“Want to make a website which features a different picture of a babe everyday.

Successful candidate:

• Must create and design the website
• Logo creation
• Provide 3000 original large, high quality photos with my watermarked logo
• These photos must be legal
• All copyright will belong to me
• Photos must automatically change as of 12:00 PM MST
• Must be able to and will be responsible for setting up the website with advertising program to ensure money is made from visitors”

The poster gave a max budget of $250….

Really!!!???

Let me make sure I understand…You want me to develop the software to power the site (admittedly very simple), design the look and feel of the site, create a logo, and come up with 3000 original photos of “babes” and then sign it all over to you, all for $250?  Then you want me to market it and advertise it?  What the F*&# do I need you for?  Let’s face it, you cant get 3000 images, even non-orginal ones for that price, but I have no idea what the photoshoots required would cost…maybe $25000?  For that many images there are going to be a lot of different girls, doing a lot of different things, in a lot of diferent places.  $25000 may be extremely cheap I dont know.

I do know the idiot that posted this is delusional.  He/She wants to pay a paltry sum for someone to do ALL the work.  Usually clients have ideas, content, and know how to market their own stuff, but not in this case.  Maybe this person works in politics and thinks this is how the real work actually operates.

**And yes, the thumbnail is Jennifer Connelly, she is the celeb that I think is all sorts of beautiful, so she is the babe of the day today, and then we go back to Jessica being the babe every other day of the year.

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I then stood up to leave, and Lynn took the check from her desk, and despite me asking her for it, since she wasn’t going to do anything with it anyways, she refused and I reached over and took it from her hand, since after all it was my property and she refused to give it to me.  She then very dramatically claimed I assaulted her, and claimed to call the police.  I laughed considering the preposterous nature of the claim of assault, and left to continue on errands with my family.

While driving, I called the national call center for Capital One and filed a formal complaint with Brittany.  She informed me of the process and that someone would be in touch.

About fifteen minutes later, I received a call on my cell phone from the Flower Mound Police Department asking me to return to either the bank or the police department.  I told them I would be at the police department in about ten minutes.

I showed up and sat down in a conference room with a pair of officers who explained to me the situation.  Lynn is claiming assault, but since it obviously wasn’t assault, it has been moved down to a Class C misdemeanor of “Offensive Touch”, which is dubious since there were no witnesses or any physical evidence.  I filled out a voluntary statement explaining what had happened. The officer  said the bank wanted to “Trespass” me, which basically means they tell me not to come back or they will call the cops.  The officer said he wasn’t going to do it, and asked for my word that I wouldn’t go back.  I, of course, gave it since at this point I can’t take my business from Capital One fast enough.

During this time, my wife had been in the car with my girls and on the phone with Capital One trying to figure out how to continue to conduct business until we can change banks.  Sandy (she introduced herself as the branch manager), told my wife I was not to come back to the bank, and that all our accounts are now frozen (garnished).  Sandy gave no reason for this drastic (and illegal) action.  My wife told Sandy that she needed to buy groceries that night for our infant and toddler daughters, and in response, Sandy said, “You can’t.  Your accounts are all on hold, until you come in and close them.”

One of the accounts garnished was my business account, and LLC which isn’t even mine since it is its own entity not linked to my social security number at all.

My wife eventually got the number for Mr. Randy Hall, the District Manager, whom we tried to call several times but he doesn’t answer his phone and his voicemail isn’t set up, so we were unable to leave him a message.

We received a voice mail on Tuesday from Leslie at the call center saying “there is a chain of command and you will need to speak with the Branch Manager”.  We also found out that day that there really isn’t a branch manager just an interim setup of various people filling in as required.

Since all our accounts were frozen, we went and opened four new accounts at another local bank.  My wife had asked Capital One’s call center for some help in understanding what was going on, but they said we had to speak to the branch manager at the Flower Mound branch.  We couldn’t even go to another branch to get this fixed, and by fixed, I mean, get our money that had been illegal garnished.  We then got our attorney involved to figure out how to get the accounts closed.  He called the Flower Mound PD and they said to just go to the Flower Mound branch, and let them call the police.  As long as we were there conducting business, they can’t ask us to leave since we have effected consent to be on private property.

I didn’t really like that answer, so our attorney called the Flower Mound branch and asked what we could do.  James said my wife could come up there and close the accounts, even though the business account, by contract and law, couldn’t be closed by anyone other than myself.  But since Capital One employees had already broken a few laws, why stop now?  We decided to go to the Lewisville Branch and close the accounts.

Olivia helped us there and was very helpful, friendly, and professional, exactly what we were used to and have come to expect from Capital One over the years.

