I could write about the chaos yesterday and having all the sites down for over a day but that was enough stress that I will just let it wash away. Suffice it to say that things went horribly wrong and those put in charge of fixing it were inept.

So I choose to instead turn to a highlight of my week. My contacts! I’m on day three of wearing them, the goal being that tomorrow will be a full day of them (including an airplane trip!) Today should be around 8 hours of wearing them, maybe more if I can keep going. It’s quite exciting for me.

I had always been extremely sensitive to eye drops and so I figured that it meant I couldn’t wear contacts because my eyes were too sensitive. But my glasses have always been an annoyance, I’m tired of wearing them, I want to look cooler and be cooler and since I host a video podcast I want to look cooler for it too. Having to wear glasses will also seriously hamper my Hollywood career, which my grandmother is convinced will be kicked off by my trip out there next week.

Who knows, maybe I’ll go make my name in Bollywood!

For a long time, I didn’t think I could wear contacts. Ever. My eyes are super sensitive to eye drops and so I just thought I would never get to wear contacts and I had come to peace with always wearing glasses.

A few weeks ago I decided that I wanted to try anyways, so I setup an eye appointment. I had to find out where my eye insurance was taken, and it turns out that it’s accepted at… Wal-Mart. Yeah, I had to go to the Wal-Mart Vision Center. To be fair though, it is a real eye doctor and he’s attached to the mega mart. Unfortunately though, his employees are… on par with other Wal-Mart employees. Sit back and listen as I tell you the tale.

The appointment went well, they had to order my contacts so I left and waited for them to call me when the contacts arrived. I had been told it would take a week at most for them to get in. Well, after two weeks I called the eye doctor and had to be put through the ringer as they tried to figure out what had happened.

Eventually the girl came back and asked, “Did you want to get frames?”

*facesmack*

“No, I wanted contacts. You guys were ordering them for me.”

“Oh, okay, well let me go look into it.”

A few minutes later she come back and said “Well we had ordered your contacts, but I’m not taking any chances so I’ve ordered another pair for you.” What I heard was “We messed up and we’re scrambling now.” So another week passed before finally getting called and heading down to pick up the contacts.

Now, you’re supposed to be given a walk through on how to put in and wear your contacts but when I arrived the guy there gave me my contacts and sent me on my way. I was already confused but we tried to put the contacts in and had issues. Namely that I couldn’t get them in and when I tried for the second time I dropped it and, like contacts do, it disappeared.

So the next day, after three weeks of delays, I call the eye doctor and request a replacement for my lost contact.

That was two weeks ago. Today I called them and inquired about my contacts. Lo-and-behold my contacts had arrived but no one had called.

After work I head down there and get there around 6:45pm and they’re all sitting around in the display area. I explain what’s going on and the Doc is visibly upset that I was sent out last time without a walk through about the contacts. They lead me into the back room and sit me down to watch a DVD about putting on my contacts.

As I’m watching this DVD though one of the women comes back and says “Well we’re supposed to leave at 7 and do you mind coming back for an appointment?”

In my mind I’m saying: HELL NO. NO NO NO. F*CK NO.

I actually said, “Well, I work 9-6 this week and I leave for the weekend on Friday so…”

She turns and heads off saying that she’ll work it out. I settle back down to watch the amazing Oscar winning DVD about wearing contacts.

After the DVD finishes another woman comes back to work me through with the contacts, first she puts the contacts in my eyes, then I get the opportunity to do it. I put them in and take them out, then pack up ready to leave. Well no, as it turns out, they want me to wear them for three hours tonight. So I’m wearing them now and here is a pic of just how I look without my glasses.

Well I’ve given them the necessary time to process the fax and such, so this morning at 8 am I called Citibank to begin trying to push them to return my money. However this morning quickly devolved into moronic corporate buffoonery.

