Mandrill.com mail service review

I wrote a web app that sends email invites, password resets and the like. The problem is, half of my emails get blocked by destination servers, and so I thought it prudent to sign up with one of these bulk email services designed just for this purpose: sending email on behalf of your app. My first try is with Mandrill.com, a service by MailChimp. My initial thoughts are not good. I created an account (after 3 page loads which erased my email address because my chosen password didn't meet their idea of complexity). After signing in, I attempted to access the smtp settings, only to be prompted for my password again. I couldn't get past the password prompt (I just made it, and I even wrote it down!) and that didn't let me in. So, off to password recovery. I entered my username (but wait, I used an email to sign in didn't I? Shouldn't it ask for my email not a username?) and clicked the button.... waiting.. waiting.. waiting.. I didn't see the email come in after a few minutes, so I scan my folders in Outlook and what do I see? The password recovery link is in my Junk E-Mail folder! Sadly, I have to say goodbye to Mandrill. If their own app emails just end up in junk, I can't use them. That is exactly what I'm trying to avoid! Add to that the clunky sign up process and incorrectly labeled buttons, I would rate this service as definitely not ready for production! What is your experience with Mandrill.com?

Tellermate TY Cash Counter Supervisor Password

Do you have a Tellermate TY cash counter?

Need to change the currency, or access other options from the supervisor menu, but don't have the password? If you call Tellermate, it will cost you $25 US for the password!

Here it is:

{Red} {Green} {$} {Green}

These buttons are located at the top of the machine.

Amigo Flying

http://picasaweb.google.com/SilverPaladin1/Amigo/photo#5041815419943479634

A short clip of my wife's Goffins Cockatoo, Amigo, flying to my arm.

Amigo is such a cutie!

  

My experience with Ruby on Rails

So, I have this grand project to do for a client. I have been wanting to take the Ruby on Rails plunge for a while now, cause I have been hearing all these wonderful things about it. How fast you can develop it, how easy it makes programming a web application, yada yada yada. I thought I would like to write (rant) about my experiences so far.

I have been reading reading reading. Tutorials, books, how-tos etc. So far, I still don't know what the hell is going on. I think a major part of my problem in getting the hang of things is that I am moving from and ASP/PHP/.NET experience to a pure OOP experience. I am having trouble grasping the terminology and concepts of Object Oriented Programming. I think about PHP, where everything is a function. You want to do something, you jump on the PHP.com site and search, bam, either there is a built in function or someone has written some function that does what you want. You dump it in your code, modify to taste and your on to the next problem to solve. Want some help? Jump on the PHP list and you get an answer in hours. I have asked a couple of questions in the Rails list and no reply after a whole day.

Documentation? Well, on Rails, that seems to suck too. I see all this great stuff about plug ins, modules, recipes, blah blah blah, and so I download them, run the commands as the author has instructed, and nothing is working. All I get is module not found, or error, or undefined object. Very frustrating, cause I don't know what is going on in Ruby (I don't know ruby, so very tough to know where to type to get what result). If you download the code, install the code, run the code, just as the author has instructed, shouldn't you get the result the author says you will? Been burning 2 weeks trying to get some simple stuff up. Ruby and Rails stuff is to a large extent self documenting. The idea is that you place comments and such in your code and run rdoc and you get documentation. I guess authors think that is enough, as you dont' get instructions, how-tos, FAQ's, user forums, and so on. Some authors have blogs and stuff, but then they close off commenting.

I must be doing something wrong, cause I have been at this for over 2 weeks and still I have no application. Client is going to be getting pissed soon!

Well, back at it. Going to see if I can get some actualy work done.

ASP.NET Atlas VS Ruby on Rails

I just viewed the video of a demonstration on how to create a simple to-do list in ASP.net and then Ajaxify it using the .net ajax plugin called Atlas.

You can view the video yourself here: http://download.microsoft.com/download/8/5/8/85803fdd-fe9a-4783-ab37-e0c565172ffd/asp_net_atlas.wmv

The interesting thing about this video is not that you can easily take an existing .net application and extend it to use Ajax like features, but how long it takes.. in this case the video is just over 18 minutes long. Now, the thing to remember, the person who is doing the programming is probably very experienced with his platform and tools, and is very organized and prepared for the demo. While viewing the video, I thought.. "I wonder how long it would take to create the same application in Rails?" View the video posted by Microsoft above, then view my video.

I miss my bike!