Collections

I've been taken to collections. I was not notified. Not once. I am fuming. Angry. Ready to call a lawyer. You think after almost 3 years they would have just looked at my account and called my phone number. It hasn't changed in almost a decade. They just continued to send notices to an old address that I forgot to set up a forwarding address at. That's my one mistake. Being a flaky college student that has a million things on his plate, believing that everything will just work out. I know better now, but back then I didn't think about that kind of stuff. No one ever taught me anything about those kinds of things. I just didn't know. Now I'm paying a HUGE penalty. I suppose its not the law for someone to CALL me when I owe them money. But if they really wanted me to know they would have gone though the effort. The fact is that they just don't care. Very few large organizations care about their clients at all. That's the nature of the business. Because they don't care I've been slapped with a bill for over two thousand dollars that I just CAN'T pay. I am stretched so thin with bills, and I don't know if I'll have the money to pay for a place to live. Or to make my car payments. I work 50 hours a week and its not even close to enough to say that I live comfortably. I live paycheck to paycheck and I still don't pay all my bills. I just defer and negotiate.

I have never owned a credit card, and the only things I've gone into debt for have been my education, my car, and medical expenses. That is it. I save when I can, and I try to live as frugal as possible. All I do is work. And I still can't get ahead. I am a single guy, working very hard at a full time career and between my bills and taxes I just can't make it. Something is wrong with our standard of life and I know its NOT my fault.

My advice to any college students out there. #1 Don't go into debt. If you have to, DO NOT, I repeat, DO NOT use Sallie Mae or any other BIG lender. They don't care about you and you'll pay for it. They will destroy your credit. It will be their fault. Ask anyone who uses them. #2 Always set up a forwarding address when you move. #3 Think about NOT going to college. College is not what it used to be. Its not full of smart, wise people any more. Its full of whiny liberal snobs that hate themselves too much to face the real world. If you are intelligent and hard working enough to get through college and earn a degree, then you are intelligent enough and hard working enough to learn on your own and work for yourself. These are the words you need to be able to describe yourself with: Independent, Dedicated, Flexible, Self-Made.

ProFTPd

So I'm currently setting up a new server at Slicehost for my music company, and I'm going CRAZY trying to get the FTP working. I have Ubuntu Linux installed on my slice and I've successfully installed Java and the JDK, php5, MySQL server, and ProFTPd. I've almost got everything I need to port all of our content over to the new server, but I'm tearing my hair out trying to get an FTP account set up that can actually download and upload files. Its killing me. I've tried using real system accounts, no dice, tried virtual users by adding them to the proftpd.passwd and .group files, no dice, tried changing the proftpd.conf default system user account from user noone and group nobody to something else, like sys, root, dev, etc.... nothing works! I've even created an entirely NEW user and GROUP in Unbuntu, then assigned ProFTPd to use that account, then assigned new virtual users to proftpd.passwd and proftpd.group, and still NO DICE. I can log in and see the entire directory structure but I'm unable to upload or download ANYTHING. Always a 550 permission denied. I don't get it. And there's VERY little step by step instructions for beginners available online, its all advanced stuff. And everything I find says to do something different, which tells me that its very complex with a lot of variables. ehhhhhhhhh....... I have no desire to become a pro at linux or FTP servers. I want to finish building my website and install a RED5 host. Thats the enire point of the migration. GoDaddy has very poor JAVA app service, so we're moving everything over so we can implement RED5 and get some HQ video on the site. Plus with this change I'll be able to abandon our old video software which is starting to outstay its welcome. Slow, cumbersome, and uses PHP upload. Blegh. Its difficult to get it to do anything dynamic. So instead of wasting my time trying to fit a square block into a triangle hole, I'm just spending that time and energy learning RED5. The problem is, now I have to learn Ubuntu, FTP servers, phpmyadmin installation, MySQL server maintenence, etc..... Its turning out to be a ton of time. Good thing thats the one thing I have no limit on. Every other resource we need is extremely limited accept time. So..... the next couple of weeks I'll be cramming.