Pauls Rants & Revelations

Well, sorta. I wanted to really try out a Mac G5 but I really, really don’t want to shell out the $5 grand for it. I mean, how will I know if I like it? Will it play nice with my other computers?

Anyways, I only know 1 other person who has a mac and he isn’t going to let me borrow it for a few days. Anyways, I checked around and saw San Diego computer rentals which sounded promising. And just so you know, they don’t only serve San Diego. I just requested a quote for a G5 and will hear back tomorrow.

I know quality costs money, but why does it have to be so much money in the case of Macs? If I like what CRE send me to try out then I may consider purchasing but otherwise Ill just keep renting it when needed.

-Cheers

WTF is up with all of the domain names being taken away? Why the hell do people buy up thousands of domains and try to sell them for many times what the registration cost ($15 usually) is from companies like Dotster of GoDaddy? Its in-fucking-sane what one of them would go for were I actually stupid enough to buy it.

OK. Let me back up a few steps and explain. I’m looking into starting another website and was searching around for domain names that would suit the style of the site. I searched for about 45 minutes and was greatly disheartened at what the results were. Of the 80 or so domain names I searched for, only 5, yes 5, were available. And of those there were only sporadic TLDs available (like one had a .net available, another a .org available, and so on). I’m a little partial to the .com’s (having been a Dot Com-er back in its heyday) so I get a little miffed whenever a name I want is taken for no reason.

Now, I don’t get miffed when someone has bought it an used it as a store front, or a company site, or a dedication to some old ladies dear departed Shitzu. These I am fine with. But when soulless, ass-hat companies like Buy Domains have purchased it for no other reason than to put up a page that says “This domain is for sale”, then I start getting irate. Irate to the point of contemplating serious bodily harm to the jag off who thought of the term “domain parking”.

Heres an example from my own experience:

Last year I wanted a very specific domain name for a very specific project my partner and I were working on. This was to be a community site with no ads and no monetization at all. We needed that domain as it embodied all that the site was going to be. I looked, and sure enough it was already registered, and by none other than BuyDomains. A little irked, I emailed them asking how much the domain is going for. I get a response an hour later saying that the domain could be mine for the low low price of $1,500.

Out of curiosity I checked the domain records and see it was registered in 2003. I give the guy a call and ask him why the domain is thusly priced. He said that it was a very popular name and that as so it carried a larger price tag. I asked him how many inquires he gets for that particular name, he lies and says 10 or so a month. I ask him how many people offered to buy it, he said “Well, none. The name is for sale, isn’t it”. I told him I would give him $50 for the name. He said no.

Its little wonder why the 360 or so people before me hadn’t bought it. Frustrated, I just added a dash to the domain name we really wanted and bought that one. I don’t consider it spending $15 so much as denying BD of $1,485.

How is it that these domain squatters think they can make money off of buying these names? One of the companies I talked to about it said “It only takes 1 purchase to negate the cost of buying 200 others”. Yea; you let me know when that one purchase goes through mate.

And even worse, possibly, are the domain negotiators like Sedo.com who offer to broker a deal between the owners of a wanted domain and you. They are worse as they are taking a commission from the guy screwing you over. “Hey, heres a $15 name, they are charging $2000, I talked them down to$1400, and my commission is only 20%”. Dingle-berries, all of them.

I understand the principle behind their business tactics as it is the same thing with land owners in the early 19th century here in the US. Buy a big plot of land, then sell off small chunks at profit. Well, most of the internet “land” they are peddling is murky swamp filled with snakes and dysentery. And you will be stupid to take them up on their “generous” offers as they are nothing more than under-handed snake oil salesmen in Kenneth Cole shirts (with no tie of course).

The next step in acquiring the domain for the latest project is to go with a weird spelling like Scrybe or Joost did. Thankfully for them, its working out OK as its a very Web 2.0 style of thing to do. But for me, no, I just cant do it. I’ll use Ajax on my sites, I’ll throw in an inordinate amount of gradients into my designs, I’ll even go with the slightly too large footer with nothing in it. But the name is too important to swap out an ‘i’ for a ‘y’ just to get a bloody entry in a registrars record books.

