I'm sorry folks, this isn't a funny or feel-good post. I'll just state that right at the top.
Four years ago today my grandmother passed away. I remember the phone call and remember scrambling to get the money to drive 5+ hours back up north for her funeral. A few months before I had visited for the first time in over four years. I saw my grandmother in her bed, a shadow of her former glory. When she died, I was actually happy that her suffering was over. I had trouble coping with what comes after death as my religious views and my logical ideals conflict, but I found solace in knowing that she no longer suffered. The thing that still bothers me is what I did, or actually didn't do before she died.
I was 17 when I decided I had enough of family and wanted to go it on my own. I think shocked everyone when I saved my money, packed my things, and shuttled off to Illinois. I spent several years out there, doing everything I shouldn't. I did drugs, was arrested for shoplifting. Every time I looked in the mirror I didn't recognize the face I saw. Then when it all went bad, I called my family and they took me in.
For years I still kept to myself. I didn't feel like I was a part of any family and I know now that was my own fault. During that time though, I saw my grandmother's health get worse and worse. Instead of doing the right thing and making the most of what time I had with her, I stayed away. I even kept away when I was living in the same apartment as she. Somehow I felt like it wasn't my problem. For some reason I blamed everyone for whatever misery my life was in. I recall being suicidal, wanting to just end everything and being angry that no one around me seemed to care. I didn't tell anyone anything, but that didn't matter. So lost in my own self-pity, I let precious time slip away.
I remember I was on my grandmother's computer, doing what I always did online. I remember sitting there at 11 o'clock at night, drowning my life away in some online fantasy game, when my grandmother came in with a sandwich on a plate. I didn't ask for it. I was actually annoyed that she was bothering me, until I realized that she forgot we had dinner already. I had a moment of clarity that I couldn't hold on to. I had seen first-hand the confusion in her eyes when I told her we already ate. I've always been able to read people well, but during this time in my life I had shut that down completely. For a moment it was back, and I could almost feel what she was feeling.
It was probably about a year later that I decided to leave Massachusetts and head down to Pennsylvania. I don't regret making this move, I regret all the chances I had missed. When I saw the video tribute to my grandmother it made me realize just what I missed out on. It's taken me this long to watch it, and I know why. First pass, I saw all my family with my grandmother. I saw them all there, being what a family should be. I didn't see me anywhere. It was the second pass that I finally spotted me in a group photo that must have been taken over 15 years ago. I didn't watch it before, and had a hard time watching it today, because it brings back all the regret and guilt I usually suppress. I do miss my grandmother, but I'm ashamed of how selfish I've been all these years.
When I turned 30 earlier this year, I went back home. I saw some family and did so in a way I never had before. Perhaps I've finally grown up? Perhaps I've finally taken responsibility for my own life and no longer hold any selfish and foolish animosity towards people who had nothing to do with the hardships I've brought on myself? Maybe it's because I've realized just how precious life is and how little time we all actually have? I think it's all those reasons.
For what it's worth now, grandma... I'm sorry I wasn't around. I'm sorry that your first grandchild never bothered to check to see how you were doing. I'm just glad that as the song says, you were not alone.
Friday, September 2, 2011
Saturday, June 4, 2011
Today's eCommerce
Ten years ago, the word "eCommerce" was about as rare as a "Smart Phone". Technology was growing so fast that computers were being out-clocked in months. The Internet, though maturing, was still not too familiar with the notion of online business. Sure, we had eBay, PayPal, and Amazon but those services and stores were still learning the ropes. Not to mention the infrastructure required to perform secure "eCommerce" wasn't feasible for the small business.
That's about when I decided to look into hosting an online store myself. At first I looked into eCommerce solutions, which were as numerous as they were new. The one thing they all had in common was the sheer expense in securing a package. They all involved hefty setup costs and year-long contracts paid up-front. To a business with capital, it's not a bad thing to pay all this up front. To a small business entrepreneur, it was a huge road block. On the other hand, I was pretty savvy with programming and computers, so I decided to look into a home-grown solution.
I picked up some books on PHP and MySQL. I was already pretty familiar with Linux, and Apache wasn't exactly hard for me to figure out. I set out to write my own product catalog with shopping cart, though I didn't get far. Even this early on, I realized that there's so much more to doing this than just showing pretty pictures and asking people for their credit card information. I had signed up for PayPal, but at the time, PayPal wasn't as easy and user-friendly as it is now. Further, the security of the website needed to be top-notch. I decided to retire the idea and only sold products the old-fashioned way.
Fast-forward ten years, and things are quite a bit different. There are still expensive eCommerce solutions, most of which offer secure payment processing and guarantee security. Indeed, today's "profit machine" on the Internet has to do with security since the last ten years has shown just how vulnerable we are out here in Cyberspace. On the other hand, we have several secure payment processing solutions that have also come a long way, removing the burden of having a bullet-proof system. What's left is hosting and store software, which has also come a long way.
