DoddBlog

Business Internet Done Right -- Southern Light

Wed, 24 Jan 2007 04:30:00 GMT

Recently, I was reading on John's dated series on how he hates the world and thought it would be good to post something a little more positive. You caught me, I'm generally pretty optimistic. I'm outwardly cynical but generally have a positive outlook on things - I just don't take the world or people in it too seriously.

With that said, my friends would be happy to back up that I am the world's worst consumer. When I walk into a business, people should run the other way. Not that I'm going to cuss them out, yell, scream or throw things but I do have some basic expectations with regard to customer service, experience and the representation versus reality of products and services I subscribe to.

I am the guy that once called Dateline on my local Wal-mart and made the store manager personally deliver a new lawnmower to my house.
I am the guy that had the owner of Daphne Honda personally sell me a car and negotiate the price because of snide tones about my age.
I am the guy that, when working with Blackboard's CMS, could get no satisfaction, googled the profiles of and emailed the Board of Directors for that company telling them we were firing them as a provider.

But I'm also the guy that doesn't mind giving out credit where credit is due and these guys definitely deserve it -- Southern Light Fiber -http://www.southernlightfiber.com/

I work for an online school in Orange Beach and I sometimes where the hat of Systems Guy and get involved in IT-related tasks. We use 2 Gulftel DSL's, Fiber from SmartResort/SmartTel/DSSI/WhateverTheyAreCalled and Fiber from Southern Light linked to a Customer Co/Location in Mobile. We do this to provide redundancy for hardware on the island in the case of hurricane, tsunami or ill-tempered contruction workers hellbent on bashing in servers.

SmartResort and GulfTel? -- Not bad.. I have contacts or special arrangements with both so when I need something, they are both accomodating within reason. My previous well-documented all-hate relationship with Gulftel has softened because I haven't had to deal (much) with the 1st level tech support guys on the east coast in quite some time. Aside from a few small ups and downs that are to be expected -- service has been good and Jimmy @ Gulftel is a great asset to their credit.

Southern Light -- I have no special arrangements, no inside contacts. I have no friends doing the network design like at the other companies, yet when I call them with an issue I always -- ALWAYS -- leave with a solution. This company has gone out of their way to not only meet but consistantly exceed my expectations, every step of the way.

The Service -- it's always up.
When I call their numbers? - -I get people. Real, live, humans. It's crazy.
Those people? They are generally pretty friendly and always VERY helpful.
As our needs grow, Southern Light isn't just there for us. - They've been down the road we're headed.
Hardware fails -- they know before we do
Network Maintenance -- they call before it happens, instead of asking for forgiveness after the outage
Service Options -- A'Plenty

At a Gulf Coast Technology Council/Baldwin EDA meeting, Southern Light and Gulftel both presented to a room of interested business IT decision makers. The Gulftel guy was friendly, informative and did a good, canned, sales pitch.

Southern Light's founder told you what you wanted to know -- good or bad. Uptime, Redundancy, how the technology works, who's using it. No frills, no bad jokes, just good, straighforward "This is what we do and although we may never cross paths, this is how we do it, in case you were wondering" tech-jargon filled business geektalk.

So, that concludes my totally unsponsored, unauthorized Southern Light commercial. it's not everday I run into a provider that continually impresses me but this company -- does.

http://www.southernlightfiber.com/

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Dear Webster,

Sun, 02 Oct 2005 04:41:00 GMT

Exhibit:

Main Entry: syn·er·gy
Pronunciation: 'si-n&r-jE
Function: noun
Inflected Form(s): plural -gies
Etymology: New Latin synergia, from Greek synergos working together
1 : SYNERGISM; broadly : combined action or operation
2 : a mutually advantageous conjunction or compatibility of distinct business participants or elements (as resources or efforts)

Dear Webster Dictionary Editing Team,

I'm writing you today to cordially request that you remove the word "Synergy" from future publications and - if possible, please recall all dictionaries including this word. I'm sure that your literary goals were indeed noble through introducing this word to the english language but I fear that its continued misuse adversely affects society by supporting vague marketing communications that are eroding the sensibility of our civilization.

If you do not catch my meaning, simply search the marketing whitepaper for any enterprise software application. All such marketing releases are dervived from a single template, bestowed upon mankind by the Devil himself as a cruel joke:

What ABC v45 Can Do for your Business
Buzzword buzzword buzzword. Workflow, buzzword buzzword ROI buzzword buzzword technology buzzword. Company Name buzzword buzzword synergies buzzword buzzword Product Name. Buzzword buzzword Product Name buzzword buzzword synergy buzzword.

