I’ve been working since February on a program for our dog grooming business to replace the software that was in use when we bought the shop.

This weekend I finally committed to the new software and the wholesale discontinuation of the old software and PC.  We now have a standalone credit card processing unit and a check validation machine that we’ll use instead of the PC based credit card processing we were using.

Previously we were running the SQL customer database and a Point of Sale (POS) program called Biztracker.  Biztracker acted as a glorified cash register program and had credit card processing capability, but only through certain banks.  Unfortunately Biztracker also had some significant problems, including the fact that it didn’t report sales totals properly.

We realized we had a problem some time ago, and when we spoke to the company that supported the software we were told that we needed to upgrade the software to fix the problem and that they wanted money to do that.  It was at that time they also told us they would charge $75 per hour for tech support.  They had also branded the software with the previous business name and the previous owner’s cell phone number that printed on the receipts that they told us we could correct with a software upgrade.

The long and short of it was that if we threw more money at the problem it might get fixed.  However, as Kim didn’t like the software anyway we opted to not pay to “upgrade” the software.  Additionally the obscene tech support charge rate all helped push me towards developing our own software solution so that we weren’t blackmailed when it came time to upgrade and/or fix technical problems.

Writing my own program also ensured that we could have the functionality we wanted and be able to add new features at will.  Of course that also meant that I the sole source of technical support which was challenging considering I have my day job that conflicts with my availability.  Also the program development has been time consuming and ongoing since February.

When it came time to pay the quarterly state sales tax the problem with the Biztracker sales totals really became a problem and Kim was forced to tally the tax manually.  So much for computers making one’s life easier…  It was clear then that we needed a solution.

So I started working on adding basic point of sale functionality to my software that would track sales totals (properly of course) and give us other sales reporting as well.  That meant I had to figure out how to print receipts and control the cash drawer via the software, and the only place to test those functions was at the shop itself.  So I could write the code elsewhere, but ultimately I would have to be at the shop running the software on the POS computer itself to test the program which wasn’t at all convenient.

Last week I got the software to a point where I believed it could be used at the shop.  On Monday night we set up the new credit card machine.  Then we began running both the new software and the old software as a backup.  The idea was to make sure the new software did what we needed it to, and if it didn’t to revert back to the old software.  After a day it was clear that the new software worked fine.  However, since the old software was available some of the employees were using it instead the new program which meant the sales totals were split across the programs.

So it was obviously time to remove the Biztracker software and commit to the new program.  I decided this was an ideal time to replace the aged PCs that were running the server and POS computer with a single newer PC.

I spent a fair amount of the early weekend shifting around computer hardware at home to make a new server PC for the software at the dog grooming shop.  I wanted a PC with enough horsepower to run both the PostgreSQL server and my program, as well as any other programs that might be needed currently and in the future.  The new shop machine is a dual core Athlon 64 X2 5200+ with a mirrored RAID drive for the data.

I also took the opportunity to phase out some of the older PCs that I had running doing the weather processing and other server chores at home in the command center. The summertime is when I really start to notice all the heat generated from the numerous PCs in my little office.  I hadn’t really thought about it much, but there is quite a difference in in efficiencies between the older and newer processors, as the newer ones run a lot cooler (as well as a lot faster) drawing about half the wattage compared to older chips.

It was a project I had been putting off as it’s time intensive but the need for a new shop PC forced me into it.  I was able to combine a home file server and the weather station server into a single PC.  The new server PC also got a new Antec Earthwatts power supply that is more efficient and runs cooler than other power supplies.  I aspire to replace all the home PCs’ power supplies with Earthwatts power supplies and about half of them have been so equipped.

Unfortunately I was a little careless in my file backups prior to disassembling my PCs, and I failed to properly back up some configuration files for the programs I use to generate the weather forecast at elkoweather.  That meant the weather forecast was down for over a day while I struggled to get the dog grooming shop software up to snuff and figure out how to reconfigure the weather software.

I also lost my backyard weather camera in the switchover.  Amusingly enough it’s because I am running older webcam software that supports capture hardware using VfW drivers that the newer hardware in the new PC lacks.