Ten years ago, the notion of "virtual hosts" was brand new. They were around, but they were also unstable and not recommended for production servers. These days, computers are actually built for virtualization. If you don't know what I'm talking about, then I can briefly explain. Conventionally, you have a computer (hardware) and an OS like Windows (software). You'd run your OS on your computer and do whatever tasks are required. Now picture that your hardware can be shared by multiple copies of Windows, each one acting like it's own computer and you have virtualization. The layers are: [Hardware]->[Host OS]->[Several Virtual OSs]
With Virtual Hosts, the costs of having your own web server have come down significantly. On top of that, Open Source software has become quite the hot topic. The average computer user has no real concern, but most of us that work in the technical industry have heard the term "Open Source". Briefly, Open Source software is usually created by an individual or a small team. They then offer the source up to the community, which in turns helps maintain it with updates, bug fixes, and new features. Not all Open Source software is free, but "free" has become a common expectation when dealing with open software. Companies instead sell the service of support and modification of that software, or they offer to sell commercial licenses and guarantee of uptime. One such projects is the Magento project, which offers a full-featured eCommerce solution for free if you want to do things yourself.
So in our cheap eCommerce recipe, we have virtual hosts ($20/mo for a starter package) and open source software (free!), but we're still missing two key ingredients: Time and Skill. If you're familiar with your hosting environment and you're familiar with the software language your open source solution is written in, then all you need is the Time to do it yourself. Don't get me wrong, I am not trying to make this sound easy. Easy isn't a part of this recipe. You can expect long nights of screaming incoherently at your screen, trying to figure out why your store is down or your data is corrupt. The difference is that in my experience, you'll probably spend the same amount of time yelling incoherently at the out-sourced call center, trying to figure out why your store is down or your data is corrupt.
At least this way, you only have yourself to blame.
That's about when I decided to look into hosting an online store myself. At first I looked into eCommerce solutions, which were as numerous as they were new. The one thing they all had in common was the sheer expense in securing a package. They all involved hefty setup costs and year-long contracts paid up-front. To a business with capital, it's not a bad thing to pay all this up front. To a small business entrepreneur, it was a huge road block. On the other hand, I was pretty savvy with programming and computers, so I decided to look into a home-grown solution.
I picked up some books on PHP and MySQL. I was already pretty familiar with Linux, and Apache wasn't exactly hard for me to figure out. I set out to write my own product catalog with shopping cart, though I didn't get far. Even this early on, I realized that there's so much more to doing this than just showing pretty pictures and asking people for their credit card information. I had signed up for PayPal, but at the time, PayPal wasn't as easy and user-friendly as it is now. Further, the security of the website needed to be top-notch. I decided to retire the idea and only sold products the old-fashioned way.
Fast-forward ten years, and things are quite a bit different. There are still expensive eCommerce solutions, most of which offer secure payment processing and guarantee security. Indeed, today's "profit machine" on the Internet has to do with security since the last ten years has shown just how vulnerable we are out here in Cyberspace. On the other hand, we have several secure payment processing solutions that have also come a long way, removing the burden of having a bullet-proof system. What's left is hosting and store software, which has also come a long way.
Ten years ago, the notion of "virtual hosts" was brand new. They were around, but they were also unstable and not recommended for production servers. These days, computers are actually built for virtualization. If you don't know what I'm talking about, then I can briefly explain. Conventionally, you have a computer (hardware) and an OS like Windows (software). You'd run your OS on your computer and do whatever tasks are required. Now picture that your hardware can be shared by multiple copies of Windows, each one acting like it's own computer and you have virtualization. The layers are: [Hardware]->[Host OS]->[Several Virtual OSs]
With Virtual Hosts, the costs of having your own web server have come down significantly. On top of that, Open Source software has become quite the hot topic. The average computer user has no real concern, but most of us that work in the technical industry have heard the term "Open Source". Briefly, Open Source software is usually created by an individual or a small team. They then offer the source up to the community, which in turns helps maintain it with updates, bug fixes, and new features. Not all Open Source software is free, but "free" has become a common expectation when dealing with open software. Companies instead sell the service of support and modification of that software, or they offer to sell commercial licenses and guarantee of uptime. One such projects is the Magento project, which offers a full-featured eCommerce solution for free if you want to do things yourself.
So in our cheap eCommerce recipe, we have virtual hosts ($20/mo for a starter package) and open source software (free!), but we're still missing two key ingredients: Time and Skill. If you're familiar with your hosting environment and you're familiar with the software language your open source solution is written in, then all you need is the Time to do it yourself. Don't get me wrong, I am not trying to make this sound easy. Easy isn't a part of this recipe. You can expect long nights of screaming incoherently at your screen, trying to figure out why your store is down or your data is corrupt. The difference is that in my experience, you'll probably spend the same amount of time yelling incoherently at the out-sourced call center, trying to figure out why your store is down or your data is corrupt.
At least this way, you only have yourself to blame.
Sunday, February 13, 2011
Pet Fairy
How many of you have been in this position before:
Almost two years ago, Melanie and I took our then nine-year-old niece Britany to the flea market. We walked around and didn't see a whole lot that deserved purchasing. We had set a limit of about $10 a person. As we walked down one of the aisles of this outdoor flea market, Britany took off running towards one booth in particular. It didn't take long to see what piqued her interest: Animals.
