Remember the human

Help Desk 2.0

Thu, 04 Mar 2010 21:31:55 -0600

This post is about Extensis and the great over-the-top service I received from someone there today. I'm making sure my Extensis representative Girish sees this post so that he can go personally thank that someone for providing great customer service in under 300 characters.

Trust but verify! Hell, don't even trust.

Tue, 23 Feb 2010 22:00:47 -0600

MacBU announced the official name for its next version of Office, Office for Mac 2011, at Macworld Expo just two weeks ago. Inevitably, the beta gets leaked, screenshots begin filling rumor sites and torrents let the general public get a sneak peek.

Releasing a major software suite like Office for Mac to the world is akin to a writer releasing his next major novel. Some critics will praise it. Others will hate it. It's exposed to the world and you can't take it back. The developers, testers, product managers and everyone else at MacBU must be sorely disappointed (but maybe somewhat flattered) when their 2-3 years of hard work gets leaked to the public before it's ready.

Well, I'm sorry to say that it's been leaked. Or has it?

Geek fest: Week 1

Mon, 15 Feb 2010 10:43:55 -0600

I'm writing this post while sitting on a plane headed to Portland, OR. In a little while I'll be meeting fellow MVP Diane Ross and former MVP Allen Watson. We're driving to Redmond for this year's MVP Summit at Microsoft.

Flying is a wonderful time for me to catch up, reflect and look into new things, which is what I'm doing now. Beneath the iPhone in my hand are two issues of iPhone Life magazine, which I discovered at the Macworld Expo last week. I'm enjoying reading it and considering asking if i can write for it as well.

Last week's Expo was my third to attend, but it was the first where I actually presented a session. Nadyne Richmond from Microsoft's Macintosh Business Unit and I presented "Administering Macs with Exchange" as part of the MacIT conference where we covered Exchange tips as well as Entourage troubleshooting. We had no idea what to expect for attendance, but Nadyne did a quick head count—52 people. A sizable group for a topic so specific.

More of my time was spent answeing questions in the Microsoft booth about the new version of Office for Mac to be released later this year. Lots of folks wanted to know about Outlook replacing Entourage and I wish I had had this next week come first so I could've answered them better. Maybe this is for the better since all this talk will be under NDA anyway.

Several months back I heard a saying that "Facebook is for friends you've met and Twitter is for friends you've yet to meet." I believe that. I met face-to-face for the first time three folks I've known at least a year only online. Two are prominant bloggers/podcasters and the third was my publisher at MacTech magazine. To add a warm handshake to those relationships was really nice.

So what did I see at Macworld? My favorite area had to be the iPhone apps area where each 4x4 table accommodated four app vendors. I think the area had at least 20-25 tables. I saw several gems there including two apps for creating and editing Office documents. Just Word and Excel.

Finally, I've found an app for grocery shopping that includes a barcode scanner! It won't be available for a few weeks. The app is pending Apple's approval process now. Can't wait!

I now have an app to take a picture of business cards and convert them to electronic contacts, which is handy. However, if a person has an iPhone then I'm going to insist he download Bump to transfer contacts more easily.

I reget not attending either of the two big parties. My nerves from before the presentation really drained me. Surprisingly, once I was on stage I thought it went really well. One of the attendees stopped by the booth the next day and said something to the effect of, "I went into the session with low expectations but came out thinking it was once of the best sessions this year." Made my day.

So this week I get to see quite a few old friends at the MVP summit and see sooper sekrit stuff I can't share here. This is a good month for a geek like me.

Tags: MVP, Macworld

iPhone blogging with iBlogger

Sat, 06 Feb 2010 14:11:33 -0600

I just downloaded iBlogger to see how easily I could post entries from my iPhone.

The interface isn't very intuitive but it's not difficult to figure out either. Setup was easy, but then again once you set up MoveableType a few times, connecting to it isn't very difficult.

This will take a little getting use to and some experimentation, but I already feel the price was probably worth the $10.00.

Posting a quick picture of Monty and Mitch snoozing on the couch. They were convenient and willing models for this test. I appreciate the app's feature to define photos as top, left or right. No control for anything else, though.

Stylizing text appears to be non-existent and that's a bummer. Looks like I'll have to manually add strong and emphasis tags by hand. Wow, that was painful! Would be great if iBlogger supported SmileOnMyMac's TextExpanderTouch app for expanding shortcuts!

Fingers are a little cramped now but I wasn't really expecting to type entire entries on the iPhone anyway. I'm hoping this will be useful for posting quick pictures and short entries.

Pushing the Publish button now.

New life for old laptops or just garbage disposal?

Sat, 30 Jan 2010 21:08:03 -0600

I'm torn.

A few times I've been asked by the director at GDC to evaluate some equipment that an organization is supposedly donating for just the cost of inspection and shipping.

The more I receive these requests to evaluate these machines, the more I think this is a great big scam.

