I finally got around to stripping down, gutting, and well actually just re-writing the WVURL.com code from scratch. I added a more visually pleasing interface, faster more simple code, all while keeping the existing url’s in the database.

I plan to add a few things in the coming days to make it super easy to send out the URL’s once shortened via various methods (twitter, facebook, email, clipboard, etc).

The previous friday i made the call to transfer. I gave them the address of the new place, and they confirmed that the surrounding two houses had service so it wouldnt be an issue. They told me they were going to do a site survey and it would take 2-4 days. Turns out they had/have no idea what they were talking about.

The house is my grandmother’s house. She has Alzheimers and is living with my parents, so my wife, myself, and my son moved in. Like i said before, it has cable now, being paid for by my dad.

I was surprised to hear monday morning that they couldnt find the address. I went back and forth with the rep, and they said to call back tuesday.

Tuesday morning i call back. They found the house. The account is in my dead grandfather’s name (dead 15 some years now) and they would need a death certificate, in order to terminate service and transfer my account. Seriously? I call my dad and he makes a stop at the court house to get a death certificate. I call them back and am now told they once again cannot locate the account. Searched by name, address, nothing. Who’s death certificate did i just get then, and why? I told the rep, if they cant find the address, why cant we just start a new account here, just as if it never had service before, even though it did. I held the phone to the TV while watching comedy central to illustrate that i had cable currently. They said, that if they placed the order, it would be canceled when they found the account. Wait…i thought they couldnt find it. If they can or would find it, why cant they find it now, and disconnect. They said its not coming up in the search. Well i told them to send a truck then. They argued again that it would have to be canceled. I had a prepaid walmart visa with $130 to pay my balance to start the transfer of my services, which i VERY WISELY did not pay until they could get a grasp on what was going on. This went on for about 45 minutes back and forth until i just had enough arguing with them.

I made 1 call to verizon, and within 10 minutes, had a DSL order put out, had my starter kit shipped, and only have to pay $29 a month, and not even until the end of the first month of service.

Id love to have suddenlink at my house, but they apparently refuse to give me service.

To Suddenlink; i will gladly cancel my verizon DSL order and go with suddenlink if you can remedy this before they come out on the 7th of may. However i expect to have my balance waved (even in part) in lieu of my incredible inconvenience. Ive been without internet for going on 5 days, unable to work (i work from home) had to trouble my relatives for information, and seriously, get a death certificate? If not, dont worry, cause verizon appears to be rolling out FIOS soon, and i will be the first to upgrade, and recommend to all that i know, to do the same.

WE ARE ONLINE – READ THE CONCLUSION HERE

The 3 virtues of a programmer as defined by Larry Wall, Randal L. Schwartz and Tom Christiansen (in Programming Perl).

1. Laziness – The quality that makes you go to great effort to reduce overall energy expenditure. It makes you write labor-saving programs that other people will find useful, and document what you wrote so you don’t have to answer so many questions about it. Hence, the first great virtue of a programmer. Also hence, this book. See also impatience and hubris.
2. Impatience – The anger you feel when the computer is being lazy. This makes you write programs that don’t just react to your needs, but actually anticipate them. Or at least pretend to. Hence, the second great virtue of a programmer. See also laziness and hubris.
3. Hubris – Excessive pride, the sort of thing Zeus zaps you for. Also the quality that makes you write (and maintain) programs that other people won’t want to say bad things about. Hence, the third great virtue of a programmer. See also laziness and impatience.

Several enhancements and bug fixes were implemented in this fix.

New admin area is included as well.

If you are an existing customer, you should have already recieved the updated version in your email, if not, contact me.

Want more info and screens? Click here

The updates to twitterfollow will include more controls and some other features, and tweetpic will include an oauth version as well as some bug fixes and admin area redesign.

Stay tuned!

The code now appends each message with RT @theauthor, where “theauthor” is the name of the original poster. The pipe for the feeds have been modified to IGNORE all tweets that start with RT. This is in response to the programs retweeting their own tweets.

The messages are also now limited to a set number of characters before they are cut off and a URL is generated to the original message. This is in response to some double URL’s and triple URL situations where the overflow was automatically linked, and then the link was then linked.

Thats all for now folks!

You can find them at the following addresses;

http://www.twitter.com/huntingtonrt

http://www.twitter.com/charlestonrt

http://www.twitter.com/morgantownrt

http://www.twitter.com/princetonrt
All ReTweeters automatically update every 20 minutes with feeds supplying relevant tweets to that particular locale.

All retweeters are utilizing my phpautotweet application and are initially propigated with my phptwitterfollow application

After much time spent with support finding out if it was something server side to blame, I found a workaround by using str_replace to replace the colon in the url, with %3A and then pass the URL to the script.

This was a problem because three autotweet programs (beckleyrt, wvjobs, and wvurl twitter) all rely on the wvurl api to generate their URL’s.

The site is now updated and the API examples reflect the changes.