07.09.08
Posted in About Me, Customer Service, KSU, SAnToS, Technology at 3:00 pm by Todd
Update (10:15a 11 July 2008): The DNS information should be propagated by now and most of the bugs worked out. We had some issues with CVS and host name that needed to be fixed. Hopefully those are the last bugs we find for a while.
Update (5:00p 09 July 2008): Looks like the DNS information is harder to change than expected. So the post of this entry was a little premature. Oops!
For the last 2+ years I have been working to upgrade our project management server to use new hardware and new software. And it is finally complete! Today, we finalized the migration from the old project management server to the new one. The new one is running GForge AS 5.4 purchased from the GForge Group. We had several issues getting this done but it looks like the job is complete (some of them mentioned in this post).
I would like to take the time to thank Tim and Marcelo (from the GForge Group) for helping get the migration completed. They certainly worked hard this last week to make sure this happened.
I would like to thank Travis, Cole, and Seth (past and present members of the CIS system admin staff) for working to get this migration completed. They worked on it for quite some time to make this happen. They also suffered my constant pressure to get it done and get it done correctly.
I am particularly excited about a couple of features in the new software: 1) CruiseControl, 2) the Eclipse plugin, and 3) Subversion. I have used CruiseControl for some toy projects in the past and I am really interested in getting it to work for some of my real projects (SpAda and Cadena). And since I use Eclipse as my main work environment, it will be nice to have the ability to interact with GForge from inside of Eclipse. That integration will make it easier to track and fix bugs as well as keep on task. And with the ability to use Subversion, I will finally get a chance to try it out. I have been using CVS for so long that I do checkouts from my fridge to get my midnight snack.
But the best feature is that the CIS department system admin staff will be taking over the admin duties for the box. This means no more late nights or early mornings fighting with the machine. And it means no more customizations to deter script kiddies. And it means no more little changes to the GForge code to make sure it works correctly. Best of all, no more KSUAFRS (a custom download manager that Jesse and I wrote for GForge) – John and Robby decided that feature was no longer necessary.
I am really glad that this task is complete, that it got done without any major issues, and that the admin duties now fall on the department (instead of me).
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07.02.08
Posted in Business, Customer Service, Technology at 1:00 pm by Todd
I just watched this hilarious video that makes fun of both techies and non-techies. It does have some vulgar language so make sure to not watch it at work or around kids (or around those that will be offended). I was laughing out loud watching this.
It does remind me that techies like me have no business talking to regular people.
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02.13.08
Posted in Customer Service, KSU, Linux, SAnToS, Technology at 3:47 pm by Todd
One of my duties in my current position (Research Associate at
K-State working for the
SAnToS lab) is system administrator. I help to manage laptops, workstations, and servers. The only server I still manage is our project management server that runs
GForge (named
projects.cis.ksu.edu). That server will soon be transitioned over to the responsibility of the
CIS departments
system administrators. Unfortunately, the transition has been a little painful. Let me explain.
Over the last couple of years we have had increasing downtime on the old hardware (a 7 year old dual processor workstation) and old software (the open-source version that we custom patched). Because of this, we wanted to upgrade both the software and the hardware. And with the shortage of man-power in the lab, we decided to share the server with the rest of the department and then transfer responsibility of it to the department as a whole.
We selected some existing hardware that was in our
Beocat cluster, upgraded the amount of storage space, and did a fresh install of Linux. We then purchased a commercial license from the
GForge group for their
GForge AS. We then started the process of upgrading and transitioning. This is when the real pain started.
Some of the pain is self-inflicted. We wrote our own plugin for GForge which modified how the file release system worked. In doing so, we deviated from the standard file locations. This made it a non-trivial upgrade.
Some of the pain was organizational. Because the
CIS system admin staff would be taking over this responsibility, we wanted to let them do the migration. Which meant them learning about it as well as experimenting. Trouble was, they have turn-over (students graduating or leaving for better jobs). So this task fell between the cracks quite often and meant a lot of re-learning by a new person. This made the transition drag on for quite a while.
