Obnoxious Clients

THE SITUATION: I was building an e-commerce site for a client whose shopping cart required a UPS API key for shipping purposes. So I went to UPS.com to get one, and found myself trapped inside a labyrinth of HELL. Ok. Maybe it wasn’t quite a labyrinth of hell, but it did royally suck.

THE PROCESS

1. First you must register for a My UPS account. [Where you best remember to check the box that specifically says NO EMAILS DAMMIT. Otherwise, they assume that the reason you didn't elect to receive at least one of their delightful email communications, is because you were so overwhelmed by the variety (of excuses conceived by UPS to fill your email with as much crap as possible) that you couldn't possibly make a rational decision. So to help you out, they'll send you every possible UPS-related email they can, so that you can be more informed of your options.]
2. Once you have a My UPS account, you can access the magical “request an access key” link. [It would be nice if by the time you clicked the magical link, you had a clue what the different APIs were for. Unfortunately the API descriptions are pithy to say the least.]
3. At which point you have to register for a completely different UPS account. [Which is bizarrely confusing since they don't really make it clear what the hell you are now registering for.]
4. And while the registration for My UPS was relatively quick and easy, this registration…is not.
   1. First you must define your shipping needs. [My shipping needs? I'm not shipping anything. Isn't this the developers section for people who, you know, develop websites for OTHERS?]
   2. Then you must fill out all of your contact information, AND your billing address? [Billing address? Why would I need to input a billing address?]
   3. Hey, lookee here, they want my credit card! Guess that explains the billing address. [Would UPS mind telling me why they want my credit card? I'm not buying anything am I? Does it cost something to register for a UPS account? What the heck is going on?]
   4. And now we get to my very favorite part, the “are you really who you say you are you” questions. [And while you would think it would be pretty easy for you to confirm your identify...it's not. I was literally asked about a phone number from 16 years ago, and that was one of the easier ones.]
5. If you manager to answer the questions correctly, THEN you can finally get the access key. At which point you will be so annoyed with UPS that you will log off your computer for the day)

So the the bottom line is, unless you want to be held financially responsible for your clients shipping costs, make them get the damn API key themselves.

Disclaimer: These orders were established by the Commander (Me) based on her own experience fighting the Gumblar Virus on Wordpress, MediaWiki, and ZenCart installations. She does not claim to be a professional virus fighter. She doesn’t even claim to know that much about computers and the internet (despite the fact that she is a web designer/developer by trade). She cannot guarantee that the plan of attack will work on all Gumblar infected platforms (though she can’t imagine why it wouldn’t). All she knows is that after 3 weeks of battle, the orders below (which pull from a number of Gumblar-related resources) are what finally worked.

Note to Solider (AKA the reader): This OPORD was written with the assumption that you run a WordPress site. However, as mentioned above, it has been successfully applied to MediaWiki and ZenCart installations as well. So when you see “WordPress” in the instructions below, swap it with the name of the platform you are using.

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U.S. WWW COMMAND – OPORD 666
GUMBLAR ANNIHILATION OPERATIONS ORDER

Situation
We are under attack. A large number of websites show recognizable signs of Gumblar infestation. Even those with no recognizable indicators seem to be having issues. Previously proven “Gumblar Killers” are no longer effective. All assassination attempts have failed.

Enemy
Goes by the name Gumblar. First sited in May 2009 when it viciously attacked over 100,000 website. A valiant battle was fought and Gumblar retreated. While in hiding, it strengthened it defenses. In early November 2009, security experts started receiving reports of “suspicious activity” in the land of Gumblar. A few days later, Gumblar made it’s official resurgence, with a rapidly deployed stealth attack on a variety of traffic-heavy websites. Due to the clandestine nature of the attack, Gumblar was able to infiltrate hundreds of thousands of websites before the internet was even aware of initial assault. With it’s clever ability to replicate and spread within seconds of insertion, as well as the ability to disguise itself as regular code, Gumblar has proven to be worthy adversary. Unfortunately, due to it’s resilient nature, it’s been incredibly hard to counteract it’s advances.

KEEP READING SOLDIER...

You and your cute little “you’ve spent 45 minutes on distracting websites” and “you’ve been away from the computer, what have you been doing” pop-up messages need to get the fuck off my monitor.