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NYC and Hurricanes

Shelby — Tue, 30 Aug 2011 16:40:29 +0000

I just got back from my trip to New York, it was supposed to be a Thursday to Sunday type of trip…. it got pushed to Monday though due to Hurricane Irene which was moving up the coast. Due to this my flight and trip were changed a bit. While it wasn’t a total loss it still screwed things up including changing my flight a day later than it should have been. It sucked that the city was about 98% shutdown so it left little to do bedsides sit in my hotel room and drink away the storm outside my window that was starting to take place. With the lack of “real” destruction that Irene caused I think the city of New York will be somewhat happy that it has earned them a visitor again so that I can redo it. It was really awesome to finally meet the guy in charge, coworker and business partner. It’s really strange to work with people and yet never have met them in person, so it was cool to do so finally.
Over all it was a pretty rad trip hurricane aside, but after about 5 days of of living in a hotel I am happy to be heading back on a flight that actually wasn’t delayed nearly as bad as I thought I was going to be. I am looking forward to the next time I get to hit up NYC, and hopefully Kat will be able to go next time as well. The next time should allow for some exciting photos to be taken rather than the ones I came back with.

Condensed update for End of March and Start of April 2011

Shelby — Sun, 10 Apr 2011 00:56:13 +0000

Since I am not really keeping up with the whole posting a new post daily like I keep saying I will, thought I would do a condensed post giving a bit of a summary of what has been going on over the last week or so. Maybe I will do this more often…. then again that might just lead to a monthly post instead .. meh
Work
So this is my 2nd weekend working the Sat/Sun shift at work and while its nice to have a few days off of work, I cant say that I am very excited about this schedule. Still holding onto the fact that this is supposed to be a temporary schedule change…. guess we will see how that pans out. The one perk of working the weekend shift is that I don’t have to dress up which makes getting up in the morning that much easier.
Life
Life is really good right now, not a day goes by that I don’t wake up thankful that I have a wonderful girlfriend that puts a smile on my face. She was gone for just over a week to her home town to help her Mom pack up their house so that the new people could move in, and while she was gone it really dawned on me that she completes me in more ways than I can count. Shes is definitely my other half and with out her around I feel like something is missing and find myself walking aimlessly in circles.
Louie and his wife Emily were out here the other week and I got a chance to hang out with them and grab something to eat. Was good seeing a friend of mine that I have known for years. Not to mention the food at Hash House A Go-Go was pretty epic as well. Still trying to figure out what to do for Kats bday as we haven’t really figured if we are taking a road trip or sticking around town, I assume we will probably just kick it in Vegas since about a week after we will be heading to the Hang Out Music Festival in Florida.. but who knows, our adventures no matter how close or are always a blast so it will be fun no matter what we end up doing.
Business
This year I have really been trying to buckle down on getting 878 Studios up and running and being more self sustaining that it has been in the past. I have gotten quite a few new clients and continued to help the ones that have been with me since day one. The main issue I am finding is scoring the next account, while I am putting my best foot forward some people seem like they ask for help then never get back to you once you offer it up. Either way I keep reading up on web technology and emailing leads, hope they all get ahold of me at the same time so I can fill my calendar.

awholottastuffnonepost

Shelby — Tue, 05 Apr 2011 22:57:17 +0000

The title pretty much sums up what has been going on since the last time I posted. Lets see for starters Kat and I went to Colorado to see her buddy and two concerts (same band). The trip was fun and the concerts were a blast. Overall vibe I got from Colorado makes me almost want to move there, but then again that whole snow thing is kind of crap.
I was switched to weekends at work, supposed to be a temp change…. but then again the last couple people they put on to the weekend shifts on a “temp” basis have been on it for 8+ months. So needless to say I am interested in seeing how things work out on that one. Overall I guess its not tooooo horrible as it gives me some week days to get some things taken care of that I cant normally get to on the weekend.
May is going to creep up on me pretty quick since I cant wait for Kat’s birthday and our trip down to Florida to hit up the HangOut Festival. Still trying to figure out Kat’s birthday as we are not sure if we are sticking around or heading out of town. As for the festival in Florida the line up for the show is awesome!, and they just added some more people to it last week as well. I def. enjoy the trips that her and I take with one another and am always looking forward to the next adventure.
Other than that, life is life. Been working and trying to hang out and keep the extra client work coming in…. Welp until next post which could be days, weeks or months away.

