November 2008
Friday, November 28, 2008
I just remembered that yesterday was my eight-year blogging anniversary. *throws imaginary confetti* Yay for me and my blog!
My mom, dad, aunt and I did some Black Friday shopping today. We didn't do anything real crazy though; no getting up freakishly early in the morning or standing in long lines. Actually, all the places we went were fairly quiet. I mean, there were still lines, but the waits weren't more than a few minutes at any of the places, so that was nice. Though, I suppose that means that perhaps not so many people are going spend-crazy this year, which is smart of them, but bad for the economy. Whatever. I try not to think about that stuff too much. I didn't spend much myself, and my parents didn't spend a whole lot either. I picked out three Christmas presents that my mom bought for me. Hehe. For the past few years I've pretty much known what I was getting before the 25th. I told my mom I'd forget. I won't, but I'll also not really think about it much and be quite happy opening them on Christmas morning. ;) I've already started my Christmas shopping, but am still waiting on some people telling me what they want. Sam and I were both way ahead of the game this year on the present front though, and her more so than me. I got my presents from her back in September, though they are still unopened. I'm being very good. ;) I sent her presents off last week.
After all the shopping was done, we met up with Kenny and his little brother at the theatre to watch Bolt. Now, I have to tangent a tad here because I started wondering about this earlier today. Kenny is my step-brother and his little brother is his half-brother, so what would his half brother be to me? Is there even a title for that kind of thing? I'm so confused. Not that it matters, it just occurred to me earlier. He seems like a nice enough boy, though. Today was the first time I've seen him in many years, but he was very polite when I gave him free soda and popcorn. Everyone liked the movie as well, and my dad even said it was okay, which means it must be at least decent since he hardly watches or likes any movies!
A pattern is emerging over the past few days. Wednesday I thought the Toyota dealership had sold me the wrong part for my car (but today dad went in with me and talked to them and it might be the right part after all, so we'll see). Then later that evening the stuff with my domain transfer (which seems to all be resolved and good now, though the old registrar still shows it in my account for some reason, but it is indeed at the new registrar... whatever). And yesterday the whole package debacle, which may now be resolved soon as her brother talked to UPS in Canada yesterday (since they didn't have a holiday yesterday) and I filled out a form that I faxed to them today. Today's issue happened when we got to the theater and I went to get my check only to find that they weren't signed. I'm making a face now just thinking about it where one eye is narrowed and my jaw is being flexed. It'd be one thing if this was a rarity, but it seems to happen quite regularly. After the movie was over, my mom asked the worker bees if the boss had come in at all during the movie to sign the checks. Nope, she's apparently gone on vacation until Tuesday, so no check until after that. If I was a cartoon character, steam would now be issuing forth from my ears. I don't desperately need my paycheck before then, but that's not the point. We're supposed to be paid on schedule unless there's some sort of emergency or something. I'm less steamed now than the initial few minutes after finding out, as it's not really a surprise, but I'm still not sure how to semi-politely express my agitation in an e-mail to her. I have a few days to think about it, though.
As for my reading, I did finish the book that had me staying up super late two nights in a row, Star of the Morning by Lynn Kurland, before Princeps' Fury came, however, I've only managed to get a few chapters in to that one since Tuesday. Part of it is the holiday and being busy, but the other part is that it's turning out to be a little difficult to get back into the world of Princeps' Fury since Star of the Morning ended so that I really want to know more... bad. The second book is already out, but I probably won't get it for a week, then the third is actually released in early January, so at least I don't have to wait too long for that, but I really want to read more. When I get a few more chapters into Princeps' Fury, I'll probably get re-sucked in to that story more, but right now it's a little difficult.
Now I shall fold my laundry that just finished up. I got a nice, soft robe on sale today, and now its all clean and ready to use. Tomorrow morning will be the test on how warm it is.
