I know there has been a lot of frustration over the last year as we have been working on zVision, the web platform, and ReEn. The shift we are making takes us from creating products to the creation of a platform.

So far, most have only felt the pain of the transition and have not seen the advantages. I promise you that this transition will be worth the pain and frustration. We are on the cusp of realizing a payout and it will be huge!

A guy who worked at Amazon and is currently at Google recently posted what was intended to be an internal memo on this topic. Everyone should take time to study the attached memo (http://steverant.pen.io) and understand the points that are made.

Here are a couple of threads where people are discussing Stevey’s memo that you may find useful:

• https://plus.google.com/112678702228711889851/posts/eVeouesvaVX
• http://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/l9ehj/steves_google_platform_rant/

I will continue to do everything I can to clearly communicate the amazing direction we are headed.

• zVision puts us at the forefront of the technology industry!
• zVision is the platform we need to carry us for the next 10+ years!
• zVision will give SRS the flexibility and agility to dominate in our chosen market!

You are welcome to send me questions or comments privately. Alternatively, I have cross-posted this to my blog and you are also welcome to publically comment there.

• http://blog.zobie.com

- Nate

Nate Zobrist | VP of Software Architecture
Service Repair Solutions, Inc. — Revolutionizing the Delivery of Service and Repair™

770 East Technology Avenue, Building F | Orem, Utah 84097
Phone: (801) 437-5846 | Fax: (801) 437-5899 | Cell: (801) 788-4789
www.servicerepairsolutions.com

An interesting analogy that was made compares applications to swiss army knives. The analogy is relevant to SRS and provides a great visual depiction of the work we are doing as part of our SaaS and SRSWP initiatives.

Historically our applications were designed as large, monolithic beasts. Like this knife, every feature that could be imagined was rolled into one of our flagship products. This design meant:

• Duplicated effort because there were no shared components between product lines.
• Intense effort required to join the team due to the large, interconnected designs.
• Even small changes were risky and had the potential of destabilizing anentire product.
• Management of each product line required enormous effort to tightly coordinate development and release of new features.

Contrast that complexity with a design where:

• Components are small, independent apps that work together (like Linux tools).
• Each component delivers specific functionality.
• Touch points between components arewell-defined contracts.

The workflow enabled by this component-based architecture is truly liberating.

• Small teams (perhaps even a single-person team) can build on top of the shared platform to quickly create new products.
  • Most products do not need to worry about operational infrastructure, databases, etc.
  • Products can take advantage of shared services to quickly enable powerful features in innovative ways.
  • Products can tap into shared repositories of both customer-generated and catalog data.
• Existing products are simpler to maintain and introducing change is far less risky.
  • A smaller codebase means that the project is much easier to grok.
  • Well-defined contracts that have robust automated tests written against them mean that each component can be released independently with confidence.
• Teams can work more efficiently by choosing technologies and frameworks that are tailored to fit specific needs.
  • Using standards-compliant web services for an API means that apps written in Java, Ruby on Rails or Node.js can access shared services as easily as a legacy, .NET application.

Following a component-based approach will make the creation of new apps a trivial exercise. It will free us to focus on solving interesting problems rather than being bogged down by operational overhead. The quality of our offering will increase as we become much more responsive to customers.

Applying these principles means something different for each of our existing projects and teams. What remains to be done for your team to fully benefit from this component-based design? What new functionality would you like to see exposed by the SRSWP?

Canceling my Lingo account was an absolute nightmare. In the end I spent nearly three hours on the phone before I was finally able to speak to someone who would process the cancellation.

I never spoke to anyone in their Cancellation Department. Honestly, I'm not sure that that department has any employees. In the end it came down to a war of attrition. I had to wait on hold and complain vigorously enough that they finally decided I was serious about wanting to close the account.

Many companies understand that when a customer calls to cancel, they have an opportunity to save that account. After this dreadful experience not only will I refuse to do business with Lingo again, I'll tell everyone I can to avoid them like the plague.

Below is the log that I kept while trying to cancel my account. I've done a little grammatical cleanup from the notes I originally posted during the phone calls.

