Vox

New Request For Referrals

Well, the request for landscaper referrals didn't work out so well.

Still, I am undeterred.

What I need now are professionals to work with the business - specifically a financial planner and an attorney proficient in corporations (small) and/or estates.

What ya' got in the Phoenix area?

PHP Problems

I am having such a Monday.

The main issue is a PHP script I have running on one of my websites that clients use to enter payroll. I haven't changed the script or database configuration for about 2 years and it has been working just fine.

Then my web host upgraded to PHP 5 (at least that seems to be the most likely cause). Now it has completely 'broke down'

In case there is anyone reading this who is familiar with PHP, and might know what changes in the new version might have done; the error seems to be an array that is created on one page in a form, that is not getting passed to the next page to be processed. This worked perfectly last time they submitted payroll two weeks ago.

UPDATE: It doesn't seem to be passing anything I try to send through from a form, all my values are NULL even those I explicitly set - though if I type them in as a GET on the address line, they do go through.

For now I am pulling out my hair and settling in to do the whole darn thing by hand....

The Sweet Smell of Success

A person could make a killing coming up with the right smell for each potential client.

E-Mail - Love It or Hate It?

Well, both actually - just like Jim Calloway.

One of my faves:

9. If it's not worth your time to crop and compress that 7MB image, it isn't worth their time to download it.

Amen to that.

Overheard at the Office

"I want potato chips....not green beans"

Tag Clouds

Tag Crowd is a site that lets you create tag clouds for any document. Tag clouds are those clusters of variously sized words you see on many blogs and on Web sites such as Flickr. Usually, they are used to display the labels attached to blog posts or images and their frequency. But Tag Crowd does something different -- it uses tag clouds as tools for document analysis.

This could be a very useful tool in business, as Robert Ambrogi points out.

Here is the cloud for my favorite song, any guesses?

Open Access?

I downloaded OpenOffice, which has most of the applications I need, but it doesn't seem to have a database program similar to Access.

Does anyone know if I have just missed the plug-in? Or, is there is another application you could point me to?

Is It Monday?

Generally, I have Friday off from work. This week there were several circumstances that required me to be at the office today. But...

I was up most of the night last night with an emergency - it turned out OK and we got home in time for me to sleep for a few hours before I had to leave for work. Seems pretty straightforward, but....

I use the alarm on my cell phone which has all sorts off little extras, like picking what days the alarm will go off. As we were climbing into bed at 4:30 this morning I adjusted the time of my usual alarm to give me an extra hour, I checked the volume to ensure it would wake me but (hopefully) not him, I plugged it in to guarantee it had plenty of juice, but....

I forgot to change the days, which are generally set to Monday - Thursday. So, it didn't go off. So, I overslept.

Thank goodness for critters waking me or I would probably still be snoozing.

It's Monday

I had a hard time getting to work today and was later than usual....

When I started trying to key in my payroll data I found that my keyboard was messed up; no 2, no 8, no arrow keys. :-( All very important for the task at hand.

Fortunately, we had an old (grimy, disgusting, in need of cleaning) keyboard stashed away. So I cleaned it as best I could and am ready to try again.

Wish me luck.

Ideas & Applications

I have an idea for an internet application that I think could be very successful. Actually, three internet applications, but they all sort of intersect and have built off of each other.

The first one would be the easiest to put into practice, is the most straight forward, and has the most obvious income stream. It would also involve the most work and the most sales (I hate sales).

The other two I know there would be interest in, widespread and growing interest, actually. They both also make the most sense from a design stand point, as the majority of the work is done once, then simply kept up to date. They would also be more mentally challenging and rewarding. Unfortunately, though I see a large pool of users, I don't see an obvious way to monetize the application.

Do I try to work on the one I know would bring in cash, but be more tedious and less fulfilling, or one/both of the others that would be emotionally rewarding and potentially have no monetary payback at all? (Bearing in mind that working on even one additional project on top of the work I already have on my plate will be pushing it)

Looking For Suggestions

I am looking for input regarding some things I need to set up for a potential new business.