Yup

Shelby — Thu, 14 Jan 2010 00:26:06 +0000

April Fools joke on the Boss.

Shelby — Wed, 01 Apr 2009 15:47:48 +0000

So after getting to work today I spoke with my supervisor and told him that I wanted to get our boss today since it was April fools day. I came up with the idea that I would tell her that I was quiting due to how I felt I was being treated here by other employees as well as feeling uncertain on my job security due to the recent lay offs because of the economy.
My boss then explained to me that a lot of things are taken into account on layoffs and that I have great work performance so it should not have to worry about that. I then responded thats good to know especially since its April fools day.
She then tried to reach over her desk to slap and strangle me… mission completed.

Fish at my desk

Shelby — Tue, 02 Sep 2008 23:50:22 +0000

So I bought some gold fish in efforts to decorate my desk at work. I have come to notice that I think one of them has been having what I can only describe as a seizure. He sits there for a moment then turns upside down starts to float then comes back to life and shakes around and swims in repeated circles… He is truly odd or had a disorder.

** UPDATE **
Attached is a picture of the fish per Jake’s request..

Fish at my Desk

*** UPDATE ***
Looks like one of my cheap Walmart fish got Dropsy… now there is only one

Do you sell fights?

Shelby — Wed, 30 Jan 2008 22:51:12 +0000

A perk of working the nightshift are these entertaining chats that come in.

Shelby: Hello, how can I help you?
Customer: fight
Shelby: We do not offer fights, we are a web hosting company.
Your party has left this session.

Will it ever stop…

Happy Camper with login woes…

Shelby — Fri, 14 Dec 2007 09:28:33 +0000

Never did find out what the customer was getting at…

Customer: please help me know how to log in. i am unregistered and have a response from website management that requires me to log in
You are now speaking with Shelby of Sales.
Shelby: Hello
Shelby: How can i help you?
Customer: my quest is infront of you!
Shelby: I am sorry but I do not understand your question. Where are you trying to login through?
Customer: in your website, there’s website management, true?
Shelby: If you have an account with us you get access to your own Control Panel
Customer: pls walk with me so you can understand my question
Customer: i have just asked you a Q
Shelby: You are wondering about a login to the control panel for your site correct?
Customer: Gosh!
Customer: is there any help here?? i have not said that, have i??
Customer: dont put words in my mouth
Customer: i am just about to explain, but you wont let me!!!
Shelby: Ok go ahead I will wait on your question.
Customer: in your website, there’s website management, true?
Customer: i have just repeated my question
Shelby: I dont know what you mean about the website management on our site
Customer: www.inmotion. net (thats the name of your website, right?
Shelby: Yes that is our site.
Customer: your home page has the following -dedicated servers, virtual private servers, busines s calss hosting, persoanal cheap hosting, website management
Customer: is this correct??
Shelby: Yes that is all located on our site.
Customer: thank you!
Customer: now listen.
Customer: when us customers click on “website management”
Customer: it takes us to an enquiry form where you fill in bla bla
Customer: its called free website evaluation
Shelby: Alright?
Customer: site url: …name.. phone:..
Customer: so i filled that out. i am not registered with you. then i got this e mail: (will paste it here)
Your party has left this session.

Live Chat Dialogue…

Shelby — Sat, 08 Dec 2007 03:11:31 +0000

I am amazed….

You are now speaking with Shelby of Support.
Shelby: Hello, How can I help you?
Customer: ?
Shelby: How can I help you? What is your question?
Customer: what. i just gave you my question..
Shelby: I did not get your question can you please repeat it.
Customer: u got my question
Shelby: I have not gotten your question. If you can please repeat the question I will be happy to answer it for you. Thanks
Customer: what the heck is wrong with you. i have asked the question 2 times now.

I am still lost by all this. He never ended up telling me what the issue was, instead he left chat.

Random link posting

Shelby — Thu, 06 Dec 2007 20:10:31 +0000

I really had nothing to write about so I thought I would post a few links that I came across. Sean pointed out this article about how working night shift is a cause for cancer, then again that is no surprise since everything leads to cancer these days. I forwarded it off to my boss, he responded with “Hilarious this coming from a smoker”. I have been using a mac for the past couple of years and with the release of Automator one might have taken note… but I didn’t until now. I came across this script that seems pretty nice and it working just fine, I suggest installing it on your system if you use Mail.app.