Once I got the new shop PC up and running I installed and configured the PostgreSQL server at home and added other software that it would need with the fantasy that I would just plug it in at the shop, simply import the database data and go.

Since last week I had been cleaning up the program and adding some small extra features, but nothing that I thought would affect the functionality.  Kim also had a new dog breed list that she wanted imported into the SQL database.

Unfortunately once I got the PC installed at the shop it was obvious that it wasn’t my night and I had a variety of difficulties.  It took hours to correct the various problems and then do all the testing to be assured that the software would work for today’s business.

The two PCs that got replaced came home to be cleaned and salvaged for parts.  But first they both got vacuumed out, and it was disturbing to discover how much dog hair had “grown” inside both.

I was also able to fix the weather station software problems last night when I got home.

The development of the pet grooming software is ongoing, and once I get some of the point of sale features cleaned up I can start working on the user interface that currently (to put it nicely) lacks polish…

I ordered a Shop-Vac online through Sears last Friday.  I saw the listing on Slickdeals and thought it seemed like a good deal.  The order was processed and I got a confirmation email shortly thereafter that I printed out.

I planned to pick up the Shop-Vac at the nearest Sears store after the weekend.  On Monday I went straight from work to the store to pick it up.

The Sears pickup routine is to scan the bar code on the email printout at the kiosk.  Then they’re supposed to bring the item out to you.  This process is supposed to take five minutes or less, otherwise they claim they’ll give you a $5 coupon.  When the bar code is scanned a monitor overhead shows the time elapsed for processing the pickup.

However, my bar code wouldn’t process.  After waiting several minutes the pickup clerk came out and tried to scan the bar code again and pull up the order without success.  He then disappeared into the back for some time.  Notably though he put my order status in the “completed” mode before he even left and it showed about two and a half minutes had elapsed for the order to be processed.  Eventually another guy came out and told me the order had been canceled and wanted to know if I had canceled the order.  I told him I hadn’t.

They were confused.  The only information they had was that the order had been canceled at a certain register number, but no one knew where or who it was.

They then decided to go into the store and find the item and give me one off the shelf.  However, once inside the store they discovered that the Shop-Vac was priced at $99.99.  The store manager got involved and instructed one of the pickup clerks to call Sears.com and find out what was going on.  He guessed it was a pricing mistake.

So I waited some more.  After over twenty minutes had elapsed the manager came back to tell me that it was a pricing mistake and that Sears.com had apparently simply canceled the order.

I told him that I could accept that it was a pricing mistake but that I was unhappy about not having been informed in a timely manner, and having driven all the way up to the store and wasting my time to discover that they had screwed up.

When I asked why it had taken them over two days to cancel the order he said it was due to the Fourth of July weekend.

I asked him if the store was open that weekend and he said it was.  I told him that I had worked that weekend at my job, and the store had been open, but apparently the people who canceled my order had the weekend off.  How convenient for them, but inconvenient for me.

He also told me that the Sears stores weren’t Sears.com and that the stores were just the middlemen between the customers and Sears.com.  I certainly don’t see a delineation between the two on the website.  They’re presented as one and the same.

But that was the manager’s excuse.  It wasn’t the store’s fault.  It was Sears.com’s fault.

So I told the manager that since I wasn’t going to be compensated for my time and expense to get to the store and find out they had made a mistake that I wanted my $5 coupon.  It had been at least 30 minutes by this time and I still didn’t have my item.  He told me he wasn’t sure if they could even do that.

However, they did manage to to do this, and in fact gave me two of the $5 coupons.  However, once I got home to exasperate me even further I discovered that the coupons are redeemable at the Sears stores only and not usable online at Sears.com.  If they truly are different entities, why would the $5 coupons given at the pickup counter for Sears.com only be good in the Sears stores?!

When I got home I discovered that Sears had sent me this email that morning:

Dear Sears.com Customer,

Thank you for shopping at Sears.com. Unfortunately, the email@email.com#10153 store was unable to fulfill your order #XXXXXXXX / salescheck #XXXXXXXXXXX. As a result, your order was cancelled. Please accept our apology for this inconvenience.