After eradicating this word from the english language, I plan to travel the nation on a $20 million taxpayer financed speaking tour aimed at returning marketing strategy to the glory days of the FlowBee. That's right, it plugs into a vacuum cleaner and cuts your hair. How sweetly concise.

Bill

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FireFox Vs IE, DotNet Vs Java, Domestic Vs Foreign & Other Battles No One Can Win

Thu, 29 Sep 2005 00:44:00 GMT

This is my "I Told You So" to my linux/firefox friends, you know who you are.

On September 19, 2005 Symantec ventured a bold claim: Mozilla Browsers more vulnerable than IE.

http://news.zdnet.com/2100-1009_22-5873273.html?tag=nl

I love the unwinnable battles. Recently, talking to a friend, I mentioned I got the personalized tag "D0T N3T' to go on my new sports car. The friend, a avid Microsoft-naysayer harrassed me for hours and is genuinely irritated by my adoption and persistent use of MS technologies to provide solid business solutions, advance my career and improve my station in life. He's a linux-phite, dedicated to hating all things Microsoft & loving all things not endorsed by Bill G. - and I constantly hear about his insistance on the greatness of Firefox.

Six months ago it seemed that Firefox had set IE squarely in its sights with claims of greater stability, security, better functionality and stricter interpretation of w3c standards. All I ever heard was how Firefox, through community support would dethrone IE and yadayadayada and that all of the cool DHTML, IE-Only tricks on the intranet app I was writing would soon be rendered obsolete by the far, superior and more stable Firefox.

Indeed, our Sysadmin spent hours on the phone with customers promoting FireFox this - Redhat - that. New machines began to rollout - Firefox as the default browser.

Sure, Microsoft is easy to hate. They have more money than the Southern Baptist Association and a willingness to dominate every market they enter. Who wouldn't want to be in that situation?

Sure... Firefox is supported by the community. But, as I said - Microsoft can always throw a $billion in the direction of IE and they are back on top- and they did and they have stayed on top.

Security. I love to hear that "Windows is insecure, IE is insecure, firefox, linux & MySQL are inpenetrable."

I learned this lesson from someone much wiser than myself.
The uncertainty principle of quantum mechanics roughly states that while the more accurately you record a particles position, the less accurate you will be able to determine it's velocity and visa-versa.

I think the same can be applied to computer security. The more exposure an application has to the general population, the less secure it is. Why? Bigger Target and Ooooohhhh so many points of entry.

Firefox, inevitably - much like a particle approaching the speed of light - will encounter more resistance the faster it deploys to the world. If firefox was installed on every desktop in the world it would become a huge target for security flaws as a point of entry to those desktops.

(Not bad for a r'dale/faulkner guy, right?)

At some point, having a multi-billion dollar software giant behind your software helps to negate the pressure applied by security exposure brought on by mass exceptance.

No software, Firefox or IE - will ever be flawless so long as people are endeavoring to discover or introduce flaws for personal gain, recognition or political motive.

clink, clink.. Just my two cents.

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DHTML & ASP.Net Controls

Fri, 10 Jun 2005 14:23:00 GMT

In the July issue of MSDN Magazine, Dino Esposito provided an excellent article on allowing DHMTL in ASP.Net Controls. This is a core concept for a project that I am working on, so I thought I would share my particular solution to the problem.

First, the problem. -- If you use DHTML and client-side scripting to manipulate server side objects, whatever attributes of those HTML elements that were changed since initial page render via DHTML will be lost on postback. My particluar need for DHTML was related to allowing users to move controls around a webform (a form designer) and then saving the new X/Y coordinates of those controls for later use.

Inspired from Mr. Esposito's article, I decided to model my solution using a single hidden field. I wasn't excited about this approach but I did consider it to me a good alternative to the common approach of adding one hidden field per DHTML-manipulated server control.

Since my particular need was to capture X and Y coordinates of controls that have been moved around a webform, in the DHTML javascript events fired after the control is dropped into place, I added code to se custom attributes representing the current coordinates. In this case dd.obj is whatever object was moved.

document.getElementById(dd.obj.name).setAttribute("x",dd.obj.x);
document.getElementById(dd.obj.name).setAttribute("y",dd.obj.y);

This code adds the custom attributes, X and Y to the DHTML layer that was dragged to a new location. Now, I must be able to persist these custom attributes through the postback.

