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What is everyone thinking 2007 is going to be like? 2006 was pretty lame.

My predictions for 2007:

• End of the Iraq war, islamofascists welcome us as friends and trade partners.
• Kim Jong Il trades a gift basket from Bath & Body works for all his nuclear weapons.
• Indian call center industry plummets when consumers collectively rise up and demand adequate customer service. Dell, notably, ends its offshore operations.
• Evangelical christians release their stranglehold on American politics, realizing that there is a seperation of church and state.
• Social Security budget secured through FY 2010 thanks to a single, one-time donation of ExxonMobil quarterly profit earmarked for return to the American public.
• Discover card is hot in 2007 because of its cashback offer; Visa, MasterCard stagnate; American Express goes out of business when people realize they don’t have to pay $75 a year for a credit card.
• America Online resumes disk-mailing strategy, except this time, distribute HD-DVD and Bluray copies of AOL software.
• Internet gambling continues despite federal legislation prohibiting it as people realize the feds are wholly incapable of patrolling the tubes.
• Milton Friedman continues spinning in his grave as the Drug War continues; voters interested in repealing drug laws forget both the address of their legislators and the date on which voting takes place.
• Looming, crocheting, pocket calculators: still immensely unpopular

What do you think?

While developing a database to manage my household inventory, I started to implement a category and subcategory sorting feature. I figured that since a lot of my items will end up being listed on eBay (or otherwise), it might make sense to categorize my items when I entered them. Of course, eBay has a fairly expansive category system, and I didn’t quite need that level of granularity for my home possessions. So I imported the first two levels of categories into an Excel spreadsheet.

Database developers creating categories for sorting inventories might find this useful so that they don’t need to re-invent the wheel. If there is sufficient demand, I may recreate these files and include third and fourth level deep categories.

Without further ado, in Microsoft Excel and CSV format, the eBay category list and eBay subcategory list:

• eBay Categories (Excel)
• eBay Categories (CSV)
• eBay Subcategories (Excel)
• eBay Subcategories (CSV)

The first column is the numeric category or subcategory ID. The second column is the category name. The third column, if available, is the subcategory name. Note that eBay motors has no inherent numerical ID, so I replaced the eBay motors category ID with 0, and the subcategories with unique numbers starting at 999990.

The other day I was hanging out, writing songs on an acoustic guitar, and Myspacin’ it, when I noticed one of my friends had a little flash applet in their profile that compared their facial picture to celebrities. I’m not one to deck out my Myspace page with all kinds of flashy things (my actual Myspace page has the default layout, as I try to spare visitors the pain of horrid style-sheeting), but I found this to be particularly interesting since it seemed to do a decent job recognizing and matching faces. The site requires registration, but overall it was pretty painless (remember to answer “No thanks” to all their fabulous targeted offers).

The real reason I’m posting this here? This site said I look like Chuck Norris, and there is no greater honor.

[Editor’s note: this is all out of date as of July 2010 thanks to provisions in the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection financial reform bill that allow for minimum purchase prices up to $10.]

Last night I ordered out for Chinese food. My stomach and my wallet were calling out for General Tso’s chicken and fried dumplings. But I ended up pretty disappointed because of a misguided store policy at the restaurant.

This particular restaurant, Plum Blossom in Troy, NY, gladly took my order over the phone, but was less than happy to accept my Visa card when I arrived. Prominently posted in the store were inkjet-printed signs in front of the counter, on the counter, and on the wall behind the cashier, each affixed with clear packing tape. The signs read: “$15 minimum purchase on all debit/credit cards”. Egads, I thought; my order was less than $15. So when the cashier announced my total, I pulled out my Visa card anyway. He pointed to the sign and read it aloud.

