The only real limit that I’ve encountered is the “maximum possible upload size per file” of only 100MB. It doesn’t happen that often, but it gets in the way every once in a while. Recently I came into some money, so I decided that I should just pay the $60 (for a year) and see if I could actually make the Pro Account worth it.

In the process of upgrading my account, I chose to pay using Paypal. After agreeing to their Terms & Conditions I was redirected over to Paypal, sent them some money, and then redirected back to a “success screen” at MediaFire. But when I went to upload a file larger than 100MB, everything was still as if I only had a free account. I hit back a bunch of times, trying to find the “success” screen and I found this in it’s place:

Paypal sent us back some invalid data! Please contact support@mediafire.com immedaitely [sic] regarding this issue or try to use a credit card. (-144)

I emailed support@mediafire.com asking what was up, but the email was sent back to me saying that there was a failure trying to send it. I was at an impasse. Do I try to contact them through some other means, or do I just submit my payment again but with a credit card? I really did not want to pay them twice.

Just as I was thinking that, I got an email from Paypal saying that I a “recurring payment has been created” with MediaFire. I checked my paypal account and, sure enough, I was charged $59.70 by MediaFire for a Pro Account, but I sure as hell don’t have Pro Account features enabled on my account.

So, I went over to support.mediafire.com and submitted a ticket explaining my situation. It’s been about 24 36 hours and I haven’t heard a single thing back from them. I know that that’s not that long (that), but in this day and age you’d think I would have at least got a “we’re looking into this” message or something. And it’s not like this is hard to fix, just go in and manually flip the “Pro Account” switch.

While I wait for MediaFire to get their shit together, I’m doing the last thing that a brand new paying customer should be doing: looking around to see what the competition has to offer.

anyhoo, when i was back in the states i used twitter almost exclusively with my cellphone, sending updates via text message. since i’ve been down here in Antarctica i’ve been interacting with twitter through a web browser a lot more. as a result i’ve become much more familiar with how their web interface works, but also how it doesn’t work. one area in particular that i was getting frustrated with was the @replies.

[for those of you that don't know, here is an example: if i wanted to reply to a tweet (an individual post on twitter) that my brother posted i would begin my tweet with @n8duke.]

the annoying part about @replies is that you have to type in “@username” each time you want to reply. sometimes the username is long and annoying, sometimes you might misspell it, and then the reply won’t go where it’s supposed to.

i had an idea, so i sent twitter an email:

From: eli
Date: Sun, Jan 27, 2008 at 12:11 AM
Subject: i hope this is alright…
To: Twitter

Twitter,

i emailed you a while ago about an api question. remember me?

well, i have a suggestion to make about twitter, and i didn’t know who else to turn to and i figured that you’d be as good a person as anyone. i imagine that y’all get all kinds of “really good suggestions”, but i truely believe that this is a good one.

so, here goes…

i enjoy @replies just as much as the next guy, but i hate (i know that’s a strong word) having to type the “@username” into the field every time i want to reply. that would be like having to type in someone’s email address every time i wanted to reply to an email. ridiculous, right? we just click “reply”.

why not implement a feature that would allow you to click a tweet-specific indicator (a “reply” link, maybe?) which would automagically insert “@username” in the text box above? you could easily slip that in right after the {star} icon…

or, is this idea like so last week and you already have it in the works?

eli

i got a response back from twitter a few days later saying that they had not heard that idea before and that it would be submitted to the team. then, lo and behold, a few days later i noticed this:

do you see that little arrow after the star icon? that’s me, baby! that’s all me!

anyhoo, about a week ago i noticed a HUGE spike!

i poked around in the referrer section and found that i was getting about 99% of that traffic from stumbleupon.com. i looked into it and found out that a friend of mine from nintendo posted a link to my site on that site. apparently the traffic immediately started flooding in and continued to do so for about 24 hours. i continue to get about 1 or 2 hits a day from there, but nothing significant since. it’s weird how stuff like that happens.

on another nerdy/computer related note, meredith was transferring some video files from my external hard drive to her laptop the other day and was bothered by Apple’s time estimations, like, “about 1 minute.” she said that computers aren’t people and they shouldn’t act like they are. i completely disagree. i love it when computers “say” things like that. a few days later i found another good example of that sort of thing from flickr. i was testing out the new “edit” feature and received the following message after i canceled the edit.

nicely done, flickr. nicely done.

in antarctica news, things are still going really well, but it’s pretty obvious that we (the galley crew) are all getting tired. it’s been well over 4 months for win-fly and just about 3 months for mainbody, and that’s a long time to scrub the same dishes and mop the same floors. we’ve got about a week until xmas (which will be just as crazy as thanksgiving), followed by the cargo ship off-load in the middle of january. soon thereafter people start leaving, and we will probably be on some of the later flights out around the middle of february. i have no doubts that we’ll make it out alive, but we’ll never be the same. ha ha!

also, i just uploaded a new batch of photos.

what would the food be like? would i be able maintain my vegan-ness?

some of my worries subsided the first time i walked into the galley and saw the largest bowl of fresh salad greens i’d ever seen. i couldn’t believe how much salad was available and laughed at the fools who said i couldn’t do it. soon followed fresh baked breads, vegan cookies, and non-dairy whipped cream! but the mother load truly arrived on Thanksgiving.

