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I just downloaded the Oracle client tools for a job I’m working on. It was an interesting experience.

Strike One: I had to download 3 different zip files named “Disk1”, “Disk2” and “Disk3”. Huh? I thought multiple floppies went out with the advent of DSL.

Strike Two: Once I downloaded and unzipped the three disk images into my “My Documents” folder I double-clicked the setup application in the Disk1 folder. An hourglass popped up, then went away. Huh? Nothing happened. Tried again. Nothing. So I rebooted. Went to the Disk1 folder and tried again. Nothing. Opened Task Manager. Didn’t appear that setup was even running. <sigh> On a whim decided to move the 3 disk image folders to the C: root. Opened the first image directory, double-clicked the setup again... walla! Oh come on. You’ve got to be kidding. Long file names and directory paths with spaces in them became common place with Windows 95.

As I was talking about in my Feeling Clean post, it is that last 5% of the effort that can make all the difference. Do you know how hard it is to make an application accept spaces in the application path? One line of code. One simple line of code to be sure you customer experience is pleasant and uneventful. Instead, I lost the current state of every application I was running as well as the web pages I had open for consultation on the setup I’m trying to do. All because a Windows application running in 2007 doesn’t support spaces in the file path. This is the type of behavior you might expect in a high school homework project or even in some shareware application, but is not what I would expect from a technology powerhouse that has aspirations of knocking Microsoft off the top of the hill.

Not a big deal you say? Well, let’s think about this. There’s an old saying you’ve all no doubt heard: “You never get a second chance to make a first impression.” Your installer application is the first impression any customer has of your company. If I had not tried to move these 3 folders to the C: root, I would have likely spent several hours, maybe even days trying to find the answer to how to get this application installed. That would cost me money. If I had contacted one or more of the guys I work with to get their help that would have cost even more money. The more help, the more money. Finally, if I had picked up the phone and called Oracle I’m quite certain it would have cost a whole lot more money; either my own for the support fee or Oracle if they have “free” or shall I say complementary support. Either way, this small and reasonably simple oversight on both the part of the developer and the testing team has almost certainly cost many people, many hours of frustration and in turn many dollars in lost time.

There were almost certainly thousands and thousands of straws on the back of that proverbial camel before it finally broke. Large established companies have lots of details to fret. Nonetheless, there is always a point where one too many mistakes were made. One too many dissatisfied customers simply walked away. One too many small details were overlooked.

Here’s the lesson: You are never too big and you are never too small to sweat the details. It is the small stuff that counts. It is the details that set you apart from everyone else. It is the little things that will keep your customers coming back and telling their friends about your products. What you do, or don’t do, says a lot about who you are and what your company is like. When you don’t care enough to insure my installation is carefree, how can I be sure you’ll care enough to support me when I’m depending on your product to run my business and take care of my own customers?

Take this opportunity to look at the products and services that you offer. Ask yourself if there are any holes in your offering that may cause your customers to have a bad experience; better yet, ask your customers. Create an ongoing list of rough spots in your product offering; then fix them. It may very likely mean the difference between surviving and thriving.

I’ve been using a Mac for over a year now. Before that I was a Windows user since 1988.

Why did I switch? Quite simply, the Mac feels clean. When you turn it on you feel welcomed and embraced; understood even. Sounds silly, but it’s true. The small things make all the difference.

Take Microsoft Outlook for instance. When I switched to the Mac I stopped using Microsoft Outlook and began using Mail and iCal to manage all my email and tasks. These applications work good and I never really thought about Outlook or even missed it. However, yesterday, for work reasons, I started running Windows again as my primary development computer. In doing so I started using Outlook again.

Wow! What a nice application. When Microsoft Outlook first opens it is clean, tidy and well organized. I felt in control immediately. That’s how all software should be. Clean.

How do your products make your customers feel? What is their first impression of you and your company? Do you make them feel clean? Do you help them to feel in control? Let me encourage you to put in the extra effort to make a strong, positive first impression. It will pay dividends in customer satisfaction and loyalty.

In 1987 I used Microsoft Word for the first time. It was bad. Functional, but unintuitive and hard to use. WordPerfect owned the market and Microsoft was still trying to get a foothold. Fast forward 10 years to 1997. Word is much easier to use, still difficult for a beginner, but much better. WordPerfect is fading fast and all but non-existant. Fast forward 10 more years to 2007. WordPerfect? What is that? Microsoft Word is hands down the king of the word processor market and for good reason. The application is clean, powerful and easy to use by almost anyone.