I always carry some cash too, so I tendered up, but before I did, I asked, “So I can’t charge this, huh?” He read the sign to me again. I asked, “Do you know you’re not supposed to have minimum purchase amounts on credit card purchases?” He looked at me like I was retarded and asked, “What are you talking about?! We do; the sign’s right here.” I said back, “Just because you do it doesn’t mean you’re not supposed to, and I know for a fact you’re not supposed to.” And he said back to me, “Well we do.” Astounded by his persuasive abilities, I was more than happy to pay cash instead. But the blase attitude to my complaint was what made me more than happy to call my issuing bank when I got home.

Amazingly, the customer service agent I spoke with at my issuing bank agreed with the merchant. “I’m pretty sure they’re allowed to do that,” she said in an almost confident tone. “Are you sure, or are you guessing,” I asked. She paused and of course replied “I’d have to ask my supervisor to confirm that, sir.” I said that wasn’t necessary and decided I’d call Visa directly.

So I called Visa, and what happens? The person I spoke with also agreed with the merchant! I started to doubt myself. Did I just freak out at the Chinese restaurant guy for no reason? Was I on a sorely misguided but emotionally intense crusade not unlike a fundamentalist Christian neo-conservative supporting war? What happened last night?

Of course my close friends know that I’m never wrong, ever, and indeed, this held true yet again in this case. Right from the horse’s mouth:

Visa merchants are not permitted to establish minimum transaction amounts, even on sale items. They also are not permitted to charge you a fee when you want to use your Visa card.

Source:
Visa USA – About Visa – Minimum Purchase
Frequently Asked Questions – Visa Corporate – Information for Merchants

And for those of us with MasterCard:

Another MasterCard acceptance rule prohibits merchants that accept MasterCard cards from establishing any minimum amount below which the merchant won’t accept payment via MasterCard card.

Source:
MasterCard Small Business – Frequently Asked Questions

So I was right! I’ve just encountered uninformed employees one after another. I called Visa back, but before mentioning that I had found their own policy, I explained my story again from the beginning and this time, the customer service agent emphatically said, “Oh no, they can’t do that [minimum purchase amounts].” He transferred me to someone in Montreal so that they could take an incident report. What this had to do with Montreal, I have no idea. In any event, the Visa agent gladly took down my name and the restaurant’s name. I didn’t ask what would happen to the restaurant owner, but I assume they’d send a warning letter first and then cancel their merchant account if they get another complaint.

Tough luck for me trying to use my Visa card, and tough luck for Plum Blossom getting called in for making it my tough luck.

Was the Plum Blossom requiring minimum purchase amounts to simply defy Visa policy? Probably not. In all likelihood, the owners said to themselves, “Self, these Visa merchant fees sure do add up! Applying Adam Smith’s economic principles, I should be minimizing my costs to continue to provide low cost to my consumer. Therefore, I will refuse credit cards on transactions in which I believe the credit card to be a costly form of doing business, and everybody will benefit.” Of course, I’m being maudlin, but the principle is probably true: that the Chinese restaurant simply would go out of business if they had to actually pay $.30 + 2.9% of my $12 charge (grand total: 65 cents) everytime somebody placed an order like mine. Again, I’m being facetious, but come on, if you’re going to take Visa, you’re obviously going to have to submit to their merchant fee gouging.

To the merchants that say, (French voice over) “Le sigh, but I have to pay so much money to zee Visa.” Tough luck. You don’t have to take Visa at all if it’s costing you so much money. But you take Visa because you want more business — specifically from people that use Visa cards! So take the damn Visa card, because you agreed to it. I charge almost everything because frankly, it’s more secure than carrying around an assload of cash. My credit card has been charged both fraudulently and mistakenly, and in both cases, the charges were righted in my favor. Placing a charge on some credit cards also doubles a manufacturer’s warranty or includes free theft insurance (check with your Bank — read your cardholder agreement unlike the merchant here that failed to read their agreement with Visa).

