Monthly Archives: June 2006

Drop MSFT, and Pick Up RHAT

June 29th, 2006

After reading Ed Bott’s “Is Microsoft about to release a Windows ‘kill switch’?” , my only recommendation is that people take their money out of Microsoft and put it somewhere else. A computer that runs Microsoft Windows, pirated or not, is owned by a potential customer for software publishers that target the platform. Microsoft might […]

AT&T Tech Support

June 27th, 2006

There has been a lot of negative sentiment on technical support and customer care representatives lately. I’ve voiced some frustration with Sprint’s front-line technical support staff before. Poor customer service over the phone has also been publicized with Vincent Ferrari’s AOL episode as well as a recent video taping of a Comcast technician sleeping on […]

“You Got It, Boss”

June 19th, 2006

In Tales of Vista development at MSFT, Scott Berkun finds a money quote from a former Vista development manager. After finding resistance when reporting the truth, particularly of but not limited to slipping project schedules, engineers tend to fold. Travel 3,000 miles on foot within 2 hours? You, got it boss!

Ding! Fries are Done

June 15th, 2006

An article claims that Backward Switches Doomed Probe. This does not mean that Lockheed Martin’s engineers are incompetent. Aerospace engineers are highly respected for the engineering problems they have solved and continually face. The article, instead, discusses the possibility that time and cost constraints on the production of the probe resulted in the probe’s failure. […]

SprintPCS Technical Support

June 13th, 2006
Posted in - blah - | 8 Comments

After setting up and testing network monitoring software for one of our co-lo sites, it became apparent that mx.messaging.sprintpcs.com was rejecting connections from the monitoring server. I used typical methods, which include using telnet to connect to the SMTP port while analyzing the connection with a packet sniffer, to determine that the problem was with […]