I think this is the core of my issues with banks. They charge so many fees to cover their expansive staffing, yet every employee seems like a retard. This very morning while trying to get an answer I spoke with a girl who identified herself as Maria in her Hindi accent. We spoke for twenty minutes and at the end of it she still didn’t understand what was going on, how do I know? After I explained my issues were with the IRS she transfers me to the IRA department. I even hear her say IRA and I clarify “No, not the IRA, my issues are with the IRS.” She assures me this is the proper number, lo and behold - I’m talking with Dennis about my retirement options.

At this point I just about throw my phone out the window and had K not been sleeping I would have let out a cry of anguish and frustration sure to shake the neighbors.

I call Citibank back at their number and blessedly I get a guy with his shit together, I explain my frustrations and he immediately moves to escalate my issue, unfortunately it’s ten more minutes before he is able to connect me with a manager.

I now explain the story for the fifteenth time to Ricardo, explaining how the IRS did what it did and why, he understands and confirms that my fax did indeed go to the right number but it wasn’t in the system so something happened somewhere. Unfortunately, he can’t talk to the department because… they’re not open. He has to wait until 10am EST before he can speak to them. He takes my number and will call me after speaking with them.

Before we hung up I explained my utter frustration. The issue is that banks (and other very large organizations) deal with so much information and it’s so sharded between offices and call centers and their system for handling it is so piss poor that I had one of their people direct me to the IRA department for my IRS issues. My problem isn’t with it being outsourced, I’m all for outsourcing to raise the economic levels elsewhere - but this woman worked for a banking group and yet she didn’t know the difference between an IRA and the IRS?! That’s retarded, stupid and simply inexcusable.

He agreed and apologized profusely but I will withhold and kind returns until this issue is resolved and my bank account has money again.

I feel great.

I’m going to hit a full week without more than a sip of K’s Coke of caffeine in the past week! And let me tell you, it was rough going to get started but now I’m really glad I decided to cut it out.

As I’ve told people, at my peak here is my standard day:

2 Mountain Dews in the morning, a soda of some sort with lunch, go by 7-11 after lunch and get an energy drink (Red Bull or Amp) and then a soda more in the afternoon.

I had energy to spare but when I crashed, I crashed hard. That’s a lot of caffeine and very unhealthy for someone. I’m going to begin cutting out candy next, it’s going to be fruit for me!

The health benefits are numerous here. It’s a major step towards cutting out empty calories, though I still have a Sprite on occasion but it’s been a lot of water for me lately. The caffeine is an addiction and the idea of being addicted to something bothers me deeply even if it is “harmless” like caffeine.
Also, would anyone out there be interested in attending a Word Camp which is basically a mini convention aimed at Wordpress, blogging and such? I’m considering trying to organize one for Orlando. It would be a few months off, August at the absolute earliest.

Let me know!

Two weeks ago I was searching my own name on Google to see what sort of presence I had for my name. I know there is a hockey player who has a fair bit of attention and there used to be an Olympic sprinter, so how did I fair?

I did alright, it turned out that at that time my Twitter account was higher ranked than this blog! I was shocked.

SEO is an acronym for Search Engine Optimization. And it means understanding, at the most basic levels, how Google (and other engines to a lesser extent) search and rank your website. Yes Google is largely based off of other links to your page, but also is a whole host of factors you as a blogger can affect. While we (SEO people) don’t know the exact formula for Google’s secret sauce, people with infinite patience and a algorithmic approach are able to determine the importance of various factors.

For example we know that having the search term in your domain is a major boost. So “PatrickJarrett.com” would immediately be better than “TrickJarrett.com.” Things like the use of the <H1> tags, the appearance of the search phrase inside the body of the page, whether it is bolded, or in links or in image alt text. The list goes on. I’ve seen lists of over 250 things which affect how your page is ranked.

All I did to bump TrickJarrett from the 2nd page of results for “Patrick Jarrett” is add an H1, add it to the title tag, modify some wordings to use the full name and sure enough this morning I’m front page and #4 on the results. With a bit more work I can be the #1 result for my name.