A Day Late

Unfortunately the only “supported” web servers offered by our IT department are servers running windows and IIS. As a result I have to deal with unreliable performance and when we do have a problem its basically impossible to debug. When I place a call to engineering about a problem the answer I always get is: “uhhh…ok, well we’ll reboot the server and see if that fixes it.” Brilliant solution.

Well, anyway the other day I noticed a strange problem. I wrote a script to email me any web site errors that occur. Previously the errors would only be submitted if the person who received the error clicked “submit error report.” I was curious to see how many people don’t bother so I decided to submit the reports automatically. The result, I think people clicked “submit” roughly 10 or 20% of the time.

Anyway, I was looking through the errors and I noticed quite a few created by search engines scanning the site (broken link errors and such). However, I noticed a few errors on an area of the site that supposedly no longer existed. I checked the server and sure enough, the files that were causing the errors no longer existed. Just out of curiosity I pointed a browser at the page and was confused when content was returned. Most of the graphics weren’t visible, since they’d been deleted, but all the text was there. I couldn’t figure out why a file I had deleted months ago was still being served so I checked the directory once again to verify that yes the file was deleted. It was; no where to be found. I checked some of the other files I’d deleted in that folder and they were also still being served up. I figured it was a caching problem but after clearing the IIS cache, clicking “expire content immediately”, neither of which worked I was stumped. So, I decided to create a file with the same name that would redirect to the home page. I refreshed my browser and sure enough it worked. Then I deleted the file just to see if it would still be served up. Strangely enough this time it actually deleted the file and I got a “file not found” error. Strange strange strange.

I went up to Salt Lake last weekend and went to the International Sportsmans Expo in Sandy. I think it’s safe to say I saw more camping, fishing and hunting gear in one place than I’m likely to ever see again. I also saw more mulletts than most people see in a year (so unfortunate). I didn’t buy anything but decided I really want a dog. We watched a dog trainer show how to train a retriever and that was good. While I’m living in my apartment (lease is till November) I think the dog option is out. They allow pets, but only pets under 20 lbs. Plus I doubt I could get away with leaving the animal inside all day while I’m at work. I guess it’s a little more motivation to look at buying a house.

It took Qwest a little over a week to complete my DSL upgrade, but it looks like it’s done. I took a couple screenshots from DSL Reports of the before and after speed tests. If you’d rather not click on the images to see what the results were, here’s a summary:

Before upload speed: 217 kbps
Before download speed: 538 kbps

After upload speed: 846 kbps
After download speed: 1142 kbps

Not a bad increase at all. Esspecially on the upload speed. I noticed it right away. I have a nightly backup script that uploads the data files to an ftp server. After the script completes it sends me an email with a log of the backup process. Previously the email was getting sent about 43 minutes after the script started. After the DSL upgrade it’s getting sent 15 minutes after the script starts, so it’s about 3x as fast (the backup file is about 100 MB). The best thing is, it didn’t cost me a thing!

Before


After

I received a message on my phone the other day indicating AT&T Wireless and Sony Ericsson are replacing my t68i phone with the new Sony Ericsson T226 at “no charge whatsoever” to me. Initially I was excited about this because, one I’ve already been thinking about getting a new phone and two I figured the new phone would be better than the one I currently have.

I couldn’t have been more wrong. AT&T and SE were nice enough to provide a web site to answer questions about the upgrade. The site also includes a comparison between the old phone and the new. I guess they thought their “spin” was good enough to keep people from noticing the new phone isn’t as good as the one it’s replacing. I couldn’t believe it. In nearly every category the t68i beats the T226. It has longer talk time, it operates on more frequencies and most importantly it has bluetooth and will synchronize with a computer address book. Do SE & AT&T think people won’t notice when they can’t connect their “new and better” phone with their computers?

The only categories the T226 is better in is really great things like a better color screen to view sharper images, more screen savers, more games, etc. What the hell? This is a phone right? Soo, why don’t they improve things like battery life, reception, address book memory and such, you know…things that actually make sense for a phone. I mean, it’d be one thing if the phones were actually decent in those categories but I think we can all agree there’s plenty of room for improvement. Do these companies honestly think people go in to a wireless PHONE store to come out with a device that has the “best color screen”, “best games”, “best camera” etc? Anyway, I give AT&T and Sony Ericsson and A+ for missing the mark.

When the pizza delivery guy refers to me as “sir”.