by Matt | Oct 29, 2008 | Culture, Travel, Web
When the U-Verse technician told me yesterday I could “get to the TV stuff online” I assumed he meant I could see channel listings. Of course, the downside was having to endure a trip to att.yahoo.com to do it. I didn’t link that because no one should ever have to see a “portal” page like that unless they’re being subjected to some sort of web 2.0 tourture chamber. Everything that could possibly blink does, and then it slides, jumps, talks, dances, rotates and eventually bends your browser over and has it’s way with it. It’s not good.
However, there is some light at the end of the browser rape tunnel. Once there, a U-Verse customer can find another link, one to a shiny golden place of web goodness. A place that lets you forget the pain you just went through.
Through some bizarre collaboration between the internet gods, you can, actively, through this second website, access your DVR at home. All because Yahoo and SBC teamed up. AT&T re-borg’ed SBC, and thus Yahoo, and now you can access your AT&T hardware via Yahoo’s homepage.
You have access to it’s recorded shows, it’s schedules, it’s settings. More importantly, you have access to all this via an interactive channel guide. Meaning, you can browse the TV listings for weeks in advance, select a show, set the DVR to record and then come home to find that indeed magic has taken place.
Oh, and did I mention it’s cellphone/PDA/iPhone compatible? Seriously, that’s a cool feature.
Lastly, as I mentioned yesterday, after my U-Verse install I took it upon myself to drop my own cable down a couple walls. Something that I succeeded in, albeit at the expense of skin and the fiberglass insulation that decided to cover it. I can’t really blame it though, I was invading it’s natural habitat. Something I’m not likely to do again anytime soon. That said, the mission was a success. Fiber to my Xbox makes me a very happy person.
Game on.
by Matt | Aug 27, 2008 | Aggravation, Friends and Family, Personal, Web
So, last night, the demo guy assures us that he’s almost done and that he’ll come back and finish up in the morning. Not a big deal, that sounds ok to me, but I go over to check on the job anyways, mostly because I’m the curious sort. Turns out that instead of using a scraper like any normal person would, he decided to pour an acid on the floor to remove the old glue that was underneath the linoleum. Hydrochloric Acid!
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When I arrived I knew something was wrong. All the kitchen windows were open and I could smell the fumes from the street. This was also a big problem because it rained at 3:00 that afternoon and apparently the windows had been open long before that. Everything was soaked. That wasn’t the bad part. When I walked in it was pretty apparent what they had tried to do. They got lazy and didn’t want to scrape up glue anymore and decided to go get something to eat away at it. In theory this might not have been a bad idea. Too bad we don’t live in Theory, although I hear it’s nice there. No, they went out and found Muriatic Acid, a 30% solution of Hydrochloric Acid and something else.
All over the bottle it says “Do not use indoors”, “For exterior use only”, “Will react with woods, metals and other natural materials”, “Caution, fumes are corrosive”.
Apparently they can’t read.
When I walked into the kitchen I was floored. Actually, the floor was “floored”, I was in shock. There was super corrosive acid everywhere. The counters, the cabinets, and especially on the appliances.
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The brand new, $1200 refrigerator that I just had installed on Sunday was covered in acid. I could hear it sizzling and eating through the metal. It was creating huge pits in the doors to the fridge, in the washer and dryer, in the back of our also brand new freezer, everywhere.
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I freaked out. I took pictures, screamed a lot, and rushed home so that we could call him and have him explain himself (I would have called him directly, but didn’t have a phone with me).
He gave us some line of bullshit about how he had done it before and it would be fine and that it wasn’t a big deal. Then we told him how it had completely ruined the fridge and all he did was offer to replace the door.
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Not good enough.
I wanted to be there when he got there this morning, so my wife and I got up early and hurried down there to meet him. He was supposed to be there at 6:00am. We got there just before 8:00 and he’s nowhere to be seen. I went inside again and not only had the acid completely ruined the fridge, it’s started ruining everything else. Anything metal in the kitchen is now covered in pits and rust. The fridge, the microwave, the other appliances, the KitchenAid mixer and it’s bowl, the toaster, everything.
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This is a complete and total fucking tragedy. It’s completely ruined our entire kitchen, all the appliances and probably stuff further into the house that I haven’t even discovered yet.
