T-Mobile Support sucks

"You cant."

All agents are currently busy. Please stand by.
You have been connected to Matthew G.
Matthew G: Sorry about the wait, for your reference my Representative Id is xx-xxxxx, how is your day going?
Wahid Saleemi: Hi Matt, doing well
Wahid Saleemi: My internet is slow, I apologize in advance. Thanks for your patience.
Currently experiencing network delays, one moment please....
Currently experiencing network delays, one moment please....
Network connection re-established.
Matthew G: Let me look through things further.
Wahid Saleemi: I have never been able to use my AMEX to pay my bill for months now. The "Pay Bill" site doesn't function correctly
Matthew G: Hmm that would be a big issue.
Wahid Saleemi: Pretty sure its not just me, tried from several computers
Matthew G: Have you tried submitting the payment with any number filled in the CVV field?
Wahid Saleemi: i put in the first 3 digits
Wahid Saleemi: and it tells me that its an incorrect CVV
Wahid Saleemi: also tried the last 3.
Matthew G: My system shows that it should allow you to enter 4 digits, I can submit a help desk ticket to our support team to look into your online account, but I don't have an estimate for when that will be resolved.
Wahid Saleemi: OK, could you please submit a ticket.
Wahid Saleemi: And out of curiousity, you're able to enter 4 digits?
Matthew G: When i access it, it advised that the payemnt system is not working currently to try again later. So I can't recreate it on my side.
Wahid Saleemi: Roger, I also never had much luck with the billing portion. Always shows my old bill. Anyway, I'd appreciate a ticket number on the CVV. I really need to use my AMEX.
Matthew G: I am sorry I am not able to provide a ticket number
Wahid Saleemi: How can I check on the progress of this issue?
Matthew G: You can't.
Wahid Saleemi: I suppose thats the first problem that needs to be resolved. Please pass on to your boss that you should have a ticketing system to track issues. I will have no record that I brought up this complaint.
Wahid Saleemi: And therefore, it won't get fixed..
Matthew G: Your welcome havea great day.

Dual-boot drama

Oh the adventures!

I was traveling recently and decided to take my travel laptop (due), its lighter. When I finally got to my room and settled in I fired up my laptop.

To my demise.. I mean surprise, it had Ubuntu Linux (6.04) installed. I rebooted to make sure GRUB (the Linux Bootloader) didn't have "Windows XP" as an option. It didn't. Oh well, I like Ubuntu, in fact I love it.

I would've been perfectly fine with that if it weren't for another one of the associates here telling me all about using my Blackberry as a modem. I was thinking "heck yeah! I want to try that."

I learned that Linux and Blackberrys don't work well (damn you RIM!). To make a long story short, in order to use your phone as a modem you NEED to have Blackberry Desktop Manager installed. I looked for alternatives but I couldn't find any. So, I thought, well, WINE should be able to run it right?

I got online and downloaded it and just ran the executable under WINE. Things were going well! It started to install, in fact the install completed. It even created a shortcut on my Ubuntu desktop. Next step, run it and connect my Blackberry. That didn't go so well. For some reason, once installed, it would not load up. It tried but it just didn't work.

So then, I was thinking, well I need to install Windows now. All I had was my backup ISO image of Windows. Unfortunately Windows doesn't do network installs, installs off a USB or anything but CD (and floppy I think). That was a show stopper. I tried to find a CD to burn the ISO image on to but I had no luck with that.

Then, I got another fancy idea. How about I just run the Blackberry software in Windows virtualized? I had the ISO, I just needed Xen, VirtualBox, or Virtual PC (why did I think Microsoft made a linux version of Virtual PC??). I chose VirtualBox, it went smooth, I got Windows installed, got Blackberry Desktop Manager installed and running... until one more thing.

The USB interface has to pass through the virtual desktop to Windows. It sort of worked after I made some changes to devsubfs.inf but not really. So then, I started doing some research. It turns out that several people have been able to get the mass storage part to work (so they can transfer contacts, pictures, other media) but not the modem part.

I was sad.

I was carrying my laptop bag around and had some folders in my hand and decided to just consolidate. I opened the bag and placed the folders in a thin compartment when I noticed the manual for the laptop and the original CD's!! What a dope, I didn't even realize to look there. Great! I thought, now I could install Windows and all would be fine.

I got back to my room and was so anxious that I just started installing Windows. When I had installed Ubuntu originally, I created 3 partitions for it but left 15GB of unallocated space. I tried to have Windows use it but it complained that it could not create a 4th partition. Darn! Maybe Linux could. I rebooted and used Gparted to create the partition and just in case, I also formatted for FAT32 (NTFS was not an option). I tried the Windows install again and it saw the partition with no problem. The install went really well and I was inside Windows.

