I hate Certificates

So, today I got a call because a user was getting an error opening outlook. The company's certificate had expired the day before. I looked and it seemed like it was just a self-signed cert, so I went through the process outlined to renew an exchange 2008 cert, and put it in place, then removed the old one. Guess what? Now the user's getting an error because the certificate isn't from a trusted authority. WTF?!? It didn't have a problem with the old one, but now that one was gone so I couldn't just look at the certificate and see where it came from. The real problem though, was the fact that the domain didn't even have a proper CA, so the cert ended up just being installed locally on the machine. After manually installing the new cert on the user's workstation, everything was just fine, which is stupid because now we'll have to do that for every other user that's got a version of outlook that's running SSL.

My Green Thumb

So, I've been playing around with gardening for a few years now. Ever since my son showed interest in growing vegetables, I've been trying to make it work. It started with a garden that had been put together behind my house by my mother years ago. Unfortunately nothing grew very well there. We planted a few different things, I remember planting sunflowers, beans, peas, and some other stuff, but none of it ever grew. The soil was too sandy, and it was full of roots from weeds that had sapped all the nutrients.
Some time after that, I built a greenhouse. It was originally a small, free-standing garage frame that wrapped in plastic and put in a sunny spot in the backyard. I planted a lot of different seeds, built an irrigation system, and waited. To my dismay, barely anything produced. We had onions in a big bucket that grew and then seemed to die out, strawberries that never even flowered, and tomatoes that we hung from the rafters which grew like crazy but never showed any sign of fruiting. We had a pepper plant that produced 2 peppers. The cucumbers finally gave me something when I transplanted them into a larger container. But everything else failed. In time, I added raised beds, planted garlic over the winter, and let it sit till it got warmer.
Now it's warmer, and there are signs of life! The garlic appears to be flourishing, some of the onions are really promising, and the strawberries already seem to be showing signs of producing fruit. Even outside the greenhouse, the blueberry bushes I wrote off for dead after one too many times of being trampled by my son are bulging with new life.
I'm proud of my green thumb. I know I've made many mistakes in my garden, but I've learned something new from each one. I planted my tomatoes in larger hanging containers, with tons of room for the roots to grow. The cucumbers have a huge bed to spread out in. I've planted multiple pepper plants, of different varieties, and have secured all of the plants in the yard with cages to keep The Boy from destroying them.

ADP is totally ridiculous

So, this past paycheck at work, my hours got messed up. I kinda expected it to happen, so it wasn't really a big shock, what was shocking is how on top of it my boss was. That same day an envelope was delivered to me with one of those ADP TotalPay prepaid debit card for the amount I was owed. I thought it was great, boy was I wrong!
Today, I got around to activating it. I was told to wait till I got a statement about it, so there wouldn't be any sort of problem. I was okay with that, I had already scheduled a transfer from savings to cover the missing funds. The card offered free bill pay, had the option of just transferring the balance to another account, I figured I'd be fine. So I call the number on the card, activate it, and proceed to the website to pay a couple bills.
What I didn't realize was that the pin I had set for the card on the phone wouldn't be used as the password on the site, and nowhere did it mention in the documentation (or on the automated phone system) what the password would be. So, I call back the number, put in the card number, push the button to talk to a rep and get that straightened out. No problem!
Then I check my balance, and I see a 50c charge for the previous phone call! And not only that, but the bill pay section won't come up (some stupid error) and there's nothing on there at all about transferring funds. I call up their support line, careful to not give them my card number. The only way I could find to get to a live rep without giving my card number and getting charged for using the automated service was to select the option for a lost card. On the phone with the rep, I explain, give her my information, and she looks it up, confident she can take care of it. But then she informs me there is no way to reverse the charge for the automated line. I ask if she has the power to do it, and she says no, so I ask to be transferred to someone who does.
Her supervisor is the only person she can offer me, so I accept and talk to her. She goes into a speech about how I used the automated phone service (to get to a rep for help with the website, which directs you to the phone number for the automated service for help) and that the fee can't be reversed. I ask her flat out "Do you have the power to reverse the fee?" and am told no. So I ask her to transfer me to someone who does, and she informed me that no one in the entire company can do it.
Frustrated, I decide to then at least deal with what I can, so I ask her about how I can access the funds transfer, since there is no option for it there, and the bill pay also doesn't seem to be working. She fiddles with something, I log out and back in, and the options are now there. Great, I end the call.
Then, I look into the funds transfer option, I want to get my money away from ADP as soon as I can. Fill in my bank account number and routing information and am presented with a screen that tells me it may take up to a week to verify the account! Well, at least I have bill pay, right?
Wrong! I switch over to that, and it takes me another another site that I have to sign up for. Asking for all my information again, I fill it in begrudgingly and proceed. At the end, another screen pops up telling me that now that they've got my information, I have to wait for an e-mail before I can do anything! So now here I sit, with over $200 of my hard earned money sitting in limbo where I can't use it how I want.
I know I can just take the card and use it anywhere Visa is accepted, but this is just crazy, they promote their services with these features that you just can't use without jumping through crazy hoops, and there's no easy way to get to a live representative for help without being charged extra money (beyond the one free call per week). Their phone menus are deliberately misleading.
I was tempted to take a stand. It is my money, but even if I do get my 50c back, the time and effort it would take to EECB ADP would not be worth it.

