Oi! UPS! Where’s me flipping stuff!!

OK getting impatient now, UPS are supposed to be making a delivery to me today. Their site tracker says it’s currently on a van somewhere in Edinburgh.

What it won’t tell me that “Bob the driver” is currently on an extended lunch break, smoking copious amounts of nicotine and supping tea. So Bob if you are reading this, remove your thumb from where it shouldn’t be, get your arse in gear and deliver my stuff!!!

Granted he has until 7pm to deliver so knowing my luck he will roll up at 6:59:59 with a grin on his smug face. At this point I shall have to resist the urge to show him a new use for a 30″ carbon arrow (he’s delivering archery bits n bibs you see)

Calm…

Patience…

Etc….

Domains and where to purchase…

A subject I see coming up quite a bit on business forums is never buy domains from the same company as your host. Now for the “kiddie” hosts who answer support tickets when they get home from school this may be true but for other business like ourselves this doesn’t hold water..

You know just as a test I have just been to Godaddy to make a trial purchase of a .com and what a faff on it is!

The checkout is very confusing and they do an almighty job of trying to add additional extras onto you.

When you finally get to the end, the price comes in at £6.59 for a one year .com registration. Obviously there is no VAT as they are a US company but this price will fluctuate with the exchange rate so you will not know how much it’s going to cost you to renew.

Now ours are registered through eNom which is the second largest registrar in the world for £7.99/year which ex-vat (if you’re vat registered) is £6.94 so 35p difference and you register with a UK company that actually have a good customer service record

In addition they charge for transfers in, we don’t…

I know domains are one of those point and forget things but what about when something goes wrong such as the domain not being renewed or worse still, being hijacked; which has happened to GoDaddy customers in the past.

Turning to 123reg for UK domains, they proudly state domains are £2.99 per year and don’t obviously advertise the facts that the price is subject to VAT and is also a two year registration. So a full registration would cost £6.88 inc vat whereas we are £7.98 a whopping £1.10 over two years more expensive

They, as we are, are members of Nominet so they get charged exactly the same for UK domains as we do. Interestingly their .com is £9.99 + vat

So onto protection…

Lets say we go bust today. There is more chance of me giving birth to twin headed alligators but I digress..

For all non-uk domains, eNom would be able to step in and allow you to manage the domain, move to another provide just by contacting them. Their response time is about 4 hours which for a multi-national is unheard of.

For UK domains, Nominet would be able to update the IPS tag in about ten minutes after a phone call allowing you again to move the domain.

Protection all round…

So to summarise, for the sake of a few pence per year you are going to a multi-national company, both of whom do not have a crystal customer service record and there is absolutely no risk whatsoever from buying from the “little guy” as long as you have done your research.

Domain name registration

Multiple VPN connections and Windows Server 2003

This one had me totally stumped for a couple of hours…

OK I’d setup a VPN server on Windows Server 2003 Web Edition which is something I’ve done before a number of times using RRAS (Remote Routing and Access Services), set my VPN user up and allowed them access to the server…

Went to the client computer, set the VPN connection up and tested. Bingo, connects straight away, I could map the drives etc all without a problem…

Now I then setup a second user on the VPN server for access and setup a separate computer to connect to it.

Erm… No dice. I kept getting a vague 651 or 800 error message being sent back which indicated that I couldn’t connect to the server.

I found then that if I disconnected the first client and tried connecting with the second client all was hunky dory so it was only allowing one connection at a time. After several hours googling and a chat with the data centre we established something that I (nor they) had come across before in that Windows Server 2003 web edition only allows one incoming VPN connection! The solution is to upgrade to Standard edition when the limit is raised to 1,000….

This little nugget of info is buried deep amongst the tech notes and is not really the first place you would check.

Now had I got an error along the lines of “Error code: xxx. You can only have one VPN connection to Windows Server 2003 Web Edition (you dumbass)” that would have been more helpful! Ok lose the dumbass bit but at least it would have been entertaining…

Vague error messages and response codes seem to be the hallmark of Microsoft at times so hopefully this post will help someone else out.

Numpties of the highest order….

We use one of the countries leading payment gateway services to download a small text file for updating currency rates for eCommerce stores.

This morning I downloaded 5,863 alert emails telling me the service had failed!

Logging onto their site someone has dropped a massive spanner and forbidden access to the text file! Ringing them got a “Oh thats odd, we’ll get onto it straight away” response.

Why the bloody hell do they change such critical stuff with no notice or thought?? It drives me nuts when companies as big as this just break stuff and then wait for someone to ring them. Idiots…

Now I can’t name and shame but lets say they operate a Secure environment for when you are Trading online….

And breath…

I feel better now

So true on so many levels…

The next time a web designer, graphic designer, writer or anyone else involved in a industry that regularly attracts freeloaders gets asked for a freebie saying it will enrich the designers life and make them rich and famous; show the requester this video…

I see this on a daily basis on the business forums I frequent and it gets so far up my nose it occasionally pops out of my ears! It really gets my goat that people honestly expect something for nothing and this chap sums it up very well…

WARNING! RUDE WORD ALERT SO YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED!