First, banking. Is there a bank that you use/have used that you have been especially happy with, particularly in the area of credit card transactions? I will need to set up for credit card acceptance and would like a direct option, rather than just going the PayPal route. However, that said, I would be interested if you have particular fondness or irritation for any of the other online payment systems like Neteller, Firepay.... I have business and/or personal accounts with Bank of America, Bank One Chase, Wells Fargo, and Washington Mutual. I am neither thrilled nor disgusted with any of them, but have not attempted the credit card step yet, so there is no telling.

Second, eCommerce solutions. I was thinking of writing this myself but figured I would look at what is already out there first. I have readily available CubeCart, OS Commerce, and Zen Cart. I am not familiar with any of them so I would appreciate any reviews from you. Or are there any free/low priced systems out there that you would recommend?

Thanks

Personal Irresponsibility

One of our largest expenses as a payroll company is workers compensation insurance, especially in our niche market. Because so many of our employees are of a "questionable" element, they tend to file a lot of claims for both compensation and unemployment. One of our tools for reducing that overhead was a discount offered by SCF for requiring drug testing in the event of an injury. They could then deny a claim if the employee was under the influence - seems pretty reasonable, right?

However, that discount is no longer available because the Arizona Supreme Court has ruled "that the state statute that barred payment of workers compensation benefits to workers who tested positive for drugs or alcohol after a work injury was unconstitutional".

So, if someone is so high that they run over their own foot with a forklift (yes, that's happened) it is not their fault and we are liable for their medical (and possibly other) bills. How does that work?

No personal responsibility at all....

My Hero

Thanks to my brother-in-law, who is not just a genius but an amazing and sweet guy, not ALL is lost. My main hard drive (the one that failed) was partitioned. He managed to pull data off the partition where I kept most of my 'stuff' - including my pictures and music ("You have 16GB of MP3s?"). Yay!!

Unfortunately, the partition which was C: had, of course, all of my programs. And my email. And all the files for my main client (which I KNOW I should have been backing up) He was unable to salvage anything off of C:

Happy, Happy, Happy that he could save what he did. Still sad about the crap I lost, though :-(

[sigh]

Doorstop

That's what my computer turned into last night. My brother-in-law, who is our resident hardware guru, was unable to save the hard drive. *POOF* - everything gone.

Four years worth of work, pictures, music, emails, applications/scripts I've written, web sites I've built......

Some I can get back from other sources; most of my music is on my MP3 player, the finalized versions of the web sites are on the server, etc. My pictures, however, will be gone forever, as will all the recent work I have been doing in Photoshop. All my PERL scripts. All my - ARGH, I just can't stand to think about it.

I looked up DataDoctors - their cheapest plan is $350. Ouch!

Two points:

• Does anyone know a cheaper solution?
• I could have avoided the hassle with an additional hard drive, which I could have gotten for less than $150. Think about that if you don't have a back-up solution in place.

UPDATE: 160GB external hard drive - $99.99. [sigh]

What Was The Question Again?

Our company is a payroll service, which makes this time of year a bit more hectic than normal. In preparation to print the W-2's we will be sending out, we are attempting to verify the Social Security numbers and names of all the employees - no small task. It is made a bit easier now that the SSA provides a verification service, and this year their turnaround is just 24 hours.

It did take me a few tries to get the formatting right for the file I submitted, but I got it, and we got the results. 5% unverifiable - not too bad. After double checking the files and correcting those we transposed, as well as trying variations based on different guesses at their poor penmanship, we knocked the number down to a more manageable 10 employees.

That's when the phone calls go out.

We got several who called and corrected the errors (e.g. "Oh, my SSN is in my married name and I got divorced and gave you my maiden name") but this voice mail takes the cake - "This is [name]. I heard that you are having trouble with my Social Security number and need it to get me my W-2. I just gave you a new W-4 with my new address [proceeds to give me her address] so I don't know what the problem is. I am leaving now but you can call me in the morning." You know, leaving your SSN might have been a good thought since that is the problem - and she even said she knew it was the problem.

