Category: Serenity Now!

Serenity Now! Web Development WordPress

WordPress MU Spam

I recently finished up migrating a site for a client (WordPress MU) from one host to another. I got an email requesting the migration from someone that said “it was a simple blog with only a few plugins”. When I took my initial look, I counted 30 plugins, and a database with 2093 tables (WordPress […]

Life Serenity Now!

Nine Years Later…

Nine years later to the month that I proudly graduated from Penn State and I have finally paid off my student loans! This is a big day for me as I thought it would never happen. Now I can put my student loan payment towards’ Evan’s future college fund so he hopefully will not have […]

Hints Serenity Now!

Email Overload? Here Are Some Tips.

Most people rely on email for their day to day business and personal communication – so much so that your mailboxes are most likely overflowing. Here are a few tips I have practiced over the last few years to keep my email under control. Make a judgement call with each email message you receive. If […]

Apple Serenity Now!

mail.app Version 3.1

I have been using Leopard (Mac OS X 10.5) for multiple weeks now, and I am absolutely fed up with Mail.app (others are as well). I rely heavily on email for all aspects of my business, and I finally had to resort to using webmail today so I would not waste any more time troubleshooting […]

Business Hints Hosting jappler.com Serenity Now!

Out of Disk Space

If you all the sudden get database errors (select, cannot login, cannot write, etc) – and everything looks ok (from the database end of things) check to make sure you have not run out of disk space. How do I know? Well – let’s say last night I had to do a major fall clean-up. […]

Apple Business HOWTOs Serenity Now!

How to Quiet stamps.com Sales Reps

Stamps.com got my contact information a few weeks ago and have been hounding me every other day after answering their three initial questions: How much does your company spend on postage a year? My response: I think I buy maybe 3-4 books of stamps. How much do you spend on shipping packages? My response: I […]

Serenity Now!

Not So Much Fun With DirectTV

I scheduled an appointment to upgrade to Directv HD. Mind you – I get something from Comcast almost everyday about switching to their service. I have been very happy with Directv for over a year now, but it seems their customer service is a bit lacking. I had a no show/no call appointment on Monday […]

Serenity Now!

Tollways

This summer I have been doing a lot of traveling. Back in July I drove through Pennsylvania – and I have an iPASS so I do not need to stop and deposit coins in tolls in IL, PA, NJ, NY. I just got 2 bills in the mail for failure to pay 2 $0.50 tolls […]

Serenity Now! Standards

Secure Email, Secure Web Site – Thanks

One of my top pet peeves in my field is the use of self-signed SSL certificates for public web sites. I have no issue with using self-signed SSL certificates for a development environment or something internal, but when you have outside users, you need to show them that they can trust you. Just today – […]

Apple Serenity Now!

How I Fix Hardware Problems

If you know me…and have seen me work with hardware, you know my style of troubleshooting. First – read to see if others are having issues. Second, make sure all the connections are working. Third, look for the dumb reasons why something would not work (electrical, buttons). Fourth – use force to beat the hardware. […]

Apple Serenity Now!

.mac Update

Serenity now – Apple has updated their .Mac service. There are some good updates…and some bad. The good: the Web Gallery looks pretty sweet. The bad: .Mac users can now send and receive email attachments up to 20mb. Ugh…nothing drives me more crazy than getting large email attachments. What is large? For me it is […]