Just a warning. This is going to be a long one. I’ve been saving
up stuff to talk about all week.
The first week
The first week of our new life went surprisingly well. I’m not a
“morning person“ so I had apprehension about waking up at
seven-something in the morning for work, but it has been working out okay.
Sure, I’ve been struggling in the mornings with a general lack of
energy, but I’ve been popping a few ephedrine pills a day for
that.
I’m kidding about the ephedrine. My Diet Mountain Dew takes care
of me.
The kids have been taking things in stride. On Friday, Maya complained
about having to go to Lindsy’s house, but she won’t have to do
that anymore next week because she’ll be back on track at school.
The way we’ve got things set up, it’s pretty good for the
kids- they get a nice variety throughout the week. Lindsy keeps them all
day on Monday and then only in the mornings the other days. My mom picks
them up and watches them at our house on Tuesday and Friday. I bring them
home in the early afternoon on Wednesday and Thursday.
Christine loves her new job. I really enjoy listening to her talk about
it too.
Congratulations to Jennie Freestone
I guess Jennie got a new job at another IHC clinic which will match her
current pay but give her more sane hours and less stress. Hopefully
they’ll also surround her with better morale than she’s had at
Alta View Hospital.
Mourning a loss
About two weeks ago, I logged into one of the Iodynamics NetGateway
systems we manage and tried to log into a Linux file server behind the
NetGateway to do some maintenance on it. I couldn’t get to it. This
usually only happens if there’s a problem, so I called Mike and asked
him to check into it.
Mike called the client and they said they weren’t aware of any
problems - that everything looked fine to them.
I checked things out again a day or so later. Same thing. Mike called
again. Same thing from the client.
Finally, last Monday, we called one of the principals of the company. He
told us what had happened: The file server experienced a problem with the
hard drive. They took it to a local hardware reseller who specialized in
Windows systems. I’m guessing he didn’t know what to do with
it. So, they had him build them a new server... a windows server.
Now, why they left us out of the loop, nobody knows. It’s all very
fishy.
This client had a support agreement with Iodynamics where we would
respond as soon as possible when there’s any kind of problem. In
addition, all our servers are equipped with mirrored hard drives which
means when a hard drive go kaplooey, we can usually just replace the fauly
hard drive and get the system back up and running in very little time. Why
they decided to not call us at all and why they took the faulty hardware to
a Windows reseller... it’s just bizarre.
This experience thus far was a big flapping red flag. Mike made
arrangements on Wednesday to meet with the client to get a better
understanding of what had happened and to see where we were going to go
from that point. I suggested he try to get them to take the Windows server
back to the reseller because they would have spent a lot of money on that
server hardware, the operating system, and the client access licenses for
all the users int he company. We could have restored their Linux system for under
two or three hundred bucks. The meeting went okay, but it seemed they
weren’t going to budge on the Windows server.
The next day, Mike got e-mail from the principal he met with saying they
had decided, basically, to terminate their relationship with Iodynamics.
They were going to, instead, purchase two Fortinet
VPN appliances to replace their Iodynamics NetGateways.
My jaw is still dragging around on the ground. I have no idea why they
would do this. Regardless, they apparently have no interest in talking
about it.
It’s painful for me to think about what time, frustration, and
money they’re going to burn through in the next couple of weeks as
they transition away from the NetGateways. They don’t realize the
NetGateways are hosting their e-mail and the Fortinet appliances do not
provide any kind of e-mail hosting capabilities. They have file server
shares on both NetGateways which will be going away as well since the
Fortinet appliances don’t provide that either.
The Fortinet appliances do provide firewall and VPN capabilities-
something the NetGateways have already been doing... and doing rather well.
We’ve never had any problems with the VPNs we’ve constructed
between these two offices.
From what I’ve gathered from Mike’s discussions with the
principal, they had some concerns about our handling of their business
management software running on a Windows 2000 server. The server and the
software were originally installed by a consultant who didn’t know
what he was doing. We were brought in to try to figure out why they had to
reboot the server multiple times daily. We tracked it down to printer
drivers causing conflicts within the Windows Terminal Server. Our fixes
improved things a lot, but they were still rebooting once or two daily
because of lockups.
We suggested a reinstall of Windows and Terminal Server. We did this and
configured the server correctly. After that, their problems were reduced to
having to reboot the server once or twice a week- fairly normal for a
Windows server.
In the end, the lesson learned from all this is that we need to be more
consistently interactive with our clients. They need to know we’re
there for them and they need to be constantly reminded that were are there.
Our Linux systems are so reliable, it’s easy for our clients to
wonder what they’re paying for every month. They rarely have to call
us for anything because the systems just work and keep working.
So, it looks like we’ve lost a long-time client and one we did
some really amazing stuff with. It’s truly unfortunate this happened,
but all we can do is move on and try to learn our lessons so it
doesn’t happen again.