Thursday, November 27, 2008
Originally this entry was going to be quite happy and I was going to wish you all a happy Thanksgiving (still am wishing you all that), but then I just read some e-mails that have pretty much killed my day. Thankfully though, I also read a nice reply comment from Sam on her blog, so that's made me feel much better, but I'm still quite flustered over this thing. Here goes.
So, I started talking to this girl on the BSB forums at LD a few months ago and recently when I cleaned out my room I found a whole bunch of posters I didn't want anymore and decided I'd send them to her as a gift because she'd mentioned that she wanted some, but couldn't find them anywhere. So, the cheapest I could mail the thing for was $21.41 through UPS (that's after their stupid handling fees and fuel surcharge). I took it to a store in town that ships via UPS and this teenager was working. I thought he was doing a just fine job, but now I'm not so sure. I told him what was in the package so he could enter it for customs since it was going to Canada, and I told him the whole package was maybe worth a couple of bucks and that it was a gift. That means that there should be no further charges beyond what I paid for shipping. Today, however, I got an e-mail from the girl saying that they charged her $70 in Goods and Services Tax! *keels over* I told her not to pay anything if they tried to charge her (because we saw this weird message about fees in the tracking info yesterday), but she did anyway. The thing was a gift so there's no way tax should have been charged on it! Someone screwed up somewhere and I intend to find out and get her the money back because that's just freakin' nuts--$70! Her mom yelled at her over it too, so I feel like a complete shmuck, even though it's not my fault. I'm going to call UPS and ask them why the fee was incurred and based on what they say decide if I need to yell at them or at the store in town. Gah.
Aside from that, the day's been good. We were invited over to some friends from church's house and had good conversation and good food. Hope everyone else had a nice holiday. I'm sorry, I'm just down still.
The other thing I have to blog about was that I decided to transfer a domain the other day and last night noticed that my domain seemed to be "missing" in between the two registrars. It was still in my old account, but some of the info was no longer listed for it, but a whois search showed that it was now at the new registrar, though it wasn't in my control panel there. Bottom line is that it was my fault because I was impatient. After I did the transfer, I accepted via e-mail from the new registrar and got a response saying they sent off a request to the old one to do the transfer, but then I never got an e-mail from the old registrar after a few days, so I decided to re-request the transfer. Then I got some transfer failure e-mails from that and just all this other stuff. Weird. So, I e-mailed support at the new registrar last night and got a response today that it did transfer over and it's now in my control panel at least. But then I noticed that I'd been charged double for it, probably from my re-request, so now it says I owe them money. *sigh* So, I e-mailed back and hopefully they'll remove the extra charge.
Oh man, what's going on? At least I'm still alive. Now watch me catch my mom's cold or something. No, I shouldn't say that. It's not going to happen, it's not going to happen...
Addition @ 7:34 PM: I just got an e-mail that my over-charge from the domain thing was removed and my balance is now $0, which has helped make me happier. I'm simmering down. Just had to get it all out, you know?
Monday, November 24, 2008
The weekend was full of chores for me. It wasn't too terrible though, and my attitude was better than it previously was. I think we may actually be almost done! I'm not holding my breath just yet though. ;) Then, of course, we won't really be done because we have to make sure our house is clean all the time for potential buyers. I think I can deal with that okay... I hope. Heh. Anyway, today was a bit of a break as I only had a few things to do and most of it was my own stuff, which makes it less obnoxious to me somehow. I have a few more things to do tomorrow, and then my room will be set and only require the maintenance, which is perfect since it's almost Thanksgiving and the new Codex Alera book by Jim Butcher comes out tomorrow! Only thing is I'm currently in the middle of another book (which was getting so good last night that I read till 4 AM, even knowing I couldn't sleep however long I wanted afterward), so I super need to finish this entry fast and get to reading so I can start Princeps' Fury right away. I'm quite excited for it, so I hope it doesn't let me down.
