As a web developer for my company, I have the pleasure of occasionally dealing with members of the public. Most times the things I deal with from the public are pretty mundane (broken links, data refresh problems, error messages when submitting forms, etc.), but every once in a while we get an email from a real character.

Well, this next guy is not just a character -- he takes the character cake.

This past weekend we received an email from a person who had some valid concerns with the site (our Print This Page link needed to be adjusted for printing in IE8 and we didn't "notify" people that they were missing the Flash Shockwave plug-in that is required to view our videos on the site). Like I said, these are valid issues; however, according to Microsoft Word's count feature, it took him 668 words (3,649 characters) to try and convey this point. Besides rambling on about Charles Schwab, the Austin-American Statesman, spyware/adware and also using the word "screw" in some form or fashion no less than three times, he proceeded to tell us that not only has he been working with computers since 1965, but that he has a bachelor's degree in physics and a master's degree in electrical engineering and that we needed to stop putting things like hyperlinks on our pages because it screws sites up.

After having a good chuckle about how the internet would basically not exist if it weren't for hyperlinks, I proceeded to fix the problems. I modified the printing stylesheet first and sent him an email thanking him for pointing out these problems, letting him know that the printing functionality should be fixed and asked him for more information regarding what I later found out on my own was the Flash Shockwave plug-in issue. The reason I say that is because he didn't respond to my initial request for more information.

Anyway, I fixed the Flash Shockwave thing and sent him a follow up email yesterday letting him know that he should now see a message letting him know that the plug-in is required and is either disabled or not installed. I didn't exactly expect him to respond, but lo an behold there was an email waiting for me this morning.

Things started off well - he thanked me for replying to his requests -- and then they proceeded to go south. He starts telling me that he has to work outside all day without breaks for eating or drinking (isn't that illegal?) and that he's single and has to take care of everything himself. He then talks about all the security risks associated with the Flash player, ActiveX components and internet scripts in general...and then goes all schizophrenic on me saying that he backs up all his important documents daily, deletes all cookies, deletes all history, deletes all temporary internet files, has an airtight firewall, disabled Microsoft's Automatic Updates, shuts down his computer when not in use and even unscrews the coaxial cable from this modem to "prevent unsolicited intrusions" because he doesn't trust websites (especially Google). If that wasn't bad enough, he says that he knows that sites are constantly getting his IP address, name and email address just by him browsing them and then they use that information to spy on him and send him spam. He trusts us, but doesn't "know if that trust is justified".

Wow.

Needless to say, I didn't respond to his latest email.

Took a stroll down South Congress yesterday with Trish and her co-worker, Daniel, for my first photowalk. Trish picked a good route and I had a lot of fun; I must admit that it's amazing how many times I've driven down SoCo and never really looked at what's there. We spent close to two hours on SoCo before we headed over to the Long Center to snag some pictures of the Austin skyline at sunset. I was a little sad that I only had my monopod and not my tripod, but I was still able to get a few good shots after the sun set.



I normally tend to shoot with all settings on auto, but I decided to switch over to full manual for this outing -- it was probably the best decision I've ever made. Not only was I able to shoot in RAW format (I can't shoot in RAW with auto settings), I feel like I know my camera so much better now. I still have a ways to go, but the experience gave me a lot of things to look forward to.

Anyway, I decided to open up a Flickr account so that I could more easily share my favorite pictures. Feel free to browse my photostream.

As I was turning onto our street on Friday evening, I noticed something sitting in the middle of the road. I originally thought was a rock, but as I drove around it I noticed that it was a turtle. Selina was outside talking to some of the neighbors when I pulled into the garage and said I was going to walk down the block to save a turtle from being smashed. She gave me a strange look...I mean, not that I blame her; our neighborhood isn't exactly known for its turtle population.

I walked to the corner, picked him up and returned to the house. The neighbors (and the dogs of said neighbors) were all interested in the little fellow, but being the shy creature that he is, he wanted nothing to do with anyone. I sat him in the grass and we started taking pictures while the dogs licked and barked at him.



One of the kids from across the street said that he brought the turtle home a few days ago after finding him trying to cross Hwy 290 and that it had been living in his back yard since then. He wasn't all too concerned that the turtle was roaming the streets, so I told him that I was going to take him to the creek that runs through our neighborhood park. Selina said I should take him to Lake Pflugerville, but I was too lazy to drive that far. So off into the creek he went.

Fare thee well, little turtle.

Finally sat down for a few hours and hammered out the code I needed to get a basic version of my blog back up and running. Old posts are temporarily unavailable (I need to write more code for that) and people can't leave comments (more code needed for that as well), but at least you can read the new posts.

Since I up and decided to join Twitter, I also wrote a custom Twitter feed that should appear below the navigation bar. Sometimes the Twitter API has a cow and ignores my requests like a 2-year-old in the middle of a temper tantrum, but most times you should see my last three tweets.

Well, it's getting late here in the Tovar household. I need to jump in the shower and hit the hay.