Jeff, the vegetarian cook, is an awesome guy. he cooks amazing food and about 90% of it is vegan. it’s great. he went above and beyond for Thanksgiving and it really meant a lot to me and the other vegetarians/vegans on station.

sure, i still might eat the occasional bit of “milk solids” found in the chocolate chips or some honey in the granola, but for the most part i’m doing a damn good job.

anyhoo, i thought it was such an amazing coincidence that i decided to leave a comment on their blog, Signal vs. Noise (SVN), describing what happened:

get this. i’m living (and working) in antarctica right now, and i’ve been using campfire to chat with my friends and family back home. i set up a time and people just show up and come and go and we have a great time with it. this crazy downtime just happened to occur at the exact moment i schedule. what are the chances?

the next day i got an email from Matt Linderman at 37signals!!!

hey eli-

just saw your message at signal vs. noise. first off, sorry for the downtime. second off, your use of campfire sounds interesting. would you be up for a mini-case study? (just means answering a few questions.) we’d publish it at our blog. let me know.

-matt

i almost couldn’t believe what was happening. some of you may remember the first time i was featured on SVN and my post about that, but this time it was a much bigger deal. i wrote back, he sent me the questions, and i wrote back with my answers (along with a few screen shots and some links to flickr pics).

the post went live a few days later. enjoy!

Campfire keeps Eli Duke in touch with friends/family while in Antarctica

over the course of this month i have grown to absolutely LOVE this place. i wake up each morning and i’m so glad because it’s just one more beautiful day in paradise. be it sunny or snowy, windy or calm, cold or “warm”, i can always find a way to be in love with where i am and what i’m doing.

i love my job, i love my coworkers, i love my friends, i love my dorm, i love the bands i’m practicing and playing with, i love volunteering in other departments, i love being outside even when it’s crazy, i love taking pictures, i love hiking, i love exploring the station, i love 24 hours of daylight, i love so much about this place that i already know i’ll be coming back soon.

for the past 2 weeks the Today Show has been here at McMurdo as part of their Ends of the Earth broadcast series. i was surprised to find out how small the crew was (only 6 people including Ann Curry), and how much control they had, which was quite a bit.

the morning of the broadcast meredith and i woke up at 2:30am and walked next door to the chalet (head office). on our way over we heard cheering and arrived to see about 100 people already gathered, along with musical equipment (drums, bass, guitar) lightly dusted in snow.

there were 3 members of the crew outside: communication guy, camera guy, and ann curry, that’s it. ann was really funny and communicated very well with the crowd as far as when we should do certain things and for how long. they gave hand signals and made every effort to put the spotlight on us. the band played and we danced and cheered and sang along and i was surprised at how much i got into it. tasha said she saw me on TV!

the first segment of the broadcast was over around 3am and we were told there would be another smaller one at about 4am. i didn’t have to be at work until 11am so i decided to stick around. when 4 o’clock rolled around most people had gone home so there were only about 10 of us. this time i decided to stay out of the crowd and go up next to the camera guy and take pictures.

fast-foward a few days and rumors are floating around that NBC was going to buy drinks for everyone at gallagher’s because they were leaving soon. i had band practice that night, but meredith and i stopped by around 8:30 and found the rumors to be just that. on my way home after band practice the weather had gotten seriously bad and i was loving it. in an effort to prolong my time out and about, i decided to stop by gallagher’s again. it was about 11pm and they were closing soon, but i couldn’t think of anywhere else to go.

when i walked in it looked pretty dead… only about 15 people or so. as i wandered toward the back to get a glass of water i noticed ann curry and the film crew. almost instantly the camera guy (mike) recognized me from the broadcast and said he was impressed by how proactive i was about getting pictures that morning. he loved the shots and then called ann over. they both gave me their email addresses (to send them the link) and mike even said that NBC might buy some of them if i was interested (and they were good enough)!

just then the phone rang at the bar: the weather had turned even more for the worse, it was now officially Condition 1, and we weren’t allowed to leave the bar until it passed. this was so awesome, i was so excited.

along with the phone call warning us of inclement weather, all pagers got the message as well, and i borrowed someone’s pager and took a picture of it. ann liked the picture so much that she insisted on taking one herself, but she needed a little guidance. a few days later she told meredith, “your boyfriend taught me more about manual settings than anyone ever has before.” hilarious.

anyhoo, we continued to hang out that night until the Condition 1 subsided. over the course of the next few days i kept running into the crew and chatting with them. meredith says i’m on a “high-five basis with ann curry.”

fast-forward about 6 months: ListYourList was still online and available for “pointless list-making”, but nothing new had been accomplished since shane took over and we were getting a shit load of spam comments. i talked things over with shane and we decided that there had to be someone out there in the world who was just dying to get their hands on a pet project like this and would get things moving on it. i posted a few notices on craigslist and found a guy in chicago who sounded really excited and qualified. i passed off everything to him (domain, code base, db dump) and wiped my hands clean yet again.

fast-forward about 6 months: i hadn’t heard from my chicago guy in months and the site wasn’t even online in it’s original form anymore because it was still “under construction.” i tried to meet up with the guy in chicago when i went back home this past summer, but he didn’t return my emails. hmmm…

so the site sat around for about 4 or 5 months with no activity and no progress, and i was getting pretty close to completely giving up on the whole deal. then, just last week, i got an email from kirsty taylor.

