God I hope so. The SPAM levels have been steadily increasing over the last 8 months or so and we could use a break. But we’re not going to get one. First of all, tguardian was not one of the biggest spammers around, but you have to admire law enforcement for blowing it out of proportion. He was just a scamming little script-kiddy that banged SpamAssassin until he could get a score low enough. Doubt that? Take a look at the graph below:

That is the global message load over at ExchangeDefender, last 24 hours. You can clearly see the spikes as our customers in Europe, USA and Asia/Pacific open for business. You can also see that the trends for today are up when compared to yesterday. Why is this bad news for everyone involved?

Well, if this guy was as big as the law enforcement leads us on to believe that US mid-day spike in activity would be significantly lower. But it wasn’t. Here is what happens when the feds bust you for cybercrime activities (long live Razor 1911).

First, all of your computer equipment, electronic equipment, electronic media, etc gets confiscated and certainly cracked in minutes. From there they try to get into the botnets, try to do discovery, capture any contacts, communications, business dealings, etc. The feds try to get as many people red handed as possible.

And these scumbags know this! So how do you explain the “enormous bust, sign of a SPAM kingpin crackdown, the end of UCE” that the media and some bloggers are hoping for?

Easy, they are wrong. tguardian always was and always will be a little scriptkiddy, bulk of whats coming up is done through organized crime from abroad.

Always a good day when one of your friends ends up on the news for being one of the biggest criminals / scumbags around. Robert Soloway, aka tg, aka theguardian used to be one of the guys on #ice on IRC that picked on me about being able to get around every SpamAssassin recipe I could write.

Hey bud, cover your cornhole. I win.

/me waves

The days of “thumbing it” could be over if Palm can get a price point that makes sense. Yesterday Palm announced Foleo, a companion laptop-like device for your mobile phone. Basically, its a 10” screen laptop with a full keyboard, USB, bluetooth and more but without a hard drive. This allows it to run for about 5 hours and connect to the Internet using your PocketPC for network access.

Awesome? You bet! With more and more applications ending up on the road, getting a light device that can give you access to the Internet and ability to sync and connect easilly back to the workplace is essential.

There are, however, two things wrong with this device. First, the price $600 – I can get a laptop for half that much. Second, why isn’t Linux software pitched more prominently. Let’s face it, this is a paperweight with the apps they put on there. But throw in Citrix ICA or Remote Desktop Client, both available on Linux, and you’ve got yourself a secure remote office.

It’s a very good idea for a road warrior, but the price and promotion need a few touchups. Will you buy one, or will you buy one on eBay later this year after it’s discontinued?

Susan Bradley’s blog tagline ought to be “Protecting you from your own stupidity” because she fought for the SP2 EULA from the day it was prematurely made available as a High Priority update on Microsoft Update. We all have a tendancy to trust Microsoft, sometimes trust it too much. Such is the case with updates, particularly to the systems that we look at on part-time only basis. Today this hard fought evangelical EULA is up on Microsoft Update.

Why? Well, Service Pack of any sort is kind of a big deal. Despite Cousin Joel’s notion that it’s easier to consume it still introduces large scale changes to your operating system and the entire network environment. So whats the big deal with an EULA? Well, it’s just another reminder put up there to make sure you’re about to do something that you might want to think about.

Why? Because you don’t want to be this guy:

The blog notes and instructions from the SBS blog have all been heeded.  32
hours of talking with tech support on the phone, changing the nic card,
updating all the drivers, and still, the system is dogging to the point of
being painful.  Here is the unexplainable issue:  I have 5 new machines, all
came from Dell with XP Pro installed.  They all had to be flattened and XP
Pro re-installed.  They worked great until SP2 was installed.  Now they take
5 minutes to open an 8MB spreadsheet they used to open in 20 seconds.  My 3
old machines were upgraded from W2K to XP Pro and they worked fine before SP2
was installed.  Afterward, they are slower, but work better than the new
machines.  The old machines can still run ACT 6.0.  The new machines fail
with a program error after opening the database.  Explain that!

All file access to the network is so slow now.  Don’t suggest anything
previously mentioned in the blog.  4 MS engineers can verify that all the
tricks have been done as outlined in this blog.

There must have been some other deep layer of connectivity between the
server and workstations that does some kind of handshaking/security checking
that is slowing things down.  Excel seems to have been hit the hardest.  It
is a terrible thing to see a 2GB 4Ghz Dual Core processor take 60 seconds to
copy 10 files of 80K each from the network to the local drive.

I have 5 SBS 2003 servers and 3 of them are just fine.  This one is dying
and SP2 failed to install on the other one.  I am afraid to work the issue as
it might turn out like this one.

I really do need ideas and help short of flattening the server, as that may
not help anyway.  Ideas, anyone?

I feel bad for this guy, I really do.

