Every web developer hates Internet Explorer

Yes that’s how much I hate IE. Right now I am having a lot of issue with IE because my CSS wont render properly.

So I spend 5 minutes on zazzle to create this for fun.

Well it entertained me.

You can see/buy/whatever you want to do with it here.

It only took 10 mins of my time to create the store, registration and everything.

And still no clue with what to do with my current CSS on IE.

This is SICKENING

Murdered Tot’s Spin Dryer Torture

Two brothers have been convicted of murdering a three-year-old girl after months of abuse, including spinning the toddler in a tumble dryer. 

Related photos / videos

Murdered Tot’s Spin Dryer Torture

The case in New Zealand exposed a circle of family neglect involving the girl’s mother, who was found guilty of manslaughter because she failed to protect her child.

Justice Judith Potter wept in court as she thanked the clearly shaken jury after the verdicts were read out.

Nia Glassie died of brain injuries in a hospital in August last year, two weeks after being kicked in the head by Wiremu Curtis, 19, and his 22-year-old brother Michael.

The youngster’s mother Lisa Kuka, 35, shared a house with her boyfriend Wiremu Curtis, his brother and other adults.

The brothers face life behind bars after being found guilty of murder and child cruelty in Rotorua High Court. Kuka is facing 10 years in prison.

Nia’s cousin, Michael Pearson, 20, and Michael Curtis’ partner, 18-year-old Oriwa Kemp – who also lived in the house with the toddler – were found guilty of child cruelty.

The child suffered abuse “amounting to torture”.

She was slapped, punched, kicked, flung against a wall and held high in the air before being dropped to the floor.

The child was also spun inside a hot clothes dryer and whirled rapidly on a rotary clothesline until she was flung off and, at one point, was left lying unconscious for 36 hours without medical attention.

Prosecutor Fletcher Pilditch said: “She was bullied in the worst kind of way. She was singled out, for what reason we do not know.”

New Zealand’s Children’s Commissioner, Dr Cindy Kiro, said the case was shocking because other adults knew the abuse was going on and did nothing about it.

“Both family members and neighbours were aware of the neglect and abuse Nia was subject to,” she said in a statement.

“That they didn’t speak out in time is something they will have to live with.”

Sky News

This company is such a “RIPOFF!!”

Sometime I wonder, some people never admit their mistake. Nobody is perfect and everybody makes mistake.

I know that during desperate time you will do anything to get everything in order thus making  desperate move such as making personal loan from a company that charge an outrages interest rate. For example cashcall.

For a $2600 loan, you will “ONLY” have to pay them $216.55 for 42 months which equivalent to $9095.1 or 99.5% interest rate!

So yeah, that is a ripoff, but you should be aware of this before you ever agree with anything. You should have read the terms and conditions.

Sure they are taking advantage of your desperate moment but, you did agree to dig into deeper hole. But of course, if you borrow this month and paid in full next month, technically you will only be paying them ~$300 ( fee plus first month interest). But how many people out there actually do this?

The reason you are taking this loan is because there’s no money to begin with, or somebody who is already in deep debt, living paycheck to pacheck or already in payday loan “victims”. So by borrowing more money isnt helping because you did agree with the terms, so technically this company has their right to charge whatever term you agreed upon.

So yeah….. first step is to admit your mistake by not reading. Second, if you already taking out this loan, the best thing you can do now is pay as much and as soon as possible. Take the responsibility on your own debt. I do know that sometime you cant help getting into debt due to some unexpected financial hardship or life events, such as job loss, medical reason and any other acceptable situation. But most of the time, you will have an option to work out a financial payment plan if you do talk to them

It is just totally unacceptable if you are living WAY beyond your mean and you dont want to downgrade (when you could) and charge the different to the credit card. There’s nothing wrong with life without cable, or cell phone or all the gadget when you cant afford the monthly payment… or to the point that you have to do cash advance or payday loans. If you are under a contract, sometime it is better to break the contract and pay the fee than commited on $60/month for 24 months. Sure you will think, it is only $60 and by breaking the contract you will have to pay $175. But over 2 years, you will save $1440-$175 = $1265. Which can be used to pay much more important stuff.

I dont know it is your choice and decision. But people should just stop to point fingers at these type of company (sure it is true they are taking advantage of your poor financial planning), but you only have yourself to blame to get into this mess.

Simple Oatmeal Cookies

Enough about finance and work. Other than those two, cooking is one of the things that I love to do.
I love cookies so damn much… and it is really hard to trim that down. Haha

So I make somewhat healthy cookies everything I have the urge to eat one.

The Ingredients

3 cups oatmeal
1 cup butter
2 eggs
1 1/2 cup white sugar
1/4 cup honey/maple syrup ( I dont have brown sugar… so I use honey )
1 1/2 cup flour
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp salt
1 bag Chocolate chips.