Dear Eli,

I was just procrastinating online, and I was distressed to find that listyourlist.com seems to have died a death. My good friend Rosa sent me a link to this blog, and I saw that you have disengaged yourself from it entirely. Rosa and I want to resurrect listyourlist, but to do so, we would need to be able to access the site as administrators; the domain name doesn’t register as available, therefore I presume that you must still hold the reigns in some form.

When I first discovered the absence of listyourlist, I looked for a substitute (aided by Rosa). It appears that listyourlist was unique in the un-gimmicky function it offered to people (emphasis added), and in the way that lists were completely independent, and attached to the user only.

Would you be willing to pass control to us?

We are two 2nd year Sixth Form students (that’s final year of High School), studying at Christ’s Hospital School in Surrey (England), and would welcome both the challenge (and indeed, diversion) of administrating the website.

Please do get in contact, with either of us.

We look forward to hearing your thoughts on this matter!

Yours faithfully,

Kirsty Taylor and Rosa Blaus.

wow! i was stunned. i literally couldn’t believe what i was reading. i didn’t know who kristy was, but i definitely remembered rosa from the early days of listyourlist. she stumbled upon it somehow and really latched on. we emailed back and forth about it for a while and she seemed like a really cool (nerdy) girl.

in the same email checking session in which i received the above email i also got CC’ed on an email that shane sent to rosa and kirsty. apparently they had emailed him as well (not know we knew each other) because he was still listed as the administrator for the “listyourlist.com” domain. remember, we completely relinquished control of the everything involved (domain, code base, db dump) over to chicago guy like 6 months ago. why was shane still listed as the administrator? turns out that the guy didn’t really do anything, so shane was able to just hand everything over to rosa and kirsty.

who knows when the site will be live again, but this time i think it’s in good hands.

From: eli
To: QOOP
Date: August 27

hugh,

thanks for the update! it’s good to hear that i actually do have options. i will definitely give that a try for my next order, but i’ll probably still keep my fingers crossed just in case.

i don’t really see how that will affect things, though. my prints were in order when i submitted the last batch (i triple checked them), so the problem had to have occurred sometime between me submitting the order and you all receiving the order. i guess we’ll just have to wing it and see.

i really do appreciate the time you have spent dealing with me on this.

eli

i was afraid that if i waited too long before printing my next batch (like when i get back from antarctica = 9 months) they might forget that i even exist. then, if the problem does repeat itself, everything would be less relevant and i probably wouldn’t get the attention that i would get now. i put in the order, making certain that the photos were chronological.

From: eli
To: QOOP
Date: August 27

Hugh,

i just submitted another order for about 650 prints, order #xxxx61482.

here is the set that i printed:

http://flickr.com/photos/elisfanclub/sets/72157601700659474/

is it possible to at least just look at the order that they arrived to you guys and see if that is the order that they are in in the set i linked to above?

thanks again for your help

eli

that was yesterday afternoon. i was expecting to get some sort of email response later that evening or early this morning. neither of those things happened and i was left waiting.

then, much to my surprise, an unfamiliar number appeared on my cell phone’s caller ID this afternoon: it was hugh from QOOP! he was calling to let me know that the exact same thing was happening with my new order that happened with the last. it hadn’t been printed yet, but hugh was able to verify that the arrangement that they received was certainly not the same as the set on flickr. i had been completely vindicated!

it was at this point that deja vu set in… hazy dissolve.

What if:

I submit a set for printing, but first you guys compare the order of the photos in your system against the order on Flickr. If they are the same, go ahead and print them. If not, refund my money.

Is something like that possible?

hazy transition

I’m sorry but we can not do the request that you asked us to do. I’m sorry about not being able to help.

wait… what? what happened? did i black out? that was weird…

anyway, hugh told me that he was going to check with the engineers and with flickr and really dig deep on this problem. he also said that when they do finally get this all sorted out that i will be getting this batch printed and shipped for FREE (that’s about $100 worth of prints)!

From: QOOP
To: eli
Date: August 28

Thanks, Eli:

As I mentioned on the phone, we’ll be checking your order for you. (Thanks for the link as a control)

I’ll get back to you with any feedback from our engineers.

Best,

Hugh

———————-

i wrote all of the above sometime on wednesday afternoon and i was waiting to see what would unfold before submitting this post. i wasn’t sure what exactly i was waiting for, but i had a feeling. boy, was i right.

at about 6pm on thursday evening i got a comment (on the first qoop post) from Bill Murray, the CEO of QOOP. say what? that’s right… this shit has gone all they way to the top. so, click that link right there and read that shit (and my response) because it’s starting to get really exciting!

anyhoo, the guy continues to keep me laughing. his most recent comic about shopping teams had me in stitches, absolute stitches!