Harsh economic times... hitting my merchants!

Last week, I was a week of birthdays: my sister's, cousin's and eventually mine. I remember we went shopping for something good to eat on that first birthday - and something i've wanted to have for a long time was a donut.

Sure it would be easy to find a such a treat at a local supermarket, but it seems more genuine from a local shop. So we stopped by one across a safeway supermarket and, to my surprise, it had an open sign on the door. Donut shops were closing all over the city and it was hard to find one open when you actually wanted one; some shops close as early as 1:00PM.

Anyway as i walked in, i noticed no customers and a girl reading a physical science textbook and another girl (probably sister) much older. The older one, though a bit younger than myself, quietly walked behind the counter to take our order - it was very awkward because the place was empty and very quiet. It was like a stage was set and we walked right in - it was very difficult to even walk out of the shop because these guys desperately needed some customers! It was very sad and I think both my sisters later agreed that it was hard to see these donut shops continue. That was probably one of the most "rock-bottom" experiences I've had; i knew donut shops were having it tough but seeing it with your own eyes is a tough sight. After I walked out of the shop I wanted to share some ideas that would probably get the shop more attention, since there was no way they could compete with safeway's dozen donuts at half the price! Maybe make it an internet cafe or place for schoolwork / afterschool tutoring? Well i doubt this shop will live very long and i bet the owners are anxious to sell the business... I just hate how they are making their kids do work ... seems so wrong.

The more recent event was with wolf camera, after it has closed most of their store locations, it has partnered with another company to launch an online store. They had some amazing deals during the past month and didn't charge for shipping or tax! So during the 4th of july sale I ordered a camera and till this day i still have not received it! Actually after 45 days paypal will retract the payment if the merchant has not forfill the order and that was exactly the case. I knew going through wolfcamera was risky based on the 1 star reseller rating (bizrate) but man i did not expect it to be this terrible. A lady with an accent called me the other day requesting i "resubmit" my payment since paypal has retracted it - i just plainly said that i was not interested anymore and actually gave them my sympathy instead of complaining to them because i'm sure they've been treated badly by the american public already. It was probably so awkward for them they didn't even know how to respond to my statements; i told them i know they they were having hard times and wished them luck on recovery...

I canceled the order mainly because some newer cameras had features i wanted and the fact that my sister already got a similar point and shoot camera for her birthday.

Setting up web-apps on IIS 7.0 (Win2K8)

Well it's official, http://www.heycloud.com/ is launched after a few weeks of planning and researching with different service providers. Fortunately, we had some hook-up deal through Microsoft with some free hosting from DiscountASP.com and the initial stuff was covered with no cost.

But as we moved on we needed security options like SSL and probably bandwidth upgrades later on in the future. But for now it's a new experience working with a cloud platform and figuring out how to work with the new IIS 7.0 that comes with windows 2008 server.

I've been reading around the clock to catch up on the technology i've neglected for some time. The windows server platform is much different than the Apache 2.0 i was familiar with; a lot of trouble is solved with user friendly controls but at the same time a lot must be learned. So far, from what i've seen, IIS seems much more manageable than apache and would be much better to implement off of. I'm sure the performance isn't as great as something like Apache but there seems to be a lot of security options readily available with Microsoft.

Anyway the purpose of this blog was to store some knowledge from my first day's experience with IIS 7.0 on the new windows server 2008. In IIS (all versions) architecture isn't as straight forward as like an Apache where the file system after htdocs is your actual website and subfolders. No, in IIS you need to create a website object and progressively add a new virtual directory or application to the website object. Since i am using asp.net applications i needed to use the latter for deployment which took some time to figure out. So with this structure already present i can tell that Microsoft will enforce a more manageable website over the typical Apache you see. This makes things much easier to enable / disable and also change security roles since every subfolder / application inherits the same settings as the root website unless it is changed manually.

After i got the web app working perfectly on my own system, i was glad i figured it out - but i would later find out that it would be more difficult on the discountasp site because of the lack of settings. The main problem I had was that my web application used an external DLL assembly file msidcrl40.dll. This file is responsible for helping a user login via Microsoft passport - something essential to the entire application. To fix the problem was easy - just impersonate a user (admin) that has access rights to the folder and it should work. But if i uploaded the files to the hosted website, there are no options to impersonate - so the assembly file probably gets a permission denial.