To the webform, or an external .js referenced by the webform, I added a javascript function to enumerate through all attributes for all divs and set a hidden field's value to a text string that we will be able to reverse engineer on postback to re-set those attributes. (Or, do whatever we would like)

function setAttribState(hiddenID){
 var attribState="";
 //Which HTML tags should we include in attribstate?
 //Div only for now.
 var tagnames = new Array();
 tagnames[0]='div';
 
 for(var h=0;h  var elem = document.getElementsByTagName(tagnames[h]);
  for(var i=0;i   var thisElement ="";
   var attribs = elem[i].attributes;
   var eleAttribs="";
   for(var j=0;j    if (attribs[j].specified){
     var thisAttrib = "";
     var thisAttrib = attribs[j].nodeName + ':' + attribs[j].nodeValue;
     eleAttribs += thisAttrib;
     if (j!=attribs.length-1){eleAttribs+=','}; 
     }
   }
   thisElement = elem[i].id + '/' + eleAttribs;
   attribState += thisElement;
   if(i!=elem.length-1){attribState+=';'};
  }
 }
 document.getElementById(hiddenID).setAttribute("value",attribState);
}

To the webform, add a hidden field called "__attribState".

Then, in the codebehind for the webform  I wired this javascript into the submit button's onclick event.

I did this by adding this to the page_load event:

Button1.Attributes.Add("onclick", "setAttribState('__attribState')")

 In the same codehind, under the form click event, I added a call to iterate through the text and set the attributes.

 ReadAttribState("__attribState")

To the webform, I added the sub:

    Private Sub ReadAttribState(ByVal HiddenControlName As String)
        Dim hiddenctl As HtmlControls.HtmlInputHidden = CType(Page.FindControl(HiddenControlName), HtmlControls.HtmlInputHidden)
        Dim elements As String() = Split(hiddenctl.Value.ToString, ";")
        Dim element As String
        For h As Int32 = 0 To elements.GetUpperBound(0)
            Dim x, y As String
            Dim ctlId As String = Split(elements(h), "/")(0)
            Dim ctl As HtmlControls.HtmlGenericControl = Page.FindControl(ctlId)
            Dim attribs As String() = Split(Split(elements(h), "/")(1), ",")
            For i As Int32 = 0 To attribs.GetUpperBound(0)

                Dim attribName = Split(attribs(i), ":")(0)
                Dim attribValue = Split(attribs(i), ":")(1)
                If LCase(attribName) <> "id" Then
                    ctl.Attributes.Add(attribName, attribValue)
                End If
            Next
        Next
    End Sub

Voilà. When your DHTML event fires, it will set your custom properties. Then, onClick, the form button will build a text string of all attributes for all divs and populate the hidden field. On postback, your code will poll this field, parse the name/value pairs for each attribute and re-set those attributes on page render. In my implementation, I then use these custom attributes to set the style of my controls on page_load.

Until Next Time,

Bill Dodd
mcp, mcsd, mcad, mcdba

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Microsoft seeks to expand overseas hiring

Mon, 25 Apr 2005 15:16:00 GMT

Biased Opinion Alert
In late April, Micro$oft urged lawmakers to ease restrictions on H1-B work visa issuance in hopes to increase it's already substantial overseas hiring trend.

reference link:
http://www.businessweek.com/ap/financialnews/D89NV0H00.htm?campaign_id=apn_home_down

Those of you who know me, know that I am about as big of a Micro$oft zealot as they come. I have made a career out of Micro$oft products and truly believe much of their technology to be empowering, from a developer perspective. With that said, I can see absolutely no good side to this event and I am hoping one of you could possibly persuade me otherwise.

Obviously, I have a biased opinion on this topic - being an American born software developer with dwindling employment options in a largely non-technical community. This is a sensitive topic because if you take the stance that "America's largest software company should employee some Americans", you are labeled a racist or bigot.

Let there be no mistake - I have met - and worked with some incredibly talented people of Oriental and Indian decent that were outstanding software developers and spoke better english than I. I have several indian friends that not only have better diction than I do but a much more verbose vocabulary. On top of this, two of those friends are outstanding developers and one is a great network engineer.

With that said, *I* still wouldn't move to India or China to fill the position of telephone support, even if the position payed ten times our Salary. Why? I don't speak the lanuage. I tend to think that speaking the native language is a prerequisite for a telephone support position. Yet, every time I call Microsoft's support line (which costs $100/hour or more) - it takes longer to help the non-english speaking person on the other end to spell my name and email address than it does to diagnose the problem.