Some of the pain was caused by the GForge Group. I am sure they try very hard but their customer service leaves a lot to be desired. It almost feels like dealing with Microsoft — our issues are too minor for them to take seriously. So bugs we found were brushed under the rug despite them being true “show-stopper” bugs (we are not going to do the final switch-over until they are fixed).
- The first issue is that mailing list archives that are marked as private are not protected. Meaning that any visitor to the site can see the “private” messages on our lists. Not a good thing.
- The second issue is that some of the data was lost during the transition. Specifically, the document manager in the old version provided a title and description to go along with each document. In the new version, there is no title. And during the transition, the consultant did not migrate the description over so we lost both the title and the description. Not a big deal but it would cause several man-hours of work for us to fix.
- The third issue is that files and releases that are marked as hidden are not actually hidden. We like to (or tend to) keep all of our releases on the server but hide the old ones so that our users (downloaders) are not confused. But when we do this, they are not actually hidden from the user in the new system (they were on the old system). Again, not a big deal but certainly more burden on us to manage our releases.
- The fourth issue is that the mailing list messages in the archives are not attributed to the correct author. This is more of an annoyance than anything else but still an issue that we would like to have fixed.
I suppose this post is part venting (getting this frustration off my chest) and part warning. When dealing with the GForge group, be aware of what you are getting into. It might be best to simply use the open-source version or purchase from a different vendor.
Update (01 July 2008): I just had a very productive phone call with Tim Perdue, the founder/CEO of the GForge Group. He was worried that this post might give people the wrong impression about his company. Because of that, I wanted to set the record straight.
First, I wanted to thank Tim for calling me to chat about this blog post. I was quite surprised since I didn’t think anybody read it. But with the magic of search engines, I suppose things get read at odd times.
Second, I think that the GForge Group has a very good product. GForge AS has a lot of really cool features that I am excited to use (integration with Eclipse, CruiseControl, and an integrated tracker and task manager).
Third, a lot of the issues that I was venting about have nothing to do with the GForge Group or GForge AS. I am guilty of screwing up this process as much as anyone when I implemented the custom download manager. And some of the issues had to do with our internal staff. All that to say there is plenty of issues in this “project” and enough blame to go around.
Last, I want to clarify this statement: “When dealing with the GForge group, be aware of what you are getting into”. I am just saying that any single bug might not be important to them. This is very normal for any small software company so it shouldn’t be taken as a dig on just them. I guess I just expect more out of customer support (which might be my problem and not theirs).
I should also update this post with the status of the migration. It looks like all but one of the issues has been resolved (we still haven’t fixed the document description issue). We are just performing some final testing to make sure there are not any more bugs before we do the final move. We hope that this will happen on Monday (July 7, 2008) (no promises though – unexpected issues always seem to arise).
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10.15.07
Posted in Customer Service at 9:49 am by Todd
Ever since I was old enough to receive mail, I was getting junk mail. And ever since I got a phone number, I was getting tele-marketing calls. And ever since I got an email address, I was getting spam. And if you can’t tell by now, I don’t like any of them. So today, I am going to document how I am dealing with these daily annoyances.
First, the low-tech way to deal with junk mail is to open them up, shred anything that has personal information on them, and then return the rest in the business reply envelope that they provide (unless it has a unique number on the envelope or they don’t provide one). I have heard that this really doesn’t do any good but I don’t completely agree with the argument. In my view, every time I send their junk back, it costs them more to market in this way (direct marketing, aka junk mail). So by me doing this, I cut into their profits. And I think if others did this as well, they might notice. But that is just the start.
The next thing in the process is to get removed from the pre-screen offers of credit. You can do this at OptOutPrescreen.com (run by the major credit reporting agencies). Simply fill out the online form, which will remove you for 5 years, and then send in the printable form to get removed forever. I sent this in today and helped Kari get it done as well. Hopefully, this will make a difference in the coming weeks (if I remember, I will let you know).
The third phase will be trying to get the Direct Marketing Association (DMA) to stop selling my name. Although this is looking like a rip-off since they charge $1 to be removed from the list (seems unfair and unethical – although I can’t make a comprehensible argument at this point). I will have to look into this more (or get assistance from my many, expert readers).