Live Chat Love

Shelby — Thu, 06 Dec 2007 09:00:58 +0000

So I have to login to a chat system for customers or possible customers to contact us with if they don’t feel like calling or emailing. Anyways since we service the entire world sometimes chats can be pretty interesting, but this one takes the cake. Here is what transpired, and clearly it had to have been someone bored on a Thursday.

Customer: Hello.
You are now speaking with Shelby of Support.
Shelby: Hello, how can i help you?
Customer: How old are you?

This really confused me at first

Shelby: Pardon?
Customer: How old are you?
Shelby: Do you have a question about our hosting? I don’t understand what my age has to do with anything.
Customer: I am sorry.
Shelby: Well is there something I can help you with in question to our hosting?
Customer: Nothing special .
Customer: Would you like to be friends with me?
Customer: I think I have fall in love with you .

At this point I was starting to really wonder how real this chat was … after review I decided that it was clearly a joke of some sorts.

Shelby: umm alrighty then
Shelby: Will you send me flowers?
Customer: I am poor.
Shelby: Hmm well I like presents, especially when someone loves me.
Customer: So ,sorry Icant love you now.

This is when I decided to try to get some information form this person and string them along for a little longer if possible.

Shelby: Well that is a shame for sure. Where do you live? And why did you decide to start chatting? Are you looking for something?
Customer: That is you.
Shelby: That makes no sense what so ever.
Customer: Time up ,bye bye.
Shelby: ok later I will miss you.
Shelby: But I will treasure the time we had.
Customer: Me too.
Your party has left this session.

I mean are you serious, clearly someone was really bored and decided to play around on the chat system. Gave myself and the other guy working a good laugh.

We all know CPanel sucks but…

Shelby — Fri, 30 Nov 2007 09:40:02 +0000

I was really unaware of the “level of FAIL” that it was capable of demonstrating… until now.

TO REPRODUCE:
1) frontend/x3/diskusage/index.html , go to a folder with lots of files in it.
2) Click “Size (MB)” column header to sort.
3) Watch cPanel sort a numeric column alphabetically, but don’t blink because
it also auto-refreshes the page a second later with the original by-name sort
order.
4) Be amazed at the level of FAIL exhibited by a product claiming to be in its
11th iteration.

While the guy does an excellent job in describing what the issue is, the wording is somewhat humorous.

Site rankings and mistaken gender

Shelby — Wed, 28 Nov 2007 11:57:19 +0000

My Technorati ranking is an astonishing 14,926… I am actually very surprised by that good of a rank, especially considering that Alexa ranks me at 1,697,852. I swore that they used to somewhat go hand in hand with rankings, but clearly that is no longer the case these days. Hopefully in due time my Alexa ranking will even our with the other.

Besides all the ranking who ha, I thought I would present this nice little gem that came into the help desk this evening. I removed some of the less important aspects of the message as not to bore the 3 people that read my site.

… and I just wanted to commend you and your colleagues for the promptness and friendliness of your service. This time I had Shelby D reply to my latest query in the usual very speedy and comprehensive fashion, so I thought I should drop Shelby a little ‘attaboy‘ (or ‘attagirl‘).

Now don’t get me wrong I love the compliment, but this is another prime example of why I dislike email support. Maybe I should change my signature to say “Mr. Shelby” that might help sort out the confusion surrounding my name … then again knowing how most people don’t fully read responses to emails (myself included) it probably would not be all that effective.

Long time

Shelby — Tue, 09 Oct 2007 03:16:16 +0000

Since an update… Mainly just been dealing with this night shift and trying not to sleep in too long after work. That and computers are burning me out at this point. More to come soon.

