Alex Scoble's IT Notes - An Information Technology Blog

Splunk + Puppet = L.O.V.E.

I'd just like to say that Splunk + Puppet = Pure Awesomeness

Akamai and similar CDNs are a big security headache

Akamai and other Content Delivery Networks (CDNs) are a perfect example of engineers solving a problem (fast delivery of content/highly available content/content with robust anti-denial of service capabilities) only to cause serious security headaches for IT networking professionals.

These CDNs take the control completely out of the content users' hands on where they can go to get the content. For instance, you cannot ensure that you will only get the content from US based servers. You cannot control access to CDNs using IP based firewall rules.

In other words, CDNs completely break the paradigm of statefull packet inspection (SPI). I guess this is why Palo Alto Networks says that the days of SPI only firewalls are over.

Blocking spammer phone numbers on Sprint

Lately I've gotten two spam text messages on my phone. Wasn't sure how to block them on Sprint, bit found out how.

You text the word block followed by the number you want to block without punctuation to 9999, so for instance:

Block 6052990190

Sorry if someone real ever owns that number, but it's being used by a spammer now.

Cassie's new Brother XR1300 sewing machine is absolutely the bomb.

It's exactly what Cassie needs to get into sewing. Has no problems powering through thick fabric.

Winds bobbins with absolutely perfect precision and is really easy to set up. Practically threads the needle for you.

Just amazing how far the engineering of sewing machines has progressed.

Thirty six months ago today, I married the love of my life and my best friend. It hasn't always been easy, but we've stuck together through high times and low (but it's been mostly good). I love you Cassie Scoble and I'm a very lucky man, indeed, to have you in my life. Happy anniversary!

Brother XR1300 sewing machine dimensions

Brother's website shows incorrect info for the size of the XR1300 sewing machine and you'll need accurate info if you want to know what sewing cabinets this sewing machine will fit in to.

The measurements are rounded up to the nearest inch to be safe. They do not include the add on quilting table that comes with the unit.

16" wide x 13" high x 8" deep

How to make a customer for life like A Blooming Hill Vineyard

Last night I posted about a recent bad experience we had had with a local business, so I thought it only fitting to talk about a good one we recently had.

About a month ago Cassie signed us up to be wine club members at A Blooming Hill Vineyard in Forest Grove, Oregon. She liked their wines and at $35 for three wines three times a year and no membership fee, it's hard to beat. Plus the people who own the Vineyard (Holly and Jim) are really nice and easy going people who do it mostly because they enjoy it.

They also have two really sweet dogs, Gemini and Trouble, that wander the property greeting guests, being lazy and getting plenty of "rubbins". These two boys are a nice plus to the place, in my opinion.

Along with the winery, the owners also have a bunch of horses and a Christmas tree farm. The tree farm is all noble firs and they sell all their trees for a flat price of $15 for wine club members or $30 for non-members.

I've been wanting to get a tree from a farm for the last 5 years (ever since we started getting a tree every year) and this was a hard to beat opportunity. We went out there, got a ride to the farm on a flatbed trailer pulled by tractor driven by Jim, picked out our tree (as you can see here it's a pretty nice one), and Jim cut and trimmed it for us on the spot. We got it back to our car where I got a lesson on knot tying from Jim on what's called a farmer's knot (he had to show me so we could properly tie the tree to the top of the car) while Cassie went and paid.

If you are skimming this post looking for the real meat of the story, here's where things get interesting. As I mentioned before, they were charging wine club members $15 for a tree. Holly momentarily forgot about this and charged Cassie $20 for the tree. Considering that even at $20 the tree was half what it would have cost at most other tree farms, Cassie wasn't going to quibble and we didn't really mind it that much.

We got the tree home, into a stand and decorated it. Meanwhile, Holly wrote a newsletter for wine club members talking about the events they currently have and sent it out to us. Cassie read it and immediately noticed that Holly apologized in the newsletter (which as I said was sent to all of their wine club members) for overcharging a member $5 for a tree and that we should contact her for a refund.

It's one thing for Holly to realize and remember this. It's another thing entirely for her to acknowledge it in such a public fashion. Needless to say that it more than made up for any trouble the deal had caused and showed real integrity, which, quite frankly, the business world could use more of.

Because of this, we will now be wine club members of A Blooming Hill Vineyard for as long as they are in business and they are much deserving of any praise they get.

As for the $5, we told them to give it to their favorite charity.