What else to say? Oh, I actually got to chat with Sam on AIM the other day for a while. I've been so busy and not online when she's awake that we hadn't had a chat for well over a month, I believe. And this one wasn't real long, but at least it was something, and we should be able to chat more again soon, which will be nice.
Can't think of anything else to blog about, so I shall say farewell and get to reading. Since I started to enjoy the book so much last night, and was thinking about the setup of where it's going, I decided to look and see if there was a second one out, and there is, so I ordered a copy. A third one comes out in early January, too. Hopefully the ending of this one won't let me down. Off to find out!
Friday, November 21, 2008
Today has been very busy for me, though at least some of it was the fun kind. I woke early--a half an hour earlier than I wanted because people were making noises outside--and went to work to run-through Bolt, which I built last night. I also broke down a movie last night and the day before I built one and broke down another and today I not only did the run-through but went back later to break down another movie again. Holy cow! Anyway... Bolt is a great movie! I thoroughly enjoyed the story and the animation, which was really well done. There are some very funny bits as well and since I had the theater to myself, I laughed as loud as I wanted! :D Definitely recommend that one.
After that I drove fast to another theater to watch Twilight. I couldn't help myself. I knew it was going to be bad, but I just had to see it still, you know? Since I went in thinking it would be absolutely horrible, I came out with more of an eh toward it. They definitely didn't transition from book to screen very well, but it wasn't the worst movie I've ever seen. Certainly it was not nearly as bad as the book-to-screen adaptation of Eragon, during which I contemplated walking out of the theatre about every 15 minutes and have never watched again. With Twilight, it wasn't real good, but I never considered getting up to leave and I'd probably watch it again some day, though I won't be buying it. I'll be sticking with the book version and my opinion of how it should be. This next paragraph will be me commenting on things in the movie; fair warning.
No offense to Robert Pattinson (who plays Edward in the film), but I totally don't think he portrayed the character quite right. It wasn't just him either, I don't think the other vampires were portrayed very well either, though admittedly they weren't in the movie very much. The only vampire I felt was close to the book character was James. Anyway... back to the portrayal of Edward. There is a scene where he turns and walks away from Bella and he's slouching! He would so never slouch! He also smiles too freely much of the time (which is not entirely bad because Rob has a pretty smile... but still), and at one point he casually throws his arm over Bella's shoulder when they are walking into the school. So not his character! As to be expected, their first kiss was overboard from the book. He went on too long and was way more passionate than Edward was able to handle the first time, and I heard somewhere that Stephanie Meyer had them re-shoot that to play it down, so I wonder what it was like before. Most of my nitpicks are to do with character details, attitudes and mannerisms. Those things are very important for this though. I was also disappointed in how much junk they added that's not in the book and how much that is in the book that they left out. Since I've got some knowledge in the area of screenplays I perfectly well understand that some things need to be changed when moving from a novel to a movie, however most of the movie adaptations I've seen have done a crappy job at transitioning while keeping integrity to the story. One GOOD example is the recent The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe. I read the book just a few days before I saw it and was fabulously amazed at how well they kept to the book. They did make some changes, but there were minor and wherever they deviated from the line of the story, they always came back to it at just the right spot to continue on as though they hadn't deviated. There's proof that it can be done, they can keep story integrity from a book and make an amazing movie. Most of them just don't, apparently. My last thing I'll mention in this entirely too long paragraph is that I thought the sparkling effects for Edward looked really lame. That all being said, I wouldn't stop someone who was interested in seeing it from doing so at least once.
