Stephan Segraves

The obstacles that stand in the way when dealing with non-tech savvy clients who have taken a “dive-in” approach in the past is usually bigger than you expect them to be. In dealing with a recent client’s hosting needs we almost ended up smack dab in the middle of a legal confrontation between the client and their hosting provider. We took a step back, evaluated the situation and let the two sort it out themselves.

Since then the hosting company has been nothing but a thorn in our side. We have let our client know of this and there is still hope that we will move them off of this hosts servers and on to our own. I have learned a lesson though, you can never plan to the last detail. We were originally going to be stuck on a server that had an old, old version of ASP and Access when what we were planning to use was PHP and MySQL.

We were able to push the hosting company to move the sites over to a Linux server running the software we needed.

In other news, I came across the owner of Cilantro’s blog located here. Check it out. If you don’t already know Cilantro’s is a burrito grill with some similarities to Freebird’s but I would say the atmosphere at Cilantro’s is more inviting.

Tom Hanks’ new movie The Terminal comes out on Friday and I am definitely seeing it. I really enjoy Tom Hanks’ acting and I do not think there has been a single movie of his that I didn’t like.

If you haven’t heard, The Terminal is directed by Steven Spielberg and is about a man (Hanks) who gets stuck in an airport after there is a coup in his home country. The previews for it look very promising so we’ll see how it goes.

Oh, and if you are in Lubbock and want to go see it, call me.

So the Democrats do not know what they want but they know the Republicans can’t give it to them. I think they want the U.S. to become an isolationist nation again, so let’s give it to them. Let’s pull out of Iraq completely, no soldiers, no contractors, no money. We’ll pull all of our outsourced jobs out of China and India. We’ll shutdown all of our military installations around the world and move them all back home. The last step would be to close the borders and limit immigration to the extreme. Sound like a plan?

What would the effects be? We’d basically shutdown the global economy and people wouldn’t be happy, probably the same people that aren’t happy now. So what’d we gain? Nothing.

There is no solution that will please everyone and since Kerry can’t decide what policies he should have (you would think he would have thought about this earlier) I will stick with Bush.

Thanks to Patrick for setting me up with an invite to a Google GMail account. I have been playing with it and the way it lays out your mail and stores it is pretty cool. Replies to e-mails with the same subject are stored as a conversation between you and the sender, which is pretty neat.

I’ll continue to play with it and see how bad the ads are that are going to be targeted at the content of the the e-mails.

My GMail address is ssegraves [at] gmail dot com, so feel free to shoot me an e-mail.

Thanks again to Patrick.

There’s a lengthy discussion going on at Sitepoint Forums about Wal-Mart selling websites. Some folks are very worried about this but not me. If people are looking for a quick way to get a canned design up, then let them go to Wal-Mart. When they realize that there is so much more they can do with their site they will contact people in the design/programming business.

I don’t really think this idea will take off with people anyway. When businesses think websites and internet they do not think Wal-Mart. In the past Wal-Mart has been able to dominate markets by basically forcing their suppliers to drop prices. They promise to buy more (and they do) to make up for the cost difference and this has led to companies becoming dependent on the business that Wal-Mart provides. So much so that a lot of the suppliers have moved their operations to Arkansas. I really do not think that is what Sam Walton had in mind when he started his chain.

I came across this iTunes plugin that allows you to display the currently playing song. It does this by uploading an XML to the web server and you can then use PHP to parse that file and output its contents.

Now for the plugin to be fully functional a donation of $10 is required. I don’t mind donating $10 for a nifty piece of software that I do not want to program myself (mostly because the iTunes SDK is in C). So, I may just grab this plugin and start using it because it makes sense. Everytime I am doing something on the computer I am usually listening to music.

We were talking about Nascar at work on Friday and we pretty much all agreed that we did not understand the lure of the racing. I mean, yeah, it is interesting to see the end of a race or a wreck but to watch a whole race is just unbearable. The interesting thing is that Nascar is the fastest growing sport in the country.

I was flipping channels tonight and came up on the Busch series Federated Auto Parts 300, this race was rain delayed and was restarted about an hour before this post. The race will probably run till 2am CST. What really amazed me was the fact that the stands were still filled with people. It did not look like anyone left. What is the draw in this sport?

Anyone who knows the history of Nascar knows that its origins lies in bootlegging. The bootleggers would put hot-rod parts into their cars to outrun police who were trying to stop them from selling illegal homeade alcohol. Wow, what an inspiration for a sport, drinking and running from the law…

It was one of those days when you actually get a lot done but you don’t feel like anything was actually accomplished. My main project at work has been drawn out even longer because of customer prompted changes. No, they were not mistakes on our part, the customer just changed his mind (and probably will continue to change his mind) so I get more work. I am just wanting the piece of software to be complete and move on and maybe come back to it later.

There comes a point when you are working on something and you just become burnt out on it and need to start on something fresh. Well, Monday I get to start my project planning on the programming side of First Bank & Trust. Don’t worry, the site is getting a complete overhaul from our design guys while I get to program the whole dynamic side of the site. It will be a refreshing change from what I am working on now which has to be kept under wraps because of the nature of its use.

So, basically I just need a change of pace. I think everyone needs one some time or ‘nother. Maybe a road trip or something… I may head to Amarillo or Roswell just to get out of town for a weekend. Don’t know exatly what I’ll do when I get there but something different would be nice.

So my middle brother put himself on Hot or Not which for some reason is just hilarious to me. Anyway, you can see the goober here….

Most of the South Plains area and parts of New Mexico have been issued a fire warning for the rest of this week and part of next week. The dewpoints around here are supposed to drop down into the teens and single digits, meaning there won’t be any moisture in the air whatsoever.

The temperature today was around 96 but there was a strong wind which made it even worse, it felt like an oven…