It turned out (as I found when I called back and got a hold of her husband) she has been married for years but hasn't bothered to tell the social security administration. Since, according to him, she just tried to get her drivers license updated and they wouldn't do it, citing the conflict between her SSN and her name, you'd think she would have known that - and told us in the voice mail. Duh.

Or maybe I'm just cranky.

Simple Things

When she went on sabbatical, we went looking to hire some help in her absence. It took us a while to even get any applicants, apparently unemployment isn't as bad as we've been lead to believe.

We finally got TM. The job requires the most basic of computer skills and a rudimentary familiarity with Excel, Access & Word. During the interview, TM assured us she had completed classes in Microsoft Office and was very familiar with using those applications. Yeah, we should have tested her - but why would you lie about that, especially since it is so easy to disprove.

Like when I told her to hit the save button in Excel and she didn't know what it was - or even what I was talking about. It doesn't get more basic than that - never mind getting her to enter in formulas and such.

But the most irritating things are those related to her work ethic - or perhaps her age. Capitalization and grammar; non-existent. Details; dismissed. For instance, I asked her to stick some labels on file folders which ought to be pretty straight forward, but straight is exactly want they weren't. Not a little off kilter, but between 45 - 60 degrees off in most cases. How hard is it to stick labels on straight?

Seriously.

She doesn't have the skills claimed in the interview, and she can't handle the non-skilled tasks either. She may not last too much longer.

The workload is lightening, but we will probably still need to have someone part-time. It took us 6 weeks to find this one - how long will it take to find another candidate?

Escape

How do you know you have been working too much on one project? When you dream about it. When every time you wake up in the night you are thinking about it; "if I put an 'if' test there it might take out some overhead", "maybe I can pre-populate those fields", "if I index it this way it might be more efficient", "maybe he would love me if I..." (oh, wait, that's a different problem).......

What it all boils down to is, despite my looming deadline, I need a break. So I am running away from all my problems/projects and spending a couple of days up north. Sedona is one of the most beautiful places on the planet to visit, and I always manage to getting relaxed & refreshed up there.

Comments are off till I get back.

My Reputation Precedes Me.....

I work for a payroll company - well, it is actually employee leasing, but same general idea. A lot of our employees are economically challenged, even more of them are intellectually disadvantaged. This leads to MANY headaches with their paychecks.

One of our clients has been trying to help one of his/our employees get clear on the whole process which involved bringing him to the office today to pick up a check that was returned (I am amazed at how many of them don't know their own address) and sign him up for direct deposit. I have talked to this client several times before, we've worked with his company for years, but I've never met him and I wasn't in the office when they came this morning.

The client called later and, the phone having been passed to me, the conversation wwent sort of like this ~

Client: "Who is this?"
Me: "This is B"
Client: "Crazy B?"

I tried to get him to tell me why I got that moniker, but he just chuckled and moved on.

When I got off the phone, my Mom/boss said, "Did he call you crazy?" I asked her what she had told him that would give him that idea, and she denied saying anything. Then she says:

"You must have talked to him at least once for him to know that"

Duh - Note To Self

If you are working in PERL (or any scripting program, I imagine) and you are running through an if-then-else loop, make sure you are checking the right value for the parameter.

For instance; if you are testing the values ("7" "orange" "cats") & ("15" "pink" "baboons") through a loop that is designed to catch any "cats" that come through, you want to make sure your script isn't checking to see if the second value ("orange", "pink") matches the criteria ("cats").

Trust me on this, you might not get an error message, but you won't get your desired result either. It can screw you up for quite a while if you are already distracted.

Timing Is Everything

As I mentioned, most of my family have gone on a cruise (Alaska) which leaves no one in the office but me. I generally love to work this way, grateful for the total control of my environment.

The computers started acting up on Monday, just completely dragging but no clue as to why. I did the usual checks for SpyWare, AdWare and Viruses and found nothing. We managed to get through the day and I didn't think much more about it.