The rest of my day was spent running errands. I had to go to a Toyota dealership to get a fuse for my car, but they didn't have one in stock and I didn't feel like driving further to get to another one, so I just had them order me one and I'll pick it up when next I head out that way. *sigh* Maybe in a week or something my car will finally work again. I'm getting sick of driving my dad's car. Pretty much, I hate it because visibility out the back when I'm trying to back up is bad, there are way too many blind spots, and it annoys/freaks the crap out of me. I want my car back. *pouts*
I also went to ship some packages today, two of which went off fine, but the third caused many problems. At the post office the lady told me it was going to cost over $25 just to ship it up to Vancouver, B.C.! I was like, "isn't there a cheaper option?" She told me know, but I think she had no idea what she was doing because when I looked at the USPS website the other night it said there was an option that was like $10 less. So, I told her never mind and took the package back. I later tried to send it via UPS, which would only be just over $16, but they require you to have the recipient's phone number, and I have no clue what that is. Lame. Not sure what I'm going to do about mailing it yet; at least it's not time-sensitive.
I took down all of the movie posters in my room last night, and I must say my room looks pretty darn sad and depressing now. At least my wall colors are pretty, but everything's bare and sad. I did pick up a frame for a nice watercolor painting I bought a while ago when I was at Michaels today, so I'll hang that up soon, but that's not going to take up a whole lot of space. *sigh* Hopefully our house will sell fast. Then I'll just have to wait another three months after that until our new house it built before I can have my posters up again. I'm not going to cry.
No more North and South episodes for me to watch now as I finished them off the other day. Book 3 is definitely not my favorite. Suddenly Ory has a brother he never had before and evil Bent is somehow alive after being in a barn filled with gunpowder when the whole thing exploded (I'm not buying it either). Then they kill the nice Irish lady, too? Grr. And then they kill some other really good characters in horrible ways. Double Grr. My only consolation is that it's briefly mentioned that Brett and Billy are living happily ever after in California.
Now, a few more chores and then some sleep, which I haven't been getting enough of lately.
Sunday, November 16, 2008
I do not recommend going to see Appaloosa. If you absolutely love westerns, then you may want to go, but I'm personally glad I didn't have to pay to see it. It wasn't a horrible movie, just really slow moving with some moronic character moments. One thing I did like was that it was sort of a secret comedy, but no one else in the theater seemed to consider anything funny so I quietly giggled to myself. My favorite character was Everett because he had a good vocabulary, among other things. I also thought the character of Mrs. French was obnoxious and gave women a bad name. And Virgil still wanted her... I totally don't understand (and you probably don't either if you haven't seen the movie, so feel free to ignore my ramblings here).
Earlier today I went and met Karen for lunch at Red Robins. I ordered this turkey sandwich on a croissant which turned out to be really good. I may have to start going to Red Robins more often now that I've discovered something I actually like. Haven't been eating any red meat for a while, so a regular burger was out, and I used to like their rice bowls, but recently they changed them and the new ones are gross. Anyway, food aside, Karen and I had a great time chatting, as usual. We're going to try and go see a musical in the next few weeks. Hopefully it will work out and won't be too expensive.
After lunch and before the movie, I went in to Office Depot to get a poster board-sized BSB collage I made back in '99 laminated. I totally should have done that years ago, but I only thought about it on a previous trip to Office Depot when I heard a lady asking about it and I was like, "they do laminating? Humm." While I waited for it to get done, I went browsing around the store. Looked at laptops and pens (though I actually refrained from buying the latter, which is amazing), and then I found my way to the clearance bins. I found a pad of Post-It notes (the actual brand too, not a crappy knock-off that doesn't stick well) in one of the $1 or less bins. I figured someone had thrown it in there by mistake because that seemed like too good of a price, but I figured I'd take it up to the register and see how much it rang up for. Then I found some computer chair mats on sale, so I was looking at those since my current one has cracks in it. I thought I found a nice one for $16, so I pulled it off the shelf it was on, and then pulled down a second. When I went to put one back, I thought I'd straddle it so I could lift the end easier. Only problem was that my foot landed on the mat, not the carpet, and the mat was partially on the other one, and they were the kind that don't have the pointy grips on the bottom. So, I sort of did the splits (not all the way, thank God), and then fell on my butt. Intelligent, yes. I laughed it off though, as I was not seriously hurt, and thankfully no one embarrassed me further by coming over and asking if I was okay.
