Entrance to the EAA AirVenture 2008

My husband and I recently treated our kids (and ourselves) to the EAA AirVenture 2008 in Oshkosh, Wisconsin.  It was a lot more exciting than your average weekend family outing.  The day we went, it was waaaay too hot to walk through the entire grounds.  Buy the time we reached the Warbirds area, we were melting.  Luckily, a storm blew past in the afternoon to cool us down, so we stayed to see most of the air show… which, by the way, was fantastic.

They call the EAA AirVenture “The World’s Greatest Aviation Celebration”, and they’re not kidding.  There was so much to see and do that it was almost overwhelming.  We missed some things including the museum, but it didn’t really matter.  There were plenty of vendor exhibits, aircrafts on display, demonstrations, videos, workshops, and the like to keep a person busy for days.  For $40 you could even go on a helicopter ride, and $55 would get you on a Tri-Motor flight.  B17 rides were available for a whopping $425.

Here are a few pictures of the air show…

These parachuters carried the American flag and trailed red smoke behind them as they descended to the ground.

A Navy plane being pulled down the runway.

"The Collaborators" - They skillfully created patterns in the sky.

I was really excited to see not one, but TWO women pilots showing off their stuff in the air show!  Aviation is one of the last strongholds men have as a profession in the U.S.  Or, in this case, I’m not sure if this is their profession, or if it’s more like a serious hobby.  I was also surprised to learn that one of the women, Chandy Clanton, is actually close to my age (30 something) and a stay at home mom raising two kids.  Go, girl!  :) 

Here’s an awesomely futuristic gadget (see below).  For $100,000, you can buy your very own Martin Jet Pack.  According to their website at http://www.martinjetpackusa.com, the first customer deliveries are expected in late 2009.

The Martin Jet Pack

Cool stuff! I would've been even more impressed if this guy had demonstrated for us.

 Another one of my favorites is this aircraft by Sadler.  http://www.sadleraircraft.com/ 

This experimental aircraft by Sadler is called the Vampire.

U.S. Coast Guard helicopter

Well, that’s about it.  I wish I had more photos but the camera seemed to be malfunctioning due to operator error.  LOL  Have you ever flown an aircraft?  Or rode in something special?  I’d love to hear about your experiences.

Being the curious and resourceful web geek that I am, I immediately Googled “Hands for Heart and Soul” and came up with www.handsforheartandsoul.com.  The website only lists the basics: a short description of services, phone number, street address, and contact email.  The rest still displays the default fill-in text <gasp!> left there as part of the original web page template.  :( 

As I read the brief website description, a phrase caught my interest: “Lomilomi massage therapy”.  Lomilomi? What’s that? I wondered.  Another quick search… lomilomi (also spelled as two words, i.e. “lomi lomi”) is a Hawaiian style massage.  In fact, “lomi lomi” means “rub rub”.  <<Correction:  After reading this blog post, Kim has informed me that “lomi lomi” actually means “to break up into little pieces with your fingertips”.  Thanks, Kim!>>  There’s a lot of history and culture behind lomilomi, so I’ll let you do your own reading if you so wish.  This article on Wikipedia is a good place to start.

Having never been to an actual “real” massage establishment before, I wasn’t sure what to expect during my first visit.  I called well in advance to schedule my appointment with Kim, the owner.  She informed me that evenings book up quickly, so it’s a good thing I’d called early.  She was also very patient with me as I asked about a zillion questions.  The major one in my mind was, clothes or nudity?  I’d heard from other sources that nudity is optional, and Kim confirmed this with the added note that she insists on modesty.

