Tom Printy’s Blog

I Really love the free shoemoneyx course! Highly recommend it http://bit.ly/dbL0v

I have decided that it is time for me to get a video camera. Ever since I got my Mac Book Pro last year I have been wanting to give iMovie a try. It seems like a neat thing to play with. I am also sure that I could make some money putting up howto movies about topics that interest me. Anyone have any suggestions?

I am also thinking about getting a new digital camera. What I would like is something that wuld take action shots. I don’t need a whole lot of settings it just has to be fast. Anyone have suggestions for that?

Last year the best gadget that I bought was the iPhone. This year it has to be the Roku Player.  I currently have it setup to work with my Netflix account. Any movie that I have in my “Watch Now” que can be viewed on the player.  The video quality is really good! I was really impressed. I have watched about three movies now and am really happy with this purchase. This really does help you maximize your netflix subscription.

This week I met a goal that I have been trying to do for the last 9 years. I finally opened a public hotspot in a resteraunt. While some would say so what I say horray!  There have been a lot of obstiacals but things finally came together when I discovered Open-Mesh. The devices are now at the right price point to make something like this possible. The really nice thing is that the devices mesh together so you can cover larger spaces.  While getting the access point is place is a big deal this is only the tip of the iceburg for my grand plan. Next steps are to modify a version of the dashboard software they use so I can do some intersting things to the individual nodes and to setup a proxy server for the whole network.

So then next time you are in Arlington Heights IL stop by the Tuscan Market and Wine shop and enjoy some good wine, food and wifi.

Wow time flies. I have had this blog going to two years now. Very cool!

So how did Elgin fare in the Stimulus plan.  Pretty well it seems. According to the website Stimulus watch, Elgin has some bigtime road construction on the way. Here are some of the projects that got funded:

You can check out how your city was affected on the site as well.

Recently a person wrote me to ask for help with OsCommerce. They wanted the “Credit Card Start Date” and a second security code field removed from the payment information screen. I did a little investigation and it looks like other people were looking to do soemthing similar but nobody provided any information.  So here is how I did it.

The file file that you will need to edit is includes/modules/payment/paypal_direct.php .

First if you want to remove the solo card and  switch card from the drop down list of card types you will want to edit the cc_types array around line 35 to be the following:

$this->cc_types = array(’VISA’ => ‘Visa’,
‘MASTERCARD’ => ‘MasterCard’,
‘DISCOVER’ => ‘Discover Card’,
‘AMEX’ => ‘American Express’);

The next thing that needs to be done is removing the offending form elements.  On or about line 109 you need to remove refrences to MODULE_PAYMENT_PAYPAL_DIRECT_CARD_VALID_FROM and MODULE_PAYMENT_PAYPAL_DIRECT_CARD_ISSUE_NUMBER. The confirmation variable would then look like:

$confirmation = array(’fields’ => array(array(’title’ => MODULE_PAYMENT_PAYPAL_DIRECT_CARD_OWNER,
‘field’ => tep_draw_input_field(’cc_owner’, $order->billing['firstname'] . ‘ ‘ . $order->billing['lastname'])),
array(’title’ => MODULE_PAYMENT_PAYPAL_DIRECT_CARD_TYPE,
‘field’ => tep_draw_pull_down_menu(’cc_type’, $types_array)),
array(’title’ => MODULE_PAYMENT_PAYPAL_DIRECT_CARD_NUMBER,
‘field’ => tep_draw_input_field(’cc_number_nh-dns’)),
array(’title’ => MODULE_PAYMENT_PAYPAL_DIRECT_CARD_EXPIRES,
‘field’ => tep_draw_pull_down_menu(’cc_expires_month’, $months_array) . ‘ ’ . tep_draw_pull_down_menu(’cc_expires_year’, $year_expires_array)),
array(’title’ => MODULE_PAYMENT_PAYPAL_DIRECT_CARD_CVC,
‘field’ => tep_draw_input_field(’cc_cvc_nh-dns’, ”, ’size=”5″ maxlength=”4″‘)),
));

Lastly you must remove these from the params variable so that these are processed. On about line 132 change the params like:

