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Coding requires concentration

I spent half my day on the phone and half the day coding. Some of the time I spent on the phone I was also coding but that is akin to driving and reading a book at the same time–neither gets done very well and something is likely to go wrong.

On a personal note, I have finally, after nearly four decades, learned how to spell bureaucracy!

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Their typo causing grief

While I was getting ready to prepare dinner, someone drove up to my house and said, "I don’t mean to sound insensitive but I saw on the Internet that this house may be up for sale." He failed. That did sound terribly insensitive and lowly. See, the mortgage company has misplaced some of my payments. Fortunately, I always use Western Union for mortgage payments making transactions very traceable. I call department A and they say, "Oh yes, department B has make an error. I can see it here." Corrections are supposedly made and I am told to call back in 72 hours. The next day department B calls and refers me to department A and the cycle repeats. Of course, in the meantime, this has not stopped department B from bringing in lawyers and threatening foreclosurestarting foreclosure proceedings complete with setting an auction date.

I understand people go through misfortune, and other people will take advantage of that misfortune to make a buck or two, but how greedy do you have to be to approach a family during their dinner before their house is even in foreclosure? I guess tomorrow the mortgage company and I need to get this straightened out. "Lowry! We’ve got another one."

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Spam on Reality Me out of control

This weekend I plan to get a little aggressive with controlling spam on Reality Me. Most of it gets blocked but I get so much spam traffic that my Spam Karma logs regularly reach 70MB or more. If you find yourself unable to reach Reality Me, I may have been too aggressive. Just email me at juggler@gmail.com or Twitter @djuggler or Skype djuggler.

How do I plan to fight the spam? Mostly with apache. I’ll post details.

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A brief pause

We interrupt our regularly scheduled programming for a bureaucratic pause. Tasks: a) convince a creditor that they have misapplied my payments and to back their lawyers off, b) figure out how to get Cathy’s last name updated with Social Security without having to drive to Illinois, and c) figure out what’s not happening with FASFA. Bets? 30 minutes or 6 hours on the phone?

Update: a) done until tomorrow when I have to call them again. b) Cathy got taken care of (hurrah! Super woman!) c) next.

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Bring Me A Rock

When talking about software development and software quality assurance processes, I love to talk about the "Bring me a rock!" scenario. I found these renderings of a rock rather amusing. Of course, there are no coffee grounds in the house so that could be a contributing factor in the humor.

I also enjoy talking about delivering a baby in one month by using nine women. And I love the ugly baby syndrome. But those are for later.