The day of my first visit arrived.  I pulled up to the building that houses Hands for Heart and Soul, which is actually the old Westfield High School.  There was a nice big sign out front so I didn’t have to wonder if I was in the right place.  I was greeted at the door by Kim and Lucy, a blind, large-breed dog with bunny-soft white fur.  Lucy’s lack of eyesight didn’t make her skittish as I thought it might, and petting her immediately eased my nervousness.  A second dog was ushered down the hallway and out of sight by another woman, but Lucy was allowed to tag along as I followed Kim through the first door to the left.  The ”office” is really a spacious room with a large desk, decorated with an aquarium and numerous papers on the walls, and completed by a classroom chalkboard. 

After signing in, Kim led me into a second, smaller adjoining room - the massage room - and instructed me to remove my clothes and lie face down on the massage table with my face over a hole in the headrest, then cover myself with a thin cotton sheet that was spread out on the table.  She said she’d give me a few minutes, then left the room and closed the door.  The room was comfortably dark as I prepared myself, and as I got onto the table some music started playing from seemingly nowhere.  (I found out later that the artist is Dean Evenson and ended up purchasing the MP3 album “Spa Dreams” from Amazon.com.)

After that, I can’t tell you a whole lot other than to say it was absolutely incredible.  I’m not sure how to describe the various techniques used in lomilomi massage.  Kim started at my upper back and skillfully worked her way down to my feet, using kneading, rubbing and stroking motions.  She then lifted the sheet so I could discreetly turn for the front half.  The material acted as a sort of curtain to shield my body.  (I was wondering how that worked.  LOL)  She continued with the front half, starting at my neck and shoulders and again working her way down to my feet.  She ended the massage by putting pressure on the balls of my feet with her fingers, and I was surprised to realize I still felt the sensation of pressure even after she’d moved to another part of the room!  That was a pretty cool trick.  :)  After whispering to me to take my time, Kim left the room so I could dress and ready myself for the “real” world. 

Although the entire massage was extremely relaxing, I didn’t fall asleep.  In fact, I felt joyful - almost giddy - as I got dressed to leave.  And that’s a big deal for me!!!  I was so excited that I scheduled my next session for two weeks later, and it was just as wonderful as my first visit.  My entire body, or I guess I should say every muscle in my body, felt “drunk” for a couple of days afterwards.  I know that’s a weird way to say it, but after each massage my muscles were just too relaxed to be bothered with things like moving me from the couch to the bed.  Not to say that I couldn’t move, but it was more like “uh, do I have to?”.  Now if there were only a way to get dentists to offer mini-Lomilomi sessions in their waiting rooms…

If you’d like to contact Kim at Hands for Heart & Soul Wellness and Empowerment Center, I’ve posted her info below.  I hope you enjoy it as much as I have!

Hands for Heart & Soul
Wellness & Empowerment Center

314 South Thomas Street
P O Box 32
Westfield, WI  53964
608-547-3900

Contact: Kimberly Bode
Email: lomi6@verizon.net

Hands for Heart & Soul Wellness & Empowerment Center is committed to excellence and caring in providing Lomilomi massage therapy for every person who enters through our doors. We will provide a safe, stress free, nuturing environment where all individuals are supported and encouraged to develop to their highest potential as they  seek professional and personal fullfilment on their life journey.

Kimberly Bode, LMT has been a licensed massage therapist and has owned and operated Hands for Heart & Soul for 20 years as of November 2008. Kim’s area of expertise is the Hawaiian Lomilomi massage. Paraffin treatments are offered as well. In addition to her massage practice, HFHS also offers health & fitness classes that include; Cardio Kick boxing, Yoga, and Tai Chi.

Granted, their support has never been great. It would sometimes take over a day to get an answer by email, or 20 to 30 minutes on hold when calling. At times I even felt like I was training their tech support staff. When the MySQL database server was being abused by another customer on the same shared server, my site would go down with the infamous and dreaded “too many open connections” error. When I contacted support about it they acted dumb and I had to tell the tech guys several times how to reset the database. If I remember correctly, that went on for several weeks before they found the offending account holder. Since things usually ran pretty smoothly, I always believed that the features offered far outweighed these minor annoyances.