Same story with Outlook. When Microsoft Outlook first came out it was big, bloated, slow and clumsy. I hated it. I said I would never, ever use it. If there were an “I hate Outlook” club, I probably would have joined. Outlook today, however, is clean, powerful and delightful to use. It is the type of application that makes people want to use a computer. Had I joined the “I hate Outlook club, I’m afraid I would have to withdraw my membership.

There are dominant people and organizations in all facets of life. Last night, for instance, we were at the softball fields. There is a team that plays in our league that is, well, to be honest, way out of our league. They literally look like a professional team on the field. A lot of people don’t like that. They are critical, even offended by these guys. However, the fact is that this guys have earned their level of excellence. They have been together for a long, long time. They play hard. They are serious. They practice and they recruit the best. Yes, this is church league softball that I’m talking about, but the rules are the same for everyone. Any team in the league has the right to play at the same level as Patton; most, however, choose not to and that is their choice. Patton has looked beyond our local church league and has set their sights on winning the national tournaments.

Back to Microsoft. Yes, it’s true, that they have deep, deep pockets, but the lesson goes further than that. Microsoft has not always been a powerhouse. They started as two hardworking guys playing to win. They play hard and they don’t give up. Yes, they seem to bend the rules from time-to-time, but we have umpires in this league too. Several years ago several companies called “foul!” So, the umpires reviewed the tapes, looked at the plays, held meetings and ruled in favor of Microsoft. We can all gripe and moan, but that won’t help us beat them.  They are a powerhouse because they play hard and they earned it.

Back to softball. There’s another team in our league that is serious about the game. Last year they set their sites on Patton. They didn’t beat them, but they definitely gave them a run for their money. This year, they are even tougher. They look sharp on the field, they communicate clearly and they play hard. They are quickly becoming a serious threat to Patton’s undisputed rule of the ball field.

Google has done the same thing to Microsoft. In the late 1990’s they showed up in an already crowed Internet search market. They were simple, clean and very well put together. In short order they stole the entire market for Internet search, one that even Microsoft was playing hard to win. The story doesn’t end there, however. Google, came to play ball and they took the entire game to a new level. They continued to refine their process and eventually turned Internet search, a free product, into a revenue generating cash cow. Next, they set their sites on offering Internet based products that would compete with desktop products such as Word and Excel. Today, Google is a very serious threat to Microsoft and by many people standards has already surpassed them as the top dog on the block.

The lesson here is that we all have the opportunity to compete no matter how big and strong the competition is. The rules are the same for everyone. It’s just that not everyone is willing to pay the price that it takes to end up on top.

So ask yourself, Who is my Microsoft? Who is it that dominates my league? Who is it that has been around so long and is so powerful that no one can touch them? Then, look at what you’ve got to offer. Why does your offering fall short of the king of your league? Why are they beating you time and time again? Be honest, then go back to the drawing board and decide what you’re going to do about it.

Don’t give up before you start. You can win this game, but you’ve got to work hard at it, be smart and you’ve got to come to win. Create a clean solid offering that nails the expectations of your market. Then, expand on that offering; steadily adding to its value.

There are no untouchables out there; only well established, hard to beat competitors. As I said before, the rules are the same for everyone and everyone has the right to try as hard as they can. Good intentions won't do it. You have to be serious. You have to play hard and you have to come to win. So don't give up.

Lookout Patton. There’s a new ball team in town and they came to win.

I got an email this morning from Jason Vaughn at CreativePublic.com regarding a proposed change in Copyright laws in the United States. His email is a forward from Michael Durwin. You will find Michael's email below.


====================================
The Orphan Works Act of 2008
Bill # H.R.5889
====================================
The Shawn Bentley Orphan Works Act of 2008
Bill # S.2913
====================================

These bills effectively release creative work, whose authors or originators cannot be found, to use by anyone, including major corporations. This will allow large corporations to take advantage of the limited understanding of copyright law by artists, illustrators and other creatives. Essentially profiting from a large group of Americans that barely make a living with their work.

The bills would require the authors of so-called "orphaned works" to go through extraordinary measures to digitally copy and submit their work the the copyright office. This doesn't just effect artists. If someone posts pictures of their baby on MySpace, then negleects to check their MySpace email, or signed up for the social network using a screen name rather than their real name, they could find those baby pictures being used for a multi-million dollar advertising campaign.

