DSL
My DSL is on the fritz. Many pictures will not load properly on this blog until it is back up.

Arabic Names
People who are from the Middle east (or the far east for that matter) should understand that Americans are not going to have a clue how to spell their name when they leave a voice mail. At my day job we have a phone book program that is maintained by the people on the ground. Every one has to maintain their own information. The phone field is free entry limited to numbers, spaces dashes and parenthesis. When some one with eleven consonants and one vowel in their name leaves me a phone message I have to look them up based on their phone number  I have to try all combinations of crap.

(XXX)XXX-XXXX
(XXX)XXX XXXX
(XXX)XXXXXXX
(XXX) XXX-XXXX
(XXX) XXX XXXX
(XXX) XXXXXXX
XXX-XXX-XXXX
XXX-XXX XXXX
XXX-XXXXXXX
XXX XXX-XXXX
XXX XXX XXXX
XXX XXXXXXX <- the one that broke the camels back today.
XXXXXXXXXX

Today, I just called the person and asked them for their user ID. Tomorrow I'll find five new ways people want to put a frigging phone number in to a field. This is a VB form. VB forms allow for forcing a method of entry. The problem is international numbers. They probably had limits on the field and international numbers blew their minds. Here are a couple of examples from memory. Usually country code followed by a bunch of numbers.

XX-XXXXXX-XX
XX-XX-XXXXXXX
XX-XXXX-XXXXXX
XX-XX-XX-XXXXX
XX-XXXXXXXXXXX <- my personal favorite.

I'm,not going into all the combinations of spaces and parenthesis for those. You can do the math.