However, a part of me wonders just how heavy the rock was. You know, the one that he was under since Microsoft started releasing service packs. As painful as the above is to read, and as painful as this process has been for him, this outlines the fundamental lack of respect for change management we have in the IT industry.

First, where is the full backup of the server that this was done on. At the very least this would have allowed him to take the server back to the last known good configuration.

Second, where is the test system on which he checked Act 6.0 for compatibility?

Third, never change more than one thing.  If you installed the Service Pack and it broke things, do not proceed to install drivers (that likely have not been tested with the said service pack) and do more exotic changes.

Fourth, test, test, test, test. Forget about the stuff you should have done before you patched, too late to setup a test vm, too late to do a full backup, too late to check the app vendor for advisories related to the patch, too late. You’re patched, there is a whole new world on your network. Isn’t the first thing to check all the workstations and rerun MBSA, performance testing, reset the performance counter on both server and workstations, build new baselines, etc? If not, why? 

Perparing for a Service Pack

There are a few simple things you can do to minimize your chances of a 35 hour support call:

1. Check the main application vendor for the customer and make sure their products are tested and supported on the new service pack. Service Packs are available months in advance and vendors can test/advise whether you should update or not.

2. Reboot the server.

3. Back up the server, full backup or image.

4. Download the service pack.

5. Disconnect the server from the network.

6. Apply service pack.

7. If all is well, connect one workstation to the server to test the performance, application compatibility, access policies, etc.*

8. If all is well, reconnect everything to the network.

9. Rebuild your performance baselines.

10. Create a new full backup.

* – The last thing you want is to start storing live data on the server that you may need to restore to the previous version due to major problems. By placing the server offline you don’t have to deal with email that was delivered to the server that you will now lose, comitted data, etc, etc.

Now I realize that points #5 and #9 are in the same category as “Don’t eat pizza, it’s not good for you” and “Did you know that smoking causes cancer” but those are really the two things that will limit your exposure and tell you that there are problems before its far too late.

Got your own change management tip? Blog it or post a comment.

I’m back, Vladville is back. You may exhale now, things are back to normal.

I am sorry that it took so long to get Vladville back together. It was a number of things. First, I made a committment to myself that Vladville will not be back online until I made sure I’ve integrated all the functions I needed for Vladville to be useful. Second, I had a ton of fun in New Orleans and I really did not feel like working on the blog code. But it’s Wednesday and I’m caught up, the blog is where it needs to be and things are clicking along. There isn’t anything new here (unless you look really carefully) but the code and the integration on the backend will finally allow me to do what I’ve been dreaming, promising and coming to terms with over the past year or so.

The Mistakes

As the Vladville popularity and audience grew I’ve felt a huge sense of obligation to keep certain things going, certain things I should have allowed to die long ago.

I’ve made far too many mistakes, ranging from talking about things and people I had no right to talk about all the way to being outright wrong about so many things I’ve lost count of. That is always a risk you take when you speak your mind.

I’ve stood up for things that were wrong, to protect the people that would have (or already have) thrown me under the bus at the first opportunity.

Most of all, I’ve been wrong about the people.

And…

… and while I can’t and don’t want to change who I am and what I stand for, it has been clear to me that I need to step up my game for those of you that are willing to learn, and a little more importantly, are willing to share. No, I won’t tell you what I’m up to or what the big plan is but there are good times ahead, I hope you join me.

I’m rewriting the Vladville backend and how my own applications tie into WordPress (my blogging platform); As a result, please don’t expect more posts/content until Monday.

Come back on the 28th.

We have a little saying around the office, “If that patch isn’t committed to the cvs by noon we’re deporting you to India.”

Tonight I decided to get cute and implement some visual effects. I’m ashamed that the stuff below took 25 minutes to produce:

$style = ( $i % 2 ? ‘altrow’ : ‘row’); $i++;
echo “<tr class=\”$style\”
onClick=\”window.location.href=’
/view.asp?item=ticket&ticketid=$tickets[ticketid]‘\”
onMouseOver=\”this.className=’hrow’;\”
onMouseOut=\”this.className=’$style’;\”>”;

I’ve posted it in its entirety so I can be ridiculed at a later date. What took so long? Stupidity as usual, but the longer you go in a stupid direction the longer it takes to figure out just what went wrong in the first place.

The top line just determines which style gets applied to the row in a listing. The idea is to alternate styles so that the table is easier to read. There are two styles here, row and altrow – pretty simple. As I list data I’m using the modulus (remainder after /2) to determine which style gets applied. There are two events that fire – namely when the mouse hovers over the row and when it leaves it. When it hovers, the style ought to be switched to hrow which is my highlighted row. After it leaves, reset the style back to what it was previously.

