Olebox Blog

Embassy Suites Guest Lockout - Downtown Tampa - 12/31/2011

2012-01-01T16:31:00.000-08:00

All hotel guests, including myself, my wife and our friends at the Embassy Suites in downtown Tampa last night were locked out of their rooms after midnight... I heard this happened at a Marriott in Denver too.

We showed up at the hotel shortly after midnight as my wife was suffering from a migraine and needed to sleep. Upon return to our room, we found no keys were working. We were told this was a computer glitch and were let into our room within 30 minutes. Not that it was much of a relief.

Nothing like trying to sleep to kick a migraine with hundreds of drunks in the hallway pissed off that they can't get into their rooms. Fire alarms were being pulled, doors were being kicked in, people were banging railings and yelling.... Until nearly 5am.

Security was non-existent and the issues continued all night long. Not only should they have proactively comped the rooms due to the lack of foresight, but we were simply offered a free room in the future (not an adequate offer to correct the 2-3 combined hours of sleep I was able to get before checkout). The night should have been comped and they should have offered an opportunity to come back, on them in the future.

Way to go @HiltonOnline..... I'm a truly disappointed Hilton Honors member.

Here's some pictures I've found of what was happening during the lockout... courtesy of @scottaudette on twitter...

Here's a bit of what I woke up to the next morning...

#Hilton #lockout #2012 #epicfail

UPDATE: I have been in contact with the hotel and the corporate affairs office. After hours of my time and negotiations, I've finally received a full refund for the night. There are still issues with follow-up and it appears that they feel they have no responsibility beyond the night's stay. I was never looking to profit on this situation. Just to get the night back that I never got due to the lack of foresight and accountability on the part of Hilton.

5/3 Bank - Business Account - Major Disappointment

2011-10-16T07:47:00.000-07:00

Recently, I switched one of our businesses over to 5/3rd bank as we are a small start-up and I was hoping to minimize banking fees as we grew our business. After a couple years of service, I ended sorely disappointed. 5/3 Bank, had fallen short of my expectations and have lost my business account as well as any chance at my personal banking.

As many of my readers know, we started up a small fragrance website not too long ago, called Bella Fragrance. I won't dive too deep into the issues, but for personal reasons, I was unable to market the business as needed and we ended up shutting it down early this year.

Our banking for Bella Fragrance was set up at 5/3rd bank, under the Olebox Communications umbrella. While the setup was seamless and we were treated exceptionally by the bank manager; when we had to close down, our experience was substantially worse.

I started out by leaving a very small amount in the account and made the mistake of forgetting about an automated renewal by one of our service providers. While I understand that 5/3rd Bank should honor these payments with or without authorization; the way they assess fees for overdrafted accounts is absurd. The account ended up overdrawn by somewhere around $20. 5/3 then charges a fee for the overdraft, and subsequent fees every day the overdraft exists after 3 business days.

I was unaware of these fees; perhaps by fault of my own by not fully understanding the fee schedule. After somewhere around 10 days later, my balance was well over $100 overdrawn. I went to the branch to discuss my concerns with a Financial Advisor and was told there was nothing that could be done by them. I spoke with customer service over the phone and they disagreed; stating the bank could certainly justify crediting fees; in fact, they would credit 1/2 of the fees to take burden off the financial adviser.

The financial adviser continued to refuse to make any adjustments; so I just paid the remaining balance. I was also advised not to close the account (as there is a $50 fee for closing a business account), rather, I was advised to leave $0.01 in the account and make sure that nothing else was billing. I followed these instructions; but left disappointed as I felt the financial adviser had no further interest in assisting me.

The very next month, I received a notice stating that my account was overdrawn by $17.49 as there was a fee for recovering my account from a negative balance. While I was told by the financial adviser that I only needed $0.01 in the account, now fees are over-drafting and causing additional fees to be assessed.

Customer service was unable to assist over the phone and I was told the fees must be credited by the branch directly. So again, I went to the branch and spoke with the same financial adviser. After much back and forth, he agreed to credit the fee, but explained I need to make sure that the account is not again over-drafted as these fees will not be credited in the future.

Yesterday, I received another notice in the mail. This notice stating that again my account has been over-drafted by a $17.50 fee, bringing my balance back to -$17.49. This back and forth is unacceptable and my time is far too valuable to have to address this every month.