The “How”?

1. Mixed butter and sugar together…. no mixer? no problem… use wooden spatula like me…hahaha
2. Add eggs….. vanila extract if you have any
3. And everything else after that
4. Bake for 15 mins 350 deg

Wow…. so simple that in only require 4 steps…LOL..just kidding, I love to make stuff as simple as possible.
I dont have brown sugar at that time, so honey can replace the moist. The only thing you will be missing is
the beautiful brownish color after baking….. ( if you have brown sugar, just use those)

The dough….

The cookies!

Make good amount……. and I dont feel that bad eating it!Well You can replace choc chip with raisin. =)

Am I stupid for saving up?

When you save up, you dont have to worry that much say when you lose your job. You will have those extra money to live on until you find a new job. You will have unemployment benefit kicking in so you can live off  that for another extra few months just in case you couldnt find a job.

But of course, you will go out less, you will spend less, and basically everything else less. You will have a really high credit score. But you dont need any loan because you owned everything outright. Your house, your 15 years old car. Student loan is being paid.

Now imagine, a person who live paycheck to paycheck. Spending like there’s no tomorrow. Getting new toys every week…go out practically everyday. Max out the credit card…. crappy credit score but he dont care as long as he can apply for a new one regardless the interest rate or annual fee because of the low score. Having friends and social life. Then he lost his job. Car being repoed, and have enough to pay only the rent and stop paying the credit cards. Getting collection calls after few months.

Then he will file bankruptcy which will going to erase all of his credit card debt. Then after few months, he able to land a new job  and wait couple of months, he will soon being showered with credit card offer and cycle start again. But he still have his toys from the first CC which technically was free because he declare bankruptcy.

Which make us wonder? Are we stupid for saving up? Are we stupid for living frugally? Are we stupid that we didnt go out that much so we could put the extra money towards emergency fund? When people who is obviously have debt up to their eyeballs because of them being irresponsible, will always have an option being bailed out?

Of course being responsible, you will own the place, the car, with no debt, but since you didnt social that much, people will called you cheap and think that you are weird. And it is only $20 outing, or it is only $10 meals. So why are you making a big deal…… life is short, enjoy it while it last….. sort of things.

It is just not fair that how responsible people are always being punished for being responsible….. You are not the FUN one. People avoid hanging out with you.

Then when there’s a financial crisis, people will come to you to borrow your money or they can just declare bankruptcy or any other “bail” out option.

So tell me, am I stupid for saving up?

Multiple savings multiple accounts.

The week when Wamu went into auction, I was absolutely in a panick mode because I dont know what to expect. The thing is we always have our wamu account to pay all of our major bills. Since we charge most of the bills with our credit card, so it wont be that bad because as long as we paid it off before accrued interest.

Our main concern is the payment for the rent. We usually deposit the money a week before, and the fund will be there when we make the rent payment. During that week, rumored that we wont be able to access wamu for a day up 90 days, does freak me out a little because I already deposit the rent money earlier.

We do have other saving account but most of our saving at that time was in wamu. The ease of transferring between saving and checking which is also instant transfer, and with their high 4% interest rate for saving at that time, make us one of their loyal customer. I know that the fact that the increasing saving rate is one of the major “ding” that bank is in trouble because they need our deposit. But as long as you stayed below FDIC limit, you will be safe.

The problem is, since all of our fund is inside wamu, so when wamu went under, there’s always a chance that we wont be able to access our fund up to 90 days. (im glad we dont have to face this issue, because the tarnsition is pretty smooth, with no interruption).

Since then, we move some of our fund to multiple saving account. We use ING direct, DollarSavingDirects (part of Emigrant Bank ). We have been using ING for over a year. We have our ING as our vacation/toys/annual bills fund. Right now every account has almost equal amount. Suppose one of those bank fails, I will always have 2 more banks to access our saving in case of emergency.

We used to live paychek from paycheck 2 years ago….. and I dont like the insecure feelings…because we are like one paycheck away to not able to pay our bills….

But as much as I love to save up during rainy days, I always believe that we do need to make a little “splurge” on ourselves. That explains the vacation fund. But of course, if one of us lose our job, we can easily transfrom that into emergency fund. But so far we have dont have to touch those and it will remain as vacation fund which we always take end of the year or beginning of the year for 2-3 days.

Why evil man is getting richer.

When I first came here, I used to live with the in laws. I need a job right away because I dont like staying home doing nothing. So I asked around and hubby told me the landlord of the house is always hiring. So we went there for a walk in interview and got hired with a minimum wage.

