I have made a decision that many refuse to make! I have decided to migrate my website to a new host. This new host will support both my website and my email (but, not this blog!). The reason many refuse to make that decision is because this sort of migration often results in the interruption of service for the website and all email addresses. If done correctly, that interruption should take no more than 24 hours. If not, I have seen it take over a week. I cringe at the thought of being without email for an entire week.
I have tried to minimize the effects of any interruption by starting this on a Friday, hoping to use the quiet weekend to absorb some of the downtime. So, tomorrow is the day. Hope all goes well.
I should know in a few days, if the problems are non-repairable!! I doubt it, but the thought of all those emails trying to find my server and not getting pointed to the correct place is disturbing.
Have a great weekend. Hope that I do, too!
Thursday, July 30, 2009
Sunday, February 15, 2009
Note to Self
Blogging is interesting to you the reader, interesting to me the writer and effective to all of us only if there are periodic new blog entries. OOPS, guess I need to do something about that.
I guess my rant today has to do with other professionals in this wide and varied technical field. Within a day of each other, I received a call from 2 people, one a potential client to whom I had been recommended and the other a past client that I had helped at a time of previous crisis.
The first contact was a plea for help. One “professional” had been to help her. Apparently, the only result was that 2 or 3 hours were wasted, the problem had not been solved, the user felt that her computer had been trashed and all the professional could do was ask for payment. After all, he had been there for a couple of hours. Nothing positive happened, but he had spent the time and expected to be paid for this total waste of everyone’s time. This attitude gives us all a bad name.
The second call had to do with a quick and easy hardware installation that would take no more than a few seconds. It was done by a friend of a friend. And because there was little time invested, no money was exchanged. Free. Sounds good? Read on. The computer was returned and the used, suffering from techno-withdrawal, connected all peripherals and turned it on. All she heard were those annoying POST beeps, the ones that tell you the computer is not well and the Power-On Self Test has failed. Try as she might, nothing changed the results. The friend of the friend was off travelling to some far-off place and not available. I got the second call. While I agreed to look at the computer later that day, several days passed between the failed installation and my solution. So, if the friend of a friend had used an additional 10 seconds to turn the computer on, he would have discovered that the POST failed and he could have fixed it immediately. But, he did not do so. Cost the user several days and a lot of frustration. Was it ego or time that forced him to be so cavalier? We will never know. But again, this gave professionals a bad name again.
I am not sure I can right all of these, but I do try to ensure that what I have done works correctly and that the user agrees. I will try to remember these two events – to help me take the extra 10 seconds to ensure that all is well and that the user will be satisfied.
I guess my rant today has to do with other professionals in this wide and varied technical field. Within a day of each other, I received a call from 2 people, one a potential client to whom I had been recommended and the other a past client that I had helped at a time of previous crisis.
The first contact was a plea for help. One “professional” had been to help her. Apparently, the only result was that 2 or 3 hours were wasted, the problem had not been solved, the user felt that her computer had been trashed and all the professional could do was ask for payment. After all, he had been there for a couple of hours. Nothing positive happened, but he had spent the time and expected to be paid for this total waste of everyone’s time. This attitude gives us all a bad name.
The second call had to do with a quick and easy hardware installation that would take no more than a few seconds. It was done by a friend of a friend. And because there was little time invested, no money was exchanged. Free. Sounds good? Read on. The computer was returned and the used, suffering from techno-withdrawal, connected all peripherals and turned it on. All she heard were those annoying POST beeps, the ones that tell you the computer is not well and the Power-On Self Test has failed. Try as she might, nothing changed the results. The friend of the friend was off travelling to some far-off place and not available. I got the second call. While I agreed to look at the computer later that day, several days passed between the failed installation and my solution. So, if the friend of a friend had used an additional 10 seconds to turn the computer on, he would have discovered that the POST failed and he could have fixed it immediately. But, he did not do so. Cost the user several days and a lot of frustration. Was it ego or time that forced him to be so cavalier? We will never know. But again, this gave professionals a bad name again.
I am not sure I can right all of these, but I do try to ensure that what I have done works correctly and that the user agrees. I will try to remember these two events – to help me take the extra 10 seconds to ensure that all is well and that the user will be satisfied.
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