Surprised that a $70 unmanaged 16 port switch has a one year next
business day replacement warranty, I called up Dell Support about a PowerConnect
2016 switch that I have that flakes out (all the lights come on and it
stops
moving packets) on a regular basis.
Tangent: Dell has apparently started using call
managers to route calls. It is their job to collect enough
information to route your call to the appropriate place without needing to
spend 10 minutes going through a phone maze. The first ironic point was
that I spent five minutes in a phone maze before talking to a call
manager, and another few minutes in a phone maze after speaking with them.
The second was that I had more troubles understanding the call manager
than I have had with any other Dell employee (I think it is time for me to
learn a phonetic
alphabet) and thus spent several minutes repeatedly correcting the
lady on the other end of the line.
Once I finally got to a support technician, he quickly acknowledged
that my switch had a problem and then told me his connection to the
support databse was broken. This is not really something I should care
about, but it meant that he might not be able to submit the shipment
request to get me a new switch the next day. He did apologize and
indicated he would email me immediately with his contact information and
would email me again when he was able to setup the shipment. I note that
12 hours after my call (most definately after the end of the technician's
shift) I have not recieved that second email. I also note that standing
in place of this $70 switch right now is a $3000 Cisco
Catalyst 3550.
So the central IT organization on campus is implementing a system to
enable them to send out emergency messages to the primary departmental
technical contacts. This system can call a set list of numbers to notify
you of various campus wide issues. I am not entirely sold that this is a
good idea, but what the hell, I follow the instructions to update my
contact information. While doing as the instructions indicate, it comes
as no real surprise to me that I have a few concerns.
Problems with the system; 1) The database of contact info is not part
of the campuswide directory system and must be maintained and updated by
hand. 2) To update your own contact information you use a shared username
and password. 3) You need to allow cookies to login, but instead of
providing an error message, the login script will simply redirect you back
to the login page. 4) Instead of just editing your own entry, you can edit
the entry of anyone. 5) If you put a home phone number into your entry, it
is made available via the public interface to the list.
And the central IT organization wonders why they get so little respect.
Two of the machines I support are used for accessing datasets from a
sizable collection of cdroms. These cds generally cost a few hundred
dollars each and come with the data wrapped up in a propreitary brinary
format which requires a poorly written custom application to extract.
Complaints about the usability of these applications (which is almost
always poor) will be saved for another day. My complaint today is the
number of companies that clearly don't wish to waste money on
programmers.
We have a collection of CensusCD
products from GeoLytics. The
installer defaults to wanting to install to a
c:\CDIDENTIFIER, changing it to c:\program
files\censuscd\CDIDENTIFIER, the installer completes succesfully.
Thinking the program is installed, I run the program and all appears
happy. Setting up a query to extract some data works goes smoothly.
Actually extracting the data however creates a cryptic error message.
A little experimentation and reading the manual (heaven forbid) show
that the program needs to be installed to a path that has no spaces and no
part of the path is more then 8 characters. Why then did the installer
allow me to install to that directory? I know testing for this is
possible in the installer, in fact while working out possible solutions I
found that the ArcView installer did
exactly this. This type of silliness was acceptable from small software
companies when we were still transitioning from DOS to Windows (I would
say up until about 1998), but it is completely unacceptable from a product
released in 2002, even from a company that does not have a multi-person
software development team.
The central campus IT organization manages site licenses for a handful
of products. Back in the days of yore, they provided this software on
floppy and then cdrom. Now it is provided by a web site which
authenticates the downloader with the campus directory. After giving the
site my username and password, I click the link to download the software
and am presented with--
"Illegal Access!!!
Microsoft OLE DB Provider for ODBC Drivers error '80040e14'
[Microsoft][ODBC driver for Oracle][Oracle]ORA-00947: not enough values
/programs/download.asp, line 24"
Having seen similar messages before, I allow cookies from the site,
re-login and all is fine. This is of course broken, I should have
been presented a nice error message explaining something like "You
seem to not have the correct cookie perhaps you are blocking cookies
from this site." Well, all is fine until I try to download
the second part of the package I am after, at which point I am told--
"Central Campus Download Site
There was an error with your download attempt.
You have already downloaded this program. Please re-register if you need to download the program again."
Ignoring the incorrectness of this message (I was downloading a
different piece of the same package), this is a message I should simply
not have recieved. There is no reason to make the user go through extra
steps to assist them logging of information when they could have handled
it inside the application.
These are mistakes that I could tolerate from small time departments,
but not from one that spends more money on trial projects in a year than I
have in my entire year's tech budget.
Update 2005-11-22: I filed this matter as a bug report with the
group that maintains the download system. The case was closed with the
following note--
"While not a critical issue, this seems to be resolved by restarting
the browser and re-logging back in."
My primary system at work is a laptop. It has both a trackpoint (the
IBM name used for the pointing device in the home row) and a touchpad. I
find I am slow and clumsy with touchpads and thus greatly prefer
trackpoints (Dell seems to call them Pointing Sticks). I really like the
grippy feel of a fresh pointing stick cap. When new, using the trackpoint
is an absolute joy. But as they get filled with human goo and dirt moving
the cursor becomes less and less accurate.
The Dell Latitudes I use at work each come with a spare trackpoint
cap. Now seeing as how 4-6 months of heavy use wears one down to the
point of leaving me unhappy, I clearly need a supply of more. Dell sells
Pointing Stick Covers for $11 for two. The saleswoman I spoke with
said that quantity discounts were not available for that part. Thinkpads
come with two different types of trackpoints. One is grippy like the
Dell's and the other is textured rubber. The rubber one is washable and
lasts lasts much longer than the grippy one that once filled with dirt is
unsalvageable.
A month or two ago, while at the University surplus store I came across
a small cache of new in package ones for fifty cents a piece. I purchased
the 9 that I could find in the box. That will keep me happy for a good
while.
I heard beeping from the room next door. It was not a beeping I heard
before. It almost sounded sickly. Poking my head into the server room I
hear for certain that the beeping was not just an angry piece of
equipment, but was an unhealthy angry one. The beeping fluctuated,
growing quieter and quieter before making a feeble attempt to shout for
attention at its former volume.
It turns out the beeping is from a UPS. Further investigation found
that the UPS had failed in a serious way as the monitor and kvm plugged
into it were no longer getting power. Moving those devices over to the
backup UPS (we are not big enough to justify a proper failover system), I
take note of the serial and model number of the dead UPS.
I am on hold with APC's technical
support line for less than five minutes before speaking with someone.
After hearing my explanation he asks for the serial number and asks if the
battery pack has been replaced in this unit. The tech was quite surprised
to hear that it had not been considering the unit was manufacturered in
late 2000. He went on to explain my options, providing me part numbers
for each; purchase a new battery pack (about $50), get a ChargeUPS pack
for the unit (about $90 and extends the warranty of the entire UPS), or
trade the unit in for a larger model ($50-100 discount off of MSRP). Kudos
to APC for a well run support group.
That phone call went exactly like it should have.
With a new battery in hand I set about pulling out the old one. After
a good deal of effort, I finally get the dead battery pack out, only to
find the top of the battery seriously distended and out of whack.
The new battery went in fine, charged, and went through the basic tests
provided by PowerChute
Personal Edition.