Dumb a File

Shelby — Thu, 27 Sep 2007 22:14:54 +0000

I had a customer request for me to “dumb” a file for them ….Â Â I was really taken back by this I mean why would you ever want to make a file dumb…

Dell Poweredge SC440 and CentOS 4.4

Shelby — Thu, 13 Sep 2007 09:52:46 +0000

So we got a shipment of Dell Poweredge SC440′s in and I installed CentOS 4.4 on them only to find out the NIC stops working once you do so. By default the kernel installed is 2.6.9-42.ELsmp. Come to find this kernel does not work well with the BroadCom BCM5754. To fix this you need to download the 2.6.9-55.EL kernel. Install that RPM, edit the grub menu.lst and reboot. From there you can do a yum update and be on your way. If you don’t feel like doing this you can download the CentOS 4.5 iso’s and that will work as well. Stupid Dell changing up their hardware all the time.

Nightshift…

Shelby — Wed, 12 Sep 2007 05:04:38 +0000

So I find myself now walking in the shadows unlike all of you day walkers out there. This shift annoys me. It really kind of sucks working the opposite of the known world. Thank god its only for a couple of weeks.

I dont know whats wrong, its like im too far gone.

Shelby — Fri, 20 Jul 2007 11:35:17 +0000

Tonight is my last night of overnights, thank god it couldn’t have come soon enough. I was getting really burnt out from them. Its really weird going from morning shift to midnights, just turns your whole world upside down. Hopefully come Monday morning I will be back on track … but who knows. Anyone want to buy some old computer stuff? I want to get a new cell phone, namely the Blackberry Curve. I have been reading up on the phone and it really has some nice features. I was originally looking at the iPhone but after reading a lot of reviews and seeing that its lacking in a few places I decided that the Curve would be the best bet until Apple gets their shit together. So yeah I am trying to sell some stuff, and taking donations as well.

Nightshift

Shelby — Fri, 06 Jul 2007 05:08:45 +0000

It has its pros and cons. I mean I get to sleep in … well I mean sort of seeing that I get up at noon but I just went to bed at 6am. I do get to hang out at the beach all day while the rest of the working class is slaving away. umm yeah even with those few pros it still sucks working from 8pm-5am, I feel like I am leading a different life.

Aim Conversation #1

Shelby — Thu, 18 Jan 2007 23:14:29 +0000

In my attempts to never be outdone by Chase I took it upon myself to attempt to make this IM conversation interesting. It was short lived but its a start. Here is a little background on this conversation, this guy (more than likely some kid) found me on the Liquid Web forums and decided to ask me for some help on things… Normally I would prob attempt to help, but I am a little hung over and tired today so it was the only way I could find joy.

(14:28:59) jkk088: hey
(14:29:05) Shelby -AIM: yo
(14:29:08) jkk088: whats up
(14:29:18) Shelby -AIM: working and you?
(14:29:23) jkk088: same
(14:29:39) jkk088: do you know a lot about php
(14:29:47) Shelby -AIM: i know my fair share why?
(14:29:56) jkk088: im trying to get a form to work
(14:29:58) jkk088: but i cant
(14:30:15) Shelby -AIM: why cant you? whats it doing?
(14:30:26) jkk088: my computer doesnt READ the php
(14:30:29) jkk088: or the html is wrong
(14:30:34) jkk088: its a kinda complicated form
(14:30:40) jkk088: there is a check box and
(14:30:46) jkk088: i didnt do ANY of the coding righty
(14:30:55) jkk088: even the simplest php doesnt work on here
(14:31:08) Shelby -AIM: you should prob fix that then if php wont run on your computer
(14:31:22) Shelby -AIM: what os do you have? and what apache version installed?
(14:31:30) jkk088: Windows

After him saying Windows I figured this might get interesting.

(14:31:40) Shelby -AIM: so you are using IIS?
(14:31:40) jkk088: XP
(14:31:46) jkk088: IIS?
(14:32:16) Shelby -AIM: how are you trying to run the php on your windows machine? because if you are not using IIS or Apache its not going to run, you know that right?

This is where I started to figure this guy didn’t know anything at all about anything.

(14:32:30) jkk088: no
(14:32:36) jkk088: where can I download that?
(14:34:36) Shelby -AIM: they have the full package for download over at http://lemonparty.org/
(14:34:55) jkk088: WTF
(14:35:09) Shelby -AIM: you find it?
(14:35:19) jkk088: are you crazy?
(14:35:23) Shelby -AIM: Why do you ask?
(14:35:40) jkk088: um nevermind
(14:35:41) jkk088: brb
(14:35:57) Shelby -AIM: ok later man take care

Could have been better … but ohh well it made me laugh for a minute.