I felt so happy eventhough it was only minimum wage job. I started as an inspector and also receiptionist. From there I did whole bunch of works outside my job descriptions. I dont really care because all that matters at that time was the paycheck and be able to contribute something to the family.

But I soon learned about my ex-boss aka our landlord. He has a lot of other properties too. So most of the time he refused to answer phone call from his tenants whenever they need maintenance or problems with the house. I feel uneasy to lie when they called us up. He will only do something when his tenants came over to the office. Then he will greet than with the most welcoming smile ever and asked if there’s anything he can help them with.

I felt sick to the stomach. But it is none of my business because I worked for his plating company, not his real estate business. But since he gave the company’s phone number for his properties , so once a while we will get this type of phone calls.

Throughout a year and half, I got about a dollar raise and started to look for new job that suite my field. During that time I also volunteer to build the company website for my portfolio (they took it down already after I quit). Before I left, I make sure that my job and paperworks, quickbooks ap and ar were up to date. I gave him one week notice. It was actually not too bad considering all of his ex-employees never gave any notice and usually just doesnt show up.

I also volunteer to train one of my co-worker for the daily. My relationship with all my co-workers are good and we are like one family over there. One thing we have in common is that we are all working very hard for this guy, but he never treat us properly, as in safety issue. Because we worked in basically very dangerous environment, chemicals all around us. He only provide the mask, first aid and evrything else during inspection time because, of course if he failed, his business will be shut down.

Anyway back to the “why evil man is getting richer”. As soon as I quit, he started to tell everyone how ungrateful I am and use the “B” word to address me (that is what my of my co-worker told me). He also increased our rent by $100 a month after.

After couple of months I moved out from my in laws into our apartment, and I found out my ex-boss increase the rent again another $100. At that time my mom in law is eligible for housing, section 8 because my father in law passed away and her only income is social security. But the housing denied my ex-boss application to raise the rent because the place is rent controlled.

Since then, my mom in law and bro in law who is in school tried to find a much affordable place. They failed during house inspection so they were given 30 days to fix the house ( well my ex-boss was given 30 days). The house is really old…. electrical outlet need to be replace, carpet, piping and all that stuff. He only fixed few stuff just so the inspection will go through.

I am pretty sure why he dont want to find new tenant.

1. The house is too old and nobody will pay $1450 for 2br place with broken pipe.
2. My in laws always pay every month
3. He will get the rest of the check from section 8 housing.
4. If in laws moved out, he has to do BIG, MAJOR repair and wont have any income for the house for couple of months….. or might reduce the price of rent to $1200.
5. The only reason he got it to increase to $1450 is because section 8 housing approve up to that amount even though in real life the house doesnt worth that much for rent.

So during the 2 months of inspection, they failed both time because of the crack on the floor, mold and broken pipe underneath the floor at the back. So my in laws got a letter from the housing that they will only have to pay their portion of rent only becase it is my ex-boss fault not to be able to repair those things.

Luckily my in laws found a new affordable place and move out that month. They pay the rent for that month before they moved out.

Couple of days later, my in laws got a letter from my ex-boss saying that they OWE him over 2 months worth of rent which is suppose to be paid by the housing section. Of course he did not recieve the check form the housing because he did not fix what need to be fixed. But he trie to sue my in laws by blaming them for all the broken stuff. ( How can they possibly broken the pipe underneath? ) It was 20 years old house.

But since I worked with him before, I knew that he love to sue people for everything and make sure he gets his money up to a single penny. Even though he did not being responsible with his tenants, employees. He used everyone in the company. One of my co-worker only make $9.25/hour even after 20 years working there. But they afraid they wont get any job if they quit and since he is old, no one will want him.

I wish there’s a way I can help them without them losing their job or source of income. Im tired of him being manipulative because nobody will say anything. Obviously most of his employees are old people and they dont know about the rights and evrything. And of course, who will listen to a “nobody”.

I wish I can do something to stop this. Or at least help my ex-co worker to get treated better than a slave.

notes : My blog is only directed to my ex-boss….. not all rich people.

Magento Custom Attribute and quantity

After 2 days working on this issue, I think I finally got the solution…. I want to be able to enter sqft of floor and it will automatically calculate the number of boxes of flooring needed. Because we shipped our flooring in boxes.

But my codes are still messy…. I mean javascript all over the places… The tricky part is that not all products are in sqft… some of them can be shipped by pieces.

So after trial and error, I got it to work. ( I think )

In order to do that, I have to create seperate template for products that need to be calculate by sqft, (magento allows different design for each product).

Anywho, Im still learning the structure and design, but finally able to manipulate custom attributes ( call, display, and stuff)

(I used Math.ceil  during calculation because I need to round the number to the next larger integer )

I have no problem doing this in regular HTML, is just that the way Magento is structured, I just have to play around with their folders and files. But as I said, it is still very messy… Im gonna do some clean up and it might be a little buggy still

FICO score …… from our very own experience.