Friends, past and future

Thu, 28 Jan 2010 21:30:26 -0600

Since caving into the Facebook fever and opening an account, I've seen the following aphorism (paraphrased) come true:

Facebook is for friends I've met; Twitter is for friends I've yet to meet.

Next week, I'm gathering together folks at work to have lunch with former co-workers, some of whom I've really only met once or twice. Amazingly, we've been very in touch on Facebook.

In a couple of weeks i travel to Macworld and hope to run into some of the folks that I've been following and who are following me on Twitter.

These are not friendships I could have maintained without the Internet and without social networking sites. Who says the Internet stifles social interaction?

Fat friggin' iMac plugs! or "Oh, snap!"

Tue, 19 Jan 2010 22:32:37 -0600

In my cube is a refurbished 24-inch iMac that I'm preparing to use for testing. We don't have many iMacs in-house but we're slowing migrating to them from the Mac Pros, which are more than we need.

iMacs are stylish and sleek, but I was cursing Apple's "design" this morning until I discovered they solved my problem before I had one.

Some geeky things

Sat, 16 Jan 2010 16:19:48 -0600

Some days are interesting not just because something special or unique happens but because of the little things.

Curlz MT walks into a bar and orders a drink...

Tue, 12 Jan 2010 23:02:50 -0600

The bartender says, "Get out! We don't serve your type in here!"

I'm going to put this on a cover page for a meeting I've called at work to explain font licensing to developers and managers. Below that it will say:

This is the funniest thing you'll ever hear about fonts. It all goes downhill from here.

A Yowsa! moment

Mon, 11 Jan 2010 22:16:08 -0600

As part of re-inventing Frankenstein at work, I have to determine the best way to take an existing Mac with two Mac OS X 10.4.x partitions and upgrade it to two Mac OS X 10.5 or 10.6 partitions. Remotely.

Culinary tip for Cuisine at Home magazine

Sat, 09 Jan 2010 23:09:38 -0600

One of my favorite magazines is Cuisine at Home, a bi-monthly cooking magazine with no advertising. Each issue may be thin in pages--usually about 40-50 pages--but it's packed with recipes and ideas that are easy to follow and teach me something new.

The first section in each issue is devoted to user-submitted tips. I E-mailed this one to them this evening. Maybe it'll get me 25 bucks!

Restart

Sat, 09 Jan 2010 17:33:40 -0600

I've avoided my blog too long. Time to restart. Quite a few new things and some old ones are in the works for the new year.

Re-inventing Frankenstein or "Engineering an old workflow with new tools"

Sat, 23 May 2009 13:21:26 -0600

Our project manager included this in her kick-off meeting invitation a week ago:

If implementation is scheduled to occur on 12/31/09, then we have 163 business days to do "everything" from today, 5/12.

I support a Composition department that has a very complex workflow system. It's a combination of internal web servers for file storage and job-tracking, Macs running third-party applications, lots of custom-developed applications, lots of scripting and lots of managed preferences.

For the next several months, we'll be re-engineering this Frankenstein system that we developed for about $2 million four years ago and has generated over $100 million since then. The project's goal is to bring all software up-to-date so that we are poised to be able to transition to a different platform in a few years if management decides that's the best direction. My goal is to re-engineer what I put together four years ago, applying new technologies and knowledge that I've gained during that time.

Roll-out of the re-engineered system for about 90 Macs in two different countries (the U.S. and India) takes place over a weekend.

Embarrassed or 'I'm most definitely not a PC!'

Fri, 06 Mar 2009 22:39:05 -0600

Microsoft's marketing group has again made a great blunder. As if the Seinfeld/Gates commercials weren't enough they apparently felt that their MVP program is up for grabs. Sadly, a lot of MVPs didn't disagree.

Apparently, someone at Microsoft decided to stage a mass "I'm a PC!" video opportunity during last week's MVP Summit in Redmond, and it is being spread to various media as our endorsement of them.

Good-bye, Arfur or "Knowing when to let go"

Thu, 19 Feb 2009 22:50:17 -0600

Writing is therapeutic for the writer, so I hope you'll indulge me.

We put Arfur to sleep early this morning. He was a really big kitty that at one time in his life weighed 24 pounds. That was several years ago and since then he had been on a stricter diet that regulated his weight, but he was always big-boned and big-personalitied.

After a month with painful urination and blood in his urine, Dean came home to find him in constant pain, which we suspect was caused by cancer. We met at the vet's office where we discussed using ultrasound to try and find the problem. X-rays and various tests had really revealed nothing and so we were hoping this might at least confirm our suspicions. The earliest, we could get an appointment was Saturday morning--three days away--and so our course of action was to try pain medications.

However, by late yesterday night Arfur wasn't moving and was literally howling every 20-30 minutes with pain. I've never heard an animal scream so loud and so mournful. Our hearts were breaking.