Gerald R. Ford Airport 20 Million Dollar FAIL

Gerald R. Ford Airport in Grand Rapids Michigan has spent 20 million dollars to upgrade its front end. A magnificent glass overhang shelters travelers from the elements while two skywalks will bring them to covered parking across the road.

So how did the engineers screw it up so bad? It seems easy right? Build a pretty glass overhang to keep the weather off the people down below. Unfortunately this endeavor proved too difficult for the brightest engineers. The thing just plain doesn't work. It leaks on the people worse than if it wasn't there at all. Today the weather was nice and warm for December. The temperature rose above freezing and all the snow on top of the glass overhang began to melt. Due to the roof being built like a pasta strainer it was in effect raining indoors while being nice and dry outdoors.

Way to blow 20 MILLION BUCKS Grand Rapids. Its not like we have a kick ass economy or anything. Frankly we have one of the worst economies in the country. Just more well spent money with a great plan that couldn't be pulled off by so called smart engineers.

Why Wal-Mart is Winning

In my area Wal-Mart isn't the number one store like it is in many other areas. Here Meijer is King. For those not in the small region where Meijer is located think of a Super Wal-Mart. Meijer has been around for decades. Most of my life it was the only option for a 24/7 grocery and everything else store.

13 years or so ago Wal-Mart came to town. I remember Meijer being very worried about it. This worry has caused them to update aging stores and buy up land where Wal-Mart could build on just to keep them away. So far their plan is not working. A super Wal-Mart finally went up blocks from a Meijer store. People love it of course.

The trend I'm seeing now with Meijer is that they are raising prices on many of their items, only to mark them on "sale" at the original price. A quick visit to Wal-Mart shows the same items for 50 cents to a dollar lower in price than the sale price.

Hey Fred, (owner of the Meijer stores) do you really think your customers are so dumb they don't realize that something they buy each week has had its price raised? Do you think the fake sale price which was the original price is a good idea? Especially when I can go to Wal-Mart and get it for an even cheaper price?

On that note, have you ever heard of the 5S program? That means making the layout of each store the same so no matter which one a customer enters they can quickly and easily find the goods they are looking for. I hate going to a "foreign" Meijer and have to wander around for 10 minutes looking for something that is on the opposite side of the store from what I'm used to.

Love them or hate them Wal-Mart is here to stay. They will put you out of business if you can't offer a service to your customer base that will offset the cheaper prices they offer. I for one don't mind paying a little extra if I'm getting superior support from the staff.

Secretive Site HiJacking New Threat?

About 6 months ago a friend mentioned that whenever she tried to visit my site it tried to download something. After typing in my url: http://bobbydoran.net I discovered nothing amiss and just assumed she was smoking crack. During this period I have been very busy so my design site was a very low priority. I did notice that my inquires had dropped off to nothing but dismissed it as my fault for not putting in the time that I had used to promoting my site. Again, with training with the Army and doing design for a company rather than myself I wasn't overly concerned.

The other day I decided to install Google Analytics on my site to see what it would show me. I couldn't access my FTP. Thinking I messed up the password I requested a new one be sent as it had been forever since I logged on and wasn't quite sure what it was any longer. After NOT getting the email I realized my account was using a now defunct email. A quick email to my hosting company and a verification later I was back in business.

As I was looking through the folders on the server I noticed some strange files that I knew shouldn't be there because I didn't put them there. They were named ht_access and ht_access_mal. Every folder on my server had these files in them. Even the sub-folders in my folders. Now I don't know how to code except XHTML and CSS but I've played with enough javascript and actionscrtipt to where I can usually look at the code and can tell what it is going to do. It seemed to me this code was a redirect of some sort. But a very tricky sort.

This is where it gets interesting. It seems this code would only redirect a user from my site to one of those scam download this spyware your computer is infected sites if the user clicked my link on a search engine. If the URL was typed in the browser or someone had my site bookmarked it would go to the site like it was supposed to. Finding my site on a search engine I tested my theory and sure enough, I was brought to an attack site that closed all my tabs but one and tried to get me to download some anti spyware virus crap. In a fit of rage I deleted all the files from the server. Clearing my cache and history I tried it again. This time it went to my site, so for now the problem is fixed. I will be contacting my hosting company and informing them of the intrusion of my domain.

This is the first time that I have heard of hackers attacking a site in this fashion. Has anyone out there heard of this subtle technique? Because I hadn't updated in quite some time nor spent any time with SEO this went on for quite some time. How much business has this cost me? How many lost clients did I miss out on? How tarnished is the name of my site by people clicking on those hijacked links? I'd love to skin whoever did that to me alive, pour lemon juice on the raw flesh and leave them on a fire ant hill to die a slow death.