Hell If I Know!

HIIK pingback to MyChagrin

admin — Tue, 08 Jul 2008 15:03:45 +0000

I am writting this post from within Hellifiknow. I am including a link here that links back to the My Chagrin Blog. Here is the link: http://mychagrin.com/?p=3

HIIK Loves MyChagrin

admin — Tue, 08 Jul 2008 05:30:25 +0000

This is a cool site:

http://mychagrin.com/?p=3

Joined BlogCatalog

admin — Sun, 15 Jun 2008 21:56:32 +0000

I joined BlogCatalog today. As instructed: In order to verify blog ownership, BlogCatalog requires you to place a BlogCatalog Widget, link, or meta-tag on your blog.

Okey-dokey, BlogCatalogue, here’s my link back:

My Technorati Profile

admin — Sun, 08 Jun 2008 20:57:31 +0000

Hellifiknow - Technorati Profile

If you enjoy my blog, please click this button:

OCD Domain Name Collector

admin — Thu, 05 Jun 2008 16:39:02 +0000

I don’t have many addictions or vices … ‘hate gambling (can’t lose 5 bucks without beating myself up); quit smoking 10 years ago and never looked back (great story reserved for another time and ~~place~~ blog); drink sociably (well at least for the few months following one of those ‘I wish I was dead.’ hangovers, which I can easily get from two glasses of wine).

HOWEVER, (and you know with me, there’s always a ‘however’) … however, I do have one addiction and that is I’m obsessed with ‘registering domain names.’ Good Lord, I can just be sitting there in the middle of a great conversation with someone, when I’ll say something like this, for example: "Well don’t over-react, just wait until the dust settles." (light-bulb-goes-on expression appears on my face) "Hey, waaaait a minute … I’ll be right back." … then I whip out my laptop or get online with whatever device is closest, log into my registrar and look up ‘whenthedustsettles.com’ for example. Well darn if the name I look up isn’t already taken so I settled for the .ca version. I’m always surprised when I see that someone has been just as clever but has beaten me to the good stuff. The good stuff being ‘.com’. It just ticks me off when I’m not the first to grab the .com’s!

I registered three of those babies just today. Website? Blog? Website? Blog? ‘Not sure what format I’m going to use for them, but based on their names, they all have a lot of potential to provide a home to some pretty interesting content. But do I have the potential to live up to their names?
Hell if I know!

Note to my LVS friends: chit-chat.* and chitchat.* are all gone. ‘Not even a dang .ca to be found!

Oh, and I registered one more between the last "Hell if I know!" and this one - that makes four just in the last hour.

WordPress Video Training - free & current

admin — Sun, 01 Jun 2008 07:14:32 +0000

Well into the 2nd hour of banging my head against the wall while continually failing to fix my Post Via Email configuration problem and muttering “Hell if I know! what the darn problem is”, I finally turned to Google hoping for an answer - but sadly the results did not produce anything even close to a solution. However, there is certainly a bright and shiny turn to this frustrating fact-finding failure.

I happened upon Kirk Biglione’s blog over at WordPress Training. This site is a little gold mine of video tutorials. Not only are they current, but they are also free. There are about 30+ videos (at the time of this post). ‘Just take a look at the index of available training videos and I’m sure you’ll be impressed with the quality and range of subjects that you will find there. But take my advice and bookmark the page if you like what you see, because I had a heck of a time finding it again after changing the location and computer I was originally working on. For some reason Kirk’s site is not easily found in the Google search engine. If you are new to WordPress and to blogging in general, you will probably visit his site often.

As for my email problem, I’m still working on it and muttering, “!@#$ Hell if I know!”

Password Protect your wp-admin directory

admin — Wed, 28 May 2008 22:37:24 +0000

I found an awesome video tutorial on how to password protect your directory. In addition, I’ve also written a few basic instruction for people using h-sphere / linux / WebShell4. It is almost identical to the video, but with a few little changes.

Notes:

Password protect your wp-admin directory using h-sphere / linux / Webshell4

Log into your web host account / h-sphere control panel

Then follow the instructions below:

click the FTP/UserAccount menu button and choose:
FTP User
clicked the little icon to login to Webshell4
clicked the PROTECT button on the bottom of the left panel
another smaller window will open with a list of sites that you have on that account (if you have more than one)
double-clicked on (the word) of the site (not on the icon) to expand it (on the left side)
single-click on the icon (not the word) next to: wp-admin
check near the top of the screen … does it say something like: Folder: /yoursite.com/wp-admin
(whereas yoursite is actually YOUR site name)
then click the little floppy disc icon - if you hover over it you should see: protect directory (save changes)
in the first text box you will probably see something like: /.htmaster/.ok_user with an edit button next to it.
click the edit button and another screen will open
click the add button
fill in the fields for login name and password (twice)
click save and then click the close button
you will now be back at the Location screen (look at the line near the top - it should say something like
Location: /yoursite.com/wp-admin/.htacess
click the apply button
test it by going to your site - the page that you usually sign in to your admin panel:
http://yoursite.com/wp-admin

This time you should be presented with a new login screen into which you have to enter your newly created username and password - then it will allow the usual wp-admin login screen to appear. It is just an extra level of protection.