On Wednesday, I again called the call center and spoke to Kenneth, who was appalled at the entire situation and again gave me Randy Hall’s phone number.  Kenneth did confirm that it was in fact not working and gave me Mr. Hall’s assistant’s phone number instead.  Kenneth did confirm that in Texas it is illegal to place a hold on an account’s funds without state or federal directives and only then it is for child support or the IRS.

I have called and left a message with Randy Hall’s assistant, so we will see where this goes.   I am still pursuing the matter actively with consumer groups, regulatory entities, and governmental agencies.

The treatment was ridiculous.  Does Lynn call the cops on every single person that takes a piece of paper from her hand faster than she wanted?  Especially after being asked for it and not relinquishing it?  If so, it is amazing there are customers at the Flower Mound branch of Capital One at all.  If not, why was I singled out?  What are the consequences for Sandy and Lynn for illegally garnishing our accounts, including a company account which is hurting our business since we can’t cut checks until we have new ones printed?  I have employees to pay, and that now gets delayed due to the illegal scare tactics of Capital One Bank.

Well, I thought “Video Card“, but I was wrong.  I went out and bought a new ATI 5870 by Asus.  Turned out replacing my 4870 with that beast didnt do a thing for me.  So, back the $400+ card went.

Well, it must be software then, the problem now being I can either re-install XP, or try Windows 7 since that is where I will have to update to within 6 months anyways.  Out I go to get Windows 7 Pro, and more than $2,000 later, it is finally installed and working.

Upon installing it, I had network driver issues from hell.  Who knew a Linksys wireless G PCI card wouldnt work with Win7?  What kind of moronic OS development team made it where one of the most prolific network card manufacturers products wouldn’t work?  Answer:  Microsoft!  But since I used the word “moronic” we all knew that was coming, right?  Ok, read a lot online about the various woes of people with that card, and I upgraded to a D-Link N card, that seemed better.  Only, it wasnt.  But I knew, from what I read online the network card was correct.  Could it possibly be my Linksys router?  I mean, really, a router is a router right?  Nope!  I replaced the router with a Netgear one and BAM, it works great on the network now.  Spiffy!  Time to start installing software finally.

That’s right, installing software, because for some dumb-ass reason you can’t upgrade from XP to Win7, they expect you to have had 2×4 to the head and actually used Vista.

Start installing software, and the first reboot, the computer doesn’t come back up.  Not only that, the primary hard drive isnt even seen by the BIOS anymore.  WTF!!!???  How did Win7 just kill a Seagate HD?  I have no idea, but it did.  Off I go to purchase new hard drives.  This time, I got two, so I can RAID 1 them, “ah ha!” I will show you Microsoft, I will fix your stupidity with hardware. RAID array created, Windows 7 installed (again), and now I can start installing software.

But wait, Adobe CS2 isnt supported by Windows 7, so, $1,699 later, I am the extremely annoyed owner of CS4 Web Premium, a supported version of the ridiclously priced yet required by everyone software suite.

I get everything re-installed, except for my document management software, Source Link.  It seems those retards over there won’t reissue a CD key without a $60 fee, “because that is how we control the licenses”.  “Why do I use your software again”, I wonder as I am re-downloading games from EA, Quickbooks,  NuSphere, and a ton of other software that doesnt require me to pay them to reinstall their software on the same computer. Clearly everyone else has figured it out, even Microsoft and Adobe!  And get this, I get to upgrade as well to SourceLink 2010 in order to have it supported as well.

So, what is the final tab you ask….

$200 for Windows 7
$350 for 2 Hard Drives
$70 for Network Card
$70 for Router
$1700 for Adobe CS4
$50 for new McAfee
$169 for SourceLink
Total: $2,609 plus tax for the privelege, nay honor, nay ass raping that is Windows 7.  I bow to Microsoft’s superior skills at making their products part of everyday life, because both I am in awe I spent that much, and bowing is about all I can do since I won’t be sitting for at least  week, or until the bleeding stops.

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For those of you that have never programming professionally, this stuff may be very new to you.  However, trust me, it is extremely important.  Programming standards are not stupid, are not corners to be cut, and must be strict, otherwise they ARE pointless.

There are standards when it comes to documenting your code, and I wont get into them.  But if you are interested there are programs out there which more or less set the standard if you want to use them.  JavaDoc, PHPDoc, and for those MS folks….. .  Go check out their websites for good advice on how to format your comments in your code.

Now, for actually coding, I have my own set of standards, developed over the years, to make the code both readable, but also hopefully logical.  Most people I run into think my code is pretty readable, some languages more than others.  Let’s face it, Perl code will never, ever, be as readable or “pretty” as Python.  It just isn’t going to happen.  Sorry you old UNIX guys, but Perl just isn’t very pretty.  The OO languages are much easier on the eyes.

