IE7 Review
I’ll start with the obvious target for scorn and ridicule, IE7, as they are the biggest let down in this sham of a new browser war. It starts with the download. I had to hop through a few hoops to get it. Not many, but it was certainly too many to go through just to download a file. Then I realize the installer is just an installer and will download the rest of the browser. In short, another hoop.

Once it was downloaded, I hit install (finally), went through a few confirmations, and then it said I had to restart my system. (WTF? Its just a web browser). So fine, I restart my system and finish the IE install. By now, it is approx 15 minutes after going to the IE7 page.

So, all installed and ready to go, I click the icon. Then I have to configure it. Errrrgg. I click a few boxes just for fun (and to get on with using it) then get a warning saying I have to restart IE for my settings to take effect. Great. I restart IE and get, not my homepage (Google), but another warning saying that my configuration is complete! I know its complete because I hit the freaking save button! Anyway, finally I hit F6, go to Google and stop my time tracker.

Total install time: 23:18.

Some may say “Wow, that was a decent install time”. I say “That’s 23 minutes of my life I would have rather spent poking venomous, ill tempered creatures with a stick”. I’m a little sarcastic like that.

The pluses for IE7 are few so I will name them here. It is said that IE7 has the best security of any browser. Well it must because anything that complicated to configure must be secure. It also has tabbed browsing (finally) which is quite handy and would be more of a wow factor if they had added it 5 years ago when we asked for it. Other than that, the removed the tool bar and made it a flyout menu on the right which is a little cool once you get used to it.

The minuses are, well, greater than the pluses, but here are some of the highlights for the minuses:

• Still has shitty CSS validation (if not worse than previously)
• No option to set for links that have “_blank” targets to open in a new tab instead of a new window
• I hate the gold/yellow color on the icon
• Set up was too complicated for most normal people and impossible for those who aren’t computer savvy.
• Way too many confirmation boxes to go through. If I want to set something, then I set it. I meant to set it. And if I want to change it Ill do it later. Don’t keep asking me if I’m sure. If I wasn’t sure, I wouldn’t have don’t it in the first place!

In short, avoid this browser like the plague it is. IE 6 was at least as good (if not better) than IE7 so please, don’t upgrade. For the websites you visits’ sake.

Firefox 2.0
After the debacle of installing IE7, I was hoping for a bit smoother ride form FF2.0. And I was not let down.

Went to the download page, clicked one button, and in less than 30 seconds had the executable on my desktop. A quick clickity later and it was installing (after pausing only momentarily to confirm the standard install stuff).

After that was done, it informed me that it was done and thanked me for using Firefox. Another clickity on the icon and a new screen appeared (and no, it wasn’t the browser). It was the Mozilla plug-in checker and it was scanning my plug-ins for compatibility. After that, it checked for updates for the incompatible ones, found some and installed them, and informed me of what was not going to work in FF2.0 (sadly, my screen grabber extension and 2 of my themes were affected).

Once it restarted itself (it didn’t bother to ask me or confirmation) it brought up my homepage (Google) just as it did before the install.

Total install time: 6:14.

Once it was installed I looked for the new features but they were not very obvious. There was no little paperclip character telling me what was new, and no floating arrow pointing to a new menu, and my homepage wasn’t hijacked to tell me how awesome the new browser was. The new features and changes were explained on the homepage (most of them being under-the-hood fixes) and not really toted a lot.

In fact, after the 6 minutes of installing and 5 minutes of reading the changes documentation, I was cruising the web as if nothing were different. I think once of the greatest advantages to the new version of Firefox is how seamless the upgrade went and how invisible the changes are. You may notice a speed boost or some minor things, but other than that you will not notice anything. This is FF2.0s greatest achievement.

The drawbacks are also bundled with the greatness though. The lack of new “hot features” may turn off some people (maybe more than some people) as they would want something that is as earth shattering as IE7’s tab feature (meh). This is sadly not going to happen. While FF2.0 is a major (and much wanted and needed) upgrade, it is not packed with all of the razzmatazz IE7’s upgrade was. However, this was the only bad thing that I found with it.

Conclusion
I will make this as simple as I can for those who are now probably quite tired of listening to my ramblings in their brains.

Avoid IE7.

Get Firefox.

Period. Fin. End of story. Goodnight Nurse.

-Cheers