Then I decided to get cute. I wanted the row color to change as I scrolled up and down the list. I also wanted to be able to click on any inactive space in the row and still take the default action. Again, programming 101. Where I lost the ball game was on the this.style part – this.style takes on all sorts of things like color for example – all except stylesheet name. It took me good 20 minutes to figure out why/where/how before I finally went back to look it up. I suck.

As mentioned on the Shockey Monkey conference call this week I’ve squashed all the bugs that have been reported throught the last week or so. I’m also addressing the current showstoppers as identifed by the folks on the conference call. Just to clarify the intent here – priority in development is given to people that have adopted the product for their business use and see it causing a lot of pain and issues for them. Those showstoppers are as follows:

• Ability to create a ticket via email
• Company update issues
• Email parsing issues
• Ability to change subjects
• Ability to offer user autoregistration*

* = difficult to solve. Someone requested it be supported via email, which isn’t going to happen until email becomes an authentic form of communication (ie: never); With SPAM, spoofing, forging and so on there is no way to provide any level of authenticity to the accounts that are being created via email. However, a web-self-registration stuff is under development, will have it ready by the May 23 feature refresh along with all the rest of the stuff above.

I’ve gone through all the bugs and fixed them, with the exception of about 5 issues that I was unable to replicate on my own. If you could be so kind to login and update the bug report with the detailed actions you took to cause it I’ll gladly get it done, I can virtually promise I will have it update on May 23rd.

A little note on bugs and releases

I patch the security and critical bugs in realtime. Shockey Monkey has a development and release branches which as the name implies hold the currently active code and the code I am working on.

If a security issue is identified it is patched and automatically rolled out to all the users.

If its a feature fix it gets fixed in the development tree instead. There are a few reasons for this:

• Security fixes are usually either 1 line or an extra loop check. I can quickly replicate them to the development branch of the code.
• I intend to release bug fixes on weekends, during the weekly maintenance window for Own Web Now Corp which is 3–7AM EST Saturday.
• The feature rollups/fixes are released periodically for two reasons: It’s easier to manage and its easier to solve a huge set of bugs and eliminate problems before new ones pop up.

Also keep in mind that as I fix these bugs I am also rolling in new features so the less branches and patches the better. Also remember that this is not a single web app running in an isolated space on a box that nobody ever touches – each code change, given enough stupidity on my part, can take down the entire farm. So every bug/fix I do has to be stress tested, etc.

This week was different from previous weeks in that the patch/update will be held off until Wednesday, May 23rd. Here is what’s at play. I am going to be out of town next Saturday. There is a big conference starting Friday where I will be meeting many of you that are using Shockey Monkey and breaking it down piece by piece. I am introducing two HUGE feature sets into the Monkey and just wanted to go through another few days of testing and checking before it went live.

Of note, Shockey Monkey changelog is now available at http://www.shockeymonkey.com/changelog.asp

One of my biggest pet peeves is when people start talking about firing clients. Regardless of justification, it comes off as the most arrogant move an IT solution provider can make. The message you’re sending to your client with your actions is: “You’re just here to get me to the next step, at which point we can do better than you” Do it to the wrong person and they will crush you in the Chamber of Commerce, smirge your reputation. Effectively, your once best customer can become your worst enemy.

But lets face reality, there are times when you’re going to have to part ways. And just when you get to the point of picking up that phone to crush the asshole on the other side to the oblivion and tell him everything you’ve been bottling for months, stop. Before you pick up that phone, or the pen, depending on how cowardly you are, stop. When you’ve reached your absolute breaking point – give the client a call and level with them: Here is what we’ve done, here is how we’ve gone above and beyond the call of duty and here is how things played out. The client is obviously unhappy. You are unhappy. You can both do better. Take a lead by saying that even though you’ve helped them this time, the next time they are on their own.

But the key is not to fire them now. The key is not to fire anyone, ever. The key is for them to understand that change is needed and perhaps you shouldn’t be a part of it. And in that situation, you should do whatever you can to accomodate them out of the door – be it recommending a local partner/competitor, giving a free assessment, exit interview, you name it. Your final task with a client is not to throw them out the window, your final task ought to be consultative one – you’re finding a solution to their problem (your company) and the solution is finding someone else to deal with them

Is it Thanksgiving yet? I know it’s May and I know this is perhaps seven months overdue but I have to give some thanks because my business is on the verge of something great thanks to some great people.

In the long, long ago some guy named Albert Churba gave me my first engineering job. My first project was to build a news server, with what were experimental RAID drivers, with hardly supported RAID controllers, with an external hard drive chassis and I learned more than any human needs to know about how news servers work. It was an exciting kind of time for a high school kid, when you could email the engineer at RedHat and ask him for help. I went on to build a lot of servers for Albert over the years but one thing I will never forget is the number of times I made some horrific mistakes and never got thrown out the window. Every time I did something stupid Albert would help me fix it. I would go over to my buddy Pablo’s house after work and we’d hack and play with experimental code until I was too tired to even drive empty I-595 road home. Whenever I hit the wall Pablo was there to help figure it out, something that remains true to this very day. Whenever there was something new going on, Albert would hand it over to me and show me how things really worked. Pablo and Albert really taught me the value that comes from passing knowledge, how doing things right in the long term benefits everyone.