Once you have dealt with junk mail I suggest getting rid of tele-marketers. This can be done by using the national do-not-call registry. Simply fill out the form (up to three phone numbers can be entered along with an email address for confirmation purposes), confirm once the email arrives, and then repeat in 5 years. Today, I just renewed my registration as well as added my cell phones (mine and Kari’s), although I don’t think this is necessary.
Now, the hard part, dealing with spam. I have tried several things in the past and here are my suggestions. First, use an ISP or mail host that filters spam from email. It is best to use someone that allows you to configure the sensitivity and allows exceptions. My main account is hosted by K-State and they do this for me.
Second, I suggest using an email client that can filter spam as well. I use Thunderbird but many email applications do this now. It takes some time to train them but once trained, they are very effective. I think I get 20-50 spam emails per day and only 2-10 show up in my inbox. The rest are filtered into my spam folder (which I go through on a regular basis to make sure the training is correct). You can see this drastically improves my day.
Last, I suggest protecting your email address online. Don’t post it to forums, mailing lists, drawings, etc. This is just inviting spammers to harvest your address and use it. And if you need to post it, try to obscure it in some ways. For more on this practice see this as well as the Wikipedia article on it.
With all of that said, I don’t think you can completely rid yourself of these annoyances. For example, spam filtering can only get you so far and you will just have to deal with the rest. And there are loop-holes in the do-not-call list like charities and the annoying political calls. But I have noticed a difference by being on the do-not-call list so it is working. Hopefully this helps a little bit. And for more information (at least in the US), visit the Federal Trade Commission’s consumer protection web to learn more.
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09.13.07
Posted in Customer Service at 10:57 am by Todd
Today is a somewhat sad day for me. Not a real sad day (like the death of a friend or loved-one), just an internet version of a sad day. Today I gave up on the Freakanomics blog.
What was once one of my favorite daily blogs to read has become too cumbersome. Before their recent transition to the NYTimes, I was able to read their entries, in their entirety, using Google Reader. This is the same way I read 99% of my internet sources. But after their transition, they only published the first bits of their entries via RSS in hopes of pushing you away from RSS and onto the NY Times website (not linking to the NYTimes on purpose).
I will admit that another reason I can give them up so easily is that it is the NY Times. I get tired of the NYTimes opinions, east-coast centered news, unscientific polls (although they sell them as informative polls), and quasi-news (inflamed, exaggerated stories whose sole motivation is making more headlines and selling more papers through the use of fear). I also hate that they, at least in the past, “protect” their online stories behind registration (like I want to give you my personal information to sell at will just so I can read one of your crappy articles).
Another reason that I can give up on them is the enlarged page size that their blog now has. This includes the standard NY Times header, the ads, and their enormous blogroll are just a few items that make their pages giant (and take forever to load).
So today was my last day subscribing to them. I am sure I will check back on occasion to see if they have fixed this issue but I doubt they will. Stephen and Steven, I will miss your opinions and insights. Wish you would not have moved over the the NYTimes.
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08.03.07
Posted in Customer Service at 9:46 am by Todd
Over the last couple of years I have come to expect really poor customer service (after dealings with the likes of Sprint, Cox Communications, Home Depot, Southwestern Bell/SBC/AT&T, Wal-Mart, HP, and Nebraska Furniture Mart). A couple of weeks ago, I experienced just the opposite when dealing with New Balance. To be perfectly honest, they impressed me with just a little bit of effort on their part.
The story starts two years ago when I purchased some New Balance 606 shoes online. Since then, they have been my primary shoes (I wear them almost every day … it is really nice to have a job where I can get away with t-shirts, shorts, and shoes like that!). A month or so ago, I had one of the laces break and I had to do a little “creative surgery” so I could continue using them. That day, I started looking around for replacement laces and came up dry (I could buy the standard white or black replacements laces if I wanted but they would not have looked good with the shoes).
At that point I was ready to give up but wanted to check with New Balance first. I was hoping their webiste would tell me where I could order them or pick them up here in town. What I found out was much better. It turns out that they have a page on their website for frequently asked questions (FAQ) that has just this question and answer. So I simply needed to use their online form and they would send me a set of replacement laces … for free.