$params = array(’USER’ => MODULE_PAYMENT_PAYPAL_DIRECT_API_USERNAME,
‘PWD’ => MODULE_PAYMENT_PAYPAL_DIRECT_API_PASSWORD,
‘VERSION’ => ‘3.2′,
‘SIGNATURE’ => MODULE_PAYMENT_PAYPAL_DIRECT_API_SIGNATURE,
‘METHOD’ => ‘DoDirectPayment’,
‘PAYMENTACTION’ => ((MODULE_PAYMENT_PAYPAL_DIRECT_TRANSACTION_METHOD == ‘Sale’) ? ‘Sale’ : ‘Authorization’),
‘IPADDRESS’ => tep_get_ip_address(),
‘AMT’ => $this->format_raw($order->info['total']),
‘CREDITCARDTYPE’ => $HTTP_POST_VARS['cc_type'],
‘ACCT’ => $HTTP_POST_VARS['cc_number_nh-dns'],
‘EXPDATE’ => $HTTP_POST_VARS['cc_expires_month'] . $HTTP_POST_VARS['cc_expires_year'],
‘CVV2′ => $HTTP_POST_VARS['cc_cvc_nh-dns'],
‘FIRSTNAME’ => substr($HTTP_POST_VARS['cc_owner'], 0, strpos($HTTP_POST_VARS['cc_owner'], ‘ ‘)),
‘LASTNAME’ => substr($HTTP_POST_VARS['cc_owner'], strpos($HTTP_POST_VARS['cc_owner'], ‘ ‘)+1),
‘STREET’ => $order->billing['street_address'],
‘CITY’ => $order->billing['city'],
‘STATE’ => tep_get_zone_code($order->billing['country']['id'], $order->billing['zone_id'], $order->billing['state']),
‘COUNTRYCODE’ => $order->billing['country']['iso_code_2'],
‘ZIP’ => $order->billing['postcode'],
‘EMAIL’ => $order->customer['email_address'],
‘PHONENUM’ => $order->customer['telephone'],
‘CURRENCYCODE’ => $order->info['currency'],
‘BUTTONSOURCE’ => ‘osCommerce22_Default_DP’);

After all these changes you should be able to still accept credit card payments via PayPal and you don’t have these superfluous fields.

If you would like me to make these changes for you please let me know and I would be happy to help you out.

This is a test post to my blog to see if an update is sent to twitter. I am using the Twitter Updater plugin to do this.

Today the “Kane County Chronical” is running a story about a local resident who found that Fermi Lab is located in the wrong place on Google Maps.  He is quoted as saying “I wondered what was going on, It just seemed very weird.”   Wierd indeed, you see Google has chosen to use Tele Atlas as thier data provider of choice. This means that a European data provider is providing map data for the United States. This is just one example of how much Tele Atlas’s data stinks!  So while Google Maps is free and cool it might not always get you where you want to go.

Here is the whole article:

BATAVIA – Fermilab is a high physics laboratory where scientists are trying to answer one of the biggest questions in the universe – how does the universe work?

Now officials at Fermilab are baffled by another mystery – why does Google Maps show Fermi National Accelerator Lab as being along Route 47 between McDonald and Burlington roads when its campus is located in Batavia, 15 miles east of that location?

St. Charles resident Chris Madsen came across this mystery recently. He uses Google Maps for a Web page he runs for the Kane County Audubon Society.

“I wondered what was going on,” Madsen said. “It just seemed very weird.”

Fermilab spokesman Kurt Riesselmann is also perplexed.

“The Department of Energy doesn’t own land out there,” Riesselmann said. “I don’t know what it is, whether it is farmland or something like that.”

The DOE owns Fermilab.

Riesselmann said Fermilab officials plan to contact Google.

“We will work with Google to solve this mystery,” Riesselmann said.

Fermilab, originally named the National Accelerator Laboratory, was commissioned by the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission, under a bill signed by President Lyndon Johnson on November 21, 1967. Fermilab’s 6,800-acre site originally was home to farmland, and to the village of Weston.

Following funding cutbacks, President Bush this summer signed legislation that provides $62.5 million for the Office of Science to ensure that Fermilab, Argonne and other scientific facilities are able to continue their research and retain staff.

As an aside when I check Google maps this morning it looks like Fermi is in the proper place now.