YOUR PERSONAL ORDER INFORMATION
===============================
Item #: 00917768000
16 gal. Wet-Dry Vac, 6 Peak hp with Blower Port

There’s no mention of a pricing mistake in the email, which shows that they’re dodging responsibility for their screw-up too and being dishonest about it.  It’s only, “Sorry, we canceled your order.  Have a nice day.”

So I fired off an email to complain.

The response was as frustrating as the rest of their handling of the affair.

Thank you for contacting Sears regarding order number XXXXXXXX.

We apologize for the difficulties that you have experienced with your
cancellation. It is our goal at Sears to make every shopping experience
a great one from start to finish. Obviously we did not meet that goal in
your situation. We again apologize for any inconvenience that this may
have caused you.

At Sears we value you as a customer and we value your business. If you
have additional questions or comments please contact us. Sears uses
customer feedback in the review and planning of current and future
policies, procedures and website enhancements. Thank you again for
taking the time to contact us.

Thank you for choosing Sears and have a great day.

Look for Great Ideas throughout the store and find Sears exclusive
innovations from great brands like Sony, Kenmore, NordicTrack, Craftsman
and Reebok.

Christina V.
Sears Customer Care
1-800-349-4358

It’s another, “Sorry, we screwed up; have a nice day” email and with an advertisement at the end to boot!  And there’s still notably no acknowledgment that they made a mistake.

Unbelievable!

Customer service is truly dead.  I doubt that I’ll do business with Sears or Sears.com in the near future because of this.  If they can’t even figure out a reasonable way of compensating me for my time resolving a mistake they made I won’t give them any of my business.

I guess my only satisfaction is going to be my publishing this recounting of the affair.

Oh, and “Have a nice day, Sears.”

(P.S.  This occurred at the Sears store at Burnsville Center in Burnsville, Minnesota.)

We were talking at work and I was surprised to hear that there were many unfamiliar with the term “viral video.”  A viral video is a video that is put online and becomes so popular that word of it spreads like a virus and lots of people watch it and talk about it around the water cooler.

Some of the viral videos such as the Star Wars Kid spawn ripoffs in commercial television (I had seen the knock-off on the series “Arrested Development” before seeing the original).

I have my favorite videos, some of which are viral.  As noted in this post the Technoviking is one of my favorites.

While we were talking Rob reminded me of some others that were good, and I’ll post them here for your perusal.

An older video (started in 2006), the Chad Vader series was a great spoof of Darth Vader of Star Wars fame.  I believe they made eight of the videos and you should watch them in sequence.

Chad Vader Episode One

Chad Vader Episode Two

Chad Vader Episode Three

Chad Vader Episode Four

Chad Vader Episode Five

Chad Vader Episode Six

Chad Vader Episode Seven

Chad Vader Episode Eight

There are other Chad Vader videos as well, but if they’re not from the Blame Society they’re probably just ripoffs so don’t fall for any lame imitations.

Here is a crazy bride cutting off her hair.  I don’t know if it’s real or not (who carries scissors to a hotel before a wedding?), but it’s entertaining!

Then there’s Jonathon the Zombie.  Guess what he likes?

A collection of photos about failures, cleverly called “Fail”.

Finally, here’s the Jimmy Dean Sausage clip.  It doesn’t have as many views as some of the others I posted, and It’s not really a video but an audio recording.  Again, I don’t know if it’s real or not but who cares?  It’s still funny!

And last but not least (and for Kevin) check out this video.

I’m sure there’s some I forgot but those are the ones I can think of (and find) offhand.

Caution:  This entry contains obscenities, so those sensitive readers should stop now!

One of my favorite online viral videos is still the Techno Viking video.  The first time I watched it I was just trying to figure out what was going on!  It’s a video that can’t be explained; you just have to watch it.

Of course the Break.com description also adds to my enjoyment of the video, which can be seen on many other video sharing sites (and in various other remixes/edits).  It says:  “This guy is like the Pied Piper of drugged up ecstasy e-tards. Remember, Technoviking does not dance to the music, the music dances to Technoviking!”

