June 20, 2007

Vacation Coming!!!

rmiles7721June 20, 2007Travel

Fifteen days and counting. Damn, I will be counting every single day and I am sure they are going to drag. Other than hopefully getting together with some bloggers in Atlanta at some point that week I think we are going to go to Hilton Head. I haven’t gone the last few times that the wife and kids have visited but it looks like her friend that lived in Bluffton is getting ready to move to Cyprus before the year is out. It would be nice to see them at least once more before they move.

I am sure that we will hit Savannah at least once so if any of you folks down around that area want to get together for a beer or lunch, let me know. I don’t have any definite dates set up yet, just that I start on July 5th and have to be back at work on the 12th. We will probably be down there the 5th through the 8th and then come home that Sunday night or Monday morning.

Open Track-Backs

rmiles7721June 20, 2007Site News

At least it looks like the track-backs are still showing up properly on the page. I knew I was still getting them because the stupid spammers have started back, but I wasn’t sure if my OTA links would show up properly.

Customer Relationship Management

rmiles7721June 20, 2007Technology

This is sponsored by AimPromote On-Demand Lead Management, a leading provider of marketing integration tools.

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AIMpromote gets rid of the hard parts for sales teams and allows them to learn the features quickly and easily so that they can actually USE the software. AIMpromote also offers a 14-Day full featured trial which should be more than enough time to fully appreciate the power in this software package.

One of the things that is really nice for supervisors is that they can set it up so that only the team leaders have access to all features and members of the sales team will only be able to access the parts that are pertinent to what they are doing. This leads to much less confusion as they will only see the parts that are actually going to be used in day-to-day operations.

Check out AIMpromote and sign up for their 14-Day free trial to see why AIMpromote is a technology leader in sales lead management.

Drunk Squirrel

rmiles7721June 20, 2007Uncategorized

I wonder if this is one of the guys that hangs out fornicating in Eric’s back yard.

On Hold…

rmiles7721June 20, 2007Technology

It’s been about an hour and a half since I first called Charter so I figured that I would call back. Their computers answer in fucking Spanish now apparently. I don’t even get the press one for Spanish press two for english any more. Just some fucking Spanish and then about three minutes of cheesy porn music, then the loop starts again. I swear I am about ready to put my head through the wall before I have to listen to any more of it.

What’s with this bullshit anyway. Did Charter get bought out by the Mexicans when I wasn’t looking and they just forgot to tell me about it? I’m half tempted to get a land line again just so that I can go back to DSL. The only reason I got rid of it in the first place was because I didn’t need the phone any more but they won’t let you have DSL without it. If it means I get to speak to someone that actually grew up speaking English and actually lives here I may just do it.

I finally just hung up and called information back to get a different city listing. Yeah, this time I get the English computer. Thank goodness.

I ended up taking the laptop down and after a few resets was able to connect. About fucking time…

Damned Hot

rmiles7721June 20, 2007Site News

I somehow managed to get home a little while ago even with two managers being out. I’m still not sure how I managed that one but I don’t look a gift horse in the mouth. I know one thing, it’s frigging hot outside. I let the wife have my car awhile back since it is the one with air and she generally ferries the kids back and forth.

Riding back and forth between the stores is extremely hot in the damn car without air. I am drenched by the time I get home. Once fall gets here (just in time to NOT need air) I will get a new vehicle, but not until then unless my wheels fall off first.

My fucking Internet connection is down again. Goddamn Charter Communication is starting to piss me off. This is the second time this week. It was down for several hours last time so I did what I hate to do and called tech support. I got a gentleman who was very polite but for whom english was apparently a second language. I asked him if we were having a high speed internet outage in my area, so he gets my address and zip, puts me on hold for five minutes and when he comes back he tells me “Yes we have High Speed Internet available in your area as well as phone service and digital cable.

NO NUMBNUTS!

I was pretty pissed off but I stayed nice to the guy. I explained that I have service but my internet isn’t working. He got the rest of my info and came back to me. By that time my cable light was solid on the modem so I scurried back upstairs to check my server. About the time I realized that I was finally getting an IP address but that something was wrong between the house and their DNS servers he tells me that something must be wrong with my equipment but he could schedule someone to come to the house. I explained that my equipment was just fine (I use my own modem, not the cable company’s) and that THEY had a problem and then he says “Oh, I see a bulletin, we have an outage in your area but now ETA.

Where the fuck do they find these folks? At least he didn’t bother to ask me to restart the modem this time. Normally by the time I am desperate enough to call tech support I have already gone through everything possible that I might be able to do here on my end, and THEY have a problem but normally their tech support makes you go through 30 minutes of bullshit before they can be bothered to check HEAT or whatever call center software they are using to see if there are any outage bulletins.

Assholes.

I need some fucking air conditioning before I reach though the phone and yank someone’s tonsils out of their head.

Found ‘Em

rmiles7721June 20, 20072Uncategorized

I’ve been looking for my shades all week, with all of the driving I do now I need them. Just found the sonsabitches in my car.

In between stores, may post more later.

Another Too Short Night…

rmiles7721June 20, 2007Site News

I don’t know how I do it sometimes. I had to handle shift change at one of the restaurants last night (I never did get that nap yesterday) so I got home around ten or so. I ended up going to bed after eleven last night but still managed to get up by a quarter to five. I’ve got a manager starting her ten day vacation today and another one that is off for the next two days, so it’s bound to be quite a long day.

Only a couple more weeks until I get a vacation and I am looking forward to it. I start on July 5th and that will be cool in itself because all of my managers will be in that day with it being a holiday so I might actually get to watch fireworks this year.

Anyway, the idea of some kind of Atlanta meet was being bandied around late this month or early next, which would be really cool. I know that Sandy will be in town during that time, actually I think she is probably in the air now, so perhaps something along the lines of a get-together is in order.

Web Hosting

rmiles7721June 20, 20076Technology

I have mentioned a couple of times recently that I am starting to look for a new web host for several different reasons, the first being bandwidth and CPU usage. I still don’t know if I am going to switch or not but I have found a couple of different providers that I am looking into one of which is Host Arcadia, who is also sponsoring this review.

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Host Arcadia has a couple of really good plans that I am looking at. One of the things that really interests me is that their biggest plan, Zion, has 2.5 times the bandwidth that I currently get from my provider for less than half the price. The also let you pay a yearly rate. At $130 a year for the biggest plan, that’s what I pay for five months at my current provider.

The starter plan that they offer which is good for most folks is only $3 a month but you have to pay for that one a year at a time, so it’s $36. Not bad at all. In addition to the extra space and bandwidth you get from their hosting plans, Host Arcadia also throws in webmail, unlimited email accounts, unlimited MySQL databases,cpanel, and Fantastico.

They also have a pretty nice affiliate program that I am going to be looking into as well. If you are interested in web hosting or reselling you can get in touch with them at 1-845-784-1614. They are running a pretty nice Grand Opening Reseller Promotion as well at $9.95 a month for 3GB space, 80GB bandwidth, cpanel and Fantastico along with unlimited hosted domains.

I also like the fact that their servers are hosted in Atlanta. Being a southern boy myself I prefer to use things that are “local” although that pretty much doesn’t matter now except for the fact that my current provider is either somewhere out west or in the northeast and occasionally I have DNS issues with them.