Now, the problem is that I need to get at my Linux partition and boot that, primarily. I should have taken this into account BEFORE! The NTLDR (NT Boot Loader) can boot Linux, sort of, it redirects to GRUB or LILO (both Linux boot loaders). Its simple actually, you just take the first 512 bytes of the boot drive BEFORE installing Windows and save that to a text file. Later, you can edit boot.ini and point it to your text file. Nice. I didn't do that. I now have Windows and no way to boot Linux. Crap.

I have no Linux boot CDs, no rescue disks, no floppy, no.. oh wait: I can boot Linux from my thumb drive. I thought if I just downloaded a rescue disk for a USB thumb drive I could probably get back in and setup the dual boot! As I researched this, it seems its not as easy to do this in Windows as you'd expect. I found a lot of instructions about using a thumb drive to boot, but there were mostly for Linux.

I found a project called GRUB4DOS and WINGRUB. Its a boot loader based on GNU GRUB but it can be used with the Windows Boot Loader (NTLDR). I don't think its made for the purpose I intended to use it for but I was desperate.

I tried it anyway. I copied the file "grldr" to the root of my C: drive and edited the boot.ini file by adding a line: C:\grldr="Start GRUB"
I saved the file and continued with my research. After some time, I got frustrated, shut down my computer and went to sleep. The next day, I loaded my computer to continue researching this and try to get it to work. As I booted I saw that I had "Start GRUB" as an option. I selected it thinking "Whats the worst that could happen?" It immediately brought up my Linux GRUB screen, I was impressed! I selected Ubuntu and it loaded with no problems. Just to double-check, I rebooted and selected Windows. All worked fine. What a crazy adventure!

So I guess the takeaway from this post, besides the usual (research stuff, know what you're doing before you start, always have backups, etc!) is that the GRUB4WINDOWS project is actually very useful and I hope development continues on it.

Apple in enterprise architecture

I ran across this blog post today while surfing Digg called "Is your company ready for the Apple invasion?"

This is an interesting topic that I think does not get a lot of attention. I think Apple has a lot of potential here but there needs to be a huge upfront investment. If you're going to ask companies to invest upfront, you have to start with yourself.

I've worked in mostly Microsoft/Cisco shops and it works really well. Microsoft has an array of product suites to address almost any need. More often than not, using a Microsoft product, rather than a better or cheaper alternative actually costs less (TCO). I think Microsoft has done a great job of addressing TCO especially in enterprise environments.

Apple would need to invest a lot to even begin to compete, but the stage is set. Apple enjoys excellent marketing, like it did in the 1980's. I remember reading about why most schools and college campuses used Apple computers: they were easy to use and learn and competitively priced. Seeing Apple computers in places of learning was very common place and expected. Not so much today. Part of the reason for this is that schools had to grow out of Apple products in favor of "industry standard" PC's. If you use a Microsoft system at work, you'll want that system at home and so schools should also be teaching that (in general).

Apple needs to invest in certifications like Microsoft and Cisco. There should be a Apple Macintosh Certified Associate (AMCA) or something similar as the basic certification. From there, more advanced certificates for different technologies could be offered. AXCA for the Xserve platform? This allows organizations to hire technicians that are familiar with Apple products. Right now, there's really no way to tell how good your Apple skills are.

Apple also needs to invest in a good user identity platform (like Active Directory) and email services (like Exchange). Finally, system management is too important for admins. As stated in the blog post comments above, admins need a way to set security policies and controls that are easy and that work! Apple's Remote Desktop 3 is the closest tool to Microsofts SMS and can probably manage a campus full of Macs. I'd love to see it in action.

Actually, all the same goes for any Linux platform. The problem for Linux though is trying to get the community to rally behind a few products (one would be better but Linux enthusiasts try to preserve choice) to address these needs.

The advantage for Apple is that it can set standards on its own technology and it doesn't have to create all those products itself. They can be contracted out or Apple could provide API's or similar technologies to 3rd party vendors who already specialize in similar products for Microsoft.

One example of this is a company called Shavlik which provides patch management solutions for Windows. Although Microsoft already provides WSUS for free and SMS for more advanced patching, I found many enterprises still use Shavlik or similar 3rd-party tools. Why not allow Shavlik to create their products for Apple Macintosh and Apple server products?

It doesn't seem like these things would be hard to do. The question is if Apple cares enough to do it. Is the demand really there?