A lot of people wonder what this video is all about but few actually check into it.  I’m one of those few who had to know more.

It apparently was taped during a parade held yearly in Berlin, Germany, called the “Fuckparade“, short for “Fuck the Love Parade”.  The “Love Parade” started in 1989 in Berlin and is now held in many places worldwide.  According to Wikipedia the “Fuckparade” started in 1997 as a response to the commercialization of the “Love Parade”.

The Techno Viking was in the 2000 “Fuckparade”.

Amazingly enough however, I can’t seem to find out who the Techno Viking is, any other follow-ups to or any more recent information about what became of the Techno Viking.  The mystery of who the Techno Viking really is is the subject of many online discussions.

However I was able to find the music from the video although I wasn’t able to determine its title or band.

There are some assertions online that his name is Hans Shlepkopper and that he is a shopkeeper either in Germany or Norway but there doesn’t appear to be anything to support that claim.

Apparently the original video was produced by German media artist and film maker, Matthias Fritsch before it hit the online community.  His description of the project content reads, “Real or set up? The camera as a voyeur in an extraordinary situation and level of intimacy. A fragment of the Berlin Fuck Parade, the anti-parade in response to the Love Parade.  Reality is stranger than fiction and more bizarre than any art imaginable.”

You may have seen Matt’s videos online already if you’ve been paying attention, but if you haven’t I’ll mention it here.

Apparently Matt was traveling in 2003 when his friend suggested that he videotape himself doing this goofy dance.  He began videotaping himself in various places around the world and creating online videos.

Eventually he even got a sponsor to pay for his travels!

Up til recently the videos only featured Matt dancing, but the last trip Matt invited people to dance with him.  Seeing him in the various places around the world doing his dance was cool, but his latest video shows what a great ambassador fun and humor can be the world over.

Here’s his latest video:

To see more of Matt’s videos (as well as hi-def versions thereof) visit his website here.

In the quest to find a way to play multi-player PC games over the Internet that only support LAN connections we discovered a free Virtual Private Networking (VPN) utility called Hamachi.

Hamachi creates a Virtual Private Network (VPN) that makes it look like the other PCs connected to it are on a local area network (LAN) instead of the Internet.  Even though the Internet is one big network a lot of games only query the local network for other games running to connect to.  Hamachi (theoretically) gives your PC the illusion that other PCs that are connected to each other running Hamachi and connected via the Internet are actually connected to your PC on a local network.

One of our group was having problems connecting to some of our game servers via Hamachi.  Matt and I spent hours debugging the problem, changing network settings, removing Norton Antivirus (as we suspected it of creating having some firewall setting or otherwise blocking the connection) and eventually running out of ideas on how to fix the problem, when Matt discovered a setting in Hamachi itself that was preventing it from connecting to some games.  So much for using a methodical and comprehensive debugging technique…

The Hamachi setting that was the culprit was found in Hamachi Preferences | Security.  For some reason even though ours had defaulted to off, the problem PC had the setting “Block vulnerable Microsoft Windows services” checked on.  Once that was turned off, the problem was solved.  It’s a mystery as to how this setting got turned on however as it was the same on both his notebook and desktop.

Anyway, long story short (yup, I know, too late), if you’re running Hamachi and having connection problems make sure this setting is off.  Hamachi is no panacea as it still has some issues with certain games but it works amazingly well for a lot of games and can breathe new life into older games that have LAN but no Internet capability.

Also, in the course of our debugging, we discovered a new network connection was appearing after running the XP network setup wizard.  It was creating a connection called “Linux IGD”.  Some apparently have connectivity problems once this connection is created.

The Linux IGD is a Linux Internet Gateway Device.  The connection comes from a UPnP (Universal Plug and Play) router or modem using Linux as an operating system.  When you run the XP network setup wizard it detects the Linux IGD and adds it.

To remove it, go to the Windows XP Control Panel | Add or Remove Programs; select Add/Remove Windows Components (on the left side of the Add or Remove Programs window) ; double click Networking Services (or highlight it and click the Details button) and uncheck the Internet Gateway Device Discovery and Control Client.  This will remove the Linux IGD.