In Fall 2007, iPower started “upgrading” accounts to the new vDeck 3.0 platform. I’ve followed the transitions closely and, without getting into all the gory details about how poorly planned and implemented the whole process has been, all I can say is that this is going to be the last straw. It’s like having a boyfriend who cries and apoligizes every time he cheats. After a while it gets old and stops sounding sincere. Well, iPower, you can drag your bum *** back to your other customers, because I’ve had it. It’s time to see some REAL change. Seriously, if I get one more canned response from you saying “We’re sorry for any inconvenience…” I’m going to puke.

Today I sent a “support ticket” to iPower:

I chatted with a representative yesterday to find out why I’m getting timeouts 90% of the time when I try to log in to phpMyAdmin to manage my MySQL databases. Even when I finally (after 20 minutes at times) am able to navigate to a database table, the left panel that’s supposed to show the list of database tables still doesn’t load. This has been happening for weeks. Now I’m on a tight schedule and can’t wait any longer for things to magically fix themselves.

Your tech support rep assured me the problem was being addressed and I’ve pasted his reply below. He basically said that a customer was hogging resources on the server, and a team of engineers has been assigned to monitoring the database. That’s an old song and dance. So what happened to the new “balanced architecture” that iPower has touted as the solution to all server problems? When will I be able to get into phpMyAdmin properly?

I would appreciate an honest answer. I’m a web developer with over 50 client accounts at iPower. It’s one thing to deal with server problems and quite another to be given the runaround by your hosting company pretending it’s not really an issue or, even better, the response that I’ve gotten too often lately which is “ho hum”. After waiting over an hour for support, I’ve even had tech guys in chat that CLOSED the chat session while I was in the middle of a conversation with them. No warning, just all of a sudden, “Thanks for contacting us. Bye.” Like having the phone slammed down in my ear.

The vDeck 3.0 transition has been a nightmare. I’ve been a customer for over four years and an affiliate for two years, and I’m a breath away from moving to Bluehost or Hostgator. Thank god I didn’t sign up for a reseller account. I already feel bad enough for my clients as it is… emails not working properly, delayed transitions, passwords being encrypted without warning, domains not being renewed properly…

So, I need to know when I will be able to access phpMyAdmin properly. I also strongly suggest that iPower launch a message board so that those of us who are technically-inclined can help each other and those who are less knowledgeable can get answers to simple questions so the rest of us don’t have to wait 45+ minutes for tech support. Well, who knows, I may be gone before that ever happens… Look at Bluehost, they are doing great things over there… I am a loyal person, it just kills me all the problems I’ve had lately. Answers PLEASE!!!!

P.S. I’ve been waiting for weeks for an answer to a support ticket for my sprayerguy.com account. Every time someone responds, they close the ticket. Read the history. It’s ridiculous.

Thanks,
Dori

Here’s the response from yesterday’s tech support session:

Nigel Atkinson: I apologize for the inconvenience this has caused you. Currently we are experiencing an issue with our MySQL server. Our engineers are working hard to resolve the issue as soon as possible. It is a temporary issue and it will be resolved soon.
Nigel Atkinson: Our Network Operations team is aware of the MySQL issues which is responsible for the slow running Web site. To find a fast alternative, we have already set-up a new team of Engineers who will only be monitoring the load on the MySQL servers. Upgrades could be the best alternative, but we are actually trying to find the reason behind the cause of the issue.
Nigel Atkinson: You might have a question about why did it take so long to get this settled. The team had to search each server to trap the account which was using high amount of server resources. We have now found the cause of the issue and it was only because of few customers the load on our MySQL server was very high. These customers were utilizing very high amount of the server resources. Now that we have deactivated the scripts and accounts of these customers, you will not find irregular disturbance while accessing your Web site. To improve the performance, we will be adding more hardware which should actually help the current servers in boosting the server performance. This will take sometime to be implemented, believe me, once the hardware is installed you shouldn’t experience any type of performance issues with your Web site.