If you are looking for a new financial institution; I highly discourage the use of 5/3 Bank. They have been very difficult to deal with and they assess fees that are outrageous. There are too many choices to have to choose an institution that doesn't exercise better customer service practices.

I'm hoping they make this right again. But I'm feeling extremely let down by a company that I placed my full trust in. The fine print, the requirement to visit a banking center and the inability of the financial adviser to make, what I felt to be, a common sense adjustment, have left me with an atrocious taste in my mouth. I'm not sure I have much more choice at this point other than to pay the $50 account closure fee this time around and actually close the account.

The ball is in your court 5/3. If I'm unreasonable, I would really appreciate an explanation. If not, I'd just like it to be made right, and perhaps we can head our separate ways.

Update (10/17/2011): So today I've closed my account. You win 5/3. I paid your fees, but you've lost a customer for life.

G+ takes down Facebook Bully

2011-07-13T11:34:00.000-07:00

I can't take credit for the creation of this, but I thought it was pretty entertaining.

Prototype vs JQuery

2011-07-13T09:57:00.000-07:00

As a developer, I tend to notice these things... It seems to be that lately, more and more companies and developers are moving in the direction of JQuery rather than Prototype. I've found myself to be doing the same. All in all, the learning curve isn't that drastic as the syntax has many similarities. What do you think? Are you still using Javascript?

Here are some books on JQUERY offered by Amazon. I would recommend any of these:

Dell PowerEdge 2850 SCSI Raid Controller Memory/Battery

2011-07-13T09:48:00.000-07:00

Recently, I had a hardware failure on one of our Pweredge servers. Upon further investigation, it was found that the memory on the PERC 4E/Di Raid Controller had failed. I contacted Dell support and was advised that they only sell the entire RAID assembly, not just the memory or battery. In addition, they were out of stock on the entire RAID assemblies. The Dell representative referred me to Impact Computers, based out of Hollywood, FL.

In a phone conversation, I was told there really wasn't a part that matched what I was looking for. Google to the rescue! I did a little searching around for Dell Part Number: 4D554. Using Google Shopper, I was able to locate a number of products, and low and behold, Impact Computers was one of the suppliers. They had 30-40 in stock. For backups sake, I also ordered the battery (8mm Li-Ion for the 2850).

UPDATE (7/14/11): Impact computers had a misleading notice on their website that they had over 40 of these items on-hand. As this was a critical outage, I needed these parts as soon as possible. Upon contact the following day, I was advised none of the products in my order were actually on-hand and they were all being shipped to Impact Computers before being shipped to me. This would cause a 4-5 day delay. This was unacceptable and going forward, I cannot recommend and will not use Impact Computers for any parts purchases.

~~For those of you that may run into the same issue with locating RAM for the Dell PERC 4E/Di SCSI Raid Controller, look no further. It seems that Impact Computers is there for you.~~ I can now say that Impact Computers mislead me and I will not do business with them in the foreseeable future.

I recommend using serversupply.com for your supply needs. They had the parts in stock and were less expensive than the "other company." Shipping was free for ground, but pretty expensive for anything overnight via serversupply.com.

2011-06-22T09:32:00.000-07:00

Communication is key!

I love the Atrix, but I would become a true loyalist if some of these issues weren't shrouded in secrecy (timelines especially). For that reason, I'm looking into Samsung for a tablet solution. If Motorola is unwilling to be so transparent with us, maybe it's time to give Sammy a shot.

Here are some of my concerns with Motorola:
What is the next version being released?
It appears it's going to be 2.3.3; although, Moto could become a game changer if they'd be one of the first on 2.3.4.

What about the release dates on updates?
Moto has a page designated for this, but I have yet to see the Atrix (aka MB860) listed on that page and we've already received updates.

How about the bootloader policy?
Can we get a more refined timeline? Give us an idea of whether it's going to be August or December. Setting no expectations is worse than setting expectations (even further out than your internally planned release date) and exceeding them.

The look, feel and operation of the Atrix is top notch. I just wish Moto had a community policy and was a little more open with communication. It's your turn Moto to become the people's device manufacturer.It seems as if Motorola isn't a big proponent of the mobile developer community. Which, i suppose, is a fair business decision. Unfortunately, that could be the reason that the Atrix is my last Motorola device.

