Ronda's Web Log

911 - What if

Thu, 11 Sep 2008 06:12:12 GMT

When I was 16 I went to the State Fair with my best friend Lisa, we parked at the Routh St. Womens clinic downtown within walking distance of the fair since it didn't cost us $5.00 and her mom worked there as a counselor. When we came out that evening we discovered the car has been broken into. My stereo and some personal items including a tape recorder and a couple hundred dollars in cash had been stolen. I remember not the loss of property but the feeling of violation.

I was at home on Sept 11, 2001. I had a funeral to go to that day and had the news on when the first news reports of the devastation began to come in. The phone rang and my brother Robert and I were on the phone when the second plane hit. The same feelings of violation. I can only imagine the loss and immense feelings the families of those victims felt. But remember we were ALL victims. We all felt anger, felt that violation. I applaud George Bush for giving us back some retribution for 911. This will be a long battle and I hope that we never forget and we have the foresight to elect leaders that will act against these senseless acts of violence.

What if we had different leadership. Someone who felt calm negotiation was the more pc response. Would I be wearing a cloth across my face?

I'm gonna BLOG about YOU!

Mon, 25 Apr 2005 07:14:58 GMT

It happens every time I have EXCEPTIONAL customer service. And isn't that the factor that makes the difference in most comparable products. It all boils down to people. Quick response when frustrated with a product brings a certain type of joy that is incomparable. Quite likely good customer service makes such an impact because we have all spent countless hours of our lives on hold, only to get a rude, incompetent person on the other end who has never used the product. I don't use the term "exceptional customer service" lightly. It must have all of the factors - patience with what may often be just a user error, competence with the product in question, timely response; because whether they are patient and competent if they do not reply in a timely manner then your initial frustration only grows. Of course when we speak of exceptional customer service I must preface this with the fact that the product must be supportable - in other words it must be an exceptional product to warrant a mention in this blog.

ASP.Net Email is a phenomenal product. Aleviating many of the automation nightmares we often encounter when dealing with mass mail. We utilize the product for retrieving XML files (sent from Yahoo) to a mail box to parse them and push them into our SQL. The support team has stuck with me through 2 server moves (mailenable and smartermail) and the response time is AWESOME. They offer support lists as well as individual support at no cost and I can't say I have been more pleased with a product for quick install, quick configuration and seamless integration.

Threat Sentry - from PrivacyWare is another one of 'those' products that has changed my peace of mind. It is an intrusion detection system that smoothly integrates with IIS and notifies me when hackers are testing my security. Not only does it notify me via email but it blocks them based on criteria I have set up. The support team again merits an EXCEPTIONAL rating and I can't praise it enough.

A Tale of Two Gates - Automated gates... while this might be a limited audience I have to tell you guys about my recent 'gate experience'. My mother has an automated gate for 2 years. She has had more downtime then uptime and replaced the mother board TWICE. So when I put in a wrought iron fence and decided to spring for an automated gate it was a clear decision that whatever gate I went with it would not be the brand she chose. I got lucky and wound up with an US Automatic gate. Saturday morning my gate stopped working - okay this happens for a variety of reasons - the motherboard has a reset switch, testing lights that trouble shoot the problem, various DIP switch settings to manipulate the gate, etc... I downloaded the manual (Grateful that it was available to download because I have no idea where my originial copy is - ALL manufacturers should offer PDF downloads of manuals!). I then proceeded to trouble shoot according to manual instructions. Nothing! So for kicks on Saturday morning I emailed the support team from the website. 15 minutes later someone calls me - at home - on SATURDAY morning! He spent an hour on the phone with me until we identified what we believed was the issue (a bad charger - resulting in a bad backup battery). He then told me HE WOULD check back with me. I had different priorities for Saturday so when he called I was not around - I had decided to deal with it on Monday. Guess what? 8:00 Monday morning HE CALLED me again. You just don't find that kind of support from most manufacturers and of course once we were ready to get off the phone I paid him the highest compliment "I'm gonna BLOG about YOU!"

Busier than a ...

Tue, 05 Apr 2005 23:43:01 GMT

It has been SO long since I have blogged I had to look up my admin page to create this entry. I bought a new house - which is going to be awesome after a LOT of work. It is 1930's rock cottage right in the midst of town on an acre of land with all kinds of kitschy out buildings and character. I still have a house in Dallas to sell - thus am making two house payments right now if anyone is thinking of relocating - I am becoming more and more negotiable as the weeks roll by.