I recently had the pleasure of working with InkCloners.com and their hosting provider, Bluehost. Bluehost has hosting packages with similar pricing and features as iPower. The folks at Bluehost are AWESOME and totally put iPower to shame. If you’re interested in moving your hosting account, please contact me to schedule your move. For more information about Bluehost, visit their website at www.bluehost.com.

(Ummm… yeah… Can you hear the sarcasm in my typing?)

Let’s start with some ugly truths. This shopping cart software is far from ideal for beginners. It’s certainly feature-filled, but the sad thing is, it’s so counter-intuitive that third-party add-ons have been created just to make X-Cart “easy to use”. What?!? Shouldn’t it be easy in the first place? Oh well, guess I’ll have to fork out some money for that add-on. (NOT)

Ugly truth #2 is that X-Cart was created with profit in mind, not customer satisfaction or pride in well-built software or any of those feel-good things we really want from the developers who control our e-Commerce world. I’m not saying I blame them for wanting to make some money, I just think they’re doing it the wrong way. Let me explain…

X-Cart is built around Smarty templates. For those of you who don’t know what Smarty is, it’s sort of like a “translator” for PHP - a so-called “Template Engine” - that separates the programming from the page design. The Smarty website says, “Designers can’t break application code. They can mess with the templates all they want, but the code stays intact.” Since you really shouldn’t “touch” the code logic, if you do and you screw it up, well, you’re either on your own or you pay to have it fixed. Sounds like a really good choice for building an e-Commerce framework if you want to make money on tech support.

The X-Cart website reinforces my not-so-kind assertion of (gasp!) greed, or something like it, anyway. Their customization services are actually reasonable at $29/hour, assuming you’re not paying for a week’s worth of work. They never give an average figure, so I can only guess how long it takes to complete a custom modification. But here’s the real trick: Support isn’t billed on an hourly basis. You earn “points” when you buy their software, which can then be used to receive support. Ask them a question about how X-Cart works: 10 points. Need installation? 150 points. If you run out of points, they’ll be happy to sell you more… up to 1200 at a time. (Cost: $585.25) It kind of reminds me of gambling. Once you stick your money in the slot machine, it turns into credits and doesn’t seam like real money anymore, thus making it easier to spend.

OK, I’ll be fair. They can’t just give away their time to help people, can they? That’s what the Support Forums are for. Only, the forums are filled with a bunch of other customers who are feeling as lost as you are, and a lot of the posts don’t get any replies at all. You won’t know that until you buy X-Cart, though, because you can’t access the forums until you’re approved for an account.

To log in to X-Cart / Litecommerce forum, you need to get authorized by Help Desk.
Please identify yourself with a username (account e-mail) and a password.

I will grant them one thing. There is a lot of documentation and some forum threads for absolute beginners. There’s just not much of substance for “advanced” users. Case in point: here’s an excerpt from a sticky post in the forums, “New to X-Cart? Read this first!”.

There is also a manual available here: http://www.x-cart.com/manuals.html It isn’t the best in the world, but it is a good place to start!

While X-Cart has a steep learning curve, you will find a wealth of information and assistance here in the forum to help you get your store off the ground. Good luck and welcome!

(Hey, at least they’re friendly.)

Ugly truth #3 is that even through X-Cart is touted as PHP software, there’s enough javascript in there to make your head whirl. It’s bad enough that they use javascript to validate their forms. It’s even worse that the Add to Cart button stops functioning for visitors who have javascript turned off in their browser. No javascript = no sales. One of the major advantages of using PHP is that it doesn’t care if people have javascript turned on or not. Any good tutorial on website design and usability will tell you that javascript should be reserved for non-critical site functions ONLY.