Hopefully, I'm given the opportunity to write a more positive review about their future products. Until then, we'll have to wait and see what happens.

Google Music Beta invites start rolling out.

2011-06-02T16:55:00.000-07:00

Looks like the Google Music Invites are rolling out to those that have requested one and had not attended Google IO. Hurry up, check your inbox already!

Increasing Battery Life - Android

2011-05-12T06:35:00.000-07:00

In my experience with Android devices, the tremendous abilities of the devices tend to lead to a diminished battery life. In using the Motorola Atrix for a while now, it seems that there is a way to give yourself a massive improvement in the battery life by managing how you use your device more practically.

I use an application called, MyProfiles, by Fanco01, Inc. The application allows you to create profiles based on your situation. For example, if you are in an office, you probably don't need GPS available. At home, you can probably disable the GPS, dim the backlight, disable Mobile data and enable Wifi. In the car, you probably don't need wi-fi. I'm sure you get the idea.

This application was simple to set up and has nearly doubled my battery life. I encourage you to try it out and if you find you use it frequently, spend the couple dollars for the app to benefit the developer.

More info here: https://market.android.com/details?id=com.fancy01.myprofiles

Massive EC2 Outage takes down Social Networks

2011-04-21T08:38:00.000-07:00

Early reports indicate that there is a major issue affecting some Amazon EC2 customers. Customers that certainly aren't small potatoes (Foursquare, Reddit and Hootsuite to name a few). More to come as it becomes available. Amazon is simply reporting it's still working on the issue. Source and more info on Huffington Post.

Update as of: 11:45AM EST:
It appears there are a couple issues. One with Amazon Relational Database Service in N. Virginia and a second with Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud in N. Virginia. I assume these issues are related since they are within the same site, but there is no confirmation as of yet from Amazon. You can follow the status progress here: http://olbx.co/w

A Lifesaving Gift

2011-04-20T05:47:00.000-07:00

Good Morning Everyone,

It was brought to my attention this morning that our nextdoor neighbor, Sandy Bennett, has been diagnosed with Idiopathic PulmonaryFibrosis (IPF). IPF is a debilitating disease which causes stiffness andscarring in the lungs and makes breathing very difficult. Our neighbor is nowon oxygen full time and is no longer able to do many of the things we all takefor granted. Her doctors at the Mayo clinic have told her that her only optionnow is a life-saving double lung transplant.

My wife, Sarah, and I have offered to assist in any way we can andright now, the most significant issue is the expenses not covered by insurance.We’re reaching out to family and friends to solicit your assistance. There is agolf tournament being held at Wedgefield Golf Course, on June 4, (for more info click here). Also, there is a basket raffle being held in her honor,“Baskets for Breath,” on June 4, (for more info click here) for those of you that are not golfers.

All donations are being administered by NTAF(www.NTAFund.org),Southeast Lung Transplant Fund. Every small donation helps and all donationsare tax deductable, of course. Please visit the www.NTAFund.org for credit cardpayment if a financial donation is within your means.Hopefully you can assist either by forwarding this to others that canhelp, or a small donation to the fund.

Thank you for taking the time to read this. If you know ofany other organizations or individuals that may be able to help, please forwardthis on.

On behalf of Sarah and I, we truly appreciate yourconsideration.

Favorite Atrix 4G apps

2011-03-18T17:17:00.001-07:00

So I've been using thee Atrix for about a month now, and as my first Android device, I'm thoroughly impressed.

While the bootloader is locked, the HSUPA is restricted, the function off the phone is outstanding.

The following apps I have found to be a must have for any Atrix user.

1. Flash 10.2 as it supports hardware acceleration.

2. Facebook

3. Android parental control is a 3rd party app that allows you to password protect all apps with exception of ones you allow. This is a great option for kids as you can prevent access to the browsers and the market. This may save you accidental purchases.

4. ConnectBOT is an ssh client thatis useful to any system administrator.

5. 2X Client is a remote desktop client for accessing windows machines remotely.

6. Car mode controlis an app that allows you to start the car mode manually.

7. Pulse is a news feed application that is easy to read at a glance.

8. Lightflow allows you to modify the onboard LED colors ac/dc durations.

That should set everyone up to start. Feel free to leave your suggestions as well.

