James Kahn

New job - Vizioncore

Posted by James Kahn on May 21, 2008 in life

Well, I had my last day at Clariti/S Central on Friday.  Finished up with farewell drinks and a BBQ, in true Clariti style.  In a couple of days I start my new job - Australia/NZ Systems Engineer for Vizioncore.  Should be a lot of fun.  Vizioncore have some great products for virtualised environments.

Don’t be surprised if my blog gets Vizioncored all of a sudden!

Any tools for local PC service monitoring?

Posted by James Kahn on May 10, 2008 in tech

I’ve got an HP multifunction printer (Photosmart 3310), with terrible drivers.  It works fine except for one issue - periodically the corresponding services on my PC spin up to 100% CPU, and stay there until I restart the service or reboot my PC.  If this happens when I’m not plugged into power it really eats the battery on my laptop.

Does anyone know of a tool I could use that monitors Windows services and restarts a service if, say, it’s been at 100% CPU for a minute?

Getting Things Done with Outlook

Posted by James Kahn on May 8, 2008 in tech

I’ve recently become a big fan of the Getting Things Done methodology (GTD for short).  Simon Guest has a great writeup on how to implement GTD with Outlook 2007.

People don’t want cheap - they want good

Posted by James Kahn on February 7, 2008 in concepts

Okay - I’ve had this one in the pipeline for some time, and Paul’s comment about me not blogging enough has got me motivated. A bit unpolished, but what the heck.

Being a pre-sales engineer, I have a constant need to justify the solutions I put forward. Customers always want to know what they’re getting for their money - as they should - and are interested in the benefits that the solution will give them. The sales guys question parts of the solution so they can understand it, and the deeply technical propellorheads ask why we don’t just use some scripts. Aside: Don’t even get me started on how many stuffed up IT environments I’ve seen where techies slapped together a few scripts where they should have got the architecture of what they’re doing right in the first place.

Undoubtedly, whoever the conversation is with, it always turns to money. People don’t want to spend more than they have to.

But they don’t want shit. They don’t want something that won’t work. They don’t want cheap. They want something that is good. Something that suits their requirements. This is an almost universal maxim. Even if someone doesn’t realise it, deep down, people want something suitable for their situation.

Let me give you an example. Living on an acreage block, I need to do a fair amount of property maintenance. A few months back I was given a near-new Ryobi Electric chainsaw (worth around $100) which I’ve been using to keep my property from turning into a jungle. It has major issues. The biggest issue is that I’m limited by the length of the power cord. It’s also not very gutsy, and the chain is a huge pain in the ass to tension. It’s impossible to do it without the bar and chain popping off, and a long string of expletives exploding from my mouth.

As I found myself battling a branch from a wattle tree the other weekend, using three extension cords, chainsaw oil started leaking out all over my hand. “This is stupid”, I thought. The chainsaw was cheap - free in this case - but it doesn’t suit my needs. At this stage I’m planning on spending around $750 to replace it with a good STIHL model. The STIHL will cost around seven times what the Ryobi costs - but I will be happier. And safer.

While I used the analogy of a chainsaw, IT Infrastructure is similar. No matter what the requirement is, there will be any number of products, solutions, or workarounds to fit the bill. Each will have different capabilities. The solution that is chosen at the end of the day should be the one that is the best fit for the business - not the cheapest.

Let me leave you with a story.

A few years back I was having a conversation with a friend in New Zealand. Ray owns a successful company that provides project managers as a resource to large corporations in NZ. We were discussing his business over a cup of coffee at Starbucks.

“Ray”, I asked, “how did you get to where you are? How did you build your business?”

“It’s not rocket science,” Ray replied. “My project managers are good, but they aren’t cheap. But people don’t want cheap - they want good“.

Clariti does it again: Citrix Pacific Partner of the Year

Posted by James Kahn on February 5, 2008 in tech

Well, Clariti just seem to keep nailing the Citrix awards.  This year we scooped up Citrix Pacific Partner of the Year at the Citrix Summit.  The third major Citrix award, three years in a row.  Not bad for a Queensland integrator.

Where to buy cheap .com.au domains?

Posted by James Kahn on January 30, 2008 in tech

I’m looking for some help here - where should I buy a .com.au domain?

I usually use GoDaddy for all my domain registrations, as they’re cheap as.  Unfortunately that don’t seem to do .com.au’s.  I’ve checked MelbourneIT, and they’re bloody expensive.

Can anyone recommend a good, cheap registrar for .com.au domains, that preferably include a basic DNS and email forwarding service in their registration fee?

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Switching from Firefox to IE7

Posted by James Kahn on January 9, 2008 in tech

This past weekend I switched away from Firefox, and started using IE7.  And I’m glad I did.

I’ve been using Firefox for years now - since version 1.0.  I actually got switched on to it by my non-techy wife who started using it around version 0.8 after reading about it on a news website.  And it’s been good.  Pages have loaded, links have been clicked, bookmarks have been saved.  Until the last few updates.

For some reason, Firefox started … stopping.  It didn’t crash, or hang, it would just occasionally stop loading pages on all the computers I loaded it on.  Even after stripping all the extensions I was using out of it, it still misbehaved.

So, lo and behold, I switched.  I was told I needed five reasons (thanks Paul) but one is enough for me.

Internet Explorer is okay in its default installation, but it’s more like a puny wimp of a browser.  IE7 needed some ‘roids for real web surfing!  Plus, I’d become far too familiar with some Firefox features and extensions I couldn’t live without.

After a quick round of googling I discovered the holy grail for IE users - IE7Pro.  Despite the poor grammar on the otherwise slick website, IE7Pro is fantastic.  Ad blocking, download manager, spell checking, inline search, and bookmarks synchronisation between PCs (ala FoxMarks for Firefox, my killer feature for Firefox).  I’m hooked.

Try it.

What We Want vs What We Buy

Posted by James Kahn on December 14, 2007 in life

There is an excellent blog post over at The Simple Dollar on what we actually want vs how we spend our money.

I’ve been thinking along these lines a lot recently.  Go read it.

Wet Dogs

Posted by James Kahn on December 13, 2007 in life

Apparently Border Collies are meant to be the smartest dog out there.  Why can’t ours figure out that when it’s raining, they can go in the carport, rather than lay in the mud!  Bloody hell!

SAN Engineer Appreciation Day

Posted by James Kahn on December 4, 2007 in life

After yesterday’s Mike Patton Appreciation Day announcement over at Dan’s blog, I’ve been inspired to announce today as SAN Engineer Appreciation Day.

Today, spare a thought for the often-grumpy, always-cynical SAN Engineers. Especially if you’re a pre-sales engineer trying to drop an HBA to fit a customer’s budget.

They appreciate gifts of Fibre Channel cables and old servers.

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