Not So Famous…

I feel as though I’ve been close-mouthed about what all has been happening this week. I get that way when I’m stressed, I suppose. I notice that when I’m really stressed, I don’t take the time out to even let Kim know what all is going on.  She knows work has been tough this week.  She knows some of the other things that are weighing on me. She knows about these things, but I don’t really talk to her about them.  It’s just the way I am.  Well, Friday went a lot better, and so we talked about what all has been going on.  I figured now would be as good a time as any to write a quick entry about it.

To begin with, on Monday my boss handed me his Cingular 8125, with a note that read, “Here is my DUMB phone. I won’t consider it as a SMART phone until it can send and receive e-mails. Please work on this.”  This is about as “in your face” as my boss gets before he gets angry, and to be honest, he’s got a point.  He got this phone while I was in Scotland, and it WAS the phone I was recommending that management start buying.  The problem is that the plan was for he and I both to get the phones so that I could hook mine up and get it working.  I figured it would be easier than I discovered it was, but all the same, it would have been easier if I’d been able to have the phone full time to make it work.  Well, he gave me my wish this week when he forwarded all his calls to his personal cell and handed his phone off to me.

This was one of the most difficult things I’ve ever had to do as an IT guy.  It SHOULD have been easy.  All the instructions made it seem fairly easy.  There was a lot of information on the Web about making a Windows Mobile 5 device work out of the box with Exchange Server 2003 SP2.  I figured I wouldn’t have any problems.  I could not have been more wrong.

For one thing, Windows Sharepoint services was not letting me get to the Exchange mobile sites. This is one of the annoying things that happens when you’re not there to set up a major piece of technology for your company.  When I got to my current company, Sharepoint was already configured, and as far as I knew, it just worked.  I hoped it never STOPPED working, because I knew nothing about it.  I knew I could learn if necessary…I just hoped it wasn’t necessary.

Once I fixed that, I had an authentication issue where I needed to set up Kerberos authentication instead of the standard NTLM authentication.  This was sort of a pain, since there’s not really a nice switchboard where I can simply tell it to start using Kerberos instead of NTLM.  I had to do all kinds of wacky command line stuff, which I don’t mind, but is sort of scary.

Once I got Kerberos working, it was still giving me some funky error, and for a LONG time, I couldn’t figure out what was causing it.  I posted at least 3 messages on 3 different forums with no reply.  I was REALLY getting frustrated when I came across some Belgian site that indicated that my problem was that I was trying to enforce a password policy on the WIndows Mobile device.  Sure enough, when I turned that off, I got a good sync.  Some really weird things happened at this point, but I don’t need to go into all that.  It’s all working now…sort of.

I need to get the password policy working, and I should have a solution for that installed on Monday.  Finally, I really need to get authentication working with SSL, which is my ultimate goal.  I wanted to get a good sync before I tried fiddling with SSL, though, because in my experience, it’s always good to make it work before adding complexity.  If I flip a switch and it doesn’t work, I know the last switch I flipped was what broke it, whereas before, if something didn’t work, I didn’t have a really good idea what exactly was causing it.  So my time next week will be devoted to making that work.  Shawn, I appreciate all of the attempts at conversation.  This was what was torturing me all week, and now you know what brick walls I’d been hammering my head against.

In addition to this at work, they were doing some personnel shuffles; moving people between offices.  Ultimately, this meant that I had 2 new people moving into the area in which I was working. This really isn’t a problem for me, except that it’s a change in the whole environment, which always takes some getting used to.  Some are handling it better than others, and I’ll say nothing else, except to say that attitudes are crucial in determining whether you’re going to enjoy working conditions or not.

Finally, and I don’t know how much I’ve said of this, Kim and I are moving…about a block from where we currently live.  It’s not far, but it’s still a move, and coordinating when we’ll make the full switch has given me a rather sizeable headache in addition to everything that is going on at work.  The new place is not a duplex, is a little bigger, and is much nicer from an electricity standpoint. Our current place is really inadequate for the electricity we’ve got running through it, and the new place has a completely redone panel, etc.  It’s really nice, and I’m looking forward to it.

Next weekend, we’ll be gone for the weekend, which really isn’t helping things, but I think we’ll be in the new place by the end of the week after that, which will be really cool.  I’ll keep everyone posted.

Finally, I was able to do a bunch of work on Dow Images this weekend.  I resized almost 30 pictures and posted them on the site.  I sent a newsletter about the whole thing to our newsletter subscribers, and pointed them to some of my favorite pictures I added yesterday. (I sent 2 out, actually…on accident.)  If you want to be informed about what all is happening with Dow Images, sign up for a free Dow Images account. You don’t have to buy anything, but you’ll get our newsletter once or twice a week or so…only whenever anything goes up on the site.  You can sign up at the site here: https://dowimages.net/store/index.php?main_page=login (Link opens in new window.)