After that I thought it was best to see if my collage was done being laminated and check out. It was finished, and it looks awesome. It's so shiny now, and the colors actually look more vivid, however that worked out. I told the guy my thoughts on the Post-Its, and when he did the price check they came up as 14 cents. Yup, 14 cents. "I'll take them!" What a deal man. I should have run back to see if I could find any more. Oh well. The chair mat ended up not being on sale (I must have been looking at the wrong label), so I didn't get that. But here's something that amused me greatly: when he handed me my receipt he said, "okay, you've got your sticky notes, and there are your boys." Like I said, it amused me greatly, his choice of words. My boys? I wish.
Yesterday I got more accomplished in the cleaning, downsizing, and packing of my room. There is still more yet, but at least the dent is increasing. I could go faster at it, but I'm going through a lot of stuff I haven't looked at in years to evaluate if I want it or not. The more stuff I can get rid of, the less I'll have to pack and move. I might be around half-way finished, I think. It's a little hard to judge that though. Soon I shall have to take down all of my movie posters and then my room is going to be freakishly bare. I shall not like that. I have one painting that I can put up that's "acceptable," but other than that, my walls are going to be bare for a while. Already the hole from the BSB collage is freaking me out.
I think, now, that I shall go watch an episode of North and South, even though I'm tired and it'll end past when I should go to bed. I'm now on "book 3," which I've only watched once before, when I originally got the DVD set. I saw the series on TV a few times prior to that, but apparently had never seen the last "book," and when I did I found I didn't like it much because characters I really like get killed off. We'll see if it bothers me any less this time around.
Thursday, November 13, 2008
I'm continuing to have busy days, and no sign of it letting up just yet. What the heck is going on? I used to not leave the house for days and now I'm going out almost every day... I'm having to do laundry too much. It's nuts I tell you, nuts. Okay, so it's not real bad, but it's a definite adjustment for me and I think I could do with being a little less busy, but will likely have to wait until the month is out before that happens. At least some of my busy is fun stuff as well. Much of it has been cleaning and prepping the house for sale, but there's been other things.
Tuesday was group, at which we finished our study of James. I'm kind of glad. I like a lot of that book, but I just wasn't feeling it the last few weeks and it felt like it was throwing a lot at me. Anyway, next week we're watching a video and then discussing it, so yay for media.
Yesterday Emily came over do do some work for my mom and earn some extra cash, and then afterward she went with my mom and I to the pool. We did some laps and Emily and I had a few competitive ones in good fun, which I lost all of. But not by much! Then, after a while, the shallow end was empty enough by the basketball hoop, so we played one-on-one. I kept slipping on the bottom, but at least I only fell into water so it never hurt. I lost that too... but I'm not bitter... I swear. Heh.
I've also been watching a lot of North and South since Monday. I just felt in the mood to watch the first episode on Monday and ended up watching four, then two the next day, and another two yesterday. Sadly, won't have time to day, and may not tomorrow either, but at some point I'll finish it out. I'm probably about halfway through the whole thing. It's totally nuts that spectators turned out for some of the first battles of the Civil War. They brought their kids and had picnics. I've no idea why anyone would ever think such a thing was a good idea. I suppose they were all thinking "honor and glory" rather than the truth: people dying.
Today I went to work with my mom so that I could run some errands. I took a large bag to Half Price Books and got a whopping $19.50 for it all. Well, it's better than not getting any money at all for the stuff, I suppose. The cash was gone within a few hours though. It's far too easy to spend.
I had called Andrew in the morning to see if he wanted to meet me for a last-minute lunch, but he already had plans. However, he asked me out HSM 3 was and said he still hadn't seen it. After a few calls back and forth we managed to make it work out to see it tonight. So, my mom and I got home, and then I left right away to get to the theater. When I got there, I had a little time to wait for Andrew so was standing outside. I look over at these cars they have parked up on the cement and see "Aston Martin" across the window of one. I immediately thought of Sam and when Andrew arrived shortly after, I had him take my picture by one of the cars (and I took one of him) so that I could send it to Sam.