Hands up if you forgot the clocks went back…

OK just me then. I really can’t see the point of changing the clocks twice a year. There are some who agree with it but it does actually cause more deaths and accidents in the Winter by doing so.

I woke up this morning thinking it was 9:45 and a reasonable time to end my Sunday morning lie in. Erm it was 8:45 and now has put me in a bad mood which will most likely end at some point in March…. 2009….

So if I snap at anyone or beat people up in the street or decide a life of crime could be quite fun, I cannot be held responsible, it’s down to the bloody clocks!

Return of the Dragons Den…

If I hear this phrase one more time…

“Let me tell you where I am…”

Oh really? Please enlighten me? Are you currently hovering six foot off the floor? Currently having an out of body experience and examining your own arse?

YOU’RE SAT IN A BLOODY PONCY CHAIR IN A OLD WAREHOUSE YOU MUPPET!!!!!

…and breathe…

I thought the student party organisers were nuts to go with PJ. They looked at it from a financial point of view with a slightly better deal but I would have sacrificed more for DMs experience in the industry and in particular in that area of the country. Despite the fact that she looks like she eats lemons for breakfast, lunch and dinner…

The gold plate chap was a lucky b*****d to get away with that, I was half expecting DB to drop kick him out of a second floor window.

Beef Jerky? Regardless what they looked like, the stuff still tastes like old shoe leather so no shockers there…

And Theo, good old TP, back to his slimy, pandering, irritating best as the snail of the den. God I hate the man…

and God I love this show!!!!

Never, ever, EVER buy a mobile from Woolworths

Unless of course for some strange reason you actually enjoy getting grief…

Four months ago my wife bought me a Tmobile phone from Woolworths as a surprise birthday present. Great I thought, lovely surprise, nice phone, thumbs up…

A week ago the phone refused to charge so off to my local Woolies I went, receipt in hand.

“Oh sorry it’s over 28 days old, you have to ring our technical support line”

“OK, can I ring them from here?”

“Nope”

All the way home, rang their “support” line…

“It’s a charger problem, you’ll have to ring Motorola”

Another national rate call later…

“Take it into Carphone Warehouse (god knows why) and they will fix it for you”

Back into the car and back into town to my local Carphone Warehouse, hereinafter known as “The Mobile Cowboys…”

“Yep it’s the charger, we can SELL you a new one for £20 or send it for repair which you MAY be charged for as the IMEI is not on the receipt…”

Now by this point I was getting pretty nicked off with the whole thing so back I went to Woolies…

“Oh sorry it’s over 28 days old, you have to ring our technical support line”

“OK, can I ring them from here?”

“Nope”

Have I slipped into a scene from Groundhog day here????? It’s the bloody charger for gods sake not the holy flippin grail!! How can it be just to swap the damn charger???

“We can’t do that as it’s over 28 days, old ring this number, blah de blah, I’m a robot etc…”

So I stormed out before I lamped the poor store manager/robot with a handy sized PS2 box…

Walking past the Tmobile shop I thought I would pop in and see if they had any spare chargers, two minutes later, all sorted…

The moral of this story? If you’re going to buy anything more complex than a pencil sharpener, DON’T GET IT FROM WOOLWORTHS!!!!

And breathe…

You know if I ran my business like this, I wouldn’t even have a business…

Goodbye Google, I’m leaving you…

My dear Google,

For many years you have been my closest ally on the Internet. You have found things I never knew existed, including things I wish you hadn’t found. You’ve been rock solid and not a drama queen in your design and simplicity. You’ve stuck by me through thick and thin…

Trouble is over the last couple of years you’ve been getting rather fat and lazy. You performance in the search department has been lacking and you keep giving me results that I didn’t ask for. You’ve got loads of friends but to be honest, they are paying to take advantage of you and leading me astray with their links…

Hell, even I paid to be one of your closest friends and all you did was bleed my credit card dry and gave me nothing in return.

You’ve stopped going to gym and have turned into a gargantuan who seems intent on swallowing up the world with you mail, stats, mapping services, all of which I have tried to enjoy with you but I can’t help feeling that you’re getting too big to fit into that streamlined home page…

So I’m leaving you. I’m not sure who will be my new search mate but they will most likely be a reflection of what you used to be; fast, accurate, streamlined and a search friend not an enemy…

Goodbye…..

There should be a law against this…

Dear Tony Blair,

Please pass a new law banning the creation of websites such as Yetisports.org

The simple reason is that the use of such sites leads to:

  1. Crankiness when you lose
  2. Excessive use of the mouse button
  3. Inability to concentrate on normal life
  4. A strange urge to have “just one more go”

and that’s just for starters…

These types of games are more addictive than crack and if you think that de-classifying cannabis was a good way to reduce addictions to harmful substances then this should fit nicely into your plans…

Thank you,

Phil “My finger hurts” Williams