My personal frustration is over the fact that I’ve taken on a new client whose previous website designer installed X-Cart for them. My client is frustrated, too, because the software is confusing to them. All they know is that they’ve paid thousands of dollars to a web designer to give them an e-Commerce website that doesn’t really do what they need it to do. They certainly don’t “get it” that template-based websites are just that: template-based. There’s no “I want to change how one product page looks,” or “We need this part of the website to work differently.” It’s a template. Once you start modifying a template, you run the risk of screwing up other parts of the site, or losing changes if you upgrade to the newest version. So it takes forever to change, test, add, test, then test again just to be sure. Development costs skyrocket and there’s not much to show for it. There’s no satisfaction in that kind of work.

I’ll end my rant with these words of wisdom: “If you want it done right, do it yourself.” In other words, if you want to start cheap, that’s fine. Just realize that if you need an e-Commerce website that works for you, exactly the way you want it, you will have to pay for a custom job. Skip the X-Cart, buy Boardwalk, pass Go, collect $200.

This morning I was feeling a wee bit guilty about the emails piling up in my inbox. Determined not to do any “real” work, I decided that Sunday is a good day for cleaning out spam messages from my Yahoo account. Being the pack rat that I am, I can’t delete anything until I know it’s absolutely useless. So I gave the Rolling Stone email newsletter a once-over, and this article caught my eye: ” Rock Bloggin’: Kelly Clarkson and John Mayer Spill Their Guts on the Web “.

There’s really nothing interesting about the article except it has a link to John Mayer’s blog . What a guy, what a genius. His “RUMINATIONS ON A TREADMILL” entry (MAY 14, 2007) nearly had me rolling on the floor:

a. Oh look, there’s Elvis Costello.
b. Man, that guy looks cool. I hope I look that cool someday.
c. How old is he? He’s just plain cool. And it’s got nothing to do with age. I’d like my cool to have nothing to do with age.
d. Do you just decide to do that and you can? I hope so. I’m deciding right now to be that cool.
e. He’s talking about Beethoven. Interesting.
f. He’s in a Lexus. Cool looking car.
g. Oh, it’s a Lexus ad, centered on the stereo system.
h. THAT STEREO SYSTEM SOUNDS GREAT, I BET.

Best of all, he reminded me that it’s OK to be human. I think I’ll pop his “Room For Squares” album into the CD player for my shower this morning. My weekend feels a lot better now. Thanks, John!

Watch John Mayer video: “Waiting On The World To Change“

My dad is one of those people who does a lot for others and never really asks for anything in return. Anyway, he’s my dad, and he’s getting old. That’s why I’ve spent all of my spare time for the past two weeks turning his vacation photos into a full video production on 2 DVDs.

For those of you who have never attempted such a project, let me tell you that it is tedious and all-consuming. If you’re the easy-going, let-it-fall-where-it-may type, you might be OK. But for those of us who can actually relate to Adrian Monk on USA’s hit comedy series, it’s a monumental task. Here’s what I learned:

1. Edit your photos and videos first. THEN add the soundtrack and special effects. You’ll have more hair left when you’re done.
2. Don’t be afraid to take out anything that looks only so-so. After you watch it for the 50th time, you’ll appreciate this.
3. Taking a video with your camera turned sideways is BAD. It seems like it should be easy enough to flip the video later, but apparently it’s a big deal. Quicktime Pro is the only program I found that could actually do it.
4. Roxio Easy Media Creator is one of the most unstable programs ever sold to the public. If you have an older version, don’t bother upgrading. It only gets worse. (On a technical note, I found that in version 9, if you edit your video and then try to export it as an image file, you’ll get an error. There are no details in the error message. Just close MyDVD, then open it again and export.)
5. Hold the camera still, for heaven’s sake!
6. Christian music is better now than it was ten years ago. Just like Country.

It was so worth it for the look on my dad’s face when I delivered his DVDs to him yesterday. He made his famous BBQ’s and we sat down to watch it together. I can’t think of a better way to spend a Saturday evening.