Long story short, I went to college, I started a business, I fell in love with a beautiful girl that didn’t think I was completely insane, I didn’t sleep much for about six years. Then I started to work really hard. This guy named Greg Boyd hooked me up with Microsoft. I traveled up and down and across Florida, supposedly promoting my business, but really being Greg’s sidekick and learning how the software business actually worked. Greg was, and probably still is, the best presenter I have ever seen. Ever. I remember going in for a really big meeting in Miami and stopping by Vero Beach (“Where 102 is young!”) and seeing Greg sell $400 mapping software to an elderly couple and they absolutely loved it! How in the world did he do that? The explanation literally changed my business, changed how I deal with people, changed my outlook on partnerships and changed my overall value proposition.

Then things started to pick up, really, really fast. In 2004 and 2005 I really took to the road and really started to take care of my own back yard. We grew some phenomenal SBS groups in Orlando, worked with nearly every major company around and got to meet Harry Brelsford who made me come out to his big SMB Nation conference. I remember it like it was yesterday, sitting in Celebration talking to my wife (then girlfriend) about all the money we were spending on growing the business, about how afraid I was about how big things are getting, about how I didn’t think I could manage where it was all heading. Katie said something to me that eventually earned her the rock, because she figured me out before I figured out myself: “Don’t worry about the money, just do what you need to and things will fall in their place”

So I let go of my fear, I went to SMB Nation where I filled my notebook cover to cover with ideas that we are still implementing today. Looking back, perhaps the most significant one came from Anne Stanton saying: “You can do a lot more business working with your partners than working against your competitors.” It is something I have been trying to say and do for years, but something I never could put quite so directly. I also got to meet two women that have influenced my day to day life moreso than anyone I’ve met in close to ten years. Susan Bradley, who I really looked up to has opened so many doors for me there is really no way to say thanks. As much as we fight and disagree, she is like a sister I never had. I got to meet Susanne there, who has since become my best friend. Susanne, through whatever magic she does, has always been able to open my eyes to the world at large that I so arrogantly think I know so well. She, like my wife, is perhaps the only other woman on the planet next to my mom and my wife that can bitchslap me into being reasonable. (though I’m sure they will all say it’s impossible)

Susan introduced me to… everyone. She introduced me to Dave Sobel who effectively influenced the process revisions at OWN. She introduced me to Karl Palachuk who has been my personal psychiatrist and corporate counsel at the same time. Karl introduced me to Erick Simpson, who is the perhaps the biggest invisible VP OWN has ever had. Susan saw what I was doing in Florida and dragged me into the SBS community where I met Chris Rue over Windows Media Edition Keyboard. Chris, through probably well over hundred hours, put almost all the SBS Show’s many of you have enjoyed. Who was the driving force to getting me back to giving WWPC another chance, something that’s repaid a million times. The SBS Show and Vladville that had established friendships with some of the most talented and most influential people in the IT business, at levels I had never even imagined I would ever be at. To the SBS-BBC competitions with Tim Barrett who, like Chris, helped me stay focused on providing video content to the people that were starting or growing their businesses.

Just like Albert saw potential in me over ten years ago and went way and beyond to help me learn, just like Pablo is constantly in my corner; Susan, Susanne, Chris and Tim have helped me pay it back and give back without asking what’s in it for me. The payback… has been enormous. And the next month and the next year will be the hardest ones in my company’s history. Hardest because the vision I had ten years ago, the vision I put in serious play over five years ago, the years of lack of sleep and hair-pulling nights of troubleshooting, studying and managing are finally going to make something great. All the things that I’ve been working on, doodling on airplanes and in airports, arranging, rearranging and explaining over and over again are coming together in perhaps the most beautiful, most clear way possible.

And we did it without screwing people over, without stealing, without compromising what I had envisioned years ago. And now, in 2007, it all comes together, built on the success, experience and doing the right thing. I worked very hard for a long time without asking what’s in it for me – and today the payback is bigger than I ever thought possible. I had to walk through a lot of shit, work harder than I ever thought I could, sacrifice… a lot. A year ago, after WWPC, I finally found that missing piece to it all. And oh how it worked out!

Thank you. NOW the hard work really begins but it never would be here had it not been for all the wonderful people in this post. What I’m up to is really not important, what is important is that when you surround yourself with remarkable people and strive to climb up to their level you never have to look down. I just wish you had the kind of friends I have.