Before I came to this country, I have no idea what FICO score , 401k, IRA and all those financial terms are. Until the day I want to apply for a Victoria Secret store credit. I was turned down. ( the application was for $500 credit line)

Unfortunately, hubby told me, without a credit history, I can never get a credit card, or any kind of loan, and stuff like that. Oh well I wasnt really planning to go into debt but they do offers coupons, rewards, points and stuff like that.

So I asked hubby what is his credit score. He said, his was pretty low because few mistakes he did (not totally 100% his fault ) I know he been struggling a little after his dad passed away and he is the oldest son in the family. I remember he always do a cash advance during that time (which I have no idea what it was at that time).

Then soon I found out he had default with his student loan (he thought he had it on forbearance ), few unpaid parking tickets, few small store credit cards….. and I remember it was low 600’s. I know he was a little stress at that time. So we sat down and discuss about this. I told him I want to get some credit history and I also want him to promise me to try to clean his credit report.

So the first thing we did was to the student loan company. After few discussion on the issue, they agree to start a fresh new monthly payment, and gave him few months to start making payment. But there’s nothing they can do to clean the credit report because it was hubby’s fault.

Then we paid down those small parking tickets, and few store credits ( which he completely forgot about them). It is not he was being irresponsible, because he choose to help his family. I dont blame him because I will probably do the same.

Anyway I did took a minimum wage job at that time (need to create US work history as well). And together, we cleaned up his report. We did purchase  reports to make sure that everything is settled, or “paid as agreed”.

At the same time, I got a credit card offer from capital one for $500 credit line. It was introductory credit card for new user who has no credit history. From there I started to make few small charges, an paid it off before the interest started to kick in. I also notice, hubby starting to get credit card offers in the mail too. So we apply for capital one almost at the same time.

We alternately charge the groceries on our card, and little by little, our score started to increase. We still lived with hubby’s family at that time, so we planned to move out once we have decent score. The reason was so that we can both rent an apartment under both names. (Well they did credit checks on both of us anyway) Plus we dont want to keep on applying and wasted on non-refundable $50 credit check for both of us only to find out we wont be getting the place. ( It happened once before). So we decided to wait for a while.

After almost a year, we started to get more 0% introductory cards. I only accept them once we “ran” out of 0% period. The reason we did this is so that we can charge on our cc, and make minimum payment every months, than whatever was suppose to be paid, we keep it in our high yield saving account ( the best we could get was 4-5% at that time) Hey it is better than nothing.

My favourite credit card is chase reward card. We got over $100 on cash back already. I am still using the same one and I love it so far. We charge almost everything on that card, from groceries, gas, and other bills that accepted credit card), and paid it off every months.

It also helps us finding a good apartment in pretty quite neighborhood, ( at that time hubby’s score is in mid 600’s and mine is in 700’s ).

Fast forward today, we are in a better financial shape than we were 2 years ago. Well we are not rich or anything but we pretty decent live. There’s still a lot more to be done but we are taking baby steps. Hubby’s score is now in the low 700’s. It took him over a year and half to bring that score up to 700s.

Surely my first thought was, how can a low score hurts you? If you are not planning to purchase anything, getting a loan, or simply pay by cash, you dont need FICO score or credit history. But I finally knew that nowadays, potential employer do look at your score and reports, because it does reflect your level of responsibility in a way.

And of course, we would never be able to move out and rent a place if we have terrible scores. I am glad we take care of those even though it took us almost a year and half. The first thing we need to do is to admit your mistakes and try to negotiate as much with the lenders. They need payments from you, so most of the time they are willing to work with a payment plan… better late than never.

You also have to be honest with your spouse and willing to work this out together.

notes : There are a lot of other options to clean out your credit, we did what best for us, and the debts are pretty new. So if you have 4-5 years old debts or bancruptcy and such, it is better to ask  a financial planner or research online on the best methods to tackle this issue.

My personal Top 5 Free Softwares

There are a lot of tools out there that help me with my daily routines, and this is a must for me.

1. 7zip – a very good replacement for winzip. Very fast and it is free…. I zip and unzip almost everyday.
2. Open Office - converting to PDF is very2 smooth and fast with open office writer, and it is really compatible with almost everything.
3. Filezilla – my favourite FTP transfer so far. Especially with their new release.
4. mysql import CSV – I used to use this almost everyday ( when we had to move our old crm to the new one. Oasiscrm to Sugarcrm. This tools has help me a lot! (With a little modification on the sql statements)
5. ISO burner – a small program to burn ISO files. Used to use it a lot too during development of our new ubuntu server.