I had my first web site back in 2000 registered under D3Firm.com. I lost the domain name because I signed up with a horrendous hosting company. I started from scratch again with D3Studio.net and made the same mistake. The company went offline, out of business and took my domain name with it. I was so frustrated that I started to do careful research on hosting companies.

In 2004, I registered Visualgui.com with GoDaddy separately just in case the hosting company screws up I can still have my domain name. Then I started hosting with Lunarpages because of all the rave reviews. It turns out that Lunarpages has been quite stable for the past five years. If you visit my blog everyday, you probably notice that my web site stays up about 98% of the time. Both iLoveNgocLan.com and Simplexpression.com are also hosting with Lunarpages. Whenever I work on a freelance project, I always recommend Lunarpages for my clients. In fact, I just referred one of my new clients.

Lunarpages is running a special promotion for the holidays. You’ll get 50% off on any 12-month plan. If you’re looking for an inexpensive, reliable hosting company, I highly recommend Lunarpages for the excellent service, reliable support and reasonable rates.

Why am I promotion it? I just hope that the company gets more clients and continues to do a great job so my web sites stay in good shape. That why I don’t have to deal with all the nightmares I’ve through five years ago.

Unlike shopping, don’t settle for cheap when you want to choose an agency to design your business web site. You really do get what you paid for. Lovely Nails & Spa is an example. Instead of hiring a web designer to create a professional looking web site, the owner, who was a high-school acquaintance of mine, chose to go with an amateur design.

Right on the homepage, the looping Flash animation is annoying. The first thing catches your eyes is the text effects that says, “Explorer the possibilities.” The justified paragraphs below the Flash piece is hard to read. The slap-on logo is disconnected with the layout. Under the hood, the codes are way outdated. Font tags for texts and tables for layout are still being used.

From time to time, potential clients who shop around for a web design agency would send me proposals from another company who offers similar services that I do, but only with a third of my price. I often explain to them the differences and let them decide.

While sorting through my mail this weekend, I received a collection notice from Afni Inc. for a Verizon bill when I moved out of New York, which was about two years ago. I can still remember clearly that I shut off my home phone service before I moved and even received some credits back. I even called several times to make sure that I didn’t owe them anything.

Today I tried to call Verizon to verify the bill, but the damn representatives kept putting on one automated answer machine to the next. They couldn’t even pointed me to one person that I could talk to about the matter. Verizon’s fucking sucks and I am stuck with them because most of my family members are on Verizon.

I couldn’t reach Verizon so I called Afni Collections to ask for the creditor information. About two minutes into the conversation, the fucker from Afni was ready to bite my ear off. He stated that I owe Verizon and now he’s handling the collection not Verizon. I told him “I am done with this shit” and hung up the phone.

I went online and found that many people had been targeted with the same scam. Some people was hit with the collection even though they never were a Verizon customer.

I did what folks have suggested: dispute the claim and validation of the debt. I sent them a letter with certified mail. Let’s wait and see how things go.

Tim Brown, my former colleague at Vassar and the force behind Nice Web Type, has launched Web Font Specimen, “a handy (free) resource web designers and typographers can use to see how typefaces will look on the web.” Tim also contributed his first article, “Real Web Type in Real Web Context,” on A List Apart. Congrats on all the great works and thanks for the top-notch recommendation. You’re da type man!

I needed a simple business card that matches Visualgui.com to promote myself. Last Wednesday, I did a quick search on Google and Vistaprint came up first so I gave it a try. The site was easy to use and it provided me a template in Illustrator or Photoshop to create my own design. I picked Illustrator, put together my card and uploaded it. Everything looked good so I made the order.

The next day I realized that I didn’t want my address on the card so I called up customer service to change my order. The representative not only cancelled my order but she also walked me through the reordering process to make sure I get the credits for my new transaction.

I picked standards shipping, which listed for 14 days, yet my business cards arrived in my mailbox today. I ordered 250 cards for about $25 and the printing quality met my expectation. So if you’re looking for a simple business card without putting a hole in your pocket, Vistaprint is for you.

With two opening lines joking about politic, my review of Asia 63 turned into a political outrage. I don’t mind discussing politics, but I chose to stay out of the Vietnam-War-related argument. As I have predicted, the comments got nasty. It’s really a damn shame that we can’t agree to disagree. Just because one doesn’t share the same beefed-up, traumatizing views Asia entertainment had repeatedly put out in almost every video, he is stupid, “eating communist shit” or a communist. That’s just ridiculous and I am done with it.

Let’s move on to a different kind of politic. Just read an enlightening post from a Vietnamese-American fellow who used to hang around here during Obama’s election and had inspired me with his sharp, thoughtful and witty opinion. Here is an example:

I heard that as President Obama passed crowds of anti-abortion demonstrators in Washington DC yesterday, they chanted “Kill the Bill”, “Kill the Pelosi Bill”. I wonder how they, mostly faithful Christians who consider abortion sinful, think Jesus would have felt if he found out that his followers reacted so angrily toward a bill that was designed to take care of the underpriviledge in society? These are probably the same people who feel elated when saying “God Bless America”. What they probably meant was “God Bless America minus the Poor”. If I was Jesus, I would say “God Bless America, minus You”!

Agree or not, I sure got a kick out of that.

San Jose police officers caught on tape beating an unarmed Vietnamese student with baton and taser gun:

The video shows police standing over Ho in a hallway of his house for more than two minutes. During that time, one officer strikes Ho with a metal baton more than 10 times — at times swinging it with both hands — while another officer leans in and uses his Taser gun.

Damn!

Duke got sick, then his mom and now me. Duke is getting better so I am afraid he would catch the virus from me again so I am doing my best to stay away from him. Slept on the couch last night and tried not to hold him or kiss him. My mom coined (cao gio) my back this morning. I feel a bit better but still sneezing like crazy. Damn, I hate being sick.

I apologize for the messiness around here in the last couple of hours. Instead of tweaking the design on my laptop, I did it right on the server. I wouldn’t do this for client or GWSB sites, but Visualgui.com is my personal playground so I don’t mind letting people see what the heck I am doing with it. I made the header much bigger and took out the slideshow feature. It started to get stale after awhile with not much contents to cycle through. That’s pretty much it for now!

I still curse at myself every time I pass by the Bon-Ton department store in Lancaster. One time, back in 9th or 10th grade, my best friend and I were browsing through the Bon-Ton for like half an hour but couldn’t find what we like. Suddenly an elder white sale clerk asked us to leave the store. As we were leaving, a bunch of old white folks clapped and cheered.

From that day on I never set my foot back into the Bon-Ton again. I also realized how stupid and wimpy I was for walking away and not pressing any charges. I could have easily cashed in a couple hundred thousands. Two Asian guys were asked to leave the store. That was racist so fuck the Bon-Ton.