I work for an ad agency and have just as much respect for the artists, photographers and designers who I work with as I do the budget limitations faced by companies trying to promote their products and services.

This bill, however, amounts to legalized theft by big corporation of the property of the little guy.

Unfortunately these bills are being sponsored by Democrats ( Howard Berman D-CA 28th, Patrick Leahy D-VT) who should know better.

I'm sure your members would be very interested in this legislation.

You can read more about these bills here:

http://capwiz.com/illustratorspartnership/issues/bills/?billid=11320236

http://capwiz.com/illustratorspartnership/issues/bills/?bill=11322171

Michael Durwin
Creative Director
617-840-2618
design :: http://www.eyeanimate.com

Tonight we upgraded our web and mail servers. What was supposed to be a simple, fairly mundane task, turned out to be hours of beatting my head against to wall without a clue what was going on.

In the recent past we had our server blow a gasket and disappear from the Internet. Josh frantically scrambled to put together a new machine and successfully had us back online in less than 12 hours. However, that machine just wasn’t trustworthy enough to leave online for long. So, we bought new web servers and got them ready to go online tonight.

We run SmarterMail, from SmarterTools as our mail server at iknowit.com and resonantmedia.com. So, when the server went offline the first time Josh did some research and found a link that gives simple and easy directions for migrating an existing SmarterMail setup to a new machine. Nice! It worked like a champ and we had the mail setup in no time at all. So, tonight, when it was time to migrate mail to the new server, I opened up the page, followed the directions, changed the firewall settings to the new box and... sat and stared as my mail client couldn’t find the mail server.

Huh? No way.

So, we dug deeper. Josh found this error in the SmarterMail logs:

The requested address is not valid in its context
   at System.Net.Sockets.Socket.DoBind(EndPoint endPointSnapshot, SocketAddress socketAddress)
   at System.Net.Sockets.Socket.Bind(EndPoint localEP)
   at TcpServerLib.Pooled.PooledTcpServer.StartListening(IPEndPoint ipEndPoint)

Hmmm.

I checked the Windows Firewall settings. Not a problem. Then I looked at the ports that were being monitored. Uh oh. Although the SmarterMail service was running, ports 25 and 110 were not being monitored. Odd.

After hours and hours of research nothing proved to be helpful. Josh went to bed.

Finally, I found this link on the SmarterMail sight that gave enough of a clue to figure out what was going on.

Turns out the entire problem boiled down to IP address problems with our existing domains. Since I imported the domains from another box, their IP addresses were already set to the IP address of the old mail server. So, after I edited the settings of each domain and set the IP address to the IP address of the new server, I checked the ports being monitored on the server and walla! We are back in business.

(BTW, the reason this was not an issue when we restored our mail server after the crash is because the new server replaced the old server and got the same IP address that had been used before.)

So, if you’re having problems getting SmarterMail to run on a new server and you copied your settings from a previously working server, go through each domain and insure that they all have the proper IP address setup.


Have a blessed day.

    Three days ago my machine hung. I still don't know why. I had been away for a while, came back, moved the mouse... hang! Oh bummer. So, my only choice was to hard boot it. I really hate to do this, especially when I have an active development environment open and a Parallels session running. Nonetheless, it was my only option.

When I started Parallels after the reboot Windows dropped into disk check mode to make sure all systems were go; they were not. The Windows disk scan started spitting out all kinds of corrupted, orphaned, lost filenames, but after a while it said it had everything repaired and booted into the Windows desktop. After poking around a little everything appeared to be OK. Nothing lost. Nice. However, when I opened Visual Studio and tried to login to the Web Application I was working on, the login failed.

Argh! I was *just* working on this application yesterday without problems. <sigh> Something obviously went wrong on that hard reset. It took a whole day to figure out, but I finally realized that my SQL Server setup wasn't working properly. When I opened SQL Enterprise Manager, right clicked a table and selected "Display All" or "Display Top..." it would chug for a bit then pop up an error message that simply read "Unknown Error." Nice. I'd like to give a gold star to the guy that wrote that error dialog.

I tried everything I could think of to get SQL Server to work again. even replaced my virtual C drive with a back up virtual C drive from several months ago. When I did that it worked, but the back up drive was too old to utilize, so I had to revert back to the drive that was giving me troubles. However, with this new knowledge that the DB was not corrupt and SQL Server would work under the right conditions I pressed on. I twiddled the registry. I uninstalled and reinstalled SQL Server 2000 (twice). Still, nothing worked. Same error.