Reasons to upgrade to 64-bit

Here's a good article on why you should upgrade to 64-bit Windows 2008:
10 Reasons Why You Want your SharePoint Server to be on Windows 2008

The biggest reason for me personally is that MOSS 2007 is the last version of SharePoint that will run on 32-bit hardware. That's according to this Microsoft White Paper.

Argh! Unknown Error in SharePoint

My front page of my new portal won't come up. I deleted the site collection and tried to recreate it, here's what I got (see image). That sucks!!!

OK, so everyone knows by now but everyone else is still blogging about it so here goes: SharePoint Team released SharePoint Administration Tool Kit. Yay!

Easier SharePoint Workflows

This is just a repost of this blog (link) about custom workflow activities that I found really useful.

Here are just some of the things that are accomplished with this:

Send Email with HTTP File attachment - Allows sending emails with attachments retrieved using a web request

Send Email with List Item attachments - Allows sending list item attachments as files attached to an email

Start Another Workflow - Starts another workflow associated with a list item

Lookup user info - allows to lookup properties in site's user information list for a given login

During my work in Afghanistan for CSTC-A, one of my biggest selling points to them for upgrading to MOSS 2007 was workflows. I really wish there were more workflows packaged but we ended up having to spend a lot of time creating them from scratch. It was time consuming because we were still dealing with post-upgrade things like training for end users. This CodePlex project is really a great tool that every SharePoint Architect/Engineer should keep handy.

SharePoint Policies

One of my colleagues (and friends - hi Brett!) reminded me of something that I think isn't written about too much. Its one of those things that everyone knows is needed but there's a lack of information, samples and best practices - a void thats yet unfilled.

He emailed me asking my opinion on the size of SharePoint Site Collections in MOSS. I echoed the sentiments of Bill Baer who's blog I read a lot. In summary, 15GB is a good limit. Personally, I know the user base that Brett was talking about and 15GB is actually too much. Yes, we did move completely away from traditional file servers but at the same time, SharePoint is not a storage dump. The information should be kept relevant, updated and unneeded documents trashed or archived some other way for historical tracking.

But the bigger question is how to define policies such as these and how to enforce them. Its really a non-SharePoint business decision. Many organizations have an "Acceptable Use Policy" that governs the use and abuse of their systems in general. I think with any Content Management System there needs to be specific policies. These policies would cover file size limits, type of documents stored and other technical limitations. It should also cover non-technical policies such as a blogging policy, classification of documents, use of MySites, etc.

I was researching this recently and could not find any such template, I guess I'll need to make my own. Usually organizations do have these policies, but they're unwritten, unclear and scattered everywhere. When it comes time to enforce, its hard to be objective without a comprehensive written policy.

Finally, I think such a policy would reinforce the business' IT growth plan. It allows you to say, "Despite these limits we've imposed we'll soon need new hardware."

SharePoint Survey Branching

I got an email from one of my friends who was telling me about some limitation in SharePoint, specifically with surveys. He ended up creating a InfoPath form but it didn't seem to be the best way.
The problem was that he needed some questions to be answered but some of the questions needed to solicit more information. For example: "Do you have any pets?" (Yes/No) and a follow up "If yes, please select the type of pet from this drop down."

The InfoPath form did get him his information but there's a better way. This can be solved using SharePoint's built-in survey. I would guess this would be an option while creating the survey questions but its not. First, create the survey with all the questions. To create branching, you go to the Site Settings and select Survey Settings and click on the question you want to branch.

You'll see the "Branching Logic" heading there, simply select which question each response will branch to.

I also found a non-traditional use for this. Some of the survey I've created were lengthy and all the questions would appear on a single page. I used Branching Logic to break up the pages, it works well.

SharePoint Training for end users (finally!)

I just saw this on the Microsoft site, Office SharePoint Server 2007 Training. Previously, I had the SharePoint Learning Kit but that didn't work out. I was never able to get it to work right, so it wasn't a usable resource for my end users. Hopefully this one will work just fine.

In my 2003 portal server that I maintained, the online training for end users was an integral part of my "New users class." Its sometimes difficult for people to retain knowledge from a class when they're new to it. So, I would let them know about the online training. After the upgrade though, that went away. I spent a lot of time creating my own training materials in PowerPoint :(

I might install this on my virtual server, it has bigger problems right now though. The main site won't come up :)

SharePoint Offline Reader

While perusing a SharePoint blog, I saw an ad for a SharePoint offline reader. Its called Colligo Reader. First off, its free! That's always a good thing. It allows you to sync a SharePoint site to your local machine so you can browse the documents at a later time. Obviously this is very useful for travelers but another reason may be for speed. Some sites can be painstakingly slow, sync a site while you're doing something else and voila! You'll have access to all the sites documents and lists.