May Day

May Day

Joel has a piece today on the importance of testing your software before you ship it. Reading this brought back horrible memories of working at Wybtrak in 1997. We would do only the crudest QA on our software before it went to our clients. Granted, there wasn't a huge need to, since our software was basically some complex FileMaker Pro databases, but there was no dedicated support personnel, and we routinely finished creating a new version MINUTES before it went to the clients.

I got all set up with PayTrust this weekend, it looks like it'll save me a great deal of time and hassle paying my bills each month. How long until I can get rid of my checkbook completely?

I just got a replacement motherboard from Quantex for one of our machines. I think I like Gateway's motherboard replacements better, they send the motherboard with the CPU and RAM already installed on it, you just pop it in where the old one was. Quantex apparently trusts me to install the CPU and RAM myself, which is fine with me, but they didn't include a motherboard manual! I'd better not need to move many jumpers...

I watched the movie The Insider this weekend, you can find it on video now, or my preferred choice, DVD. Anyhow, the movie illustrated, at least to me, that probably the greatest threats to our freedom don't come from the government, but rather from Big Business and the lawyers they retain. That said, I don't think we should kill all the lawyers as Shakespeare suggested, but this movie made me acutally think, as opposed to much of what Hollywood churns out...

Is it the weekend yet?

Is it the weekend yet?

I got a pretty funny image in my e-mail this morning, here it is:

Of course, I was two in 1978, so I didn't really have much to invest...

Dell-icious

Dell-icious

I just saw on the web that one of my favorite magazines, PC Accelerator is folding. It's a rather juvenile magazine, but it's fun to read a magazine which included blood alcohol contents with every review when they did their flight simulator roundup. The page on their site which announces the end of the magazine says that we loyal subscribers will probably get a subscription to PC Gamer to compensate us for our loss. The only problem with this is that I already subscribe to that magazine, so I fired off a quick e-mail to the subscription department, like PCXL suggested, here's what I got back:

Hello! Thanks for writing PC Accelerator! We have just received your customer service inquiry and and we are looking into your questions as quickly as possible. Please allow 2 to 3 days for a response (if one is required) so that we may adequately review your records. Donít forget to include your full name and address along with any other specifics with all correspondence. We value you as a subscriber and look forward to helping you in any way that we can!

Okay, fine, a standard auto-responder, but then five minutes later, I got this e-mail:

Your customer service request has been received by PC Accelerator. You should receive an email response in 2-3 business days.

Umm, thanks, but I got that from the first message, do I really need two pieces of mail to explain this concept to me? Needless to say, I don't have high hopes...

When I got back from the Microsoft event last night, there were four big Dell boxes stacked near my desk. Inside were our new Optiplex GX110 desktops. These are the first 733mHz machines I've ever used, and they're FAST. So far, my only gripes are that for some weird reason Dell puts the Windows 2000 Product ID number on the side of the machine, so you see this rather ugly Microsoft sticker there, and that the cases are sinfully ugly.

I want a cable modem in my office.

I want a cable modem in my office

Just got to work to find this message in my inbox:

The ICN is experiencing problems with one of their Frame Relay switches. This affects our Internet access and connectivity, which is somewhat intermittent at the present time, but down more than it is up. There is not an ETR at this time.

This is becoming an almost weekly occurrence, not to mention the ICN is slow, and the four T1's connecting UNI to it are saturated.

Luckily, I'll be out of my office most of the day, as I'm going to Des Moines for the Microsoft Quarterly TechNet Briefing.

I'm looking at taking this course to prepare myself for our big Windows 2000 conversion. We're currently a Windows 9x shop (yuck) but I've previously worked in a Windows NT 4.0 environment. The class is somewhat pricey, but you get 5 days of training for your two grand.

Back in Business

Back in business

I answered my own problems with Norton AntiVirus and Eudora, after looking around on Symantec's site. This article explains that it sets up a proxy server on the local machine, and that's why it reconfigures Eudora to attempt to get the mail from 127.0.0.1. John VanDyk also experienced the fact that this feature doesn't always work.

Another interesting feature that I encountered yesterday, in dealing with Norton AntiVirus, is that it won't let a user without Administrator rights scan for viruses on a Windows 2000 machine. The program will report that the file is infected, and then denies them access to the file. This article describes how to give users the ability to scan and remove the viruses themselves, but I haven't decided yet if it's better to have them call for an admin to come do so, to ensure that the viruses is eliminated. Any thoughts?

I received my new Samba shirt from Nerdgear yesterday, and there was a small flaw in it. I sent off a quick e-mail to the fine folks there, and they told me to keep the shirt and they'd send me a replacement as well. Thanks for the great service! If you don't know what Samba is, go here.

Hurrah! I can finally connect to this site again, it was down most of yesterday.