After much poking around on the Internet I finally came across this post. Down near the bottom Fotis Tsitsirigos writes "I had the same problem. The solution was to run the Norton Win Doctor. It found some kind of error in the registry, regarding the "msadce.dll" and fixed. Since then, everything works fine." Ah hah! So, I searched around a bit for how to "fix msadce.dll", but again, no success. Finally, I took Fotis' advice, went to Symantec and bought System Works, which includes WinDoctor.

Once I got everything installed, ran WinDoctor and let it fix the problems it ran across... Walla! SQL Server Manager is working again! Praise the Lord and Thank you Fotis Tsitsirigos!

Can't say this will work for everyone who gets the "Unkown Error" dialog, but it worked for Fotis and me!

Have a blessed day.

I'm a recent Mac convert, but that's a different story I'll tell another time.

What's important is that I am able to do my job, which is to write Windows software, on the Macintosh. I can do this because of an incredible application called Parallels. Parallels allows me to run Windows on my Mac, but better yet when run in Coherence mode Windows applications run seemlessly along side Mac applications as if the Mac were able to run Windows apps out of the box. It is truly an amazing thing to see.

I've been running in Coherence mode since one of the beta releases of Parallels and quite frankly have become adicted to it. I didn't realize how badly until it quit working one day. All of a sudden I started getting an error dialog in Parallels each time I would try to start it in Coherence mode.



I tried everything I could think of to get it working. I even posted a case on in the forums at Parallels to see if anyone else has had this problem. However, I got no response. So, since I had gotten so used to running in Coherence mode it just about drove me bonkers to run in "Full Screen" or "OS Window" modes. So, I kept trying to figure out what was going on.

Once day I got a core dump in Windows. You know, the BSOD, Blue Screen of Death. When that happened I took the time to investigate it a little and noticed that it was my video driver. Hmmmmm... So, as one of my last ditch efforts I tried reinstalling the Parallels Tools in Windows from the ISO image that ships with Parallels in hopes that it would reinstall the video driver and perhaps fix Coherence mode. Sure enough, after reinstalling the Parallels Tools... Walla! Coherence mode worked again! Praise the Lord! Thank you Jesus!

So, in an effort to share my joy, I wanted to post my results here in hopes that it helps someone else. Below are the steps I took to reinstall the Parallels Tools in Windows.

How to reinstall the  Parallels Tools in Windows:

1. On the Parallels menu select Devices -> CD/DVD-ROM 1 (or whatever the CD option is on your machine) -> Connect Image
2. Locate the file called "vmtools.iso" It should be located in the "Macintosh HD\Library\Parallels\Tools" directory.
3. Select the "vmtools.iso" file and press the "Open" button. This should cause the Parallels Tools installer to start automatically.
   
4. Follow the instructions given in the setup dialogs for Parallels Tools.
5. When the install is complete, restart Windows.
6. You should now be able to run in Coherence mode again.

I hope this has been helpful. Have a blessed day.

I don't know why, but I thought Bob Parson's was a Christian. It must have been the fact that Parsons Technology marketed QuickVerse, among other Christian software. So, when I found out a couple of years ago that GoDaddy.com was owned by Bob Parsons, I was down right excited. Not only was GoDaddy.com a top-notch company, but there was a solid man of integrity at the wheel... or so it seemed.

Not long after I transferred my first domain over to GoDaddy.com I started to suspect that my first impressions of Bob Parsons were wrong. I began to see conscious decision on GoDaddy.com's part to use women in most of their advertisments and site design. I'm ashamed to say I turned a blind eye to that and have supported GoDaddy.com for several years now with about a dozen domains that are registered there. I've even recommended the company to others, but not any more.

In an email I got today from GoDaddy.com I read about their latest TV commercials. So I clicked on the link to to see, only to hastily scramble for the close button on my browser when I realized they are completely inappropriate and defilling. DO NOT go check them out for yourself. You can get all the information you need by reading Bob's personal blog.

So, I've learned my lesson. I won't turn a blind eye any longer. I don't want any of my domains associated with an organization who blatantly promotes the filth that GoDaddy.com peddles. I'm not exactly sure where to go, but I'm looking and once I find a registrar with integrity, morals and high standards I'll gladly pay 3 times the cost if I have to to support them. So if you know of such a registrar, please let me know. I'm interested.

With that, bye, bye Bob. I'm taking my business elsewhere... and if you by chance run across this low-traffic, low-profile blog, please take the time to read this. My prayer is that reading it will truly change your life... forever.