And another thing that was safe was to compile everything based on the .NET framework 2.0 rather than 3.5 - i had some problems running with the newest version.

Getting frustrated finding the right bike

This past week i've been working less and tried enjoying my time with others. I think a great deal of time was spent with my friend's short cousin who wanted a quality road bike so he can ride with his friends and not feel ashamed. This was not the first time i met the fellow since he seemed anxious to get a road bike his size probably a half-year ago and settled with a kids bike because he thought it was good enough. But, unsurprising, he hated his first bike which was a really inexpensive GMC Denali Kid's bike.

This bike, when i first saw it, was something i'd never consider buying but he bought it anyway because of his seemingly impatient behavior. If i were in his shoes, the first bike i would buy is a used road bike possibly a women's with decent parts - but this guy doesn't like looking awkward and would probably walk away from a ladies bike. The guy wants a nice race bike so he can show off to his friends but the problem is that these nicer bikes are harder to sell so manufacturers are pretty "cautious" when producing bike sizes since most of their customers aren't short like he was (~5'1"). Being too helpful as i am sometimes, i agreed to help him get the right bike which took quite a lot of more time outta me than i expected.

I agreed to go with him to a local craigslist posting on an old Giant OCR bike that a lady was selling for $650 - which i thought was OK at first. The OCR is a frame with some carbon and some quality parts off a race bike. This bike i was really looking forward to since it was sorta everything the guy wanted so I wanted to go out to his house personally to help check the bike out since he really did not know anything and nobody else was available. So when we arrived, we met the seller and I took the bike out for a spin. The bike was an earlier model OCR which was not what i expected - all aluminum parts. So immediately I knew the bike was going to need to cost less than the posted $650. I offered $500 max and the lady tried to say it was worth $550 when she bought it and that she bought and installed a computer for extra $100... So we just walked off and started to visit some stores.

I remembered we looked at was a Specialized Sequoia which was a "comfort" bike with decent parts, it was selling for $1050. I immediately thought it wasn't worth the money since the frame was probably heavier than a race bike and that the bike was not intended for performance. By the time I had a chance to think about it, he was already giving up and was ready to put a down payment on the bike. He was not patient at all, he wanted the bike, and from this experience i saw a lot about his character. So before he took out his cash i suggested we look elsewhere and stopped that "close" transaction.

My new friend said he visited a lot of stores already and it seemed like none of the stores had anything he wanted to try out and so everything he wanted always needed to be pre-ordered (meaning purchased before testing). I really do not believe this was a good idea so I told him he needed to try the bike first before buying it and that he should not judge a bike by just the parts on it since those can be replaced later.

As i returned home, he called me a few times with his usual anxious tone asking me to help him out and look for bikes his size - I spent that weekend looking at different manufacturers. I dug up a website of a local bike shop near me and saw that it had something his size and price range so i gave him a call and he was already ready to drive over here. I told him they were probably closed and that i should give them a call - and i was right because it was the 4th of july weekend. Anyway on monday he called me a few times and told me he was on his way there - i met him later and he was already on riding the bike on the street and this angered the owner a bit because he didn't even have a helmet.

My friend's cousin, which i still never could remember his name, does not listen very well - which i just remembered now as i'm blogging. I remember my friend repeating the same thing 3 times just because he knew that he doesn't listen very well, which makes quite a lot of sense now. Anyway we went back inside the shop and looked at other bikes - he kept asking the same questions and I stepped in to save the seller some breath. His questions were "does it come in a smaller size?" - no the men's bike does not go lower than size 50. Pointing at a ladies bike "does this bike come in a different color?" - no. Pointing at the same bike "can you get this bike in 'mens'?" - no i told you mens bike doesn't go lower than 50. And it seemed like he at least asked the same questions as if he had short term memory loss.

Eventually, we just ended up buying the bike - a specialized allez triple 2010 with 9 speed sora for $840 total. The bike was not a bad price and i had a good feeling about the bike frame since it was an entry level race bike (not that he would notice right now). Anyway as i thought my day was finally over with him - he called me half an hour later, an hour later, and yet for a 3rd and 4th time... He kept asking me questions and kept me from work that afternoon and I felt like i did not deserve this ...