Erick Simpson in Orlando

Posted: 2:05 am
August 5, 2006
Friends, IT Business
12 Comments

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Earlier tonight Katie and I had the pleasure of Erick's company. Even though we've been at the same two conferences already this was the first time we got to sit down and chat about IT, management, business, American history, perfect women and plasma or LCD television. It is very gratifying to be able to sit down, bounce random ideas and get the fresh perspective from people that are on your own level. I always encourage newbies to find someone in similar circumstances and just.. talk. Here is the case for that: even if you think you are brilliant and you have the most proven concept in your head it helps to bounce it off someone and see how it resonates. Ask them to repeat what they just heard from your proposal because I guarantee you it will not be the same thing that just came out of your mouth. In strategizing, evaluating, designing and perfecting whatever you do you have the end goal in mind so you wrap your thinking around it. Getting the other person to see it the same way without understanding the end goal is the biggest part of the challenge.

It's getting harder and harder for me to find people that are at the same level I'm at professionally so I was really glad Erick got a chance to say over an extra day for this. Erick is a partner at Intelligent Enterprise and works on designing, presenting and facilitating training on managed services. So if you're looking to become an MSP you will be seeing and hearing a lot from Erick over the next few months. We shot a quick "deer-in-headlights" interview for Vladfire and we'll have Erick on the SBS Show (which by the way is not dead, we're on the summer vacation).

Just for the alibi above is a pic of us. Can't mistake Florida with all its natural beauty and snowed in frosted carolers.. in 100% humidity and 92 degree temperature in the middle of August. Almost don't feel bad anymore for blowing off Scoble and Amanda for Montana off-grid. That Chris storm spinning in the Caribbean isn't being very helpful either.

DaSBS Code Video

Posted: 3:23 pm
August 4, 2006
Microsoft
6 Comments

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So video is suddenly all the rage. Steven Van Roekel has posted the new SBS R2 movie on his blog and.. well, you just have to see it to believe it. Steven Ballmer as Mona Lisa and Bill Gates as Vitruvian Man. Someone must really have locked down on their MSFT options early on 🙂

View the movie here. 

Enjoy! Thanks to Kevin Lisota for the pointer.

Good intro to MySQL

Posted: 11:53 pm
August 3, 2006
Linux, Open Source
6 Comments

Needed to get some air and clear my head.. so I went to the local Linux User Group (www.golug.org) mostly because its one of the few places I can go to without looking like a human being. No shaving, no haircut, no problem – dirty jeans and “I read your email shirt” and I’m out the door.

Kevin Korb presented a very nice introduction to MySQL and SQL in general. He has a writeup here. Take a look at it, the paper is a pretty comprehensive description of the basics to get you started. MySQL is a powerful SQL server and yes, it runs on Windows too. Check it out.

When bloggers judge Vista

Posted: 11:10 am
August 2, 2006
Microsoft
14 Comments

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Today I stumbled upon an interesting summary over at Cnet covering blogger comments on Vista "readiness" as is. Their general argument is that people would rather see the next OS done right even if it meant further delays. For what its worth I do agree with taking time as opposed to "crunching" it and before I say what I am about to say I think it's rather foolish to accept comments from "bloggers" as an indication when the release should happen. The only guys that should/could comment on that are the actual Vista developers. You will not hear from them though, they are in a bunker writing code trying to ship the product.  So those are my disclaimers before I say what I am about to say.

As an IT Pro I see little value in Vista over XP. My customers having seen it on my laptop percieve even less. The common question is: "But we do not have to upgrade to it, right?" That is not a pretty question you want to answer if your business relies on people constantly upgrading their computers. For the first time in.. well, ever, what we have just may be good enough and dare I say it "time tested and proven"; XP SP2 is a solid beast, I go weeks without rebooting my main workstation and even then its just for patches.

So will Microsoft take the blogger advice? Sincerely doubt that because they seem to be getting squeezed from all sides. Macintosh is taking back share, now at over 10%. Linux Desktop seems to be gaining ground, not just hot air, and people are actually installing it. Google is becoming a near defacto leader for the web applications but live.com is closing the gap. Make no mistake, Microsoft makes money on Windows, Servers and Office. All the other money-losing ventures are there to diversify the company and allow it to lead in other segments. It is a big, long term bet.

Will Microsoft ever catch up to Google? Can Microsoft compete in media applications with iTunes/Ipod? Will live.com be anything more than failed bcentral.com? Will Vista at its most basic be more compelling than Free/OSS? Will, or rather, when will people open up their pockets for a service instead of software?

The faster Vista can come out, the faster Microsoft will have an answer to the questions above. 

