Aldebaran Web Design Blog » Uncategorized

Jill’s Coworker – A Male Anna’s Hummingbird

Jill Olkoski — Sat, 19 Feb 2011 19:51:59 +0000

My clients know that I work out of a home office near Seattle WA. I used to work in a big corporate office with lots of human coworkers. Today I captured a video of one of my current coworkers, a cute male Anna’s hummingbird:

[See post to watch QuickTime movie]

This video was captured with an iPhone 3GS. This little fellow was officially counted in the Great Backyard Bird Count going on this weekend.

A Life On Facebook Video – Excellent!

Jill Olkoski — Mon, 22 Nov 2010 14:06:58 +0000

If you’re at all familar with Facebook, you’ll enjoy this “A Life On Facebook” video by Maxime Luere. Having recently created a Facebook account (and subsequently deleted it) I found it quite good. Enjoy!

Washington State Considering Change to Online Tax Law

Jill Olkoski — Mon, 01 Feb 2010 22:52:16 +0000

Many of my readers may be familiar with a very popular article I wrote in May of 2008 about the then new Washington State Destination Based Sales Tax. Today I received news from one of my readers that alerted me to a new development: SB5113.

This new bill would ammend 82.32 RCW adding language that would seem to fix the problem that many of us who own online stores have – namely that we’re supposed to be charging tax based on the customer’s address, the “destination”.

Here’s the language:

NEW SECTION. Sec. 2. A new section is added to chapter 82.32 RCW

4 to read as follows:

5 (1) Retail sales of tangible personal property and digital goods

6 shall be sourced to the location where the order is received by the

7 seller if:

8 (a) The order is received in this state by the seller and where

9 receipt of the product by the purchaser or the purchaser’s donee occur

10 in this state. However, when products are sold in conjunction with a

11 retail service, both the product and the service must be sourced as

12 required in RCW 82.32.730;

13 (b) The location where receipt of the product by the purchaser

14 occurs is determined pursuant to RCW 82.32.730(1) (b) through (d); and

15 (c) At the time the order is received, the recordkeeping system of

16 the seller used to calculate the proper amount of tax to be imposed

17 captures the location where the order is received.

18 (2) For purposes of this section, the location where the order is

19 received by or on behalf of the seller means the physical location of

20 a seller or third party such as an established outlet, office location

21 or automated order receipt system operated by or on behalf of the

22 seller where an order is initially received by or on behalf of the

23 seller and not where the order may be subsequently accepted, completed

24 or fulfilled.

If you’re in Washington, contact your legislators to learn more about this bill and if indeed does get rid of the nearly impossible to implement “destination based sales tax”, help get this bill out of committee and up for a full vote. This would be a great improvement and make it much easier for online store owners.

Online Identity Fraud: File Sharing Programs (from MSNBC)

Jill Olkoski — Mon, 02 Mar 2009 18:08:54 +0000

If you, or your a member of your family uses a file sharing program to share things like music, with others – better watch this video from MSNBC. Apparently it’s easy for identity thieves to get into your computer via these programs and get access to all kinds of person info, like tax returns. Very scary stuff – I highly recommend you watch the video I’ve embedded.

Watch the video:
[iframe http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/22425001/vp/29405819#29405819 500 350]

Help, My Website Is Down!

Jill Olkoski — Fri, 19 Dec 2008 02:36:02 +0000

If you’re on shared hosting like I am, every once in a while your website will go down. It’s just a fact of life, that due to forces beyond your control, something will happen to cause your website to be unavailable.

First off, don’t panic. This happens to all of us. The sky is not falling.

Secondly, contact your hosting company immediately – do not wait and hope it will get better on it’s own. While it’s possible that your hosting company knows about the issue and is already working to fix it – it might not – and it’s up to you to notify them. If you don’t know who your hosting company is, read this article.

Because having my website stay up is important to me and my business, I use Web-Stat to tell me when my website is down. It checks every 15 minutes and if it can’t connect to my website, it sends me an email.

Shared hosting is inexpensive, at DreamHost.com, where I have my own site and many of my clients’ sites, it’s $10 a month. But shared hosting means that your website will go down everyone once in a while. If and when it does, let your hosting company know. If your company is DreamHost.com, you can submit a support ticket to them.

So if you discover your website is down – take a deep breath and contact your hosting company, then try to relax. I know it’s awful, but most hosting companies will have problems like these fixed quickly.