By the way, did I mention how cute their dogs are? You can see them here. If you are ever in Forest Grove, I highly recommend giving the winery and the dogs a visit.

How to lose a customer the Aloha Sew and Vac way

It's one of the worst kept secrets of our household that Cassie's getting a new sewing machine for Christmas (yes, it's what she really wants). She's getting a Brother XR-1300 from Costco which seems like a decent enough machine and should certainly be a step up from the 20 year old White machine that she's using.

Because of this, Cassie wants to take some classes and perhaps buy a sewing cabinet/table that she can use to store the machine and sew on as needed. Given that, we thought the best place to start was our local neighborhood sewing shop, Aloha Sew and Vac in Beaverton, Oregon and boy were we wrong.

We go in and the salesperson running things seemed nice enough at first until Cassie said she just got a new machine and wanted lessons. The person asked what we got and I said that we got a Brother XR-1300 from Costco. The salesperson got a frown on her face and said (I'm paraphrasing) oh, if you buy a machine from us, lessons are free, otherwise we charge $75 an hour and you are wasting your time with a box store machine as they are all plastic mechanicals when you take them apart and are just junk.

Now, keep in mind a couple of things. Cassie's moving up from a machine that is all metal internals AND IS not up to par, that she's just getting started, doesn't know how far she wants to take this as a hobby, that as I said, the Brother is a big step up from what she currently has and that the shop we were in was a Brother dealer.

I know Costco. Costco doesn't generally sell junk. They offer good quality items at excellent prices and they back them up with one of the best return policies in the business, period. We've returned outdoor Christmas lights over a year after purchasing them when they failed as well as two air mattresses. So I know something about how they handle returns.

The woman at this sewing store tried to tell me that Cassie would try out the cheaper Costco machine, get fed up with it and put it in the closet after a year or two. Not happening. It either works out and lasts longer than that or it gets returned to Costco for a refund. As far as I know and am concerned, there's zero risk to buying the Brother from Costco.

Yes, I'm sure that you generally get what you pay for and all that, but this person made it sound like there were huge differences in quality between the Brother machines that she sells and what Costco sells. As far as I can tell, what you pay for in sewing machines are features (stitches, patterns, ability to self thread, auto cut, knee presser foot control) and capabilities (how fast it can stitch, how large of a section of cloth it can embroider if it can embroider at all), and so on. You pay a lot for large multicolor LCD screens and other such features that have nothing to do with build quality.

So what's the problem here? Instead of getting to know the machine that we bought and really what we are looking for, she insults the machine that we got (and Costco to boot). If she had been listening, she would know that we are in the market for an entry level machine that can do interesting things. We aren't yet ready to spend $1000+ for something. Yet that's exactly what she started pushing us towards. I kid you not, at one point she points to a machine and tells us that the unit is normally $2800 but is on sale for $1400 and it's a fantastic machine at that price. Great, so we come in looking for a Honda Fit and this person starts selling us a Porsche 911. And don't even get me started on the fact that there cabinets START at $1400.

It didn't feel like this person was interested in listening to what our needs were or the fact that she couldn't really fulfill them. She apparently wants to lead people through the world of sewing as if they are empty vessels ready to be filled with her wisdom. And she was snooty about the whole thing to boot.

Tell me, how many successful snooty salespeople do you know? 

This store is literally within walkin distance of our house and we will never set foot in there again because we don't appreciate being treated like poor peasants who don't know better, but will be shown the light.

Try listening to your customers and if you don't have anything to offer to them, give them a reason to come back when they are ready for what you do have to offer.

I'm sure that this store does well with empty vessels who don't know better and have a ton of money to spend on sewing equipment. For the rest of us, we'll have to get our stuff from Costco and Amazon and our advice from the internet.

Moral of the story? Don't insult the intelligence of prospective customers, listen to their needs and provide them with an experience that fulfills those needs in a way that satisfies the customer and not your notions of what is right or wrong as a sales person.

Dec 7, 2012

If you are using your Apple TV for party entertainment, make sure you connect to it the night before and check to see if it needs updates...it takes forever for the Apple TV to update.

I'm fully on board with markdown now. Especially that I've found Pandocs http://johnmacfarlane.net/pandoc/README.html which can be used to convert from markdown to html, Word docx, pdf and any of a dozen other formats. Can also convert from a bunch of formats to markdown or to other formats.

Very useful tool.

Just make sure that your text/markdown docs are saved to UTF-8 before trying to convert them with Pandocs or it will error out with "hGetContents: invalid argument (invalid byte sequence)".