Andrew enjoyed the movie a lot, though he didn't like the ending. I can see why, though most of it doesn't bother me as much. He agreed with me on what the top few songs of the movie were, and we spent a while freezing our butts off in the parking lot talking about it. Then I'm all, "pause for a sec... want to go to Starbucks where it's warm?" The first one we tried was closed, but luckily there was another one real close (it's Seattle, they're everywhere). They weren't open for real long, so we froze a little more toward the end, but had a very nice chat. He's just real easy to talk to.
Tomorrow looks as if it will be busy as well, though hopefully part of that will be fun busy in the form of another movie for me to see. If not tomorrow, another day. There's also a new Atlantis episode tomorrow night, but I'm not super looking forward to it because it has the Genii in it and I don't like them. I think I dislike them even more than the wraith, which is just odd. Oh yes, in the last episode Michael supposedly "died," but it wasn't a conclusive death for a wraith, so I won't be surprised if he pops up again later, though they may not decide to do that. Anyway, it's getting late now so I must be off to sleep so I can wake up at a reasonable time for tomorrow.
Sunday, November 9, 2008
I'm in a mood again. It's been happening a lot lately. Part of it has to do with all the extra stuff I'm being asked to do around the house right now since we have to get it ready to sell in a short period of time. On top of that is that my mom's legs are still hurting, meaning she needs me to do a lot of things for her. So I'm getting agitated over that, and then feeling horribly guilty because how many times has she done all this sort of stuff when the situation was reversed? Lots. Someone smack me now, please.
As was likely expected by all of you, I've already thrown in the towel for this year's NaNo. I wrote on two or three days, and that's been the end of it. I can give the above paragraph as a partial excuse, but that really doesn't cut it. On the up side, I did some research last night for a different story, so there was at least some minimal progress.
Haven't gotten paid for that website job yet. Seems like the PHP fix may only work sometimes, who knows. Plus, I need to figure out how to setup FrontPage on their computer so that they can make edits to the site on their own, which should be a non-fun adventure since I absolutely despise FrontPage. And speaking of websites for others, I turned on my computer late last night to see that both owners of the theatre had e-mailed me on Friday (when I decided to leave my computer off all day) to ask me to do an immediate update of the site. I have already explained to them before that I can do same-day updates most of the time, but they have to call me as I don't always check my e-mail and do sometimes go a day or two without turning on my computer. *sigh* So, I did the updates last night for the event that was today. Not my fault.
Anaconda 3: Offspring was absolutely terrible, and not even in the funny way like the first two. The bloody gore was way overdone and way, way fake looking. The snake behavior was different, but I suppose I can explain that away since they were experimenting on these ones. However, never before did the giant snakes have giant skewers on their tails that they used to make human kabobs at random, never actually devouring those people. Snake also bit off heads, which is so not possible. Snakes swallow their prey whole. Even if they were experimenting on the thing, I don't think that would have changed, or they at least ought to have made some mention of it or attempt to explain. Let's just say, don't watch it at all; it's not even good for laughs. As for the other movies I rented... Get Smart was funny again, and Journey to the Center of the Earth is a good romp. I tried out the 3D glasses with the last, but they didn't make things look very 3D and wigged out my eyes, so I went back to watching standard 2D pretty quick.
Maybe some cheesy lasagna will get me out of my mood. Always makes Garfield happy.