Really, who at Microsoft, Dell & Gateway thought it was a good idea to staff the call centers with people who do not speak English. I don't have a problem with providing jobs to overseas workers but why do we take jobs away from Americans to do so? What is so wrong with the American worker that companies are forced to continue to find ways to not use them? Sure - the labor is cheap but is it really worth it?

I'm not worried about an America being "taken over" by people of foreign decent, I'm sure America will be just fine. (Although many rednecks walk our streets today with this very thought accepted as truth.) But, I do believe that with countries shipping boat and planeloads of their brightest to the States, it will adversely affect those countries' economies in the long run.

Companies should outsource to overseas responsibly. Open overseas field offices and employee locals. Don't imports thousands of workers or close American-based businesses to move operations overseas. Likewise, countries exporting their brightest to answer the American thirst for technology workers should do so with caution. If you spend all of your resources building up American businesses it will stunt the growth of your own economy.

Just my two cents...
clink, clink.

Bill Dodd
mcp, mcsd, mcad, mcsd.net, mcdba

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Will I Work On Your Computer?

Mon, 11 Apr 2005 03:24:00 GMT

Put yourself in my shoes.

Scenario 1

Standing at the casket of my Great Aunt Suzie, I stare fondly at her warm smile and ponder quietly childhood memories playing board games and enjoying home-made cookies and lemonade in the summertime. Just then, I’m jolted back to reality by my untactful 2^nd-cousin Jed, who hopefully asks in a country accent “You werk wit computers, riiight? My computers’ doin’ the darn’d’est thing…”

Scenario 2

After working 80 hours on a software release and returning from a 6 hour flight, I stumble tiredly into my house. With my laptop and garment bag sitting on floor where I dropped them upon entering the house I check my voicemail. 1 telemarketer, 2 calls from Mediacom stating they are ready to install my new TiVO, anytime between 8-5 Monday through Friday and 4 calls from a cousin-in-law about the new DVD Writer they bought, asking how to install it.

Scenario 3

After successfully lobbying to keep Star Trek: Enterprise on the air in a doomed timeslot (9:00 PM – Friday) on a doomed network (UPN), I sit down to enjoy the season premier and finally experience how the crew of the first Enterprise will escape the cliffhanger ending of the previous season’s finale. 10 minutes into the show, my phone rings. Some obscure friend-of-a-relative is on the phone, torqued that Incredimail no longer works correctly when opening an email that contains a virus attachment. Evidently, before I installed an antivirus program the weekend previous, Incredimail had no problems opening emails ridden with viruses. The caller is livid that I put things back the way they were.

I speak to programmers, database administrators and network administrators all of the time that tell humorous stories about the poorly timed and communicated computer repair requests of friends and families that usually only call for the purpose of free computer consultation. If you are reading this and you ask family members to fix your computer(s) – I PROMISE – they are irritated by these requests and probably inundated to the point they could never keep up with the requests. Below is some perspective from our side of this exchange. Please consider it.

Prequalification for computer help

1) Have you called me for any reason other than technical questions since the last time I repaired your PC?

2) Did you send me a card for Christmas, Hanukkah or Kwanzaa in the last 24 months?

3) Did you send me a birthday card or call to wish me a pleasant birthday in the last 24 months?

4) Did you buy the PC I recommended?

5) Did you follow my repair advice?

6) Do you know my title?

7) Do you know how old I am?

8) Do you know my middle name?

9) If I died today, would you attend my funeral?

10) Think of your relation to me. At hallmark stores, in the card sections, under birthdays – is this relation listed with a group of cards associated with it?

(Quick Tip: Cousin – YES, Cousin-In-Law twice removed – NO.)

If you answered NO to more than half of the above questions, odds are good that you have exceeded your free-computer-repair-and-advice-from-Bill karma points. It is advisable that you reference your local computer store (try the yellow pages) for computer repair advice. These stores will often offer phone consultation (grudgingly) for free. Most repairs cost between $50 and $100 in labor charges.

Telephone Etiquette

Interesting Fact:

77% of American families eat supper between 7:00 P.M.-8:00 PM.

Source: American Statistical Association (http://www.amstat.org)

Before you call

1) Check the clock. Is it between 7 and 8 PM? While your inability to download the latest animal blooper video over your dial up connection is an inconvenience to you, it does not constitute a dinnertime emergency† for me.

2) Think to yourself: Is Bill the only computer-savvy person I know?

3) Think to yourself: Am I asking too much of my 10 year old computer?

4) Have you scanned for viruses? Freebie: (http://housecall.trendmicro.com/)

a) Have you updated the definitions in the last 30 days, like I advised you?

5) Have you downloaded and used a spyware/malware removal tool?

