One of the industry buzzwords that needs to go to the grave is the user “experience.”

Don’t quote me here, but I recall this buzzword being developed by Microsoft as part of the marketing campaign behind Windows XP.  XP was supposed to be “experience” or “expert” or “Xtra stuPid marketing,” I’m not sure.  Don’t get me wrong, I’m not an XP hater.  But I’m definitely a hater of the term “experience.”

The user interface is just that, an interface.  The term “experience” has its roots in the passive voice.  Somewhere in there you’ll find that the user “experience” for computing generally sucks.  It’s just a nicer way of saying “our user interface sucks, but it provides an experience.”

Whatever.  Drop it.  Look, other computing companies are just as guilty on this one (I’m looking at you RIM and Apple), but the fact is – everything great on the Internet is ruined by salespeople and marketers, period.

This is just one example of many.

Bookmark to:

Hide Sites

Try this one in powershell on your hub transport server:

get-messagetrackinglog -start “mm/dd/yyyy hh:mm:ss” -end “mm/dd/yyyy hh:mm:ss” -eventid “send” -resultsize 9999999 | measure-object

This will pull stats for messages that were “sent”.  To pull the number of messages received, change the “eventid” parameter to “receive.”

Bookmark to:

Hide Sites

Paul Thurrott posted a nice attaboy to the MSN folks today for releasing a wallpaper product that will check Microsoft for updates to your operating system.

Get ready folks, I’m about to show my ass again.

Are you KIDDING ME?  Paul Thurrott has obviously never had to manage a network beyond his own house.  Microsoft commonly releases updates through Windows Update and if you’re a Windows admin worth your salt, you’ll know that it’s wise to wait on many of these updates until you’re sure they’re not going to fry your systems.  Indeed, many enterprises flat out block Windows Update and only deploy them when they’re ready to support any mishaps.

Any of you who think Microsoft cannot commit mishaps in an operating system update is just a fracking idiot.  Period.  Don’t even bother talking to me.

So now these MSN goons have released software that lets you bypass your enterprise security measures on Windows Update?  THANKS ASSHOLES.  If you’re running an enterprise network, please take a look at this software package that your users are RUSHING OUT THERE TO DOWNLOAD before they gank up your network.

This is basically WALLPAPER that can update your OS?  Great.  Another background app.  Another systray app.  Another useless waste of time and resources from a company that should be spending its time fixing Exchange 2007 instead of releasing useless garbage that grants enterprise users free license to bypass their IT department.

THANKS AGAIN, MICROSOFT!

You have so jumped the shark.

Related articles by Zemanta

• Microsoft Patch Day March 2009 (ghacks.net)
• Installers and updates crashing in Windows 7? Here’s your fix. (downloadsquad.com)
• IE8 Blocker Toolkit Available Today! (blogs.msdn.com)

Bookmark to:

Hide Sites

Let’s face it.  Documentation sucks.

I’ve traveled around this country and seen many an IT environment.  All of them have one thing in common: the documentation about the environment sucks.  It’s in such a sad state that should anything happen to anything, nothing would be recoverable.

We’re guilty of it in our own environment.  I’m not going to sit here and disparage everyone else’s IT environment without realizing that it’s a problem where I work too.  I’ve spent a lot of time wondering why this documentation is in such a sad state and come to a few conclusions.  I suspect these conclusions aren’t a surprise to anyone.

• The staff is overworked.  They have no time to sit in your meetings, listen to the managers and customers rant and rave about how nothing works right (funny how that not-listening thing travels both ways), or get all of their assigned work done to begin with.
• Documentation is boring.  There is nothing glamorous about writing a Word document about how you configured a paging file.
• After writing the documentation, maintaining it is a real bear, especially in an age when the corporation that owns 90% of your data center farts a new patch daily.  What?  Tuesdays?  Oh man, that’s just for OS patches.  Try running some enterprise software sometime.  (NOTE TO SELF: Bitch about Exchange 2007 more, because that obviously hasn’t sunk in yet).
• Too many fires to put out.  Remember that not-listening-is-a-two-way-street crack?  Yeah well, since management didn’t listen about your needs, you’re working 70 hours this week to fix all the crap that broke.  Oh yeah, don’t forget to document what you did to fix it.  (Now it’s 90 hours).

I could go on, but I think you get the idea.

So, now that I’ve listed reasons why you do not have the documentation, let’s talk about what happens when you do not sit near the data center and have questions about what’s what out there.