All of that being said, I don’t think I’ve looked forward to a day of rest this much in a long time.  Gabe asked me if I’d give the Dow Images stuff a break tomorrow, and I think I can honestly say, “Heck Yes!”  I didn’t WANT to work last Lord’s Day.  But I had to.  Tomorrow, it would be nice to be able to have time to get stuff done, but I don’t think that our convenience should be a reason to ignore the 4th commandment, or the Lord’s command that we follow His example in setting aside a day to take pleasure in Him.  My computer will be on, as it always is, but I’ll not be resizing pictures or much of anything else.  The radio will be on for those of you who want some tunes to listen to, but I will be RESTING!  :)  Have a nice night, everyone.

If you subscribed to the Dow Images newsletter, be sure to check in your spam folder, if you’ve not yet received one.  I’ve sent out one last week, and one this week, so if you’ve not gotten either of these, check your Spam/Bulk/Junk folder.  If they’re in there, mark them as “Not Spam/Bulk/Junk”, and your spam catching software will learn.  :)

Just sent out a newsletter, so if you’ve not registered for an account at Dow Images, feel free to do so at https://dowimages.net/store/index.php?main_page=login&zenid=e46a3adf90f373688e2d4160e720740a

Thanx!

Hey everyone.  I know my entries of late have revolved around Dow Images, but to be fair, I started this blog to write about what was going on in my life.  Right now, I think you can get a good idea of what’s going on in my life.  :)  Today was a really busy one.

As the title of this post indicates, today Dow Images’ Portraits site went live today.  It has always been our goal to get a two-sided presence on the web. The first side was the one that took the most work, really, and that was the Art Photography side. Getting that up required a great deal of configuration and coding. I told someone recently that I’ve spent 40 hours on the site, but I think it more likely that I’ve spent more like 60.  Anyway, that side is up, and if I’ve not gotten as many pictures up as I would like quite yet, it’s a work in progress, but it’s working!  :)

The portraits site didn’t take a whole lot of coding work.  Maybe 5-6 hours or so.  However, it’s not done either.  This Thursday, as I mentioned in another post, we have a little bit of a Meet & Greet at the open house of an office where her art is displayed. (It’s her father’s office, but still…it’s advertising.)  :)  There will be a small sign up indicating where this art is available, as well as a business card holder with many Dow Images business cards.  It’s precisely because of that event that we needed to get the portraits site up as quickly as possible. Feel free to check it out at http://www.dowimages.net.  Comments and criticism is welcome.  Please keep in mind it’s also under construction. I’ve got some basic links on the left, the logo in the upper-left corner, and a VERY basic heading for each page. I’ve got a design concept in my head for the navigation panel and the header, but I’m keeping that under wraps until I have designed the graphics for it.  :)

Finally, I’ve got a couple plans for the Online Store. To begin with, I plan on making all of the large images much larger. Each product, as I’ve mentioned, has 3 photos associated with it; a small one, medium one, and large one.  Right now, the large one is only about 100 pixels larger than the medium one, but the original image is around 7-8 times larger than the current large size.  :)  With our watermark on each photo, we can afford to have a larger version of each pic, so as soon as I get my second drive formatted, and all the pictures copied back over, I’ll start working on that.  I’ll let you all know when it’s up.

In addition to all of that, I de-spyware’d a computer today.  :)  That’s a quick bit of cash, which is kind of nice. A good day’s work, though I didn’t get everything done that I’d hoped to do.  I DID go on a little errand which could prove to be a very good thing.  I’d appreciate it if you’d all keep my secret errand in prayer.  :)  I’ll post more if anything comes of it.  :-D

Thank you all for praying for Dow Images. Whenever we’ve needed something, it’s just sort of been provided, such as site design, time to design the site, etc.  We’ve spent very little money and accomplished a great deal.  Our first official client is about to order prints this week, which is a neat thing.  She LOVED the senior pictures we took of her daughter, (who is featured on the High School Seniors page of the Portraits site…3rd down from the top), and her daughter loved them as well.  This bodes well for print orders, so we are really quite excited.  The Lord is blessing this little by little, and we praise Him for His providence!  :)  Thank you all again for praying.

Well, I’m off to relax for a little while.  See you all l8er.

There’s a lot of people who would argue that Christians ought not to work on the Sabbath.  I, personally, believe that they’re right.  It seems clear to me that the 4th Commandment is part of the moral law. In addition, the Sabbath was instituted before the giving of the law, which most Christians will agree that restrictions given before the giving of the law ought to still be obeyed. At any rate, even these Christians who believe that the Sabbath is still a holy day will agree that there are works of necessity that can be performed by Christians on the Sabbath.  Police officers, etc.  If a job cannot be done on a different day, then it is lawful to perform on the Sabbath.