Tuesday, November 4, 2008
After the great agitation of the final e-mail from the "support" at my clients host, which I ranted about yesterday, it dawned on me that I should do a google search to see if anyone else has experienced similar problems. Man, praise God for google, the PHP manual site, and the nice person who posted the work-around that has made the forms work! :D See stupid support, my code was fine just the way it was! Apparently, there's some bug in PHP when it's run on a Windows server that causes the mail function to, well, not function. Some guy posted a one-line work-around to it and now I'm receiving the form messages, though they do take a while to actually get to my inbox, but at least they do! lol I so wanted to write back to the "support" people and rub their noses in my discovery, but I decided that was perhaps not the nicest thing to do, so I didn't. But yeah, now I can finally finish this job and get paid. Happy! :D
Last night I decided, what the heck, I guess I'll vote. I get an absentee ballot so I've had it for a while and just opened it last night. I'm sorry, but I honestly didn't have much desire to vote. Most of my ballot ended up being blank, but I voted for some of the local propositions, the president, and my state's governor. I wrote in a candidate for president. At least now all the stupid political commercials and pamphlets--Earth killers! Do you know how much paper you're wasting? At least we recycled all the ones we got--will go away. I was getting dang sick of them and didn't bother to pay any attention to them or read them. They were all just slamming their opponents, so what was the point?
While out earlier today, I rented some movies since it'd been a while. I was happy to see the grocery store had Ben Stein's Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed, which Andrew told me about the other day, so I got that one (more on that in a minute). I also got Journey to the Center of the Earth (they gave me 3D glasses, too!), Get Smart, and, because I thought it was so hilarious that they made another one, I couldn't help myself and got Anaconda 3: Offspring. LMAO I think I'll watch it tonight and try not to laugh so loud that I disturb my parents. I'll let you know how it is. ;) I did watch Expelled already today, and I found it quite interesting. I actually have a lot more to say about it than that, but I need to collect all my thoughts and write out a nice long piece.
Monday, November 3, 2008
I have to rant. I'm dealing with my client's web host right now and they're majorly ticking me off! First of all, they take way too long to reply, which is obnoxious since I'm done with the site and it's ready to go with the exception of the PHP problems I'm having with the host. For starters, it's on a Windows server, so that's not helpful in my book, but their site says they support PHP, so I activated it in the account, which seemed to work. When I went to use it a week or so later, it was giving me page not found errors. I e-mailed support and two days later received a response that they were escalating me to tier 2. Took them that long to escalate it? After a full week of waiting from my original e-mail, I got a reply that the PHP module had been successfully installed. I tested it and it seemed to work... except that the e-mail never got to me.
Now, I know my PHP code and the whole script is correct because I tested it on my own server and it worked flawlessly. Therefore, I e-mailed them explaining the problem that most of the code is executing, but for some reason the e-mail is not being sent. I also plainly stated that I had tested the script on an alternate server and had no problems. Fast forward a few days to the response. They wrote back that it must be a code error and to contact the web developer because when they went to the PHP file, they saw error text. Duh, the error text states that you did not enter a valid e-mail address into the form thus exiting the remainder of the script as a precaution against spam. Even just so I knew I wasn't being stupid, I removed all the spam checks from the code and tried a bare bones run and still got no e-mail in my inbox.
So I wrote back again. I AM the web developer, I wrote, and as I stated previously I know it is not a problem in the code because I have tested it on another server where it works flawlessly. The error you received means that no valid e-mail address was entered into the form; it's a spam precaution. Therefore, this all leads me to believe that for some reason the mail function in PHP is not working on your end. Today I got a reply.
Kindly note that the PHP feature is successfully installed for your domain, as we were able to access the phpinfo.php without any issues. Also the e-mail functionality is working seamlessly for your domain. This seems to be a coding issue which needs to be resolved at your end, since the contact.php is displaying the message "Sorry, you entered an invalid e-mail address. Please try again.". Please check the same at your end.