Several weeks ago I made the decision to close my voip account with Lingo in favor of just using my cell phone. I got a new cell phone for my house and transferred my phone number from Lingo to my cell provider. Now I'm trying to cancel my Lingo service... what a joke. As I started writing this I'd been on hold for exactly one hour.

Friday, December 17th:

• 11:30am - I first called Lingo. I listen to the recorded message and navigate their menu system to talk to Customer Service.
• 11:46am - I waited on hold for 16 minutes before talking to a guy who took my account information and put me back on hold.
• 11:47a - He's going to transfer me to the cancellation department.
• 11:52a - The guy asked for a callback number. The cancellation department is too busy to take my call. From the way that he is talking about it it sounds like the cancellation department is one person who is out to lunch. He said that someone would try to call me back in the next 48 hours. I told him that this was unacceptable because I don't want to continue paying for service that I'm not using. He's going to try again so I go back on hold.
• 12:02p - He still can't transfer me because no one is available to take the call. I ask to speak to a manager and am placed back on hold.
• 12:03p - The manager is too busy to speak to me. I tell guy that I'll hold for the manager.
• 12:06p - I finally get to speak to a supervisor. I express frustration about this situation and ask what she can do to help. She is very nice but absolutely no help at all. She says that there is nothing she can do except continue trying to transfer my call. Because I have no other options, I agree.
• 12:37p - I've been on this call for over an hour now and am still on hold. I should have used a landline for this call. This is chewing through my cell minutes.
• 12:50p - Lingo wins this round. It's easy for me to sit on hold while I'm working at my desk but I have to go to a meeting. I am extremely frustrated!

December 22nd: my second attempt

• 9:09am - Called Lingo back. Went through their menu system and am on hold again.
• 9:20a - got a recorded message saying that they are too busy to take my call and asking me to please call back during normal business hours. According to their website, they've been open for over two hours already today (Mon - Fri: 9AM - 9PM EST)... this is normal business hours!
• 9:21a - I call back and am again placed on hold.
• 9:33a - I got the recorded message again and was disconnected. I called back immediately. I really wish that their hold music had more than just one song being played over and over and over...

Gotta love their "Terms and Conditions":

Cancellations will only be accepted via phone through Lingo’s Account Management Department at the toll-free number listed on the first page of your invoice, and will be effective upon the date that you cancel with a Lingo Account Management Representative. You will be given a cancellation confirmation number by the representative. Service cancellation requests by mail, e-mail, fax, equipment return, or any other form of non-telephonic communication requests will not be accepted.

We only accept cancellations by phone. Also, we don't answer calls to that phone.

• 9:44a - Disconnected again. Called back again. I guess that their system is programmed to hang up on me every 11 minutes.
• 9:55a - Disconnected again. Called back again. I guess that it's more likely that the system hangs up on me after being on hold for 10 minutes. The extra minute is probably just the time it takes me to call and get back in the queue.
• 10:06a - Disconnected again. Called back again. At least I was smart enough to route the calls through Google Voice this time so I'm not using my cell's minutes.
• 10:17a - Disconnected again. Calling back again. I think I'll try connecting to the billing department again (that's who I spoke with last Friday). They still put me on hold for the Cancellations Department but at least I didn't have to keep calling back.
• 10:26a - Spoke to a Customer Support Representative. She verified my information and then put me back on hold. She gave me instructions on how to call back "just in case we're disconnected." What a joke.
• 10:32a - a manager is on the line. She said that since I've been on hold for so long and since I had spoken to a manager on Friday that she would cancel the account for me. On Friday I was told that the manager I spoke with didn't have the authority to cancel an account. I don't understand her logic for finally accepting the cancellation but I really don't care. Just close this account! I asked her for a confirmation number and was put back on hold while she processes the cancellation.
• 10:36a - The manager processed the account and I have just sent me an email with the cancellation confirmation. This process has been an absolute joke!

The moral of this story: Don't signup for service with Lingo. It's not worth it.