In short, I may just have to stuff the project all together if I can’t get the name (yes, its that important to me). Either that or just add a subdomain to my site as I have total control over everything under iGonzo. Perhaps BD would be willing to donate the name in exchange for a link?

Yea, I’ll hold my breath until that happens. It looks like I will have to either A) wait until I win the lottery or B) wait until these domain stealing web-ticks go out of business. I’m thinking B will happen sooner.

Oh, and if anyone from Buy Domains is reading this, please email me and let me know if anyone has registered the domain I inquired about in January 2006. I would be REALLY interested to go and meet the biggest moron on this planet.

-Cheers

I’ve always been interested in consulting. Mostly, how these people make a living. I mean, seriously, what can they do that is better than what, say, a developer does? A developer develops and a development consultant tells developers how to develop better. They are getting paid for little more than suggestions. Its amazing.

Now dont get me wrong. I have worked with a number of consultants for various companies and some of them have been good. But I was curious how these people got into consulting in the first place. One resource that I have found if for Dr. Mike Beitler who, you guessed it, teaches people how to start a consulting business. The techniques he teaches sound pretty solid for someone coming from any background or career. Its basically how to sell your knowledge and play to your strengths, but its still a good reference for beginners.

Eventually, if I ever tire of this whole crazy web developer gig, I’ll probably start consulting other developers who can benefit from what will no doubt be a veritable wealth of knowledge and experience from my career.

Of course, I’ll have to tire of this whole crazy web developer gig first. And I really don’t see that happening in the near, not so near, or far off future.

-Cheers

This morning as I sat down to work, I didnt feel the usual stress that I do when confronted with projects that are late (or going to be late). I felt like some music so I donned my headphones and hit “shuffle” in iTunes. The first song that plays; First of tha month by Bones Thugs N Harmony.
Eerie. I start working finishing up a project and also notice something strange. An hour had passed by and no one had called me or emailed me or anything. Usually I get a message every 5 – 10 minutes about something that broken or needs to be updated. This day I get no such messages. Eerier still.

Lunch comes and goes and I get back to work and finish a project that I was sure would take me 2 days in about 3 hours.

Still no messages. I do get a phone call from my boss wondering about something on the previous project, but I correct it in about 5 seconds and all is well again.

It seems that February was a particularly harsh month as work goes. Projects were late and clients unhappy about it, plus a lot of bank problems and bill problems and general life stuff that gets in the way. I thought the month would never end.

But it did and I survived and work has eased up a bit and I am caught up on everything now. And not a moment too soon as we have to plan my sons birthday party (hes 5 on March so we have much to do since its such a huge event (you only turn 5 once you know).

I hope the rest of March stays this way. It would be a delightful change of pace.

-Cheers

Im always searching for ways to make work more efficient and hassle free. Sometimes (most times really) it is not possible to do both. One of the things that I am always on the lookout for are ways to decrease the overhead of my business. I use Paypal for my business simply because it is easy to use and bill through but I longed for a way to take credit cards in a more professional manner. I think I have found them now.

I came across Advantage Processors quite by accident. I wasnt meaning to find them so Im chalking it up to the fates working for me. Advantage offers credit card processing and merchant account services for businesses large and small. They also cater to online businesses (such as myself) and provide tools and services to help you become a more “professional” business entity. The rates they charge are also among the lowest around; some services charge $0.50 – 5% per transaction so Im really interested in their flat fee.

I already submitted my merchant account application and hope to get approved for it. Ive had my business a long while now (going on 5 years) but I still get shaky whenever I apply for something. Their signup was super-quick and easy and the documentation and tutorials they provided was a very welcomed and comforting thing. I really think I can get to like  Advantage Processors and use them for my merchant services.

Now the only thingI have to worry about is how to tell Paypal that I found something better. I should feel sad about leaving such a long relationship, but the fact that I can save a ton of money on transactions kind of makes it all OK.

You can check out Advantage here to see if they can work their magic for you.

- Cheers Mates

I think that 1 more sleepless night is what it will take to get me caught up with everything. Projects are coming due and with an increase in mundane stuff (updates and general client maintainence) my time seems to have slipped away again.

Maybe after I clear off whats on my plate now I can ask for some time off. A few days of unplugging would do me good.

