Drupal Camp, Skype, Malaysia and Sweden

Jacob Redding — Mon, 22 Jan 2007 19:00:55 +0000

Drupal Camp ended yesterday and I have never felt geekier. I helped organize the event (ok I took credit for doing very, very little to organize; Noel and Hans did everything) the event and I was also roped into doing multiple sessions. On Saturday I did a session on how to create websites with google maps but on Sunday I got hit really hard. In the morning, as the group was defining what we all wanted to talk about, both Sam T and I noticed a really bad trend. All of the sessions fell into our realm of expertise. The end result was Sam doing multiple sessions and I starting out a 4-hour power session in a single room.

Oh ya, that was fun. 20 people and 4 hours of joyous Drupal Talk. Whoo Hoo! Actually to be honest it wasn't that bad.

I was completely exhausted at the end of the day but I have to thank OpenPlanner for stepping up at the end of the day, taking us all out to the bar and paying our tab! Oh ya, nothing feels better than to end a super geeked out day with a nice vodka on the rocks (or two).

After the bar I headed home and set out on a mission to purchase tickets to Sweden.

Ok first a little background.

Earlier in the week I received a travelzoo email that advertised an amazing deal to Stockholm from NYC. $380/rt AFTER taxes ($199 before)!!! I'm sure I waited about 5 seconds before telling myself that I'm going to Sweden. That evening I went online to malaysiaairlines.com and attempted to order the tickets. I say attempted because I have tried multiple times each day on every day, since Wednesday, to order these tickets and every attempt has failed.

The first error was with Time-Warner (my cable-internet provider). The domain name for their payment processing (a .my domain) was BLOCKED by time warner. Look I'm a geek, I digged, pinged, tracerouted, everything and the name was definitely blocked.

I got around the error by finding the correct IP address and adding it into my local HOSTS file.

The second error was harder to get around. My credit card information seemed to be going to them but it wasn't processing. I tried over and over again but I kept receiving errors. I did, however, have a booking confirmation. In fact right now I have 5 booking confirmations for trips to Sweden.

After about 10 or so attempts at purchasing the tickets with multiple browsers, computers and even a windows machine I decided to break down and call the company directly in Malaysia.

Verizon cell charges to Malaysia: $1.25/minute!
Verizon cell charges to Malaysia if you an "international calling fee" of $4/mth: 20 cents/minute
Skype calls to Malaysia: 2.5 Cents a minutes.. yes that just over 2 cents a minute.

So I put $10 on my skype account and called them up. I heart skype!

Figured out that they are having trouble with Mastercard and that my Visa is being blocked by the bank. I cleared those issues up and I'm still having troubles. :(

At this point I don't have ticket to Sweden but I AM going.... I've called Malaysia twice, I'm calling Kuala Lumpur tonight and I will purchase these tickets. (fingers crossed)