Olebox Website Launches

2011-01-10T12:00:00.000-08:00

Unofficially, Olebox has been a source for referrals and consulting all across the web. We now have an official point of reference in: http://www.olebox.com/.

We will start offering project management, consulting, and referral services on a per product basis. This means that if you have specific project/product requirements, whether the project is a mobile application or full scale application development,we will find best-in-class solutions based on your timeline and budget.

You shouldn't have to waste your time managing a project that's being developed in an industry that you lack experience. Let the experts take on the management and tracking role for you! Far too often, firms base their pricing on the maximum they can charge you and still gain you as a client. How often are one of the first questions, "What is your budget?" There's a reason they ask that question.

Be represented. Have an advocate in your corner. Let us use our experience to keep your project on time and on budget!

Our goal is to earn your repeat business over the lifetime of your organization. This is why we use a customer service first approach. Give us a try, you will not be disappointed!

Chrome Apps & Extensions

2010-12-29T07:24:00.000-08:00

NEW! We now publish Packaged and Hosted applications for Google Chrome. Are you looking to build something new? Are you looking to monetize on a new application idea, but you're not sure how to get started? Let us help!

I have nearly 10 years of web development experience with everything from small web hosting firms to fortune 500 company intranets. I lend my experience to you for that next big project. I intentionally take only a few projects at a time to avoid prolonging development for those that need a fast turn-around.

Act fast! Together, we can build a new outlet for you and you reap all the rewards!Hit the contact link above for more information. I look forward to working with you!

Best Realtor in Orlando, Adamus Realty Group

2010-12-22T05:48:00.000-08:00

It's been a couple years since we bought our last house, but in the season of giving thanks, it's my turn to return the favor. Our Realtor, Jon Adamus (Adamus Realty Group), showed a level of professionalism and dedication that we never could have anticipated. In addition, there was no pressure. It was like working with a friend with that had only my best interest in mind.

If you are looking for a Realtor in central Florida (Sanford, Orlando, Eustis, etc) and you want one that will take the time to find and negotiate you an new home or simply need to sell your existing home. Search no more. Jon Adamus of Adamus Realty Group is far superior to any others I've encountered.

Thanks Jon!! Keep up the outstanding work.

Site5.com Shared Hosting Review

2010-12-21T09:42:00.000-08:00

I am a customer of a number of hosting companies. Most of the solutions I have purchased are by means of Virtual Private Hosting (VPS). I have experience with Neosurge Hosting, Linode Hosting, Slicehost Hosting as well as a few smaller, relatively unknown hosts.

Initially, my needs started small, I just wanted to run a blog and host a few simple websites for friends. About 3 years ago, I found an unbelievable offer from Site5.com where I would be provided with an unrealistic number of domains, bandwidth and data storage. I jumped on the bandwagon and had been happy for a number of years with the website's uptime and speed and performance provided.

Recently, something on the provider end had changed. With no changes to the coding, plugins, features, traffic or implementations, my site had been shut off due to heavy resource usage without any prior notification. While I understood the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few, I was disappointed to not have been presented with the opportunity to address the supposed issue prior to the disconnection of my services.
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Sam Knows Program - FCC Broadband Awareness

2010-12-18T11:30:00.000-08:00

SO I have recently been approved to start contributing to the Sam Knows project. This project was started by the FCC to identify areas of improvement for US Broadband providers. I was asked to provide details on my ISP, the internet package chosen and the price I pay.

The FCC then sent a Netgear wireless-N router with full instructions on how to setup. The setup was fairly easy and the router is pretty feature rich. Apparently, there is custom firmware.

The FCC claims the government will not track any specifics on web access; rather, the router will randomly run speed tests to identify performance at times when the router is not being heavily used by our local network. These tests will reportedly be accessible to me directly once the first few are run.

What do you think about this process? Is the government over-reaching or is this the reason that we have government (to protect the people)?

I'll follow up with more information as it's available. I'd like to hear your feedback.

PHP Topics

2010-12-16T06:37:00.001-08:00

I'm looking for frequently run into issues or questions to write posts that will help others that are either learning or are having problems. Do you have a topic that might help others? Leave a comment. I'll even give you credit for the suggestion. The community has offered many resources to us as developers, and I'm happy to return the favor. Let's see if we can't help others too.