*fists clench as she tries to rein in her desire to respond to them with profanities* Oh my gosh. Just because the phpinfo page is displaying statuses doesn't mean that everything is working properly! It says "no value" under both columns of the sendmail properties, which doesn't particularly look good to me, though admittedly I don't know if it's supposed to say that or not. Hello losers, if you ONLY check the form processing page (contact.php) and not the HTML page with the actual form on it, duh you will get the error message about the e-mail address since you did not enter one, obviously!!! &^@*! They are freakin' no help at all! I'm totally ticked off and I'm going to strongly recommend to my clients that they either decide to use a different visual editor to make changes and sign up for DH, or that we find them some other host that supports FrontPage extensions still because their current one is utter crap.
I mean, this shouldn't be that I'm just being stupid right? If the script works perfectly on my server shouldn't it do the same on their server if it was properly configured? The knowledge I have tells me it should be so which leads me to the logical conclusion that something is not working on their end. That makes sense to you, too, right?
Saturday, November 1, 2008
Yesterday turned out to be really great, and I totally forgot it was Halloween for the most part, too, which was fine with me. Though, I ate more than enough candy for it to be that day. lol Anyway, in the afternoon I went to watch HSM 3 again, this time dragging along Emily and a girl from our college group named Jessie, neither of which were very excited to see the movie. However, they both really liked it, which was super good since both needed cheering up. Jessie just broke up with her boyfriend and after my last post, which was Thursday evening, I got a phone call from Emily that her cat had gotten hit by a car. :( She had just started to accept that she had to find a new home for her kitty because her parents didn't want it there anymore (so sad), but none of us expected that to happen. *sigh* But so hopefully the movie cheered them both up some.
Afterward, they both ditched me since they had things to do. ;) lol When I got home I called my mom and she invited me back out for dinner, so I left again. We had a very nice dinner though, and then it was back home again where I figured I'd be the rest of the night. Emily had invited me to go see another movie, but it's the kind I don't want to ever see. lol I've heard a small bit about it, and that little bit is enough to keep me away from it forever. Haha. Jessie had said she'd call later when she was done with her other plans, but I wasn't really expecting her to. I was wrong.
Jessie did call and I went over to watch movies with her. We watched Newsies, which she liked a lot, so that was cool. Then we had a good hour-and-a-half chat that I really enjoyed. I felt super blessed by it, and I hope maybe she did too. Hopefully we'll get another chance to get together again soon.
I got home a little after midnight, then proceeded to be nuts and stay up three more hours. *shakes head at self* I don't understand myself either people. ;) But, I did write a few paragraphs toward the NaNo goal since it was officially November at that point. ;)
Today I was woken up early by the phone ringing, and it turned out to be for me. They were calling about my guitar, which I had up for sale. It took a little while to finally make the move to sell it, but I figured I'm never going to play it. I shall just appreciate other people playing guitars. Anyway, they came around noon to look at it and after voicing some qualms, made me an offer for $100 less than what I was asking. I put it up $40 from there, and they said okay and bought it. I probably shouldn't have caved, but I've been trying to sell the thing for a couple months now and they were only the second call I received about it and since we're prepping for moving, it's good to get things out of the house. So, now I have a little extra money and I was able to use part of it to pay back my mom for my plane ticket to California in March. :) That makes it sound like I got a lot for my guitar, but it's really that the plane tickets turned out to be a really good deal. ;)
Guess what the next thing I did was. I went to see HSM 3 again! lmao This time with mommy since she hadn't gone yet. She enjoyed it as well, and each time I watch it I seem to like it more. I keep listening to the soundtrack and I'm totally going to buy the movie when it comes out on DVD. Seriously, it's quite well done and very creative and fun. Yes, there are some majorly cheesy parts, but what are you going to do? It's Disney and it's rated G, which is AWESOME!
The rest of my evening was mainly spent making two soups at the same time. My chicken noodle minus the chicken (it's got chicken broth, but no chicken pieces), and my first ever time making split pea soup (minus the ham). Man, split pea soup takes FOREVER. Hours, anyway. I hope it turned out good at least. I haven't had a chance to taste it yet, but my mom had some when she got home and she said it was good.