Nursery
Christine and I served our first Sunday together in the nursery today
at church taking care of 2 year olds for a couple hours. We did this before
in a ward we were in a ward in Hyrum so we knew what we were getting into.
Eli is going to be 18 months old in 3 days, so he’s old enough now
to be in nursery. He’s a lot younger than all of the kids in our
nursery because they’ve all been in nursery since last year, but he
seems to get along with them fine.
Anyway, we had a good time today.
A couple new vices
I’ve got a couple new TV shows I’m watching and getting
into.
I had heard bits of the grapevine chatter about Desperate Housewives, but wasn’t really interested
in it. From what I had heard, it sounded like a weekly serial of stories
from Danielle Steele novels: trashy, stupid, and weak.
The Monday Night Football publicity stunt pulled a couple months ago
where Nicolette Sheridan stripped down in a NFL locker room didn’t
help my impressions of the show much either.
Of course, when I heard the title “Desperate Housewives” I
naturally thought, “Oh- they’re desperate for sex,
right?”
A friend of mine watched some of it and gave it a little more credit
than I had been willing to. I decided to give it a shot and downloaded the
2-part pilot episode from a favorite BitTorrent site and gave it a whirl.
Wow. I really liked it. It was witty, charming, endearing, and pulled
you in. It’s a nice combination of drama, mystery, comedy, and
thrill. The visuals are spectacular as well. I wonder if they got some
direction from Buffy / Angel alumni...
Well, they got David Grossman listed as a director on one episode and
he’s worked on Buffy and Angel. Hmmm.
Anyway, I’m hooked and I’ve watched 10 episodes so far.
I’ll be honest and say I’m liking it less now than I did during
the first 4 episodes because it’s beginning to feel more like your
typical primetime soap opera, but I’m still interested enough to keep
watching.
Now, the other show I’ve been watching is Point Pleasant
which is being produced by Buffy and Angel co-producer Marti Noxon.
There’s some resemblence between the story presented on Point
Pleasant and those I’ve seen on BtVS and Angel. Right now, I’d
have to say Point Pleasant is nowhere near as fun to watch as BtVS or
Angel. The dialogue is nowhere near as witty or clever. The acting is more
wooden. The editing is a bit sloppy. The writing is mediocre. The
cinematography is good for a prime time show, but still pales in comparison
to Mutant Enemy productions.
Nonetheless, it’s still interesting. ;-)
But, because of these things and because of how difficult it was for
Angel and Buffy to stay on the air, I predict Point Pleasant will live a
much-abbreviated life and won’t make it past one season. We’ll
see, I guess.
Enterprise stops. What now?
Speaking of abbreviation, it looks as if Star Trek: Enterprise is ending
after the fourth season. Being a fan, I’m disappointed, but not
surprised. I can’t help but wonder if it might be partially my fault
since I have yet to watch an episode on live television. I’ve
downloaded every single episode of Enterprise I’ve watched and
I’ve seen them all. Because each downloaded episode did not include
any of the original advertisement interstitials which accompanied the
original broadcast, the advertisers which funded the production of the show
did not benefit from my attention to the show. In an essence, I stole the
show.
Heh.
This has got me thinking, though. As more people learn the tricks of
downloading archived video from the Internet of their favorite television
shows and as more people purchase TiVO and TiVO like video recorders which
make it trivial to ignore advertisements, the relationship between
advertisers and television production erodes. Who pays the high production
costs associated with a high-quality weekly television program when the
advertisers aren’t willing to foot the bill anymore?
Traditionally, television advertisers have acted as middle-men. They buy
advertising during television programs with money they earn from the sales
of merchandise. Television production is there indirectly paid for by
consumers via the advertisers.
Obviously, if there’s no value in it for advertisers anymore,
they’re not going to be interested (or as interested) in playing the
middle-man role anymore.
Is the future of television nothing but reality shows?
One option would be pay-per-view or premium channels like HBO and
Showtime. Sex & The City and The Sopranos have had notable success
doing that. From what I’ve seen of these two shows (which isn’t
much, really), they do have high production values. Maybe the good
story-telling television is going to be forced to move to premium cable to
survive.
Another option, or maybe just an added thing, is to change the dynamic
of how advertisers play into television. Imagine, if you will, you go to
the grocery store and you see a Coca Cola display which says, “Buy a
12-pack of coke and get a Desperate Housewives token.” Maybe you
don’t normally buy 12-packs of Coke products, but you love Desperate
Housewives, so you buy the 12-pack so you can go home and use this token to
get one episode of Desperate Housewives for free instead of paying for it.
Everybody wins... including consumers/viewers because we’re not
subjected to lame commercials anymore.
That’s my stupid idea. Somebody’s got to figure it out.