Having trouble aligning your WordPress images?

admin — Wed, 28 May 2008 18:37:40 +0000

I’m not sure exacty why my images where not being aligned properly in my posts; perhaps it is something inherent in my theme, or something was wonky with the Add Media application, regardless, here is what I did to fix it … I put the section that contained my text and images in a table, and inserted the table via the HTML section of my Write Post editing screen.

EXAMPLE:

This table:

Text Here

Is generated by this code:

Text Here

but of course you would change the image location to your own site and directory.

If you have any comments, suggestions, or alternatives to the above fix, your comments are more than welcome.

So why is so hard to just simply use the Add Media button or the insert image button to insert and image and have it display with the correct alignment?

Hell if I know!

How to remove Snap Shots from Sidebar and Footer

admin — Wed, 28 May 2008 15:58:05 +0000

I love the Snap Shots plugin by Snap.com. I enjoy using it with my self-hosted WordPress blog. However, I didn’t like how all of the little icons made my page look cluttered and it was aggravating to have so many shots popping up as I hovered along my sidebar. Here is the fix that I used to remove Snap Shots from appearing in my sidebar and my footer.

First, I opened up my footer.php file (using notepad) and edited the div id tag:

Next, I opened up my sidebar.php file and edited the following section:

Amazon.com Marketplace - eek Technology

admin — Tue, 27 May 2008 22:51:41 +0000

I am currently working on the long and detailed experience I recently had with eek Technology (who is currently a Marketplace seller within Amazon.com). The premise of this post being: Just because a seller operates under the umbrella of Amazon.com does not necessarily mean they are reputable and honest.

Please watch this post for details within the next few days.

Want more details now?

Okay. Well on May 23rd, I happened along this product page on the Amazon site. As you can see, eek Technology Storefront was offering the “SanDisk 2 GB SD Memory Card ( SDSDB-2048-A10/A11, Retail Package)” for $6.56 each. Well, that sounded like a great deal, so I went ahead and scrolled down to eek Technology Shipping Information link to check on shipping rates. This is a screenshot of that page. Great! So I decided to order 5 of these cards. Well, according to my calculation (based from their shipping rate info) I assumed: 5 X $6.56 = $32.80 plus $5.35 (weight / lb) plus $2.50 per shipment =

$32.80 (product) + $7.85 (shipping) = $40.65

So imagine my surprise when I received my order confirmation from Amazon and found that I was being charged $29.95 shipping when, as you can also see, the options chosen are:
Shipping Method: Standard
Shipping Preference: Group my items into as few shipments as possible

So how did they come up with a shipping figure of $29.95?

Hell if I know!

But no big deal … everyone makes mistakes, so I emailed them and pointed out their mistake, and requested a credit for the difference of $21.40.

They responded with an email that said (in part): Our standard shipping and handling rates are $2.50 per order plus $5.35 per item.

So how do they justify charging exhorbatent fees outside of what is officially listed on their seller profile?

Hell if I know!

Anyway, this could go on and on, but the summary of what followed is this:

I emailed eek a couple more times requesting that they honor our transaction and refund the mistake in shipping. They only responded with: “If the package ships, please REFUSE it for a full refund.” They MISSED THE POINT! I wanted the memory cards, but I only wanted to pay the shipping rate that is advertised on their storefront.

I spent hours upon hours on the Amazon site looking for a direct email address (other than a form so that I could forward Amazon the emails from eek as well as the screenshots as posted in this site. I even filled out a couple of their forms asking someone to either call me or send me an email address that I could forward everything to. I never heard back from anyone. I even sent off about 6 emails to email addresses that I guessed would be logical addresses, such as:
-complaints@amazon.com
-spoof@amazon.com
-customer.service@amazon.com
-and about a dozen others
… and each one came back with an Failed Delivery Notification saying: Your message cannot be delivered to the following recipients…

So, in the end I received a notice from Amazon.com this afternoon telling me that eek Technology had canceled my order. Well now, isn’t that convenient for them!

How does Amazon regulate the quality of their Marketplace sellers if customers can not offer feedback without jumping through a dozen hoops?

Hell if I know!

How does eek Technology get away with not having to honor transactions and fees as listed on their storefront?

Hell if I know!

eek really has the system beat! If you complain to them about their refusal to correct their shipping charges, they cancel your order. Hence, there is no way to leave negative feedback so that others can see what they do.

Also, once they cancel your order there is no way for you to File a Claim because once you enter in your original order number, the page states: You were not charged for this order, so you cannot make a claim against it. So why would I want to file a claim? Well, I don’t but I wanted Amazon.com to force eek Technology to honour their transaction with me. I can’t find any other way to contact them, so I tried to use this claim form.

So how do I warn people on the Amazon.com site that eek Technology did not adhere to their stated shipping rates with me (and possibly other people as well)?