Do you have quite a bit of experience with technical issues, but haven't quite found the forum to help others? Register and leave a comment, I'll email you directly with more information.

Linux flavors

2010-12-16T06:36:00.000-08:00

So I've been using Linux for the past couple of years. By no means am I an expert on the varying flavors nor do I think that there is one that is better than others for all circumstances. I think this is a healthy forum for discussion and I'm always open to input from the community.

First of all, I'll list the flavors I've used. With that in mind, you'll notice that I haven't used all of the distros. My experience is from my limited exposure to those I have used. Keep in mind, my goal was to provide the best development environment for my laptop with my level of experience.

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PHP Sessions

2010-12-16T06:35:00.000-08:00

So a little about PHP Sessions. I'll talk briefly about how they persist, how long they persist, how to add variables and how to destroy/unset variables. As stated on the php.net website

Session support in PHP consists of a way to preserve certain data across subsequent accesses. This enables you to build more customized applications and increase the appeal of your web site.

Introductions

2010-12-16T06:33:00.000-08:00

Let's start off with an introduction. If you made it here, you most-likely already know who I am. With a previous employer, my responsibility was to manage various web projects; which includes, the project management, personnel management and the actual higher level programming required. I'm still in the industry, but no longer am employed by a web hosting firm. Enough about my past, please allow me to explain my experience.

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Prototype Javascript Calendar

2010-12-16T06:31:00.001-08:00

Well, I've finally found a well-written, easy to use prototype/scriptaculous based Javascript Calendar. It's as simple as adding .js and .css files to your site, and specifying a class for the html text input that you would like to populate with these fields.

The calendar is specifically designed to be used as a date-picker so that dates within html forms are formatted correctly by end users. The script is called DatePicker and is written by coders at http://www.frequency-decoder.com.

To Start, you just have to upload the js and css files to the website in a web-accessible directory, for the purposes of this example, those directories is '/assets/js/' and '/assets/css/' accordingly.

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Time Zone in Linux

2010-12-16T06:30:00.000-08:00

I was curious one day when performing a fresh install of Fedora on my Laptop. I saw New York Listed as the available time-zone (as it typically is) to indicate Eastern Standard Time(EST). What about Orlando, where I live.

I performed a quick google search and found this helpful article on how to add a specific city to a time-zone. Hopefully, you'll find this useful as well.

http://www.linuxjournal.com/content/add-your-city-linuxs-list-time-zones

Enjoy, and try not to break your system too bad when following these steps.

Conficker Worm Detection/Removal

2010-12-16T06:29:00.000-08:00

A new worm has been found to affect 20Million + computers so far. It is set to execute on April 1, but nobody knows what it's going to do yet. It blocks access to major anti-virus and system update sites. To determiner if you are affected. Try accessing www.mcafee.com/. If you are unable to access that site, make sure you can access other sites.

If McAfee seem's to be the only one you can't access, you may be affected. This is not an April Fools Joke. For further information or removal of the Conficker worm, the US Government has released an alert with details as follows:
http://www.us-cert.gov/cas/techalerts/TA09-088A.html.

Authorize.NET and PHP

2010-12-16T06:27:00.000-08:00

So I've had quite a bit of experience with authorize.NET and PHP and I've found it's difficult to find resources that provide textual examples for integrating the payment processor. I've put together a generic tutorial from Authorize.NET documentation that is public. Of course, you will have to specify your Transaction ID and API Login ID. So here you are. If you need assistance or have any questions, feel free to leave a comment. If you found this article helpful, please help support our sponsors through the google ads as they help to cover our hosting fees. Both myself and the companies appreciate it!

The example that Authorize.NET provides does a lot of parsing through strings. I prefer working with arrays as they are easier to read, shorter to write and from what I understand, faster to parse. Also, I like to organize my data in classes. For this example, I'll just show the function as that should be enough to integrate.

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Coke's new Freestyle Dispensers - a new approach to soda vending

2010-12-16T06:25:00.001-08:00

I was reading an article last week from InformationWeek magazine that detailed a new effort that Coke is pushing forward that will most likely change the face of soda vending as we know it. The source of the article can be found here:

http://www.informationweek.com/1233/coke.htm

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