So, other than for documentation reasons, readability (which leads to maintainability), are there actually other reasons to program to a standard?  Only if you want to use your code in some sort of portfolio.  But those first two reasons are EXTREMELY important.  Everyone out there that has programmed professionally will know exactly what I mean.

Tabs or spaces?  Braces at the end of a line or on their own line?  Spaces between concatenation or operators?  Double quotes or single quotes?  Print to buffer or hold in variables?  Globals or object variables?  Arguments or variables?

There are a ton of questions, and I cant answer them all.  But think about why you do something, and if you cant come up with a good reason, probably time to stop doing it.

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I have been in development for a long time time, about 12 years, and for the web development world I live in, that makes me ancient.  I carry my own errors and omission insurance for personal projects, just in case the GPL can’t protect me well enough.  What is this insurance you ask?

There is a good article over at Insurance Journal that goes over exactly what it is and why you might need it.  My question is a bit more complex though.  If you are a professional programming, working on someone else’s payroll, do you need this insurance?  If you are fired for incompetence, or laid off, and the company you used to work for finds a bug that has cost them $1M a week since it was implemented 2 quarters ago, do they have the right, or abililtty, to sue you for that loss?  Perhaps.  It all depends on where you live, what company, and the situation.

Being sued for something you did on the job, in the best interest of the company, under the leadership of someone else, is extremely rare.  Most likely because it requires the company to admit they were less than diligent, didn’t do a very good job managing, and then makes them liable to their stakeholders since they are basically admitting an agent of their company screwed up.  Companies don’t like to do that.

However, if you are working on a 1099 or a third party W2, you need to make sure you are covered.  If you are on 1099 or doing corp-to-corp, you had better have insurance.  You are liable in that case, in the absence of another contract, for everything you do and write.  While you probably wouldn’t be found guilty of anything (I hope), it would be expensive to fight it, and better let the insurance company do it.

If you are on a third party W2, make sure the folks you are actually workign for have E&O insurance as an add on or rider to their general liablity.  You could need them to protect you for something you did in their employ on behalf of one of their clients.

So, do you have insurance?  Do you need it?  I am not a lawyer, so none of this should be taken and blindly run with, but, ask yourself if you are covered, and if you have questions or doubts, find someone that knows and ask.  It never hurts and could save you a lot of trouble later.

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So, although it is the worst time of year in a horrible economy to be looking, I am looking for a job.  The typical, Application Development Manager or Project Manager position, really not further east than Irving with a few exceptions.

And to Caris, well not the company, but the people there, to my friends, I will miss working with you, it was fun and great building PathConnect together and watching it grow and make the customers’ day.  I will remeber the experiences and enjoy looking back.  Good luck in all that you do in the future.

As usual, the current license applies to all new downloads, changes, forks, etc.

If you have any questions, feel free to contact me.

A group of graduates, well established in their careers, were talking at a reunion and decided to go visit their old university professor, now retired.
During their visit, the conversation turned to complaints about stress in their work and lives. Offering his guests hot chocolate, the professor went into the kitchen and returned with a large pot of hot chocolate and an assortment of cups – porcelain, glass, crystal, some plain looking, some expensive, some exquisite – telling them to help themselves to the hot chocolate.
When they all had a cup of hot chocolate in hand, the professor said: “Notice that all the nice looking; expensive cups were taken, leaving behind the plain and cheap ones. While it is normal for you to want only the best for yourselves, that is the source of your problems and stress. The cup that you’re drinking from adds nothing to the quality of the hot chocolate. In most cases it is just more expensive and in some cases even hides what we drink. What all of you really wanted was hot chocolate, not the cup; but you consciously went for the best cups… And then you began eyeing each other’s cups.

Now consider this: Life is the hot chocolate; your job, money and position in society are the cups. They are just tools to hold and contain life. The cup you have does not define, nor change the quality of life you have. Sometimes, by concentrating only on the cup, we fail to enjoy the hot chocolate God has provided us. God makes the hot chocolate, man chooses the cups. The happiest people don’t have the best of everything. They just make the best of everything that they have. Live simply. Love generously. Care deeply. Speak kindly. And enjoy your hot chocolate.

Speaking of shoulders, I can actually feel mine again. They don’t just consist of knots. While I’m still looking forward to our day at the spa we have planned while in Tahoe, it’s not as though I’m just dying for it. It’s as if I’m on a whole new path of self discovery. Take away the corporate world, and some sharp edges dull. They’re not necessary anymore. You come back to your roots. It’s been exciting to watch everyone grow.

I’m so appreciative of all Ryan does to make it possible for me to be at home and run our household properly. We really are so blessed.