Oh on the subject of remodeling - I offer a tidbit of wisdom -- NEVER buy cheap sandpaper when sanding wood floors. Always spring for the most expensive stuff

I came across a rollover image control that Chris Garrett put together - I don't usually do rollovers but am trading out a web site for a heavy metal band (they are doing some construction for me) and they want rollovers. I started to do it with client side javascript and googled it with .net and found this clean, neat little user control to throw into your library.

I finally had some time tonight and spent a couple of hours in the microsoft newsgroups - it is amazing how much time programmers don't have - most especially if they have any outside interests like gardening, moving, side-work to support double house payments, not to mention any kind of social life (right). My listservers are all going to my gmail account (which really is the best solution in the world for lists) and I haven't checked it in more than a week or two- so I almost want to go in and just archive everything but I have never been able to do that. I really do admire those of you with clean mailboxes - I keep almost everything; which results in tons of folders for organinzing and lots of archived .pst files.

When I started this post I had some interesting items (VB.net) to mention but they are eluding me now - so maybe I will consolidate my thoughts, empty out my pda, get my notes together (darn I have been meaning to install one-note) and try another post soon... ~

Responsible Journalism?

Thu, 28 Oct 2004 10:51:59 GMT

At what point did we become a nation that had to be suspect of the validity of our media? The liberal biases of the mainstream media have always shown through but it seems that lately there is an air of irresponsibility that has placed a doubt in the minds of the readers/viewers on every 'breaking' story.

It started with the CBS - Dan Rather fiasco and now the New York Times has jumped on the boat by blowing up a potential 'non-incident' with the missing munitions in Iraq. According to the IAEA records there is a discrepancy on whether we are talking about 270 tons or 380 tons of munitions and the New York Times has followed up the initial story today with 3 eyewitnesses that claim that there was rampant looting shortly after the Americans came in - no shit! Please do tell how the looters, who were to say the least, 'disorganized', in April of 2003 managed to stealth away 380 TONS of munitions. It is not even plausible. I am of the opinion that Sadam moved them before we moved in. That is the most logical assumption since it is totally illogical to assume that looters could have relocated this size cache.

The fact that Kerry has made this story a key point of his campaign effort makes me further doubt that there is any real story here at all. A senator who seems to care little about fact and has no qualms about making statements that he can easily retract tomorrow he has proved to be a very reactionary 'leader'. Trusting what spewed from Kerrys’ lips has never been a question for me but it would be nice to be able to believe that our Journalists are not subject to the same inflammatory, non-investigative attitude in reporting the stories that should be relevant to Americans.

Social Skills Declining?

Sun, 18 Apr 2004 00:14:23 GMT

My daughter and I went to Macaroni Grill for dinner this evening and as expected on a Saturday night we had about a half hour wait. We waited outside on the bench near the front door and made some interesting observations. Whilst watching patrons come and go I remarked that it really bothered me when I was coming out a door - given a situation where there are two doors at an entrance - and as I open the door - the door on the right as is customarily the door I use when exiting a building - there may be someone standing on the outside about to come in, instead of opening the door on their right they will stand there and wait for me to go through the door and then use the 'exit door' to go in. Not surprisingly my daughter told me that was one of her personal pet peeves. So we regaled one another with recent stories of people who practiced this odd social custom of using the 'wrong' door.

The very worst is when a man will wait while I go out the 'right' door and then he will go in the 'wrong' door (the door I just exited) and never even gesture to grab the door or offer to hold it as I exit. As we waited on our table we began counting door usage and interestingly out of over 70 groups or individuals going in and out of the restaurant only about 10% used the correct door. Many, if they saw a door opening - the exit door - as someone was leaving, would wait and use that door instead of extending their arm out and open the door on their right. A couple of folks were on their cell phones as they entered the building and while holding thier phone in their right hand would reach toward the left hand door. Several people exiting would use the door on their left and it would swing toward people who were about to enter only to look irritated that the people were 'in their way'. The incidence of Men vs. Women using the wrong door was about the same. Over 90% of minorities used the wrong door and slightly less for non-minorities.

I know this is probably somewhat of a trivial thing but it is just good manners to use the door on the right when entering or exiting a building. We won't even go into the rudeness of not opening doors for other people because I could rant on that all day long. I open doors for both men and women. It is also way beyond rude when someone lets a door slam behind them in your face. Anyways the food was good and it was an interesting conversation to have with my daughter. I am grateful that I raised her with some social skills and feel confident she will pass them on to her children one day....