I won’t charge purchases under $5 generally because of merchant charges — I don’t want to impose that on small businesses, and I can actually understand that losing $.30 on a $1 or $2 transaction can make a sale a loss. The corollary to this is that I love using my card for minor purchases at big box stores. The true test: could I charge a penny. What better place to test this than a Walmart? At a nearby Walmart, I went to the candy section, and grabbed two peanut M&Ms — not bags of M&Ms, but two peanut M&Ms. I didn’t bother bagging it since I knew the candy shells would only melt in my mouth, not in my hands. At the self-service checkout, I proceeded through the menus to weigh my non-barcoded item, and per the machine’s directions, placed the item on the scale (only one — I ate the other, whoops!). The total: $.01. The form of payment: credit card. Indeed, the machine gladly authorized my card for $.01 and proceeded to print my receipt. The paper on the receipt and the duty cycle to the checkout machine probably almost cost that much, not to mention the heat that I let out the doors by walking into the building.

If costs of doing business get too high, raise your prices. No business would tack on a “receipt charge” or a “opened-the-door-and-let-out-heat/cold” charge, but we let merchants get away with “credit card fees”. The next time this happens to you, tell the merchant that they’re in the wrong, and see what they say. If they cave into your pressure and take your card, that’s all well and good, but someone will still be in that same scenario another time. Consider calling Visa and reporting the merchant. In this case, I only reported this restaurant because they were so complacent in telling me that was just their policy, but if they were pleasant it might have made me more hesitant to call Visa.

You can call Visa at (800) VISA-911 (847-2911), and MasterCard at (800) MC-ASSIST (622-7747).

I use GoDaddy’s Virtual Private Server solutions to host this and other websites. It’s very stable and reliable. GoDaddy will help with basic support, but for a lot of things they’ll simply tell you: it’s your server to support if you are using a dedicated or virtual private server solution. This left me in a horrible quandary earlier this evening.

I found directions on GoDaddy’s virtual private server help page with very simple directions about an upgrade path for Plesk 7.5 that would upgrade me to Plesk 8.0.1. Really, I had no good reason to do this update, but I like to keep my software fresh. And that is one thing GoDaddy’s VPS lacks pretty horribly. Right now I’m running PHP3 and MySQL3. Light, stable, and broken-in — that’s what I think of when I think of these versions of PHP and MySQL. But seriously, to not even offer a more recent version is pretty lame. This may cause me to drop GoDaddy as a VPS host if I ever need the enhanced features of PHP5 (and coming soon, PHP6) or MySQL 5. For example, in PHP5, there is the “str_ireplace” function, which allows case-insensitive inline string replacement, and in MySQL 5, there are subqueries — something I’d die for right now for my custom coded apps.

In any event, I followed the directions on GoDaddy’s help page, and the installation completed successfully. Per their directions, I had to call and have a customer service rep update my Plesk license key. Humorously the technician didn’t know how to handle my request. But before he put me on hold, I asked, “Are you from the United States?” He chuckled and said, “Of course, what did you think?” I said, “Well, when you call Dell, it can be a culturally enlightening experience.” Instead of putting me on hold, he spent a few minutes with me joking about Dell customer service and their battery recalls. But he did get someone that was able to help with the Plesk license key issue. So my key was updated, and everything worked except for two things.

First, all of my DNS zones were completely wiped out. I’d get this error when trying to access any of my DNS management pages:

ERROR: PleskException
Up LevelUp Level
Undefined dns_zone_id

0: /usr/local/psa/admin/htdocs/domains/dns.php:1

And second, when I restored all the old DNS records, none of my “www.” subdomains worked properly. All “www.” pages would redirect to the default page for the IP address shared by the hosted site. So for example, since INeedAttention.com is hosted on 208.109.22.54, “www.INeedAttention.com” was resolving the same way that 208.109.22.54 would, which normally is what happens anyway, except that the Apache server was handling it as if it literally was a hit to 208.109.22.54 and not “www.INeedAttention.com”. The issue is that I have many sites hosted on this server, and INeedAttention.com is not the default site for this server (feel free to peek at http://208.109.22.54/ if you’re curious about what the default page is).

