Tax Season and Technical Work: Close Enough to Hell

Tax season ohhhh tax season, where art thou sleeping? Ohh, in the bowels of hell, nestled with Satan? How lovely.

We are already getting off to a great start. The major software update Jackson Hewitt dropped on us last week is totally eating shit at the moment, less than 24 hours from going live for Money Now Prefile. YAY! So that means, its all coming back on me. I have had computer issues coming out of my ass for the past couple of days. I didnt even get off work last night until 12:15am! The company I work for owns the 4th busiest store in the United States and the customers are calling in masses and showing up, already looking for their money. My boss is dropping the bomb on me, not in a bad sense, maybe more of a desperate looking in all fucking directions for a answer. Im trying my damnedest to help them out, after all they pay for my salary and if we lose a ton of cash on this, well, so much for the raise right?

I have been now sitting on hold with tech support for 20 minutes. Hell Im on hold right now while Im typing this and I dont think its going to get any better soon considering when I tried to call 40 minutes ago, the line was busy with callers maxing it out. ***HOLD ON, BOSS CALLING*** Ahh and the general consensus is...JHnet is taking a gigantic shit! Im all for newer technologies and updates, hell thats what I work in, but these guys are taking the WRONG approach for the way our software works. They have all tax return and customer retrieval happening through an SQL backend over an HTTPS connection to a website. Throw in some sql, php, and soap, and you have an environment teeming with unreliable variables. There HAS to be a better way. Right now, its looking like that HTTPS SQL server has given up the ghost, so now return retrieval is next to impossible. Not only retrieval, but filing as well, which is the core of the business right? Right!

I had a few beers last night with Rami to try and calm my nerves and celebrate the upcoming season and devotion to hell..err I mean tax season. Rami was mentioning something totally on his own, about how when he was "kidnapped" and taken back to Syria by his parents, he was super super stressed for a while. In fact he was soo stressed, he started getting itchy, bad. Almost like opiates itchy. His doctor there told him it was due to high stress and he needed to relax. Needless to say the itchyness went away, but started to return just yesterday. he has been really stressed out with his work as he has been recently promoted to store manager of a Starbucks. Now you may be wondering what the hell this has to do with anything I have been talking about, but hold on, Im getting there! Actually, Im there....yea so I have been getting extreamly itchy for a while now and I couldnt figure out why. In fact last night, as I had just gotten off, at 12:15am, I was VERY itchy. In fact, Im itchy right now as Im typing this crap.

Ok, so I just got off the phone with JH tech support, it is in fact THEIR server! damn I knew it! They are saying its being really slow, and I can just try again later. Wanna know what I think? How about you upgrade? Get some nice servers together, no fucking around on this one. Bleh....

So in other news, I signed up for classes for this semester. Looks like I will be taking Trig and Spanish 1. Yes I can already speak spanish, but Im looking for more vocab and some more hardcore studying. Thats my plan for college this semester. I have been thinking for a while about grabbing all my certifications for computers I can get. NET+, MCSA, MCSE, and maybe even a CCNA. With those, Ill quit college for good, and just run on my certs and see where I end up. Im also taking a class in the fall for my Insurance All-Lines Adjusting licence. I want to start working disasters and hopefully I can do this for a while so I can just work 4 months out of the year and travel the rest. I have some close family friends doing this and they are making quite a bit of cash. This is all boiling down to the "Great Escape" plans that are in motion. In the next upcoming 2-6 years, this blog will be littered with "surfing in Indo","Surfed 6 west african countries", "surfed brazil, paraguay, argentina, all of central america", "explored all of SE asia, india, and asia minor.", Rode/Drove a vehicle from texas to south america in 7 months, with surfboards, surfing ever piece of land", and the best yet "bought a sailboat after learning to sail, and sailed all over mexico/central america". I also have some big plans for winter gulf suring in the gulf side of Mexico. There are hundreds of secret spots, tons of places no one surfs. Damn...Im obsessed!