Vladfire 6: SmallBiz IT Shop & SBS Community with Tom Crosbie

Posted: 6:18 pm
August 1, 2006
Vladfire
26 Comments

Tom Crosbie of Crosbie IT Ltd talks about being a one-man band IT shop in UK. Tom talks frankly about how he started his business, the hardship in getting good business training and how the SBS community helped fill the void. Quite inspirational, enjoy.

Vladfire6

Runtime: 8 minutes, 12 seconds.

Download a WMV (Microsoft Windows Movie) | (43 Mb)

Stream Quicktime (Fast, Streaming, Requires Quicktime) | (15 Mb)

Note: Sorry about the video/audio quality, this was shot in a dark hotel room. It is a part of the same presentation you saw by Susanne Dansey and Mark Taylor is next.

VladWind: Food & Running

Posted: 10:18 am
August 1, 2006
Vladville
13 Comments

My UK friends seemed really puzzled with our eating habits so I have to share these two gems with you. One of the partners from Manchester (Jules) came along to my ITPRO group and brought his very charming girlfriend that had this question for me: “How does your health system cope with obesity?” – I am not sure if Katie and I laughed out loud at Lucy or if we just kind of looked at each other.. health system? No, no, we have insurance here when things break. The second question: “On our way here we saw a 24 hour pancake.. who needs a pancake 24 hours a day?” God the British are cute! But since Vladville has a worldwide audience let me share two of the delicacies from the south which is where I live.

Hamdog_bigThe first one is the hamdog.  It is a hot dog wrapped in a meat paddy and deep fried. It is then placed on a giant hot dog bun and topped with caramelized onions, cheddar, chilli and finished off with a nice fried egg. It comes with two fistfulls of fries and perhaps a diet coke. No, not a joke, this monster is real. Click on the picture to the right to enlarge it and watch it glisten.

Luther_bigThe second one is now world famous luther burger. This sandwich was actually made live on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno and the process is simply brilliant. Instead of buns they use two (or one sliced) Krispy Kreme doughnuts. If you’ve ever handled a doughnut you know it can get messy, not to mention when you slam the rest of the stuff on it. Just what does Mulligans put on the doughnut? You’ve guessed it, a double bacon cheeseburger. None of those pesky vegetables or grass getting in a way of things, just good ol’ eating. Big thanks to Texas Burger Guy for the pictures.

WdwvladlAnyhow, its August 1st and I’m getting back to my marathon training. I’ve obviously learned absolutely nothing from last years marathon but I also didn’t die which only means I owe it to myself to go back and kick some ass. I have roughly four months to get back in shape and my goal for this year is to hit that wall at about 22 miles, not 18 like I did this year. I’m running Orlando (Walt Disney World), Tampa (Gasparella), Miami (South Beach) and the usual breakdown of local 12K/half marathon things.


P.S. For all my Americans.. I did send Jules and Lucy to the 24 hour Krispy Kreme so they can watch the whole doughtnut making process and enjoy our culture to the fullest. I am not sure if they made it when the “Hot Doughnut” sign was on so they could watch people that can barely fit through the double doors get their dozen doughnuts served to them with a straw (don’t want to crush the hot doughnut by picking it up with your hand); If you can appreciate big numbers check out the KK Nutritional Chart. Poor Jules. As for Lucy, she lived through my presentation and is getting a degree in theology, so KK probably was not the thing that ruined that night

WGA & Homicidal Tendancies

Posted: 12:47 am
August 1, 2006
Microsoft
11 Comments

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Last night I made a quick post about a tool called RemoveWGA with hope that I can shed some light on one of the most disappointing Microsoft moves in recent history. It is interesting to see how WGA works under the hood and address exactly what is being passed back and forth. Is it spyware? Well, read the page. While I have not been affected by WGA at all I never imagined how big of a deal this was for partners and customers. Frankly, I like the concept of pirated systems getting busted for doing what they do and hunted down by their "clients". Sure I got a ton of calls about it but I get a ton of calls about everything, it's the nature of what I do. But very rarely do I ever get a call where the other person is screaming at the top of their lungs to the extent that the speaker in the phone can't handle the volume. Thats the new kind of pissed I have not heard in quite some time, brought to you by WGA.

So the WGA thing. Great concept. Horrible implementation. And this got personal quick and it hit really close to home for quite a few of you. Click here to read the 17 comments on the post and pay particular attention to the comments made by Ramon. I sincerely hope nobody reading this will ever have that kind of experience. But if you think my visitors are raving lunatics then you need to look at Microsoft's own WGA boards. I have not seen anybody lose it so quickly outside of LUG flamewars. You will find this thread in particular very disappointing and perhaps telling of why this software is still so bad and why it infuriates so many.

