Citrix - Great Software, Horrible Customer Service

I'm writing this as I'm on hold with Citrix. I have been passed back-and-forth between customer service and technical support twice already. All I really need is a new TS CAL license keys for Citrix Access Essentials. The inital purchase got us keys that worked with Windows Server 2003. We decided to go with 2008 and that's my guess as to why the keys won't work. They did, however, get the Citrix Access Essentials key to work for the user-licenses on their software.

I really don't get how you have to have license keys for Terminal Services Users as well as license keys for Citrix Access Essential Users. But I guess that's what this company gets for choosing third-party remote access software. Good god.

Maybe I should call Microsoft and try to get new TS CALs from them; I'm surprised to say it, but they might have better customer support than Citrix.

n-central application compliance

What good is the application compliance service if Windows is being constantly updated anyway? Ok, I admit the license compliance feature, which shows a birds-eye-view of software that is installed across the entire company, is useful for ferreting out unwanted software.

Back to the application compliance, I reversed the detection so that it would show an error if it detected x unwanted application. The only problem is again that it is an all-or-nothing test! I can't tell it to show an error if x or y application is found. Now I remember why I deleted the Application Compliance service from all company's initially. Bleh.

n-able

Yeah, in parallel to the last post, N-able should definitely use the blue icons for disconnected instead of using red x's for everything. What's more, it should show the percentage of failures and not just a all or nothing picture. For example, let's say I have a customer with 100 devices and 5 services per device (services are the variables being monitored which can be Cpu, disk space, applications installed, etc.). If just one of those services on one device is malfunctioning, I get a big red x when I look at the customer. Like this: It doesn't bother to notate that 99 of the devices are functioning fine!

n-able

Long time since I've posted...

Ok, this is going to be a page to complain about a certain product known as "N-Central 6.5 SP2" made by a company named N-Able. I usually refer to the product as N-Able so forgive me if there's any confusion.

Anyway...

Gripe #1: When I do the NOC or All Customer View it almost always shows customers with Red X's making it look like most of the customers devices are failing. When in fact it's usually due to a few workstations that are turned off. And that's what I can't understand, how can a monitoring probe be intelligent enough to get performance and capacity metrics on everything from CPU's to DNS to Exchange to Sql Server and yet it doesn't know when a device is just turned off! How the hell am I supposed to show this to a customer when there are red x's everywhere?

Dude Dell - Firefox Snafu

http://partner.dell.com/ is down. Well, I think it's down. Nevermind, It's just not working with firefox.

P.S. I'm going to start posting twitter-length blogs (~140 characters max)

parallelism

In social sciences we say, "Correlation is not causation"

I think the computer science version would be, "Temporal Contiguity does not equal causation"

Let me explain. Many people, myself included, think that because error y happens right after event x that event x must have caused error y. But event x could have caused event t which stopped protocol a from working causing error 1. There, now you got it.

a few of my favorite things

Just spent the last hour playing a protein-folding game. That's right, a computer game about protein-folding. If you wanna play, go here: http://fold.it/portal/adobe_main. It's addictive and it has the bonus of benefiting medical science.

Also, I love Pandora.com. I think I'd rather have it than iTunes. That's saying something.

just when I thought

Just when I thought everything that could be done has been done... Diablo 3 and Starcraft 2 are coming out! Yet another chance to teleport my mind back to the free-gaming adolescent days of yore. Oh diablo and starcraft, how I love thee. The hours spent playing were only a "waste" to the un-enlightened. Please, God, hasten the day that these games are available to play.

http://www.blizzard.com/diablo3
http://www.starcraft2.com

n-able 6.5 training

Just a couple random text strings from N-able training on N-central 6.5

It's funny that I know how Smart Folders work from the Smart Playlist function of iTunes.

The hierarchy so far:
Dashboards contain folders contain devices. Confusing enough for you?

microsoft training by quickstart

This was supposed to be published a while ago:

*The author makes no claims to coherence or correctness, read at your own hazard.

In San Jose right now attending Microsoft Training by Quickstart Intelligence (quickstart.com). I think I'll have to ask the instructor at the break about active directory, agpm's, etc. (because I wouldn't want to admit I don't know things in front of my IT "peers").

Sidenote: I wonder who would win in the competition of "Most Obscure Acronyms" contest: the Military or the IT industry?

In two days, my fellow cohorts and I will be learning the wonders of MDOP (Microsoft Desktop Optimization Pack).

Licensing: A method of selling software that is meant to be so confusing that the client ends up paying any price that is proposed.

Yikes, does anyone know how many applications Microsoft makes?

not artificial intelligence

Just something I thought about last Sol Day (05/11/08):

Instead of AI it should be called NBI where
NBI = Non-Biological Intelligence
and
BI = Biological Intelligence

Furthermore:
NBI(-) = Non-Biological Intelligence less than that of the average biological intelligence
and
NBI(+) = Non-Biological Intelligence greater than that of the average biological intelligence

*Note: There will be a standard error to the above two terms because our measurement of biological intelligence is not very reliable.

Lastly, in reference to when we merge with NBI:
ABI = Augmented Biological Intelligence (it is assumed that the augmentation is by a NBI(-))
CI = Companion Intelligence (it is assumed that the companion intelligence is NBI(+))

As for the issue of whether or not the superior intelligence of the "companion" will make all the decisions for the less intelligent biological aspect of the pairing, well, I'll leave that up to you, dear reader.

information exchange

Idea: (Copylefted by Scott Garrett Daniel, Inc.)