FEES
Discount rate: 2.9% + $0.30 USD
Monthly fee: $20.00 USD
Custom integration: Depending on your needs, average integration costs will run anywhere from $650 - $1600.

REQUIREMENTS
* PayPal requires that you offer Express Checkout as an option on your shopping cart’s checkout page.
* You must submit an application and be approved before you can use Website Payments Pro.

NOTES
It took me a few days to get into PayPal’s Developer Central to set up a test account. Apparently they’re having some issues with the confirmation emails not being sent out to users registering for the first time. I signed up a couple of years ago, so when I finally remembered my old password I was able to log in.

Once I had access to the “Sandbox” (the developer’s testing area), I created a new business account and signed up for Website Payments Pro. The application process is somewhat long, but typical of what I would expect when applying for a merchant account. The usual business PayPal account setup requirements apply, which include entering basic information about your business, verifying your email address, and adding and verifying a bank account. When signing up for Website Payments Pro, a few extra steps are required:

• Submit your application
  Enter your social security number or EIN along with some basic business information. In the “Sandbox” (the developer’s testing area), my application was automatically approved.
• Accept the billing agreement
  It basically just says you will be billed $20.00/month for the service.
• API Set-up
  Select an API implementation method. Options are “Grant API Permission” or “Request API Credentials”. Since I’m building my own shopping cart using WebAssist’s eCart extension for Dreamweaver, I chose “Request API Credentials”. (The other option is for third party shopping carts, whereby you grant them permission to make transactions on your behalf.)  On the following screen I was prompted to choose between an “API Signature” or “API SSL client-side certificate”. I chose the Signature method.
• Integrate!
  PayPal estimates integration will take 2-5 days. That seems fairly accurate. The WebAssist eCart extension made this step really easy. I had a working shopping cart and was making transactions in less than a day. There’s still a lot of work to do, but the basic functions are there.

If you’re coding your shopping cart by hand, PayPal offers plenty of example scripts to get you started. A word of warning: integrating the API is not for the faint of heart. If your coding skills are a bit rusty, you may find the task a bit daunting.

CONCLUSION
All in all, PayPal Website Payments Pro is a good solution for your eCommerce needs. If you don’t have the technical skills to do it yourself, or the funds to hire a developer, there are plenty of third-party shopping carts available.

While you’re deciding on the best way to add Payments Pro to your website, you can use the Virtual Terminal to process orders over the phone, by mail or through fax. To use Virtual Terminal, you simply enter the customer’s credit card and payment information through the Virtual Terminal page in your PayPal account.

With all the resources available for developers, it doesn’t get much easier than this to add real-time payment processing to your website.

A more streamlined approach (at least, from a customer’s standpoint) is to use a payment gateway like Authorize.net or Plug N Pay. The details of how this works are best left to a full article on the subject. (Many such articles already exist, such as this one at Sitepoint.

Unfortunately for the small business owner, using a “professional” payment gateway also requires an internet-compatible merchant account. There are setup fees, access fees, discount fees, per-transaction fees, and monthly minimums. All those fees can sure add up fast!

Tonight’s question is: how does PayPal compare to the other big players in the e-Commerce market?

I’ll be researching this topic and the results will be posted soon.

My name is Dorinda Bohnsack, but please feel free to call me Dori. Like the fish in Finding Nemo. “Yes, I’m a natural blue…”

I started designing websites professionally in 2002 under the business name “Dirt Cheap Web Designs”. While a name like “Dirt Cheap” is catchy and attracts a lot of customers, it also limits me to being, well, dirt cheap! Sometime around January 2008, “Dirt Cheap” will officially become “Foxglove”. Hence, the “Foxglove Blog”.

Through this blog, I hope to share my insight into the world of website design and development. Some other stuff might sneak in, too, like gardening, music and movies.

Whatever the topic, your comments are always welcome… as long as you’re not a naughty spammer! (Why would I want Viagra, anyway?!?)

Again, thanks for stopping in!