Long story short, the laces arrived in 4 days. And while they weren’t an exact replacement, they sent me two pairs so I would have my choice. What a great experience. One that I will be telling everyone about (including my 2 blog readers). And this will certainly effect my next buying decision. Why can’t companies like Nebraska Furniture Mart, Wal-Mart, Sprint, AT&T, HP, and Home Depot do the same? I assume they have the money to invest into this type of support as well as the talent, or at least the ability to hire the talent. So do they just not care or is it really that hard?
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08.02.07
Posted in Customer Service, SAnToS at 8:09 am by Todd
I have been spending time over the last couple of weeks trying to get my new laptop setup so that I can transition to using it. Unfortunately, this has been quite a chore and is taking a non-trivial amount of time. So far, I have run into a bloated Vista install, a lack of documentation on how to reduce the bloat, and an inability to repartition the drive from within Vista.
I have already talked about the bloat but wanted to provide a little bit of a conclusion to the story. It turns out that you can remove the recovery partition and extend the Vista partition to include it. You simply need to create DVDs (or CDs) of the HP Recovery system, uninstall HP Backup and Recovery, remove the Recovery partition, and finally extend the Vista partition to take up this new free space. I am still trying to figure out how to remove the 3rd partition (OS_TOOLS) but can’t seem to find any clues as to what it is, if it is safe to remove it, and what procedure to follow to remove it (feel free to leave a comment or email me if you know how to do this).
At this point, I had quite a bit of space on the brand new system so that I could create the Linux partitions and setup my dual-boot laptop. This is where the trouble with Vista and HP Support started. To be specific, I had a working Vista system that was trimmed down to have about 80G of free space.
I found out that Vista has a built-in utility to manage partitions. So I tried to repartition by issuing the “Shrink Volume” command on that partition (hoping to free up 70G to install Linux on). It came back and said that it could only shrink the partition down by 6G. This seemed weird because there was so much free space so I asked the great google brain “Why can’t I shrink a volume more in a fresh install of Vista?” The response was no louder than crickets chirping (ok, there were quite a few hits for my query but nothing close to a real answer). After searching “Live Search” (Microsoft’s answer to Google), I found some details that said that the volume shrinkage might be limited because of the location of the pagefile, hibernation files, and other system files (shadow copies, whatever that is). With this information I thought I might try to use Disk Cleanup and the Disk Defrag tools in Vista and it might push all of these system files closer to the beginning of the disk and it would free up space in that partition. This was not the case and I still could not shrink more than 6G.
With my new found limitation and the lack of knowledge on the internet I decided it was time to consult the experts at HP. I contacted HP support using Active Chat and was greeted rather quickly with a real person (within about 5 minutes if I recall, pretty impressive). He read through my description of the problem and said he would have to research the issue and respond via email. I thought, great, this should be resolved within a couple of days and I will have my new laptop closer to being usable as my primary platform for everyday work.
This is where the story starts to frustrate me. The response that was sent to me via email was quick but didn’t tell me anything I hadn’t tried already (Disk Cleanup and Disk Defrag). So I went ahead and tried it again and it ran overnight (sidenote: why does defrag take so long?). When I got in the next morning I rebooted and tried to shrink again. No luck (surprise). So I connected to ActiveChat again. This time the tech support specialist tried to walk me through something but he didn’t know how to find pagefile.sys (I later learned a little something about folder options in Vista that will be useful in the future). So he said I would need to contact Microsoft for support.
This is where I got really angry. Why did I need to contact Microsoft for support when I have a 3 year warranty with HP and this is the OS that HP installed? Besides, Microsoft charges for support (and doesn’t recognize my product ID, probably because it is an OEM product ID and they assume you get support from your OEM – good assumption). So I argued a little bit and he gave me the standard “customer is upset and we won’t fix it” response. At that point, I just shut-up and disconnected.