With regards to the work we did yesterday, it was necessary.  We had a senior portraits photo shoot scheduled for this weekend.  This weekend was the first that could possibly work for both us and the client, and the school yearbook is demanding the photos by a certain date. Next weekend would be cutting it too close to get the pictures to them in enough time, etc. We planned the photo shoot on Saturday, so needless to say, the rain that was projected to fall on our thirsty land gave us mixed feelings. We had to cancel the shoot out of expediency.  Can’t take shots in the rain, and we really needed to get it done this weekend.  So we rescheduled for the Lord’s Day.

That morning, I realized that we needed to get a Customer Information Form created, so that we could get the client’s information in our database. I did that after church, and got ready to go to the shoot. We did the shoot, and the pictures turned out wonderfully.

When we got home, I entered her information into the database, and began generating the order for her account, indicating she’d paid the session fee, which required me to work some on the invoice generation module.  Meanwhile, Kim started looking at the pictures and putting together a proof CD for the client. We had dinner, and then finished up the order form, proof CD, etc.  It was a lot of work, and it had to be done by today, so that we could get the client the proof CD and order form with enough time for her to make her decision for the yearbook photo.

The shoot went really well, though. She took 41 pictures, all of which were very good.  Both the client and her friend took a look at the proof CD today, and thought we cut out the bad pictures to come up with so many good ones.  They were amazed that Kim included all the photos on the CD.  She really does a stellar job with portrait photography.

On that note, I’m hoping to have at least SOME of the Portrait Website done at http://www.dowimages.net by this Wednesday, so that we’ve got something up there to look at. We have a good idea of what we want it to look like, so it’s just a matter of getting it up and ready.  We’ll see how far we get.

Finally, I’ll be doing some more pictures on the Online Store Wednesday. I’m hoping to get all of the categories done except Scotland.  Scotland has a great deal more pictures than the others, so I’ll be saving that one for last.  If you’re thinking about getting a shot of Scotland, and you’re not sure which one you want, hold off until I get them all up.  If you see one up there that you MUST have, please feel free to buy it.  :)  All the prints we’ve made from these photos have turned out absolutely spectacular, so buy with confidence.  :)

I’m still learning this shopping cart software, and there’s a lot more I have to do on the site.  One of the things I’ve noticed about the site lately was that it was intolerably slow.  I’ve rectified that somewhat by reducing the size of the images, and getting rid of the category counts.

If you noticed that it was slow, feel free to check it out again, and you should notice a bit more peppiness.  I have only fixed Animals and Beaches thus far, but should have the other categories by the end of the day!

Next week, my father-in-law is having an open house for his new building, in which are some photographs by Kim. He’s said we could put up a sign explaining where people can get these and other photos, etc.  We’ll have business cards out, etc. It’ll be some great publicity for Dow Images, but as with all things, we want to ask the Lord for His blessing on it.  :)

Thanx!

I don’t think I’m going to get into all the gritty details of how webmasters optimize their pages for good search engine rankings, because it’s really boring. But it’s what I’m dealing with now, since the store has gone live.

One thing worth mentioning is the irony inherent in the fact that I am trying to attract automated search engine crawlers, which are universally called, that’s right, SPIDERS.  Nice, eh?  It makes sense, really. The spiders crawl around the World Wide Web looking for interesting stuff.  :)

So yeah, when you do a search for Dow Images on Google, we’re the 4th, 6th, and 17th or so result, which is neat.  My question is, “How often will people do searches for ‘Dow Images’?”  I’m guessing not often!  So my goal here in the next couple of weeks is to improve my search engine ranking so that when people search for art photography or various other things that Dow Images does, we show up in the first couple of pages.  Sounds about as exciting as it really is, which is to say “not very”.

In other news, we have a photo shoot with a high school senior this weekend….or we DID before we learned that it’s supposed to rain tomorrow.  Maybe we’ll still be able to shoot it…we’ll see.

Hope you all have nice weekends planned.  If it rains, I will be sitting and listening to it patter across the ground.  The mere thought of a day spent in this manner calms me.  :)

Yup, we opened the store today with 40 products, as well as gift certificates.  We’re still putting products up, but that’s a pretty hefty beginning!  If you’re interested in getting some beautiful photographs for your walls, visit us at http://www.dowimages.net/store and browse our selection.  We’ve got a bunch more photos that will be going up soon, but if you see something you like, feel free to order.  Shipping is free, and you only pay tax if you live in California!

We’ve recently been asked if we dedicated our business to the Lord. Insofar as everything we do is for the glory of the Lord, yes, we have. We have not held some special ceremony, or offered a business card up to Him or anything. It’s not necessary.