When we called him this morning he said he was “on his way”, which is complete BS to begin with, but he said he called a “Kenmore Parts place” and would “make it right”. He’s got one shot to make this right, and by right I mean a complete new fridge, otherwise I’m taking his ass to court.
I’ve never been so angry in my entire life. We saved and worked and saved for these things and then, 3 days after they’re in the house, they’re completely ruined by some asshole who doesn’t know what he’s doing.
I don’t have proper words for my anger. I’m literally blinded by rage. The only words I want out of his mouth are “I’m sorry, I’m going to make it right, here’s a check”. Anything short of that and he’s going to hear from my attorney. There’s not really much else I can do. He’s ruined my house. I wish there was some form of punishment allowed by the courts that could result in him getting a beating, but there’s not. All I can do is try and recoup the cost of the damages.
I lost sleep last night because I was so mad. So did Lauren. We’re both so upset that we don’t want to talk about it.
I don’t know what else to say.
It’s like I bought a brand new car, parked it in my driveway and someone slammed into it with a garbage truck.
I. Am. Pissed.
by Matt | Aug 20, 2008 | Web
Does anyone have any experience with Google Maps API? I’m beating my head against a wall on somthing and I can’t quite figure it out.
Here is my current code/page: Link
It works, but a couple things aren’t the way I need them. For starters, when it loads, it loads the entire thing, generating directions and all. I’d like it to start with the locations filled in, but with it getting the directions only after someone clicks “go”. Second, the map is getting it’s location based on the directions. It should really start focused at a specific point and then change when the directions are asked for. I can make everything blank, but then the map starts out blank as well. Here was my first attempt: LINK.
Any thoughts from you programmers out there?
UPDATE: Nevermind, I figured it out. I had to toss out the “set.Directions” variable and replace it with “set.Center” and a set of longitude and latitude coordinates. Then, it adds “set.Directions” later on when someone puts in the to/from information and refreshes the map. Ya!
by Matt | Aug 7, 2008 | Web, Work
Over the past few days I’ve installed and tested numerous CMS systems for a potential project down the road at work. Drupal, Geeklog, Joomla, Mambo, SiteFrame, Typo3 and Xoops. They all fall pathetically short of WordPress. It’s not a very complicated project. A simple site that I need to make weekly updates to. Probably about 10 static pages total. There’s also the potential of a second, far more in-depth and advanced site later on. That’s why I was searching for a CMS system. It’s really pathetic that WordPress is so great in the areas of content managment, theme creation and ease of use that I’m willing to mess with more advanced plugins for that system rather than try to use one of the other systems that are designed for more “enterprise” type sites.
My problem of course is convincing hardened developers that WordPress is a viable CMS and not just a “little blog toy” as one of them tried to point out. It’ll all come back to what the client actually needs in a website in the end, but I’d much rather push for a free WordPress install with some heavy-duty plugins than a $20,000 piece of enterprise grade CMS software that no one can work with. I don’t have a staff of 100 web guys to work on something like that. I need to be able to develope a site, roll it out and make updates to it without pounding my head against a wall every time I try and publish a page.
What I really need to do is find BIG sites that run just fine off of WordPress. Something really complicated, with interactive stuff, shopping carts, photo galleries, all that stuff. If I can find a couple examples like that, then maybe I can push for WordPress when the time comes.
I should probably dig deeper into creating a theme as well, but that’s a whole other ball of wax.
by Matt | Jul 17, 2008 | Aggravation, Web
I have this terrible problem in that I can’t actually make decisions about the design of my own website. Every single wordpress theme I look at has potential but there’s something major about it that just rubs me the wrong way. Or, it has a lot of potential but there are so many little things that need to be changed that it’s not worth the effort. Then there are the themes I start designing myself, which always fail to match up with the picture in my head. I’ve done 6 PSD layouts in the past week. I’ve yet to finish one. I did a new/tech/sleek looking one but it was too “corporate” feeling. Then I did a grunge one but I don’t know if I actually like that style. Then I started a “space” one but nixed that because it was too trendy. So, I can’t find what I want, I can’t customize something to be what I want and I can’t make what I want from scratch. I don’t know if it’s “artists block” or what but it’s driving me up a wall.
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