Freebie: (http://www.lavasoftusa.com/software/adaware/)

a) Have you updated the definitions in the last 30 days, like I advised you?

6) Say out loud to self: “Since Bill is gracious enough to take the time to help me with my computer problem, I will not argue with the advice he so kindly dispenses.”

7) Are you running Windows ME? There is no help for your PC. Box up - sell on eBay for $5.

8) If you wake me up – not only will I not fix your PC but I will enroll you for every Male Enhancement, Breast Implant, Personals and Real Estate spam list on the internet in addition to penciling your name and phone number on truck stop bathroom walls.

During the Call

1) Please start the call with some form of small talk, such as “Hello”, “Howdy”, “Whassup?” or “Yo, Shizzle.” This at least gives me the false impression that you actually care enough to be somewhat courteous and are not just using me for free computer repair advice.

2) Listen carefully for the frustrated sound of a fork digging into a plate or for loud chewing in the phone. It isn’t that I am this rude – this is a hint. Now you know.

3) Even though you will likely ignore every piece of advice I give you, at least give me the false impression that you will at least consider the advice that I freely give from my 18 years of computer repair experience.

4) Just because I hear your voice doesn’t mean I can diagnose your computer over the phone. Usually it is necessary to “look around” the computer setup to accurately troubleshoot a problem. Most mechanics can not fix your car over the phone.

5) If I say, “Great, bring the tower to me and I will take a look at it.” – the appropriate answer is – not “no”. Definitely the right answer is not “No, you come here.” Really, it’s enough that you are unwilling to pay a computer store to fix your PC, do you really expect me to do a house call? Does your mechanic come to your driveway to fix your car?

After the Call

1) Take my advice. I’ve been fixing PC’s since I was 7. I may not always be right, but I’m usually not far off.

2) Computer still broken? I offer a 100% refund on all freely issued computer repair work and advice.

†Definition: Dinner Time Emergency

(Pronunciation: 'di-n&r-tIm i-'m&r-j&nt-sE)

An urgent need for assistance or relief that occurs during the customary time an individual would eat dinner. A dinnertime emergency will usually result in premature completion of dinnertime activities in lieu of attending to said emergency.

Having Henry Ford Change Your Tires

Fun Fact:

I am a Sr. Level Software Developer, creating enterprise-level multi-tier database driven applications in team and JAD development environments for the Healthcare, Manufacturing and Telecommunications industries. What does this mean? I make software. Making software is very different from building and repairing PCs.

Dollars and Sense

PC Technician - Average Salary: $34,097 ($16/hr)

Sr. Computer Programmer - Average Salary: $90,897 ($43/hr)

(Source: Salary.Com, Adjusted for Zip Code 36567)

Fixing PCs, for me – isn’t about money. Offering me $50 to have me make your 10 year old computer emulate Pixar’s $50 million render farm for 3D animation is like offering a mechanic $50 to make your car fly.

At any given time I am working on at least two freelance hourly programming jobs, each paying a minimum of $65/hr. When I fix your PC, I will do it for free because I’m cool that way – but I am taking from time that I could be billing a company to help pay my bills, put my kid through college or install that indoor pool you could come swim in. More-so this is taking from time I could spend being with the people I love or doing the things I enjoy. While asking me to fix your computer as a favor DO NOT be an asshole about it. If you give me attitude about working on your computer for free – I will return your PC as a virus-infected crumbled, melted ball of steel, rubber and glass.

Summary

At peak, I often have 20 people asking that I fix their PCs at one time. Most are simple jobs and many of these people (you know who you are) – I not only welcome the requests but enjoy the opportunity to help them in some way – as they have helped me & Dina over the years repetitively. What little I can help, I’m willing to try.

It is funny, that no one actually realizes that I don’t fix PCs for a living. Just once, it would be cool for a relative to call and say, “Bill, I was reading about Visual Studio .Net 2005 and it’s implementation of generics, how will this affect the OO design of my classes moving forward?”

Aside from this, I do sit behind a desk doing computer work all week. I’m very good at installing car stereos, building RC Cars, Trucks, Planes and Helis and working on jetskis – by all means please feel free to call me if you need help in these areas as they are a departure from my 8-5 career.

And for the love of god – do not offer me money. No amount of money you could conjure up is worth my weekend and evenings. I’ll help you to be helpful but leave cash out of it.

We can barter. Are you a mechanic? Work on my car. Are you a good painter? I’ll rebuild your PC – you paint a room in my house.

Bill Dodd

mcp, mcsd, mcsd, mcdba

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