I took the Memorial Day week off this year and worked cleaning up my workshop and doing a variety of projects around the house.

One of my ongoing projects is getting my shop organized. Over the years I’ve been accumulating a parts collection that comes in handy for my various odd projects, and I last summer I acquired a lot of new parts and tools from my father’s home shop when he moved out of his house and into an apartment (thanks again, Dad!). Dad was/is a pack-rat and he had lots of goodies that he accumulated over the many years he had a home shop and I was happy to add his stuff to my collection.

I started organizing this winter but sorting and storing the various parts into plastic storage tubs has taken a lot of time and is far from finished, but I’ve made good headway. Hopefully it will make it a lot easier for me to find the things I’m looking for as I endeavor in my projects. I’ve already “re-discovered” parts/things that I haven’t seen in years!

Unfortunately I didn’t get to working on the dog grooming database program at all, although I’m close to having point of sale functionality.

I did manage to finally get a network cable connected to the second shop computer as I felt the wireless connection it was using was a security risk, especially considering the geeks that work next door to to the dog grooming shop in the new game store. I didn’t really want them compromising my wireless network and sniffing data and/or otherwise doing mischievous things. Now the second computer accesses the database a lot faster as well as giving me piece of mind.

Now that summer’s arrived, my geek projects take a back seat to the many other outside projects I have to do around our little farm.

About the only geeky project I would like to add this summer is my thunderstorm detector add-on to the precipitation identification sensor, but I seriously doubt that will happen this year.

In fact, my other projects have prevented me from updating my dog grooming shop software as well, and I need to finish the point of sale functionality in the program.

Unfortunately the weather has been to nice to spend hacking away inside, so I haven’t…

I’ve been employed with the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) for over 19 years.

It takes several years of training to become an air traffic controller. The training includes classroom, simulation and on the job training.

When I finished all my training back in 1991 they gave me a pink cardstock card (FAA Form 7220-1; every FAA form has a number and the FAA has LOTS of forms!) with my facility rating. Tower controllers called these pink cards “cab cards”.

To center controllers like me, the cards really didn’t mean much, and we didn’t use them for anything. Like a lot of my co-workers, I carried mine around along with my identification badge for years. Since it was only made out of paper due to wear and tear it eventually became pretty dilapidated and I stopped carrying it around and put it in a file at home somewhere.

A few years ago apparently someone in the FAA got the brilliant idea that we needed these cards again (even though we never used them before). This time around they were going to be called “credential cards.”

I finally got mine last week! It was unceremoniously left in my mailbox at work in an envelope.

Instead of being made of paper cardstock, the new cards are hi-tech plastic with a magnetic stripe and a hologram!

I didn’t look at mine that closely, but PDog pointed out to me after looking at his that apparently now we’re “privileged” to do our job, as the front of the card says, “has been found to be properly qualified to exercise the privileges of air traffic control specialist.” Heck, if it’s a “privilege” to do this job, maybe I shouldn’t even be paid for doing it (or a heck of a lot less anyway - aka “B” scale)! I wonder if the FAA thinks the janitor is “privileged” to clean out the toilets as well…

The old “cab cards” said “This certifies that … has been found to be properly qualified to perform the duties of air traffic control specialist within areas specified in the suitably endorsed Rating Record on the reverse side hereof.”

The card also notes that I’m “English proficient,” which is handy, and there’s a spot for my signature.

I wonder if I can buy air traffic merchandise at the air traffic gift shop with this card and what my credit limit is on it…

I’m sure ultimately these cards will be as useful as the last card I got. Your tax dollars at work!

This last weekend one of my email addresses suddenly started getting a lot of undeliverable email bounces back from servers telling me the recipient didn’t exist.

However, I hadn’t sent any of the emails originally.

Apparently for some reason spammers started using my email address as a bogus “reply-to” in the emails; thus when they were undeliverable they were sent back to me.

It was one of my garbage email accounts, so it’s no big deal. I just set it up to bounce the emails back again so that I won’t get any more. However, that also means that email address is unusable, so if you get an email to me bounced back, you’ll know why.

Thanks again, suckhole spammers!