With the advent of information being a real commodity, how will it actually be exchanged? Well, if you take for example, the knowledge of how to solve a specific computer problem, that kind of information is usually esoteric and hard to generalize and apply to other problems. This is why, when I search for solutions in Microsoft Knowledge Base, it often takes extra experience-learned tricks to implement said solution. Now, if there was an artificial intelligence that recorded every one of my solutions to computer problems, that might be valuable information. But only if said AI could also find some way to generalize the solutions and find potential "buyers" of those solutions. Any input on this would be awesome.

it's official

I am now part of MoonKnight Networks, Inc. My official title is "IT Consultant". The sad thing is that I don't think I can serve my old clients now. With the caseload as it is. I suppose I can tell them I'm out of commission for right now, adjusting to this new position. That might work.

So much change. So little time. Where's my nano-machine neural implant to handle all this processing of multiple streams of data?

Oh, I am reading "The Singularity is Near" by Ray Kurzweil. Awesome book. It makes me happy.

ridiculousity

Ok, so I'm checking out www.sbsummit.com on my PC running Windows Vista Home Premium. I open up Internet Explorer 7 and install Flash Player so I can watch the video stream of the webcasts. What I get is an awesome video of a black screen. It doesn't work. Ironically, the first webcast I was going to view was entitled "The Vista Advantage".

So, now, I jump over to my Mac machine running OS X 10.5 Leopard and open up Firefox 2.0.0.12. I go over to www.sbsummit.com and the webcast starts playing immediately.

Imagine that.

yay for opensource

Well, since openoffice.org is opensource, the good people at planamesa inc. have created a Mac OSX native version of it called NeoOffice

Check it out.

merger, affiliation, alliance, partnership

Is a merger still a merger by any other name?

Funny how psychology works in all areas of life, and I thought that piece of paper from UC Berkeley would be worth nothing, Ha!

So, I'm in partnership (the current definition that I like) with Moonknight Networks, based in Oakland, CA. I'm still gonna keep the website and e-mail address of computerhelp2go@gmail.com but I'm just going back to being an independant contractor as I started out. In other words, I'm no longer Computerhelp2go as a company identity, I'm just "Scott Garrett Daniel IT Consultant". Sounds good to me. So, the psychology of all this is that I'm balancing my identity as an Independant IT Contractor and my new identity as an Apprentice to a Seasoned IT-Consultant with 15 years of experience. I'll be making less money for the jobs he passes to me, but I will be gaining valuable experience with small to medium-size business networks. Servers, Routers, and Firewalls Oh my! Maybe now I can finally achieve the dream of establishing telepathic contact with a room full of servers.

The other thing to note right now is that I've been rejected from SJSU and SFSU for the master's in experimental psychology program that I applied to. Yeah, I forgot to tell you guys about that. Now I'm just waiting on NMSU, and if they don't want me then I'm gonna go with the IT Business. Because, you know, I like the independance and I like helping people with computers. And I like computers because even though you have to tell them exactly what to do like children, they don't talk back. :)

first comic

Hey all, I now introduce to you "Super IT Guy":

usb stick access lockup under leopard

Just another bug report for everyone:

While trying to access a spreadsheet file on my 8gb memory stick, Finder and the Spreadsheet program kept locking up while I was trying to open the file. I looked up at the top right corner and it seems that spotlight was indexing the disk. The simplest solution was just to wait for it to index (which only took a few minutes) and then I could access the files. That is all.

macworld expo 2008

Gather round children, for a tale of social anxiety and rampant commercialism...

So, I went to Macworld Expo 2008 today and the best thing about it that I can say is that I survived. There must have been something like 5,000 people there. I did ok at first, talking to a few people at booths and picking up some demo cd's and whatnot. Then I realized how these people at the booths weren't techies like me, they were just salespeople. They said things like "robust" and "intuitive" as though I would actually be impressed.

Additionally, There must have been something like 40 booths all based around customization of you ipod/iphone/iwhatever. Either I didn't realize that Mac users were this crazy or most of these companies are running on profit margins smaller than a quark.

Now, I know that it was just the sheer amount of sensory stimulation that was paralyzing. The people there weren't really the problem, I just can't handle that much "stuff" at one time.

Why is it that every salesperson thinks that their product is going to solve all your problems and completely change your life for the better?

oh, about computer games

I deleted every single trace of computer games from all my computers (except for the little games like solitaire and chess). No more hours wasted playing Civilization 4 or Neverwinter Nights 2. I did this on 1/5/08 so I have 12 days "computer-game-free" if anyone's counting.

good bye windows hello ubuntu

So here's a tip:
When you hibernate windows, don't change the ram. Or more generally, completely shut down your computer whenever changing hardware. Just like any good contractor, I sometimes mess with my own gear so much that I break it. But I suppose that's good for my customers because I learn a lot in the process. Anyway, here's what happened
1. Received a 2gb Pc2-5300 kit for my birthday (DDR2 SoDIMM's for laptops/macminis)
2. Installed the 2gb in the laptop after shutting down, realized there wasn't much performance increase
3. Painstakingly (seriously, I cut my finger) took apart my macmini (*do not try this at home*) and installed the 2gb in it. Put it back together.
4. Put the 1gb RAM back in the laptop, turned it on and it froze at the "Resuming Windows" screen.
5. Tried booting into Ubuntu 7.10 and it worked great

I have all my user data backed up on the windows partition so there's nothing I really need. However, it's good to have windows on the laptop when I'm on-site somewhere and need a working windows computer. So, I guess I could take apart the macmini again and switch the RAM.

That is all for now. See you next time.