Snakes, turtles, and all sorts of other critters were for sale from this gentleman, who reminded me of the Crocodile Hunter. He seemed to be well versed in the care required of each animal, and seemed to be generally concerned with the welfare of the animals. He also seemed very interested in supporting Britany's desire to have a turtle. In all honesty, it didn't take us long to make the decision. Since our landlord won't allow bigger animals, having smaller ones seems to be only fair.
I did what I felt I should do as a responsible adult. I asked the man profiting from the sale all the questions I felt needed to be answered. As a naive idiot, I took what he said for truth. He made it sound like the turtle was quite easy to care for, which I assumed cheap. That day, I spent $10. To date, the current habitat has cost about $300, and she's already nearly outgrown it. Also, there are so many things about turtle care that I had no idea about, such as UV lamps, heat requirements, lifespan, and DAMN they are dirty.
Flash forward to yesterday. We were at the pet store, purchasing more supplies for aforementioned turtle when we happened upon some cute little fuzzy critters. When I saw the price tag of $2.50 for these little colorful mice, I figured "what's the harm?" I should have examined the contents of my basket more closely, but you know what they say about hindsight. After pricing out a habitat and supplies for two mice, we paid for our order and took our new cute critters home. I set up the house for them really easily and everything seemed pretty awesome. I thought: "Wow! We got lucky here... I remember that turtle..." We even decided to go back out and pick up another mouse. The theory was that there's three of us living here, so we can each have our own mouse.
We took home an albino mouse that's twice the size of the other two. We knew that the two we originally bought may have been males, and that the new one was a female, but we thought "what harm would it be to have some baby mice in the future?"
This is exactly why I titled this post "Pet Fairy". I need a little fairy to pop up next to me whenever I'm about to purchase a new pet, and whisper the facts and reality of the situation into my ear. I did not know that female mice can pretty much be fair game for mating every few days. I also didn't know that when you cage a male and female together, the female can have an average of one litter every month with about 6-8 "pups" each litter. So while we were thinking, "Aww! How cute, the little mice are getting to know the new one." What we were actually seeing was the courting instincts of the male mouse. As they were caged overnight, there's no way of knowing if either of the males "got lucky". We'll know in a month!
So yes, if there is such a thing as a Pet Fairy... please, save me next time.
There you are, standing before a pet of some kind. It's cute and seems small and harmless. It's one of those small pets that don't look like they'd take too much to care for. Oh, and look at that price! Well, under $10 for a cute little pet? How can you go wrong?Let me tell you the ways...
Almost two years ago, Melanie and I took our then nine-year-old niece Britany to the flea market. We walked around and didn't see a whole lot that deserved purchasing. We had set a limit of about $10 a person. As we walked down one of the aisles of this outdoor flea market, Britany took off running towards one booth in particular. It didn't take long to see what piqued her interest: Animals.
Snakes, turtles, and all sorts of other critters were for sale from this gentleman, who reminded me of the Crocodile Hunter. He seemed to be well versed in the care required of each animal, and seemed to be generally concerned with the welfare of the animals. He also seemed very interested in supporting Britany's desire to have a turtle. In all honesty, it didn't take us long to make the decision. Since our landlord won't allow bigger animals, having smaller ones seems to be only fair.
I did what I felt I should do as a responsible adult. I asked the man profiting from the sale all the questions I felt needed to be answered. As a naive idiot, I took what he said for truth. He made it sound like the turtle was quite easy to care for, which I assumed cheap. That day, I spent $10. To date, the current habitat has cost about $300, and she's already nearly outgrown it. Also, there are so many things about turtle care that I had no idea about, such as UV lamps, heat requirements, lifespan, and DAMN they are dirty.
Flash forward to yesterday. We were at the pet store, purchasing more supplies for aforementioned turtle when we happened upon some cute little fuzzy critters. When I saw the price tag of $2.50 for these little colorful mice, I figured "what's the harm?" I should have examined the contents of my basket more closely, but you know what they say about hindsight. After pricing out a habitat and supplies for two mice, we paid for our order and took our new cute critters home. I set up the house for them really easily and everything seemed pretty awesome. I thought: "Wow! We got lucky here... I remember that turtle..." We even decided to go back out and pick up another mouse. The theory was that there's three of us living here, so we can each have our own mouse.
We took home an albino mouse that's twice the size of the other two. We knew that the two we originally bought may have been males, and that the new one was a female, but we thought "what harm would it be to have some baby mice in the future?"
This is exactly why I titled this post "Pet Fairy". I need a little fairy to pop up next to me whenever I'm about to purchase a new pet, and whisper the facts and reality of the situation into my ear. I did not know that female mice can pretty much be fair game for mating every few days. I also didn't know that when you cage a male and female together, the female can have an average of one litter every month with about 6-8 "pups" each litter. So while we were thinking, "Aww! How cute, the little mice are getting to know the new one." What we were actually seeing was the courting instincts of the male mouse. As they were caged overnight, there's no way of knowing if either of the males "got lucky". We'll know in a month!
So yes, if there is such a thing as a Pet Fairy... please, save me next time.
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