Tuesday they were toast - well, not the computers, the network. Here I am in the middle of a payroll with almost 200 employees waiting for checks and I can't get anything done on the payroll. It turns out the router has lost the will to route. Bummer! All the people I would normally call for help with hardware issues are on the cruise. Bummer! I call the manufacturer, DLink, and they are willing (and actually quite eager) to replace it - but it won't get here in time.

So I start my wild goose chase for a router that can handle 4 computers and a printer through the one unit.

Best Buy doesn't have what I need - and the clerks are confused about what it is I am looking for. When I say I need to replace my router they take me to the cable modems. When I finally get to the right area, they tell me that there is no such thing as what I am describing. Yeah, I am making it up - and the model number is fictitious. Their suggestion is that I get the wireless router, which I can use with cables and will be ready when I decide to go wireless. Add a print server and I am good to go. About $100. uh---no.

Circuit City, nearly the same situation, but at least the girl knew the difference between a router and a cable modem. She didn't, however, get that I didn't want to go wireless. I didn't want to reconfigure anything. I wanted a product that would meet my specifications and get me up and running NOW. She also doesn't believe a router that handles a printer even exists. Same suggestion from her, buy the wireless product because eventually we "will want to go wireless" and either add a print server or share it through one of the computers. Not efficient and not economical. $80 - $100.

Fry's Electronics - hallelujah. Not only did they have the exact product, they had several in stock. He didn't try to upgrade me. He didn't suggest I was not getting the right product for my needs. I was in and out quickly, back to the office and working in a flash (well, if you don't count the wasted stops and the driving time....) $50.

Payroll processed, checks printed with time to spare last night.

Thank you to DLink and Fry's for their great customer service. Thank you to Fry's for the depth of their product selection.

Brain Fog

I used to work a lot with PERL, I love PERL - but I haven't used it much lately and I am way rusty.

The company I did my most intensive PERL work for just contacted me today for some help. They had me come in for some contract work about 3 years ago and I was rusty at that point, now I am way under par. They also work in Linux, which I haven't gotten near since the last time I worked for them - so that is somewhere else my skills are lacking.

I would love to go in and help them out - I liked working for the company and I love the $$$ they would send my way. Unfortunately, having clarified what it is they need to have done, I don't think I am up to the task. If they were to hire me for a long term project, I would jump at it. What they need is someone who can get in, get it done and get out. I would take far too long to get back up to speed.

Busy B

We had to convert to a new software version at work. Although it is from the same company whose product we have used for nearly 20 years, it is like a whole new animal. Between trying to learn it, fighting to get it to work, working on making our old systems interface with the new, etc...not much time for blogging or even reading blogs.

I think I got rid of the major problems this week. Now if I can get two more formulas to work, we are set.

UPDATE: Formulas are working - we'll see how they do on Tuesday

Frustration

It has been too long since I worked in PERL - I am having to look up the most basic things.....

ARGH!

OK, back to work

unHELPful

I am still working on setting up Direct Deposit for our payroll company. Unfortunately, our payroll program has many problems - the newest I discovered is the fact that is doesn't work with any of the direct deposit processing programs. Bah!

But, that isn't today's headache. Today's headache is trying to figure out how to enter the information for employees who choose to participate through the banks online service. There is nowhere obvious on the site - so I spent a very long time searching through the maze. No luck.

Even tried their help button..but it only offers help for the functions on the page you are on. If you don't know where you need to go you are out of luck.

I found a place where you can edit information for participants you already entered - but not enter new ones. ARGH! But the help here mentions entering new participants - hooray!

Um, no - psyche! It says, to enter a new participant go to the "Participants Data Entry" page and it's a link. To a page that tells you what is on the "Participants Data Entry" page. Not how to get there.

I.am.going.to.scream.

Note To Self

If you plan on working at home overnight, it is important to let your co-workers know. Otherwise they turn off the computers and you can't dial in.

Way Too Funny, Way Too True

Found this over at House of Snark, haven't we all seen this style of management...?