The Future of Panhandling

Another one of my coworker’s whiteboards digitized. This one focuses on how QR codes are popping up everywhere. First it was restaurants and now they can be found in everything from grocery stores to hardware warehouses. Soon people will be placing QR codes on the backs of their cars instead of using long web addresses and maybe even panhandlers will now have Paypal accounts in order to collect their donations.

Smart phones and mobile computing sure have made our lives more connected.

My bosses family trip photos

So my boss took a trip out to the outer banks last week and when he came back he proudly presented his family snap shots to the group. I have a running prank with him where I will take one of his cherished memories and turn it into something a little more fun via photoshop. This time I thought I might would share it with you.

Original (Click picture for bigger one):

Modified:

Digital Snow

Above is another creation from Barbara Hullett her original artwork is on the right with my vectorization on the left.

This drawing was inspired by the recent weather events and modern times. The recent weather events are also known as the biggest let down in weather this century. Several counties around the triad called off school in anticipation of Snowmageddon and nothing showed up until well into the evening. Facebook and Twitter were both on fire with scowls of angry parents telling the school board and the weathermen that they had waisted their precious PTO.

I myself even got caught up in the hype staying home Monday and working remotely.

Hope all you stay warm and enjoy the imagery.
David Bates

Birds Falling

A quick note about the artwork
A co-worker of mine Barbara Hullett draws a picture on her dry erase board every couple of weeks for our teams amusement (you may have seen some of her other drawings on my twitpic feed). Sometimes its whimsical, sometimes a play on words or the latest news, but almost always involves a cat. We have all come to appreciate her artwork here. The photo you see above is a vector re-creation of her most recent board “Birds Falling” done by myself.

I was recently shocked when I went through my news-feed to find that thousands of birds were falling out of the sky and thousands of fish near the same town were floating up on-shore. I couldn’t believe that they didn’t immediately issue a warning for the area asking people to stay indoors, or even a “Don’t touch the birds” broadcast. The clean up crews that entered the town wore total protective suits including air filters but left the regular townsfolk to fend for themselves. Almost like a scene directly from “The Crazies” where the whole town become infected because action wasn’t taken to separate the towns people and test them.

The conclusion that the birds died from stress due to fireworks is completely ridiculous. Especially given that fish died as well. I just am baffled how casual this whole situation was dealt with and thought I should jot it down.

Thanks for reading
David Bates

Warning Never Use 3sHost.com Crappy Service

Recently I witnessed such a horrendous display of poor customer service from a friend of mine that I had to post something about it. Based on his experience I will never use and emplore you to not use 3shost.com for any of your hosting needs. Although their pricing is cheap their service is horrendous.

History: This is for a small church website that my friend developed as a favor. The barrage of bad customer service started with a simple inquiry to downgrade his service, renew for another year, and when his current contract ran out. I am going to post the full transaction below but have a few excerpts that I would like to highlight showing the gall that these folks have:

From 3sHost.com:
"if you are not going to renew it is your decision but please do not blame
us later"

"Now we are asking please backup your files & please do not renew your account because such customers like you are really waste of time & money"

Now I have seen a lot of customer support disasters in my time but this one takes the cake.
Needless to say my friend will be finding another hosting provider.

The initial email that started this chain of events:
"Dear customer,
To renew your hosting account, please Copy & paste the FULL link below
Link hidden for obvious reasons
Kind Regards,
3SHost.com Sales Team
Sales@3SHost.com"

Friend Wrote:
"I would actually like to renew at the "Medium" Windows hosting level,
since I don't use any features beyond what it offers. Will you please send me
a bill for that? Also, will you please verify when my current contract
runs out, what date this renewal will expire?

Thanks"


Needless to say they went back and forth. My friend always simply asking about the renewal. He has since switched host.

Full transaction to come I didn’t realize how much work it was to annonymize something…