So first, to restore my DNS zones, I logged into my Plesk panel and viewed the root MySQL database to investigate the issue. clicked the Server button, then clicked “Database Servers”, then clicked “Local MySQL Server”. From here, I selected the “Databases” tab, and then clicked “DB WebAdmin”. I loaded the “psa” database. Note that the “Database Servers” feature is new in Plesk 8.0.1; in previous versions you could only use the “DB WebAdmin” feature on a per-domain basis.
Knowing that the DNS zones, DNS records, and Domain tables are all related, I first grabbed a list of all domains hosted on my server with the SQL command:

SELECT `name` FROM `domains` WHERE 1

Then I copied the list of domains to my clipboard, and put each domain on it’s own line. Now I needed to create the DNS zones for each domain. I created new DNS zones manually by using a series of INSERT statements based on the list of domains I had just copied. There was one statement for each domain, and each statement looked like this:

INSERT INTO `dns_zone` (`name`, `displayName`) VALUES (`mydomain.com`,`mydomain.com`)

In this case, there was already 1 entry in the DNS zone table still: the default DNS zone, named “ip-208-109-22-54.ip.secureserver.net”. So for the first INSERT statement, the first DNS zone ID was now 2. I made note of this number. Starting with the first domain on your list, each domain’s new zone ID will be one higher than the zone before it. So in my case, my first domain’s zone ID was now 2, and my second domain’s zone ID was now 3, and so on.

Now, I had to update the DNS records table to reflect the new zone IDs. Interestingly (and fortunately), upgrading to Plesk 8.0.1 didn’t cause the DNS records to be deleted, only the DNS zones. So now I needed to update each of the DNS records and link them back to their corresponding DNS zones. To do that, I used an UPDATE statement that used a LIKE clause to figure out which rows belonged to which DNS zones. Again, you’ll have to do this for each domain:

UPDATE `dns_recs` SET `time_stamp` = NOW( ) , `dns_zone_id` = ‘2’ WHERE `dns_zone_id`=0 AND (`host` LIKE “%mydomain.com%” OR `val` LIKE “%mydomain.com%”) LIMIT 20;

Note that “mydomain.com” appears in this statement twice. Also, note that “dns_zone_id” must correspond to the zone you just created. So in this example, my first UPDATE statement starts with zone ID 2, and my second statement is zone ID 3, and so on.

And finally, I needed to actually update the domain records to link the new DNS zones and their associated DNS records to the domains themselves. I created yet another series of UPDATE statements (one for each domain again), to link the domains up to their new DNS zones:

UPDATE `domains` SET `dns_zone_id` = ‘2’ WHERE `name` = “mydomain.com” LIMIT 1 ;

This fixed the DNS issues. However, there was still the problem with the “www.” subdomains not being properly handled by Apache. GoDaddy’s tech support told me this was a “known issue” with Plesk 8.0.1 when I called. It would have been nice if they mentioned that in their help center on the page with the instructions on upgrading! However it turned out to not be a big deal to correct. I logged into the Plesk control panel again, and clicked the “Domains” button in the left navigation column. For each of the domains listed in the right side, I clicked the domain name to show the domain control panel, then clicked “Domain Administrator”. Then I unchecked the “WWW” box at the very top of the page, and clicked OK. I was returned to the domain control panel. I clicked “Domain Administrator” again, and checked the “WWW” box again, then clicked OK again. I did this for each domain on my server.

With each domain re-configured for it’s “www.” subdomain, I clicked the “Server” link in the left side, then clicked “Service Management”, and then restarted Apache and the DNS service.

And now, after about 90 minutes of downtime, two phone calls to GoDaddy, and a lot of grief later, I have Plesk 8.0.1 installed and working!

Overall I would not recommend the upgrade, though I do like the features of Plesk (generally speaking).