A writer, reloaded

Employees of non-public schools are fingerprinted in accordance with New Jersey statute NJSA 18A : 6-4.14. Today, I complied and trekked off to a fingerprint facility.

I mention this because the gear is sweet looking, and the process one hundred percent digital. The only paper is a receipt the machine generates. After capturing the images, a scanner saves them in a file, and pushes them to the state for a full background check. Electronic automation reduces the turnaround time from weeks to mere days.

OK, so maybe it’s only cool to me, but every so often, tech guy earns a few words. Alter egos are like that. Never know when they might bust loose.

And now, off to dose the cats with some fresh catnip.

Asleep since September, Tech guy hit the coffee almost as hard as the keyboard this weekend, implementing numerous site enhancements. Myself, I’d rather sleep on Sundays, but he was awakened early, driven by the love for semi-colon and things that go beep and click. Such an unruly beast.

The key changes:
1) Karma, Comments, Category – are all on one line now. From a real estate perspective, this is more efficient and pleasing to the eye.
2) Karma ratings are now – “I like it” or “I like it”. Gone are neutral, or negative karma. Either click the number in parenthesis next to the phrase Current Karma, or click not. This addresses a long standing security hole in the site. Long story – trust me you don’t want more details, unless it’s time for a nap.
3) Comments now support mail notifications. When you leave a comment and “notify me when others comment” and someone comments, email fires off to everyone who indicated they wanted notifications about that comment. The message includes the comment, and a link to the blog. What about existing comments? Unless a conversation reignites, there’s not mail on the horizon. Note that by default the notify box is checked. Why is that? My hunch is that readers comment with the interest of what others might say later. Since blogs roll off the front page so quickly, it’s hard to find prior blogs and the related comments. This provides an easy means to return.
4) Lastly, there was a big nasty issue with the comment lock out period. At this point, Tech guy says, says, says – it’s resolved. The lockout period, which varied from 60 minutes to 12 hours ( don’t ask ) is now 15 minutes. If anyone has issues with comments, please email techguyATsamhilliard.com ASAP.

Recently Steve Ballmer sent a memo to every Microsoft employee. One short snippet of the very long memo caught my attention.

“We must also work to change a number of customer perceptions, including the views that older versions of Office and Windows are good enough and that Microsoft is not sufficiently focused on security.”

Let’s consider this compound sentence in more manageable pieces, shall we?

“We must also work to change a number of customer perceptions…” Translation: Our customers have their own ideas about our products. Perhaps they tried to use them recently.

“…including the views that older versions of Office and Windows are good enough…” – Translation: Microsoft ships beta. Our products are disposable and meant to be replaced frequently.

“..and that Microsoft is not sufficiently focused on security.” Translation: Was it the rampant virus attacks, or the never ending stream of updates we release on a daily basis that clued people into the issues with our software?

Microsoft is a maturing company in a maturing industry. And the greatest challenge they face is not their competitors, but their customers.

Tech guy had a busy Saturday of coding and made several modifications to the site, most of which I’ve been after him about for months.

Handy changes like:
1)Consistent navigation. No matter where you are at samhilliard.com, the left hand side navigations are the same.
2)Mailing Lists. Want the inside track on the goings on? Sign up for one of the lists!

Thanks to Russkaya’s much appreciated testing efforts, it appears Tech guy upgraded the site without breaking anything.

With the lists in place, next stop – downloads! Huzzah.

Tech guy had a busy day. Besides packing a bunch of Buddhapuss shirts, he installed the mailing list program. Some open source program called Dada.

For those who signed up for the mailing list, yes a periodic ( and hopefully relevant ) mail is coming your way sometime soon.

Tech guy: OK, so all you do is type up the message and click the button and away you go.
sam: It just fires off to everyone on the list?
Tech guy: Everyone gets it.
sam: Even me?
Tech guy: Even you.
sam: And this is all free?
Tech guy: Free.

Yep, sending mass emails is remarkably easy to do.

Whilst typing away this morning a fuse in the power box blew. The real fun started once the new fuse was in place.

The Wife: There’s something wrong with the PC.
sam: It runs perfectly.
The Wife: It won’t turn on.
sam( presses power button – nothing happens )
sam: I’ll call tech guy.
Tech guy: What did you break now?
sam: The PC won’t start.
Tech guy: Is it plugged in?
sam: Yes! Seriously it won’t fire up.
Tech guy: You’ve been googling again haven’t you?
sam: This is serious! Press button – we got no power.
Tech guy: I’ll check it out. Don’t touch anything.
Tech guy checked all the connections, but it still won’t start. Popping open the case tech guy made a discovery. He held up a massive wad of gray cat fur for me to see. It could be from only one critter in the house, the long hair cat, Electra ( Buddhapuss’s apprentice )
sam (to The Wife): Honey look at what your cat did! She broke the PC.

Tech guy vacuumed out all the fur and all was good. Now the PC runs like a top.

Tech guy reviewed the usage logs today and discovered that site traffic increased more than 50 percent over April. Not too shabby. Time to buy tech guy a beer me thinks. Or maybe a Ask Buddhapuss t-shirt. : )

Anyway, even cooler stuff is coming shortly including a new 2 part poll and the first chapter of The Ridge Runner and possibly the first chapter of Velocity.

We’re also going to incorporate more pictures to the site since there’s lots of bandwidth to spare. Such a visual crutch should help the blog out. Lately after writing for 12 hours a day, I run short on energy for the site.

It’s time to go catch some sun while it’s still shining.