OK. Back to the grind stone.

-Cheers

My company was nominated for a marketing award for a website we did for a client. It was a really nifty site that had a virtual training section, a reseller incentive mall where resellers could enter sales and recieve points for free swag, and some nifty video podcasts. The site itself, at least from my perspective, wasnt exactly groundbreaking programming or design work, but it was kinda nifty and it gave me an excuse to look into how loading podcasts for iTunes worked and about producing podcasts in general.

We ended up not getting the award. Whether this was because we were simply beaten by a better company (doubtful) or because we werent a member of the AMA (likely) we will never be sure of. At least the beer was free.

I do know this though; when you walk around a room with a name tag that says “Finalist”, people tent to notice you a bit more. I had a couple of poeple come up and introduce themselves. I was flabergasted. Whats intersting to note though is that I didnt originally have the Finalist ribbon on my nametag. I picked it up off of the reception table (the sale guy for the project is the one who had the ribbon) and stuck it on and all of the sudden I was popular. It was kind of like high school in that way.

Anyways, it was kind of fun. But truth be told I would have rather gone down to the Kit Kat Klub and thrown dollar bills at some morally lax female college students. With them you always feel like a winner.
Oh well. Maybe next time.

I have been messing with the FedEx API for a client for the better part of 2 months. After many irritated phone calls (and more than a few insults to their IVR system) they finally told me that what we wanted to do would not be possible. Ever.

I primarily develop on a Windows 2003 server. Their ATOM software (that controls the API dll) will not work on a 2003 box. This they told me after 2 months of hassle with it. Needless to say I was a little miffed.

But where one door is shut voilently in your face (doorknob hitting you in the ass and all), another door opens. This door, a small, rathole sized door, came in the form of an XML request.

It turns out that if you cannot use their API, they offer the option of calling their servers directly using an XML request. They dont normally tell people this and the documentation for it is laughable at best, but it turns out that it works. And whats more, it works better than their API option. And whats more than that, Their request comes back as an XML string so we can parse it to our desires (sweet).

So after about 5 minutes on google, a site what yeilded that explained, in detail, exactly how to do what we want using an XML request.

http://www.tek-tips.com/faqs.cfm?fid=6397

I copied the exact code he had, added in the clients specific info, and you know what; it WORKED. We got a positive response. Another hour and we were getting back exactly what we wanted; the Net Charge of the shipping (we only needed this one stinking number).

There is still work to do to integrate it into the clients site, but this is a major step forward. The rest (making a function, integrating into the cart, etc) is small beans compared to this victory.

So, for all those who are messing with the FedEx API, trying to get information from it, give up now and cut your losses. Go with the Direct XML request. It works beautifully on any system (windows, unix or other as long as you can parse XML) and you dont have to install anything.

The only other option I would suggest is to try UPS.

Cheers

Update: After two hours of tinkering, I finally have a nice selection box that displays all of the shipping estimates for the various services based on where they are going. Im almost amazed since I have gotten further in 2 hours than I have in 2 months. OK. Back to the grindstone. – Cheers

For the 4 people on the planet who havent seen this, Lightbox JS is the absolute coolest image script ever. Normally you have a thumbnail image that links to a full size and either do some new window JS to display or or open a new broswer (with target=_blank), of, if lazy, just link to the image. This script will address everyone from beginner to JS expert.

Click Here to view the Lightbox JS site

To use it is simple. Include the files on your page, add the REL parameter to your thumbnail link, and you are off and running. Complete details are on the site as well as support.

I have used this on I dont know how many sites and has saved me probably hundred of hours when creating galleries for clients. Go check it out and start using it on your site. Your visitors will be impressed.

Cheers

This is actually trickier than I thought. The majority of plugins available for it are basically a “turn a post into a product” type deals. There was one I found that works really great for a shopping cart (im keeping the name out until they answer my emails) but I keep running into errors with it. My PHP install on the server (a Windows 2003 box) is fine but the plugin was only developed for linux/unix systems. Im pouring over the code to see how I can get it to run on a windows machine but my PHP isnt exactly “guru” level.

Does anyone even have an interest in such a thing as a wordpress powered ecommerce site? Does anyone need one?