With all my pent-up-anger I decided to take a break. After my break (and reducing my anger by about 50%) I decided to try another route. I would use HP’s email support and see if I get any better results (I know, not a good idea but I figured I might as well give it a try).
HP’s email support obviously didn’t read through the prior history detail in the Active Chat session so I got a little further with them. Unfortunately, they ran into issues and gave up as well and told me to contact Microsoft Support. Here is their final message:
Hello Todd,
Thank you for contacting Hewlett-Packard’s Commercial Solutions Center.
This is with reference to your e-mail regarding the HP Compaq nc8430 notebook.
Based on the information provided in your e-mail, we understand that you want to create a second partition on the Hard Drive of the notebook.
We understand your concern; we wish to inform you that it is a known issue in Vista and Microsoft has not yet released the patch to resolve the same.
However we suggest you using the below link of TechNet of Microsoft which provides the clear picture that the issue is known one. We suggest you that you will have to wait until Microsoft releases the patch to resolve the bug:
http://forums.microsoft.com/TechNet/ShowPost.aspx?PostID=1319579&SiteID=17
Please do contact the Microsoft using the below link and they will help you in providing further assistance:
http://support.microsoft.com/oas/default.aspx?ln=en-us&x=10&y=12&prid=10299&gprid=436975
Please e-mail us in case of any further queries and we will be more than glad to assist you.
Once again, thank you for contacting Hewlett-Packard’s Commercial Solutions Center.
Regards,
HP eServices
So I am left contacting Microsoft for support and a not-really-usable laptop (I cannot work in Vista since it is so slow and takes so long to boot besides the fact that I am much more efficient and effective in a Linux environment). I am left thinking several things:
- HP doesn’t know how to support their customers and their technical knowledge is the same as using Google and Live Search.
- HP doesn’t want my business.
- HP does everything it can to avoid working hard to satisfy its customers.
- HP outsources their support to an off-shore firm where the techs are non-native English speakers.
- Microsoft Windows Vista is not ready to be released.
To all my loyal readers, don’t buy an HP. I think this was huge mistake and I should have just ordered a MacBook Pro or a Dell Inspiron instead.
Update: I just got an email from Thomas Netter who mentioned this article that might have fixed my problem. Unfortunately, it was too late for me to try since I have given up on Vista, completely removed it, and installed Linux instead. But others might find it useful. Good luck. And thanks Thomas!
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04.20.05
Posted in About Me, Business, Customer Service, Manhattan at 7:33 pm by Todd
House Hunt 2005 seems to be over. My wife and I recently purchased a brand new house (still not quite finished with it) and we are just waiting to close. So assuming we don’t run into any snags between now and closing we will be the owners of a nice new house.
Now this process was not as fun as I had hoped. We looked at a lot of houses (well, at least I thought it was a lot) in a short period of time. Some were definite no but most were maybe. The market here in Manhattan, KS is really crazy. One house we looked at went on the market (listed on MLS) at noon, I looked at it at 2pm, my wife went back with me at 3pm, and when our realtor (Stacey Hoffman, Hallmark Homes) called the listing agent there was already a couple making an offer. How is anyone supposed to find a house!!!
Another interesting problem we found was that realtors in town are not very nice to each other because they don’t need to be. What I mean by that is that since the market is so hot agents can just sell their listings to their own clients without ever letting other people see the house. We found this out because of a tip from one of my wife’s co-worker. They have some friends looking to upgrade and were planning on selling their house once they found one to move to. So they didn’t have it listed yet but it turned out they had a listing agent already (turns out to be a family friend). So we talked to the family to see about buying their house (it was in a nice neighborhood with what looked to be a good price tag). We then had our agent call their agent (Jim Ryan Jr., Ryan and Sons) to set up a showing. Their agent said he would not schedule it but would be willing to give our agent a referal instead. Put in laymans terms, he wanted to get whole 6% commission on the house instead of the 3% he would get as the listing agent. In other words, very selfish. We ended up seeing the house through the listing agent but we decided it wasn’t worth working with someone like this.
Now the non-fun can begin … MOVING. I am sure to post more about that whole process later. And I might have more on the process of buying a house if I can put my cursing and muttering into real english words.
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