I got an email this morning from some old colleagues who had spotted that my 3rd xbox had died. Now Gavin, is a Playstation boy through and through and thats cool. Johan, wanted to know when I’m gonna leave xbox and move to PS3.

The answers are simple really:

1) Its too expensive
2) Only 1 game has caught my eye (Ninja Gaiden Sigma)
3) There are too many Xbox360 exclusives that I want

I would love a playstation 3 if someone gave it to me or if I won one. Otherwise not a chance will I fork out R6000 on a console (US$836)

This picture descibes my feeling perfectly: http://priesmeyer.com/photos/test/picture9.aspx

Blogged with Flock

Since my little problem with Circle I cannot make any decent posts concerning Ruby and Ruby on rails so I’m going to continue this month with random little posts about general stuff.

I was speaking to Andre a few months back when he mentioned WCF and I never really looked into it. Recently Rudi Grobler posted a few great links to getting started with WCF. Check out his post here : http://dotnet.org.za/rudi/archive/2007/08/07/using-windows-communication-foundation-wcf.aspx

Blogged with Flock

I suppose as some people would say, “Its on now!”

Two weeks ago I encountered a problem with my Webhost, namely www.circle.co.za, when I try to post a long entry on my blog, lets say an entry in excess of 2000 characters its won’t post my entry. My WordPress installation gives me a 403 Forbidden error message. Now I even found links to solutions for this and forwarded to David Venter from Circle and to this point, I have received absolutely no response.

I also left a message on their website for them and again, no answer whatsoever. I don’t mind if its against their company policy to make those changes but at least tell me that! If I don’t have at least a response by the end of this week they can officially kiss my business goodbye and I will go out of my way to let everyone know how terrible their service is.

I will be emailing a copy of this to them as soon as its published just to make sure they get my message…

Thats right kids! My 3rd xbox360 has died this morning and I now fully believe that this is the work of Oblivion. Everything ran fine until I decided to play oblivion again, from there on it was hell. Call MS Support though and spoke to a dude named Nikita and it was all sorted within 5minutes. Literally! Within 5 minutes I had my exchange reference number and everything!

I will not let Xbox number 4 be introduced to Oblivion, in fact, I think I’ll trade it in today!

Blogged with Flock

This month I’m suppose to be covering the Ruby and Ruby on Rails languages. I wrote quite a decent length post but I cannot seem to get it posted. I did a little bit of research to check what the problem was. I found the problem and sent David Venter of Circle (my host) an email requesting that he look into it. Now, almost a week later I have still had no feedback. I even left a message on their website.

I am a fully paid up client and I get NO service, not even an email explaining why its taken so long to get this resolved. I am seriously p*ssed about this!

Blogged with Flock

Check out http://www.colorschemer.com/online.html for finding a HEX color from a RGB value and vice versa

Blogged with Flock

After my post a while back on The Image of IT in a company I didn’t expect much response, since trying to improve the image of a department that is initially looked down on is a very difficult task. Imagine my surprise when two colleagues of mine came in this morning describing an extract from the latest SysAid newsletter where someone is having the same problem out company is having. They asked if it wasn’t me since the writer was a Steven McD. I had a look at the newsletter and true as nuts IT WAS ME!

Now I don’t mind a company using what I’ve written but at least give me some credit and let me know its gonna be published All of us aspiring bloggers love the recognition and I’m still really glad that they used my content in their newsletter and linked to the post.

In the newsletter they did provide some pointers which I’m going to share here:

• Use the end user FAQ feature available in SysAid to answer recurring questions. We advise organizing the different questions according to categories, to make it easier for the end-user to find the relevant information. You can even direct your end users to check your FAQ page before they fill in their request form.
• Configure SysAid to send an automatic message to an end user upon opening a service request, that will include information about where the request is routed to and to whom. (We have done this)
• Direct SysAid to update the end user via mail about any change in the status of their service request. (We have done this)
• You can add to your service request form the different criteria you use when you prioritize service requests, so an end user sending a request will be able to estimate where in the queue of service requests her/his question will be placed. For instance, you can indicate that sever malfunctions in the hardware or software of machines is in a higher priority, while difficulties of users with forms or web applications will be addressed later. If you are currently involved in a major project, such as installing a new program on all the network, you can also mention this in the service request from, apologizing in advance for the longer time it will take you to attend requests.
• In general, it is a good thing to remember to keep an open communication channel with your end-users, and let them see what work is done in the IT department. In the near future we plan to add a possibility of live chat to SysAid, so simple requests could be attended in this way as well.

So out of the 5 requests there are 3 new things we can try and implement. So thanks to the people at SysAid for the mention in the newsletter and for the ideas, next time, just drop a comment on the post and let me know its being used Thanks!

Blogged with Flock

Tags: SysAid

So for the first month I’ve seriously started blogging and such, I have managed to win with Community Credit. For those of you do not know what Community Credit is, check out the link on the right hand side of my home page.

I won the 5th place prize which is the USB Mini Fridge. Now I’m just waiting for it to arrive which will probably take a few weeks.

Blogged with Flock