We're on a temporary hiatus from the Vista rollout due to politics.  Yes, politics.  Our Project Manager was really hired as a scapegoat for the program manager who suffers from little man syndrome.  This "man" is so small minded that he even complained about me making phone calls during the day, in an effort to try and pass the blame on to someone else for the project running over time.

 

LESSON LEARNED: Don't be scared to push back on the customer if they are causing delays!  Oh, and don't be scared to tell people that they are fools if it is warranted.

 

Back to the project next week... RIP Project Manager - who left the project due to being made the scapegoat for other people's failures.

Just got back from Madz and Daz' wedding.  It was in Vanuatu.  What a nice place.  Locals are friendly, it's unspoilt, they like Aussies and most of all it's relaxing.  Well, it would be if you don't have kids with you... but fun nonetheless. 

 

Kyle's a bit of a worry though - he's got a boundless amount of energy.

We're about to start an engagement which requires the use of SMS (probably 2003) to provide the inventory data instead of the usual Altiris CMS (Altiris will be really happy about that, I'm sure - well maybe they could treat us a little better and it won't be such a problem?!?!)... It's been a long time since I touched SMS - should be interesting!  I'm sure it's much better now.  Funny how during the Altiris days I spent most of my time trying to displace it when in pre-sales mode, but when in consulting mode I never thought it was a bad product - it just needed to be implemented properly, that's all.

 

A Vista rollout is what this project is about - should be a great experience because not many corporates have rolled it out yet.

We're putting in a new phone system at work shortly: an Epygi IP system.  I'm really looking forward to this... hopefully it won't be fraught with issues!!!!

One of our consultants recently did some work in India for a very large software company beginning with the letter "S".  Funny thing is, they were really caught in a bind because they had set some expectations with the customer that they could not deliver upon... so of course they escalated it to us.  3 days of solid proposal writing, revisions, re-sending, negotiations on the rate, re-negotiations on travel and expense costs... and we finally got our consultant on a plane to Mumbai.  He did a fantastic job and the customer was happy.

 

Over 1 month later we still haven't been paid.  Said very large software company has decided that they don't want to pay the whole cost of our consultant's accommodation DESPITE THE FACT THAT THEY ORGANISED THE ACCOMMODATION AT THEIR RECOMMENDED HOTEL!  They think they owe us USD$1000 less than what it cost us.  Never mind the fact that our consultant had to fly overnight, had no weekends whilst there and missed out on time at home.

 

Now, you may say that it's only AUD$1300 and it's not much in the big scheme of things... however, we could have refused the work and then the very large software company would have lost their customer.  It's annoying that in some cultures, there doesn't appear to be any concept of trust in business, or giving people a "fair go" when you save their backsides.  I'm hoping I'm wrong, but I'm now very wary to the point that I don't think I could trust people from this company ever again.

 

 

I swore off building my own machine this time around due to a lack of time - been doing it for so many years now... but the Dell XPS710 was just a little out of my price range... so back on the PC building treadmill I went.

 

Settled for an Antec P182 SE case.  This is the best case I have ever worked with! It's so quiet that I can't even tell when it's on.  Excellent quality and another fine product from Antec.  My file server is running in an Antec Titan case and it's never had any problems - stuffed under a desk but it still provides enough ventilation whilst minimising noise.

Finally received a Jasjam... within 3 days I had changed the firmware for the Black 3.01 Windows Mobile 6 firmware.  WHAT A DIFFERENCE!  It's so much faster!  Having said that, I still had 2 sleeps of death.

 

Jasjamming has done a great job with this.  It's compact, FAST and reliable for the most part.  Either way it's better than the old XDA IIs - geez that was a piece of junk when I look back.  Sure, the technology was good, but O2's support was atrocious.  The good thing about sticking with the Jasjam (AKA HTC HERMES) is that the installed base is so much larger - there's bound to be someone who will spend the time getting the firmware right.

Just built my new Dell D620 with Vista.  Actually, I didn't build it - it was pre-installed.  As with most Dell builds, it's full of crap which needed some mucking around with.  And then I received my first BSOD within 24 hours of putting the machine into production.  But what was great about that experience was the fact that Windows pointed me to the culprit and I was able to get a newer driver for the wireless adapter without too much fuss.  Unlike XP, Vista knows what causes BSODs these days.  So that was a pretty positive experience.

 

Looks nice, will it play well with my crazy working habits?  Who knows...

 

Although I'm a week late, yes it has happened.  I always thought it would be HP (2002-2004) or Microsoft (2005-onwards)... but hey, why not Symantec.

 

Must say I'd be a little concerned if I was in development.  Altiris have just under 1000 staff TOTAL whilst Symantec have 16000, of which 2000 are in development in India.

I see that Alhilali took the VIP entrance when arriving back in Sydney.  Very courageous now, aren't you?  Can't bear to face the public?  It's easy for you to ramble about how racist Australians supposedly are but you can't possibly tolerate having to *speak* to one?  Why did you bother coming back here?

 

This is the weirdest Summer I've experienced in Sydney since 1989.  We've had a great deal of rain (compared to previous years).  Windy, rainy, sunny, humid.  Bit like Melbourne really.

Aaargh!  My Xbox 360 suffered from some hanging in COD2 over December... and after resetting a couple of times, the dreaded 3 red lights of death... so I logged a call with Microsoft.  Their call centre rep suggested removing the hard drive and trying to restart it - and it seemed OK.  I didn't believe it at first - seemed like a cop-out to me, but it really did work... for a week or so.

 

Following that, even DVD's would hang.  And then just constant 3 red lights of death.  Logged another call with Microsoft and was advised to send it back... no worries I thought, but not over Christmas - knowing my luck the repair centre in Sydney (Regents Park) would be closed over the break.  Bugger that, especially since I was getting Rainbox Six: Vegas and Gears of War for Christmas.  I couldn't wait for it to sit in a repair shop over Christmas!

 

I read about the towel trick and I can't bloody believe it - it has WORKED!  So far... Tried it on Christmas Eve and it seemed ok.  Since then I've played several 3 hour sessions of R6V without crashing.  I've also repositioned the box so it sits horizontally and on a couple of rubber feet - better airflow you see.

 

I'm still going to send it back for repairs, but at least it's getting me through the Christmas season OK.

 

At the risk of sounding like a Microsoft fanboy, I think it's good that they've got a pretty efficient (sounding) support and repair process in place along with the fact that they are back-dating warranties in the US.  Here's hoping that the repair/replacement works out OK.

 

On a further note, it sounds like the call centre is in the Philippines, based on the accents of the support staff.  Slight American twang in the voice.  A bit different to the usual Indians-attempt-to-sound-like-Aussies call centre.

A customer "accidentally" upgraded to Patch 6.2 recently and the install must have gone awry - lost all patch tasks and related info.  Got them back up and running after cleaning out patch then manually upgrading from 6.1 to 6.2

 

NOTE: It's really important to run the upgrade checker FIRST!  Since the customer did it all via the solution centre, they probably didn't do this.  Of course, the customer is not admitting to performing the upgrade - "It just happened!"  Sure!

 

We're running it internally here and it seems much better than 6.1 - new features such as revisions and so on, along with the ability to have it automatically backdate changes.  Not sure whether that means that old patches will reinstall, or just install differently on remaining PC's.

 

So far so good however.

 

 

More detailed info when I get into it. Now that I’ve finished COD2 on regular difficulty, I might give The Outfit a go for a while.

So far it's quite a nice game, although I wasn't impressed with the jerkyness when there were 3 explosions on screen at the same time.