Chris Meller

I’ve spent the past two days or so managing my email migration from DreamHost to Google Apps for Domains.

Over the weekend, DreamHost had some scheduled maintenance. Not only were their main page, panel, and all webmail down for an extended period, but they were moving the cluster I’m hosted on… for the second time. This is soon after a typo killed their entire network by firewalling out the entirety of the internet.

Of course this downtime would have to come as soon as I’m ready to send one of the half dozen emails I’ll actually send this year. All in all, it was the straw that broke the camel’s back. I think DreamHost offers good service, for the price they charge, but sometimes ‘good’ just isn’t ‘good’ enough.

I moved my blog to SliceHost previously, and email was the last link in the chain. While I’ll still use them for massive bandwidth and storage, there’s no chance I’ll be putting anything mission critical on their network again - it’s just not worth it.

So I was recently linked to Paul Krugman’s opinion piece from the NYTimes entitled Prostates and Prejudices and I just can’t ignore it… I mean, you guys actually pay this man to put out hypocritical crap like this? Wow… I need to go to work for the NYTimes.

The third paragraph is where we really start to hit Rudy Giuliani hard:

Let’s start with the facts: Mr. Giuliani’s claim is wrong on multiple levels - bogus numbers wrapped in an invalid comparison embedded in a smear.

So a politician didn’t get his facts right or took something out of context to further his own point? Well, that’s not exactly news, but alright, let’s hear what you’ve got to say…

Mr. Giuliani got his numbers from a recent article in City Journal, a publication of the conservative Manhattan Institute. The author gave no source for his numbers on five-year survival rates - the probability that someone diagnosed with prostate cancer would still be alive five years after the diagnosis. And they’re just wrong.

Wrong you say? Ok, I can believe that. I mean, who’s ever heard of this City Journal and why would we believe a conservative Manhattan Institute anyway? Carry on…

You see, the actual survival rate in Britain is 74.4 percent. That still looks a bit lower than the U.S. rate, but the difference turns out to be mainly a statistical illusion. The details are technical, but the bottom line is that a man’s chance of dying from prostate cancer is about the same in Britain as it is in America.

Wa… Wait a minute. So you’re saying the survival rate in England is actually 74.4% but that it’s actually the same as the claimed 82% survival rate in the United States? I’m not sure my high school Algebra teacher would agree with you on that one, Mr. Krugman.

Oh, by the way, where did you get your claim of 74.4%? Forget to cite a source, did we? And how exactly does 74.4% end up equaling 82%? Oh, right, just take your word for it…

So that’s bogus numbers¹? Check. Invalid comparison²? Check. Smear campaign against Giuliani³? Check.

Hey, I hate the man just as much as the 9/11 next 9/11 guy⁴, but come on. If you’re going to call the pot black, at least make sure you’re not the kettle first.

1. Unless you can cite me a more reliable source than the City Journal. ↩
2. Unless in the universe in which the NYTimes resides 74.4 does in fact equal 82. ↩
3. Unless somehow this is supposed to be flattering to your former El Presidente. ↩
4. 9/11… ↩

How To Win Friends and Make Developers Happy

If you’re managing developers (dare I say IT personnel in general), and you’re doing any of these wrong, it’s time for a serious change.

Now, how do I subtly hint to my boss that he’s doing most of these wrong? Oh yeah… quit.

(via Dzone here)

For the last two weeks, I’ve been working to design a one-off enrollment system¹ for a client, and it seems like it’s just been one road-block after another.

First, their data was incorrect. And then again. And for good measure, a third time. To be fair, I don’t know if it was their fault or ours the second and third time (mis-communication somewhere about what translations we were making), but the first time certainly was².

Then, there’s the fact that when I notified the person in charge of coordinating this data exchange with the client, they apparently “missed” the email… And so three days later I’m asking them where the hell my answers are, and they have no clue what I’m talking about.

Next, apparently no one really knows what data the client wants to get back from us for entry into their system. On some things, they claim to want all coverages. For others, just changes. Then there’s this one piece of information they don’t seem to have thought about nor want at all…

Finally, 4 days before the system is to go live and we’ll have thousands of people from across the country calling in to enroll using it, as I’m working my ass off to correct a few bugs and get final testing in, I notice that the spreadsheet I originally got says that the client is expecting data back for a coverage we’re not supposed to be enrolling them.

Uhh, what? How can we give them back data on something we’re not enrolling? Back to the project manager we go… “Oh, right… That spreadsheet is old, I’ll see if I can find a new version for you.”

WTF? 4 days from live and I’m the one that has to realize no one bothered to give the programmer the real specs? If these were freelance clients, I’d never work for them again… Alas, they’re internal company employees and I’m not their manager…

1. We do health insurance claims-related stuff. ↩
2. They duplicated first_name in the last_name field of the data file they sent us. ↩

How do you convince “management” that purchasing a physical piece of software for 20 people, which will need to be updated manually (no automated deployment possibilities available) every quarter, is a bad idea and that they should instead purchase the web-based edition that is managed and updated by the manufacturer?

Technical and man-power aspects aside, add to that mix the fact that one of the newer executives used this particular piece of software at their previous job and is insistent that the web-based version (which provides identical features, simply in a different format) will not be acceptable. The arch enemies of the IT industry: company politics and user stubbornness and pride.