Oh well, their software, their license, they can do what they want to assure its genuine. But let me offer you a bit of PR, software developer and CEO advice all rolled up into one: When your customers are telling you that your software sucks, when you put the reputation of your partners on the line with your bad software, when you've nailed people with a beta product without properly informing them of its status and when you've received over 1200 reports where people take issue with your software.. you sit back and you say you're sorry and you tell them what you're doing to fix it. You don't moan about how people only talk about the negative aspects of your software, you look at the bad stuff and you fix it.  

P.S. Does anybody know if Phil Liu is at 1 Microsoft Way? I think I have a book I'd like to send him and his boss.. Folks, I realize you are in a big company and you need a permission when you want to go to lunch 15 minutes early. But if you're facing this kind of a PR nightmare and you need to seek approval to talk to your customers and partners… you might want to get out there while there are still some willing to listen to you.

Disable, uninstall neuter & understand WGA

Posted: 11:35 pm
July 30, 2006
Security
25 Comments

Have your friends been calling you every few days to check if you found a way around WGA or if you got something other than Devilsown ISO key? If you’re getting your product key out of FILE_ID.DIZ or devilsown.nfo then activating new systems has been a pain in the ass lately. Though not quite as painful as the one thats coming after the feds raid your office and you’re stuck clinching to the cell bars while Bubba works his magic from behind you . But I digress…

There aren’t many happy WGA stories out there. Some consultants are excited because they can make a $50 margin on selling OEM software on after-market PC’s (you’re a national treasure boys) but it seems like everyone I’ve talked to has legitimate Windows XP copies throwing warnings, crashing and really showing many signs of a coder that had to ship the code by the deadline but spent too much time on YouTube downloading behind the scenes of These Boots Are Made For Walking. Sorry folks, it shows.

First of all, there is the Microsoft way to get rid of WGA. It’s not pretty. There is an easier way, too. But if you really want to know how WGA works (down to the TCP dump) here is a site for you:

http://www.firewallleaktester.com/news.htm#60

Awe, but Vlad that page is all words! Don’t despair, these guys also publish a tool to remove WGA in three different ways. Original name too, RemoveWGA. Git’r’gone.

To choke a monkey and other power user design concepts

Posted: 7:05 pm
July 30, 2006
Shockey Monkey
8 Comments

Ah the fun of designing software. No, not writing software but actually designing the behavior to work the way that user would expect it to work. No, not Microsoft’s misleading marketing campaign. I am talking about the concept of putting in traps in your software to catch the stupid things people would do and more importantly what they were trying to do.

It really is an art form. For example, I put a search form at the top of each page and threw away all my preconceptions about what I would do. After all, I am not a field tech so what do I know about trouble ticket management? I figured they would look for a company name, for email addresses, for ticket tracking numbers..

What did I actually get?

First and foremost, a long list of profanities. Yes, really. While at the ticket display screen or contact contact info people would scribble in things that I do not imagine were a part of the conversation. They put in phone numbers, passwords, notes to self and just amusing notes to pass the time.

So the lesson here? When designing management systems put in some stress relief code. I can only phantom that people were so utterly bored with the person they were trying to help that they must have been banging their head against the monitor to come up with the vile things that got posted back to the server. I am seriously considering having an iframe somewhere in the page that loads pictures of serene landscapes. Give it some feng-shui to help IT folks put up with the customers without the rage. I can see the future of my preferences system now.. “which color relaxes you the most? which one infuriates you? Virtually choking the monkey – relaxing, fun or cruel?” 

Most systems prompt you to pick your prefered date display format. Mine wonders about choking monkeys. Talk about personal software!

Vladfire 5: It’s not easy being green

Posted: 11:30 pm
July 28, 2006
Vladfire
Comments Off on Vladfire 5: It’s not easy being green

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It’s not easy being green. The SBS R2 project has not been on a pretty road, until today.

For the first time in Microsoft’s history a product group has pulled the product back from manufacturing. They saw a flaw and decided to fix it. They pulled it back before it blew up in their face as a huge PR nightmare. No pointing fingers. No “we’ll fix it in SP1”, no "we'll patch it after new years," no "it's not that big of a big deal", no "we can't test every single piece of software," no "we already burned the DVD's, how big of a problem is this really?" talk of cover-up and denial. No excuses. Just hold tight and we’ll fix it. Amen.

R2recalled

Download a WMV (Microsoft Windows Movie) | (2.6Mb) 46 seconds

Stream Quicktime (Fast, Streaming, Requires Quicktime) | (1.3Mb) 46 seconds

Hopefully other Microsoft groups learn from this humiliy and show the same care for their customers that the SBS team did. Microsoft makes phenomenally stupid mistakes. They also make remarkably good decisions. And that my friends is why they are #1.

Note: from her cold, dead hands is dedicated to the SBS R2’s sole evangelist through the thick and thin. Enjoy the video.

Note 2: Thanks to Tim Barrett & Associates, my PR agency, for scoring the Kermit song. Saved me a trip to BlockBuster.