Technology On Television

As I sat at work, watching The Big Bang Theory during my lunch break, I found myself checking wowhead for Wand of Untainted Power. Lo and behold, it actually exists in game! Beyond that though, almost nothing they reference are at all realistic in the game. I completely understand the need for poetic license to create a good storyline for a TV show, but too many shows just go way over the top with meaningless technobabble.
A lot of sci-fi shows can get away with it, since so much of the technology they use is futuristic or alien, so I can easily give them a pass. But too many shows these days just bend technology to suit their needs, and it gives viewers a completely unrealistic idea of what technology can actually do.

New, and hopefully interesting things.

So last night I pulled out my Arduino Mega 2560 to do some prototyping for Michelle's wings. It had been a while since I did much of anything on the Arduino, so I had to do some reference checking when writing the code. Luckily it came back pretty quick, so with just a few lines of code I was able to get 20 LEDs twinkling randomly. After showing her what I'd done, I tweaked the code a few times till I got something closer to the effect she wanted. Of course, she still needs to acquire the parts for her wings to even begin designing the effects. You can check out the code in my pages.

My first post, and random thoughts.

So, here I am. Starting a blog. I've had a few others. My own personal site, which I stopped using, and then got rid of hosting. Still got the domain, might forward it to here. I've got a livejournal, but that's more for personal stuff. I think I'ma use this space to rant about stuff in general. Hopefully it will be entertaining to you.
Let's talk about me some. I'm a geek, I work in IT. I have odd ideas about the world, and hopefully my viewpoint will be interesting to you.
I love technology, new shiny gadgets are always fun. I have a Nexus One, I absolutely love Android. 
I like to create, build things, modify things, grow things. I made a greenhouse in my back yard, setup rain barrels for watering, built beds for planting, made a compost bin for food scraps.
I'm a self-taught programmer, mostly open source. Started with PERL and then moved onto PHP. Messed with Javascript and HTML, lots of personal work in web development. Recently I've gotten into microcontrollers, I love the Arduino. So many wonderful ideas and things to use it for.
I'm a gamer. Right now there's nothing big on my plate but I am a WoW player. FOR THE HORDE! I probably spend too much time playing, but I have other stuff I do.
I watch a lot of TV too, Sci-fi shows, procedurals, British stuff. Can't get enough cheesy movies; love Syfy original pictures. 
I have a son, he takes after me (sometimes a little too much). He's got a blog around here too. I have a live-in girlfriend, she's also got a blog here.
For now, that's about all I have to say, I'll post about last night's adventures in just a minute.