DISCLAIMER: I've only tested this on Ubuntu 9.04 (Jaunty) server.

$ sudo aptitude install -y imagemagick
$ sudo aptitude install -y libmagick9-dev
$ sudo gem install rmagick

And you're done! You can verify the installation using this irb command, taken from the RMagick HOWTO:

$ sudo irb -rubygems -r RMagick
irb(main):001:0> puts Magick::Long_version
This is RMagick 2.10.0 ($Date: 2009/06/19 22:07:05 $) Copyright (C) 2009 by Timothy P. Hunter
Built with ImageMagick 6.4.5 2009-06-04 Q16 OpenMP http://www.imagemagick.org
Built for ruby 1.8.7
Web page: http://rmagick.rubyforge.org
Email: rmagick@rubyforge.org
=> nil

[10:40][root@iPhone:~]$ chsh
-bash: chsh: command not found

I next thought to modify /etc/passwd but, according to the file's header, that's not going to help.

[10:41][root@iPhone:~]$ cat /etc/passwd 
#
# 4.3BSD-compatable User Database
#
# Note that this file is not consulted for login.
# It only exisits for compatability with 4.3BSD utilities.
#
# This file is automatically re-written by various system utilities.
# Do not edit this file.  Changes will be lost.
#
nobody:*:-2:-2:Unprivileged User:/var/empty:/usr/bin/false
root:*:0:0:System Administrator:/var/root:/bin/sh
mobile:*:501:501:Mobile User:/var/mobile:/bin/sh
daemon:*:1:1:System Services:/var/root:/usr/bin/false
_securityd:*:64:64:securityd:/var/empty:/usr/bin/false
_mdnsresponder:*:65:65:mDNSResponder:/var/empty:/usr/bin/false
_sshd:*:75:75:sshd Privilege separation:/var/empty:/usr/bin/false
_unknown:*:99:99:Unknown User:/var/empty:/usr/bin/false

Finally I found /etc/master.passwd. I just modified root and mobile to use /bin/bash instead of /bin/sh and on my next login I was using bash!

[10:41][root@iPhone:~]$ cat /etc/master.passwd 
##
# User Database
# 
# This file is the authoritative user database.
##
nobody:*:-2:-2::0:0:Unprivileged User:/var/empty:/usr/bin/false
root:5IS3K.2i/ciLw:0:0::0:0:System Administrator:/var/root:/bin/bash
mobile:NhbBgPU3IOnek:501:501::0:0:Mobile User:/var/mobile:/bin/bash
daemon:*:1:1::0:0:System Services:/var/root:/usr/bin/false
_securityd:*:64:64::0:0:securityd:/var/empty:/usr/bin/false
_mdnsresponder:*:65:65::0:0:mDNSResponder:/var/empty:/usr/bin/false
_sshd:*:75:75::0:0:sshd Privilege separation:/var/empty:/usr/bin/false
_unknown:*:99:99::0:0:Unknown User:/var/empty:/usr/bin/false

As far as I could tell, any apps that were running when I got into this problem state would continue working fine. The OS would never completely freeze but I noticed that my CPU started being monopolized by CrashReporter. I tried killing that process but it would just immediately relaunch and peg the CPU again. I looked inside /Library/Logs/CrashReporter/ and saw that a new crash log was being created about every three seconds. The crash logs were for many different applications but none of the stack traces was useful. I had trouble spotting a pattern to what might trigger the problem.

Once my box was in the bad state I tried to ssh in to see if I could gather any useful information. SSH would prompt me for a password but it always denied access saying that I had entered an invalid password.

The only way out of this state was to restart the machine. When I tried to reboot, OS X would successfully log out but then get stuck on a blue screen. I would see the indeterminate NSProgressIndicator for a few seconds then it would disappear for a few seconds then come back again. I was forced to power cycle the machine.

