Tom Printy’s Blog

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

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.

Here is some patriotc music for you…

I was researching the Chicago fireworks that will take place downtown tommorrow and found the songs that they will be using. Not one of them is what I would call patriotic, instead it is composed of the garbage you hear on FM radio. This is just sad!  Here is the list of songs that will compose the musical portion of the fireworks display:

Intro (Before fireworks launch)
KAYNE WEST – Homecoming
CHRIS MARTIN
Fireworks
BON JOVI – Living on a Prayer
LENNY KRAVITZ – American Woman
RIHANNA – Don’t Stop the Music
PRINCE – Let’s Go Crazy
KILLERS – Mr. Brightside
SARA BAREILLES – Love Song
COLDPLAY – Clocks
GWEN STEFANI – The Sweet Escape
GOOD CHARLOTTE – I Don’t Wanna Be In Love
KAYNE WEST – Stronger
K. T. TUNSTALL – Black Horse and the Cherry Tree
MATCHBOX TWENTY – How Far We’ve Come

Ok so there are some local artists there and the is ok. But these songs do not even mention the very reason why we celebrate the 4th of July.  For those who forget here is why this day is special

 In the United States, Independence Day (commonly known as the Fourth of July) is a federal holiday commemorating the adoption of the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776, declaring independence from the Kingdom of Great Britain.

A much more fitting song selection would be some of the following

Air Force Anthem (Off We Go!)
America (My Country Tis of Thee)
America the Beautiful
Army Anthem (Caissons)
Battle Hymn of the Republic
Marine Hymn (From the Halls…)
Navy Anthem (Anchors Aweigh)
Navy Hymn (Eternal Father)
Stars and Stripes
Star Spangled Banner
When Johnny Comes Marching Home
Yankee Doodle

So while you are watching the fireworks this weekend I hope that you feel proud about our country and at least have something patriotic playing in your head and heart.

While I was waking up this morning I had a thought….. Normally around 7:00am there is a rush of traffic down my street as people head off to work. This morning that rush was eerily absent. So this got me to thinking that you could judge the state of the economy based on the amount of traffic.  I suppose to do this you could look at historical traffic data  and compare the morning and even time commutes with things like stock market prices and offical job numbers from the government.

Of course this is all just an observation it could be that gas is so high that people in my neighborhood are choosing to walk or ride a bike instead of drive.

All I can say is WOW about Rober Byrds recent activity on the Senate floor. Take a look and see for yourself.

I was happily sleeping this morning when I was woken up by the a strange sensation. I thought to myself wow this feels like an earthquake. It appears that I was right. There was an earthquake. Here is the map image from the USGS.

.

UPDATE:

The following is a release by the United States Geological Survey, National Earthquake Information Center: An earthquake occurred 35 km (20 miles) SW of Vincennes, Indiana and 205 km (125 miles) SW of INDIANAPOLIS, Indiana at 3:36 AM MDT, Apr 18, 2008 (4:36 AM CDT in Illinois). The magnitude and location may be revised when additional data and further analysis results are available. There have been no reports of damage.

This large region borders the much more seismically active New Madrid seismic zone on the seismic zone’s north and west. The Illinois basin – Ozark dome region covers parts of Indiana, Kentucky, Illinois, Missouri, and Arkansas and stretches from Indianapolis and St. Louis to Memphis. Moderately frequent earthquakes occur at irregular intervals throughout the region. The largest historical earthquake in the region (magnitude 5.4) damaged southern Illinois in 1968. Moderately damaging earthquakes strike somewhere in the region each decade or two, and smaller earthquakes are felt about once or twice a year. In addition, geologists have found evidence of eight or more prehistoric earthquakes over the last 25,000 years that were much larger than any observed historically in the region.

Earthquakes in the central and eastern U.S., although less frequent than in the western U.S., are typically felt over a much broader region. East of the Rockies, an earthquake can be felt over an area as much as ten times larger than a similar magnitude earthquake on the west coast. A magnitude 4.0 eastern U.S. earthquake typically can be felt at many places as far as 100 km (60 mi) from where it occurred, and it infrequently causes damage near its source. A magnitude 5.5 eastern U.S. earthquake usually can be felt as far as 500 km (300 mi) from where it occurred, and sometimes causes damage as far away as 40 km (25 mi).

About two weeks ago I worked a booth at recent Chicago Dice Career fair. There were may 15 other companies with booths there. This fair was devoted towards job seekers who considered themselves technical or software development related. This fair was interesting to me because it gave a real sense about where the economy is and what types of people are looking for jobs and what types of people are not looking for a job. The good news is (based on my observations) is that if you are a good solid software developer you are employed and not looking. Te bad news is that if you are a Project Manager (PM) you are out there looking for new gig and you are not alone.  I must have had at least 80 people in a 4 hour period ask if my employer was looking for a Project Manager.  I would tell them that we are looking for developers or sysadmins and they would frown. I guess they were hearing that a lot.

What does this say about the economy? To me it says that we are in the very early stages of a slow down or  recession. It seems that companies are just starting to trim the fat (Project Management) and have decided to keep the meat (developers).  This also means that there possible could be more fat trimming and even meat trimming in  the near future, and that we haven’t even started to see the effects of this recession or coming recession.

As always keep your resume polished and ears to the ground.

Beaver books the little facebook application that I helped write finally reached 100 registered users!!!!

Yea!!!!

If you have a facebook account give Beaver Books a try and let me know how you like it.