| I hope this FAQ will provide
some answers to the most common questions I've received. Especially to
the admin account. Losing TJ on such short notice hit at the worst point in health problems. Said problems were simply because I am an obsessed dude with (previously) almost inexhaustible energy. One of the few "bennies" of my kind of brain.. When First Data defaulted on payments to I-Bill. I-Bill defaulted in it's payments for what the site qas earning. After that, I simply pushed my engine until couldn't be pushed any further. Just call it multiple system failures. It's taken five months to become almost human again. Although, I have been once again pushing 16 to 20 hour days to find, followup and start to fix items left untouched. My attempts to hire replacements failed miserably. Unless someone understands the smoke fetish, they just wind up making more stuff for me to fix... That may have changed with a new girl coming in later today. More on that below. |
| I am now covering all facets of Colight and have made some progress in the essential areas that my illnesses prevented me from completing. So.... If you have questions not addressed by this "general update" I shall answer them as I fight through the real e-mail sprinkled among the spam. I'll say this almost jokingly, but... if any of you want to visit for a week and help out .... you'll leave with a nice fat video collection. And will have the chance to help me shoot with the girls. |
|
Here's
the general stuff:
|
| 1. The recent site access issues may have two causes depending on your case. a. The hosting company in california lost my site twice in the last few weeks while upgrading their servers and prepping Colight for a transfer to a new high speed server in L.A.. b. If you had recurring / multi-month billing via Colight, then I am the one who did not renew you. I would not charge someone for access until I was sure my days as a bedridden basket case were behind me. And TJ's pop up sticky note reminder system for your renewals is so limited and lame, i t might as well have been reminders written in sanskrit. |
| 2. PHONE CONTACT: The new answering machine I bought was supposed to solve the message problem. It turns out it the fax machine was sicker than I. I'll have to hand transcribe what messages may still be on the machine before I reset it. However, attending to your e-mails and shipments have first priority. I should have the answering system up again in a day or so. You old timers know that before this miserable last year, the phone never went unanswered. |
| 3. WEB SITE ORDERS: If you place or have placed an order on the site make sure you select the e-mail receipt option. If you get the receipt, then the order is on the server for me to download. This will prevent duplication of effort for both you and I. And since we are on the topic of web orders...... I have a three inch thick stack of "problem orders" that have never been resolved due to mistyped email addresses or yahoo addresses with full mailboxes. In the past, TJ and I spent many hours resending notices or returned packages, bad addresses, etc. only to have them bounce back due to full Yahoo mailboxes or a mis-typed return address. You would be amazed at how often they occur. And, I'll only briefly mention the time lost isolating the flat-out fraudulent orders we catch coming in. At this point all I'll ask is to double check your web orders. If you do wind up leaving a phone message please speak clearly. Especially if leaving phone numbers or addresses. can't spend hours I don't have trying to help a person if I can't reach them. 3a: I've already pegged down the USPS site and finally have the correct labels on the first of the packages. I've hired a trustworthy friend to continue the labeling starting this afternoon. At least one task will be handled by someone who doesn't have the tendency to drop a task when hit with a fresh crisis. |
| 4. OVERNIGHT DELIVERIES - I have had to temporarily discontinue all / Airborne / Postal or International Express shipping until I am caught up on outstanding orders/site work/ equipment maintainance and some improvements I wanted in place last year.. The extra fees Airborne/DHL charge for picking up only one or two packages are not cheap. The nearby AB/DHL drop box was removed months ago requiring me to drive several miles to the nearest one. I would prefer to avoid having to add my own fuel and time fees when every second of the day will be needed to work in the studio and office. And if you think about it, the special packaging and labeling on international or postal express will slow delivery of everyone's packages, keeping me from filling your needs in a prompt fashion. PS.. I can't alter the systems on the secure server or I would have posted this info months ago and disabled the Overnight or Express options to avoid confusion.) |
| 5. Monthly memberships through Colight. I am still receiving the occasional e-mail or snail mail request for one month memberships. My account with I-Bill accepts Visa (the most commonly used card) for either single month or recurring. Their computers will do in seconds what takes a human 20 minutes to process, document in the records and send you your info. Those minutes add up quickly and are very valuable when I have a woman waiting for me in the studio or when Murphy's Law is in overdrive. |
| 5a: IN HOUSE RECURRING MEMBERSHIPS: As mentioned elsewhere, when I knew my updates were suffering, I chose not to re-bill anyone using Colight's In-house memberships. But often was unable to find time to write to all concerned. Finding you based only on a pop-up sticky note was eating my lunch. I'm glad to say I feel confident about the sites flow and have resumed the multi-month In-House system. I'll be starting fresh using a program that can provide reminders AND the information related to your account in one program instead of three. |
| 6. E-MAIL is still going to be a spam screwed problem. The spyware out there used by spammers can actually read text from a Jpeg or any other picture. Within days of setting up my "smokeman" mailbox for customers, I was already getting spammed in bulk. And all I put up was one Jpeg with the address. What you put in the SUBJECT LINE is also of great concern. I've been on the web 10 years and still am never sure if my subject line text will be considered spam by a filter in your mailbox or ISP. Look for a new, and to date, spam free address below. It will look like a brain-teaser of a puzzle but only so the spam bots take longer to find it…. |
| 7. Any smoke lover with a verifiable ability to capture and process still images from my videos or site clips will have access to my work in exchange for capturing those many hours of smoke which several prior part-timers have left untouched. I used to do all of it myself but other areas need what time I do have. I'm looking only for a natural in the art with an above average Photoshop ability. And, of course, an eye for all the special preferences that need to be capped. IOW.. I'm an exhale fan, but those are not the only pics I capture. If you have editing skills and the equipment needed, I would be willing to discuss having some of my earlier work remastered for DVD so I can focus on later and future projects. |
| Anti Spam Crypto-gram: Take the word smoke and place a (.) period after each of the first four letters. Only the first four. Then comes the all too familiar circled "a" symbol above the number 2 key. So, all you'll have to do is finish up at THESHOP. Which is on a NET. The admin or nemo account is also going to be functional - I'll have to address a lot of pending mail there spammy companions..... so it may be a little slower as I move from most recent letters down to the older ones. |
| Hmmm... I know I'm forgetting
something but it will have to wait. As I mentioned above... I will address issues which are not covered above or require research.as soon as practical. I had hoped to do a lot more of them today but I'm already late to mingle with a few perspective smokers...... Then it's back to packaging, dubbing and editing..... Ed |