• Need to find out what port a server is hooked up to?  Scan through your endless amounts of PSTs on the file share (haha!) to discover what port was assigned two years ago.  Fail.  Look for the document.  Oh!  Wait.  Fail that too.  No docs.  Ask someone who is sitting in the data center.  How the hell should they know?  They’re busy and don’t have time to help you.  Oh, by the way, that cable isn’t labeled anyway.  Look it up in the docs, dumbass.  Yeah, what docs?  Time to get in the car and drive over to look for yourself, cursing all the way that you have no documentation.
• Need switch zoning information for that fabric?  See above.  At least you can login to the switch remotely… until Java fails.  Drive over.
• Time to build a server.  Time to put it into production.  What do you mean it’s got a bug we fixed two years ago?  Oh, shit.  We forgot that NoServerTimeZoneComp registry key.  It’s always the Mac users that make your Windows admin lives hell, right?  No, buddy, it’s because you didn’t follow the documentation.  Uhh, what documentation?

I think I’ve stated my case.  Now then.  I want software that can overcome the burden of writing this documentation and I want it available in damn near real time.  So, here goes.

I want data center management software that:

• …is object-oriented like C.  I want to be able to instantiate a new instance of a Dell 2950 and define its properties – like what rack it’ll be in and what U numbers it occupies.
• …can perform discovery on that new Dell 2950 and figure out the rest of the properties for the object (a la service tag number, CPU, RAM, maintenance left on contract, etc.)
• …can allow me to connect the network to a specific switch port by dragging and dropping a line like Visio.
• …can allow me to connect it to a storage area network like the network connection above.
• …can produce a 3-dimensional rack drawing (the rack itself should be just another object, since we’re object-oriented and the server objects are just properties) that details every network connection, fibre hookup and power connection.
• …can, upon sensing a failure from SCOM 2007 or NetIQ, label each server and cable that has failed to look for common properties in an anomaly (because it’s always the network’s fault).
• …is able to produce a server installation document by right-clicking on it and selecting “current state documentation.”  I want it in PDF format so I don’t have to open fracking Microsoft Word ever, ever, ever again.  I want it to be able to spot every piece of software that is loaded on the server.  I want it to be able to tell me every patch and registry tweak that has been applied to that server since I racked it and installed the operating system.
• …is able to alert me when servers are about to run out of maintenance.
• …is visual enough that the customers can use a dashboard of sorts to view some of the same properties and elements that I need to see.

I think you see the challenge here.

Now I ask you…

…why doesn’t this software exist?

Bookmark to:

Hide Sites

So, I don’t mean to continue to rail on Vista like I did about a year ago, but something absolutely ridiculous happened to me today.

I’ve been doing some hard drive recovery for my dad’s old NEC Windows 98 system. (I had to do some recovery on another system as well, but that one didn’t go so well).

So I finally get the hard drive extracted via the handy dandy Newer Technology Universal USB 2.0 Hard Drive Adapter… which took about 5 hours to copy a little under 4 gigabytes. This is after I had to research why “Program Files” and “Windows” would not copy… only to discover that User Account Control prevents *any* copying or manipulation of *any* Program Files or Windows directory on *any* media. Instead of doing the copy, it would just stop without warning or dialog. Okie, whatever.

Anyway, so I get the 4 gigabytes extracted and onto the desktop. Now to burn it. I slip a dual-layer DVD into the drive and drag the folder to the drive location. It proceeds to do what seems to be another copy process. Only this time it says it’s going to take another damn 5 hours. For WHAT? To move the same goddamn files from my Desktop to a temp folder so you can burn it? Give me a fucking break.

So, I go away and finish watching Iron Man. When I come back, that 5 hour counter has now moved up to 1 and a half DAYS. Are you KIDDING me? Just to move files from my Desktop to a temporary location to burn to a disk (which is a stupid endeavor anyway)?

Screw that. I reboot into OS X, copy the files off my Vista64 partition and burn it to a DVD disk in minutes.

Really, Microsoft. What should have taken a mere few hours has literally taken me all day.

Fail. In a big way. Not just did it fail with the UAC issues on two directories I’m trying to rescue, it fails trying to even rescue data onto a DVD disk.

I’m so irritated with it, I’m surprised if that partition will even remain on my system.

Related articles by Zemanta

• Microsoft forcing the switch from XP to Vista
• Kinder, gentler account control in Windows 7

Bookmark to:

Hide Sites