Monday, I finally broke down and ordered iPhones for Jenna and I. It doesn’t appear that Verizon is going to get the iPhone until they roll out 4G, which could still be a year or two. So, AT&T was the only option.

I ordered two 8GB iPhones (because I’m too cheap to pop for the 16 or 32), and they promptly shipped Jenna’s phone and backordered mine.

Needless to say, having my phone backordered (especially when Jenna’s was shipped immediately), did not make me happy. I called AT&T to get an ETA, and they told me they had no idea.

I went home and told Jenna and she said “you should call and threaten them.” It’s not really my style, but I did want my dang phone, so Tuesday morning I called again.

This time, I worked my way up to a supervisor. Here is a transcript of the conversation.

AT&T: Hello sir, I understand your iPhone was backordered and you need information about it’s ship date.

Pete: Well, yes, my phone was backordered, and I’m going to need you to go ahead and ship it out today.

AT&T: Unfortunately we are completely backordered on the 8GB iPhone, and I don’t know when they’ll be replenished.

Pete: Sounds like you have a problem there. I guess you’ll have to ship me a 16GB instead.

AT&T: I’m sorry, but I can’t change part of an order that’s already shipped.

Pete: I’m not interested in you changing my order. I just want someone to go down to the warehouse and put a 16GB iPhone in a box and ship it to me.

AT&T: Well sir, I don’t have the authority to do something like that, unfortunately.

Pete: Yes, that is unfortunate. I’ve been with Verizon for 14 years and I’ve never had a single complaint. I’m already unhappy with AT&T and I don’t even have my phone yet. I think I might have made a big mistake switching over, especially considering your 3G network is so much smaller than Verizon’s.

AT&T: Please hold for a moment.

Pete: No problem.

Eight minutes of total silence commence…………..

AT&T: Sir?

Pete: Yes?

AT&T: We have shipped you a 16GB iPhone at no extra charge. You should receive it on Thursday.

Pete: Thanks.

And that’s how that works.

Fortunately when I bought the computer, I paid big money to have the best board and processor (Intel Quad Core) available. I did that because those are the hardest things to upgrade (and the most expensive).

So I upgraded from 32 bit Vista to 64 bit Windows 7, went from 4 to 8GB of RAM, went with dual SCSI 1.5 TB drives for data and a 500 GB SCSI drive for OS and programs.

That sucker flies now. 64 bit Photoshop CS4 loads in less than 2 seconds. Suck on that.

Needless to say, I purchased the crap out of it.

It is a 1.66Ghz, 1GB ram, Win XP machine with Microsoft Office 2007, 10 inch screen, and built in 3G.

Twenty Nine Bucks.

I nearly sprained my ankle trying to get to the nearest computer so I could order mine. It arrived today, and is not a disappointment.

I plan to carry it with me 24/7 to take care of IHS tech support stuff, which is pretty much always requested at the most inopportune times.

I installed my Macromedia Studio Suite (Dreamweaver, Flash, etc), Firefox, Filezilla, and Putty, so I can pretty much manage IHS completely off this thing.

For 29 bucks.

Did I mention it was 29 bucks?

I would have bought 50 of them, but it was limit one.

Today after some shooting on blank backgrounds, I discovered that Mr. D2x needs a trip to the service center for a “wet” sensor cleaning. Yes, my D2x has measles.

Sadly, I have a photo shoot on Saturday and I will just have to Photoshop all of the dark spots from the dirty sensor… on every photo.

The good news is a professional shop only charges a few bucks to perform said “wet” sensor cleaning (as opposed to the dry cleaning techniques that I’m comfortable doing myself). I’m scared to actually touch the sensor… I’m happy to pay someone else to take on the liability.

Hopefully I can get it cleaned before the next time I need it.

I don’t like running sound.

We have to set up and break down everything each week… can’t just leave the sound system set up.

So, at 7:30 on a Sunday morning I get to do heavy lifting, then sound checking, then run-through, then service, then break everything down.

I’m theoretically in the band. I play bass.

I haven’t played bass in several months. We have been short on sound people in the rotation, so instead of doing what I like to do, I get to do something that I hate (which people say I’m good at).

I can’t wait for the day when we have enough people I don’t have to be in the sound rotation anymore. Ugh.

In a matter of a week, I have done the following projects:

Black Sky Radio
Wilson Home Development
Luman International – Secure Client Interface
Custom Kids Music
Barrett Graphics

Black Sky Radio has been a MASSIVE project with untold difficulties. First, it streams live audio 24/7 in a variety of formats (to be compatible with different computers and mobile devices). Second, it needed a secure members-only section with some special functionality (like on-demand podcasts, discussion forum, etc.). Third, it has a lot of enhanced features like a main page flash slideshow, a chat room, and multiple blogs. It basically took every free waking moment of my time for the past three weeks, except when I wasn’t working on those other websites.

Wilson Home Development was one of my first IHS customers, and their site was due for an overhaul. I slammed out a redesign of their site with a good looking flash portfolio gallery and real estate listing capability.

The Luman International site has been around since the Internet was invented, but they didn’t have a secure client system. I was tasked with building a secure back end for members, with individual client pages that can be created on the fly, with recursive directory-based file posting (in other words, they drag a file into a client’s folder or subfolder, and it puts the link to the file on the client page under the appropriate heading). Oh yeah, it also uses SSL, which I’m not exactly an expert at, so I had a learning curve to do that.

Custom Kids Music was for a friend of mine, and it was a really simple site to set up… did it in just a couple of hours. It has one advanced feature, which is the ability to play mp3s directly from the web page. It also has integrated Paypal.

And last but not least, I redesigned Barrett Graphics (my photography website) to reflect the modern web technology now available to me. The old site was “fancy” but it was nigh unto impossible to update anything on it. I like to keep my portfolio up-to-date, and with the redesign, now I can. Of course, I integrated everything into my own site – it’s got secure client access (to their online proofs), flash portfolio pages, including one behind the members-only section. It has a form that allows a customer to upload their favorite photo along with a testimonial. It has rotating slide show on the homepage.

The only thing that makes it tolerable is this:

However, when I’m at work my Internet experience is not quite so impressive (T1 is a tenth of the speed of my home connection). It’s especially sad since a T1 is a synchronous connection (same up as down) and my home upstream speed is faster than a T1:

Anyhow, that’s why I’ve been bad about updating recently. Too much code.

Today’s Website Project

Today’s Website Project

Today’s Website Project