As we believe in what the Bible teaches about the sovereignty of the Lord, we realize that we don’t have to offer anything up to Him for Him to control its destiny. He already owns it all. He controls the fate of everything, and the first step toward glorifying the Lord is recognizing that.  Does that mean we ought not to lift things up to the Lord as an act of obedience?  No.  However, that doesn’t require a magical incantation or “Prayer of Lifting Up” or any such thing. We ask for the Lord’s guidance in how we ought to run this business.  We ask Him for the grace to run the business as glorifies Him. We seek to glorify Him in all we do, as it says in 1 Corinthians 10:21,

“Whether therefore ye eat, or drink, or whatsoever ye do, do all to the glory of God.”

So yes, our business, as is our life, is dedicated to the Lord. He controls it, blesses it, and curses it as He will.  Our largest prayer, then, is that we would be praising Him no matter what happens with the business. Whether it succeeds wildly or fails miserably, He is in it. And we ought to praise him for that.

I mentioned that we’d not sacrificed a business card to Him.  We’ve not done that, but if we HAD done something like that, this would be the business card we would have sacrificed!

Tell me that is not the coolest thing….ever!  :)

As you know, I’ve been spending a great deal of time of late trying to ensure that our new web store works without a hitch.  Taking photographs is something that Kim has been doing for years, but this web store is a new thing for us, and with the creation of Dow Images as a business, I figured we might as well sell her beautiful artwork online as high quality art prints.

Tomorrow, then, is the culmination of all my work in getting this thing up and running.  From proper implementation of SSL security to trying to figure out what permits we needed to get from the State of California, to the overall design of the store, I’ve been working to make our customers’ experience a safe and simple one.  I think we’re finally ready with all the modules in place and functioning as they ought, so tomorrow, I’m going to start putting products up for people to look at and buy if they like.  :)

Those of you who are in the market for some beautiful art, go to http://www.dowimages.net/store, and have a look at what we’ve got tomorrow.  If you’re not in the market, we would very much appreciate prayer in this area.  We feel as though the Lord has worked all of this together for us to start this business, and it wouldn’t have happened had He not caused it to happen. That doesn’t mean that we are destined to make tons of money or be successful in the terms of the world. We know what we would like, but we need to keep in mind that His will ought to be what we seek.  So we ask for prayer in these areas:

• That the Lord would bless this business. Our personal goal in this business is that it would bring in money while Kim is able to stay home. However…
• We also would like prayer that the Lord would keep our focus on Him and His plans for our family as the true measure of the success of this business.
• That the Lord would not allow this business to become such a drain that it becomes a detriment to our family.  We started this business so that we could better focus on our family rather than having Kim out of the house, etc.
• That we would be responsible with whatever money this business does bring in. (This is more for me than for Kim, as those of you who know us already know.) :)
• That we would be content with what the Lord has for us, including the possibility that this business does not do well.  If we become angry at the Lord for taking this away from us, then it means that we were putting the business above Him, and that is not acceptable.
• …and anything else you can think of.

I’ve explained what our goals in this business are…it would be easy to allow this to take over everything, so that is what we will be fighting against.  In that same vein, having your own business means some late nights to keep the customers happy, and we want to make sure we’re doing these kinds of things as well.

Anyway, thank you in advance for your prayer!  :)

Those of us who have been reading the Wheel of Time series for any length of time know that Robert Jordan has been fighting against a rare blood disease called amyloidosis for over a year.  His doctors didn’t give him very long, but he vowed to fight it for as long as the Lord would give him to do so.

The last post on his blog at Dragonmount, a Wheel of Time fansite, indicated that he was doing well, and that rumors of a priest administering last rites to him were false, and that he’s tired, but aside from that, he was doing well. He had been receiving his priest at his home on a weekly basis to administer the Lord’s Supper to him.  Jordan professed faith in Jesus Christ as a member of an Episcopalian congregation in South Carolina. Our hope is that he is in a better place.

Please pray for those close to Jordan, like his wife Harriett and his brother (either in spirit or in truth) Wilson.

As the news stories have all been reporting, he was working on the 12th volume of Wheel of Time.  What I’ve not seen mentioned anywhere is that A Memory of Light (the name of the book) was to be the last in the series, which has been in existence since Jordan published Eye of the Word in 1990.  17 years is a long time to wait for a series to be completed, and we all wondered if the Lord would give him the time to finish the series. Looks like the answer to that is “no”.

For fans who did not follow his blog very closely, I will report that last week, Wilson posted on the blog that Robert Jordan spent 2 and a half hours telling him and Harriett ALL THE DETAILS of how the series was to end.  I thought it was a strange thing at the time, because he’d always played his cards so close to the vest.  The story will end, then, if not how we would have liked it to have ended.

RIP, Robert Jordan (real name, James Oliver Rigney, Jr.).  Your storytelling will be missed.