I finally noticed that when this problem occurred, the first crash log was always for securityd. /Library/Logs/CrashReporter/securityd_2009-03-23-204700_macpro.crash:

Process:         securityd [22]
Path:            /usr/sbin/securityd
Identifier:      securityd
Version:         ??? (???)
Code Type:       X86 (Native)
Parent Process:  launchd [1]
 
Date/Time:       2009-03-23 20:47:00.211 -0600
OS Version:      Mac OS X 10.5.6 (9G55)
Report Version:  6
 
Exception Type:  EXC_BAD_ACCESS (SIGSEGV)
Exception Codes: KERN_INVALID_ADDRESS at 0x0000000001000000
Crashed Thread:  0

This information finally led me to the solution.

The problem was that securityd would crash then any app that needed to authenticate was unable to do so. One newsgroup noted that the problem could be temporarily solved by relaunching the process:

$ launchctl load /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.securityd.plist

After a bit more searching I found a permanent answer in a mailing list archive: Keychain access crashing on SecKeychainFindGenericPassword. The solution was incredibly simple (and completely unintuitive). I had to remove the file /var/db/CodeEquivalenceDatabase and reboot. That's it!

The thread offers more details but basically, "that file [/var/db/CodeEquivalenceDatabase] has gotten corrupted and runs securityd into an endless memory-eating loop that (usually) ends up running your system out of memory and into the ground."

1. Your customers understand DRM and are frustrated because they have to waste time getting around the "protection."
2. Your customers don't understand DRM and are mad because their music doesn't work the way it should.

But as far as I can tell the article is legit. The answers were given by Hugh Griffiths, Head of Mobile at Microsoft UK. In retrospect he probably wishes that he had referred the interviewer to someone in the PR department.

Most surprisingly, Mr. Griffiths makes absolutely no attempt to spin DRM as being beneficial or to try to justify its use. You might want to read the full article, these are just a few things that jumped out at me.

Why has Microsoft gone back to DRM when the vast majority of music services have ditched it?

It's a first step.

Translation: We've always been extremely forthright about our intentions to gain monopoly power over every aspect of your digital life. This plays a small part in that larger initiative.

[Customers] certainly tell us that they like listening to music while they are out and about, on their mobile phones.

Translation: Everyone listens to music on iPods and we're not making any money from that.

What is your message to consumers - why should I come to you instead of Amazon or iTunes? What do you offer that none of your competitors do?

There's a whole bunch of people who are very loyal to MSN on the web...

Translation: Being a monopoly has provided us with a butt-load of customers, most of whom aren't savvy enough to realize that there are options.

The fee for downloading tracks - £1.50 - is relatively high compared to 79p on iTunes and less than that on certain Amazon tracks. Why is that?

We're constantly reviewing our pricing and if we feel this price point is incorrect, we'll look to amend it.

Translation: I just told you, our customers are du-umb! I'm pretty sure that we're going to raise the price to £3.00 after the first couple of weeks. We'll just explain that we need to charge more to cover the cost of... something. Our customers genuinely appreciate the opportunity to pay a premium.

If I buy these songs on your service - and they're locked to my phone - what happens when I upgrade my phone in six months' time?

Well, I think you know the answer to that.

Translation: Yeah, we're screwing our customers. So what? I buy all my music from Amazon so it really doesn't affect me.

Seriously Microsoft? Seriously?

The first thing that one needs to know when joining a startup is to understand how they work... make sure you understand what you are getting into. Here are some things to consider

• startups are not for the faint hearted
• startups are not a "get rich quick" scheme
• startups require sacrifices from everyone including you the candidate (pay/effort/etc)
• if you put your heart & soul and are part of the right team there is good chance you will succeed
• success is not guaranteed, it has to be achieved!
• remember its a journey, so if you are thinking about jumping ship often - dont even bother!
• startups are a small community and if you play dirty the word WILL get around

Taazza newsroom, January 6, 2009

Some time ago I made an important discovery about myself: I love startups. I thrive in these fast paced environments. To me, participating in the design of a new product and creating the first iterations of the software is like a fix to a junkie. Working with new, cutting-edge technologies is exciting to me. It is exhilarating to interact with other intelligent people when we are all passionately fixated on achieving our mutual goal. It's awesome!

All that said, working at a startup company is definitely not for everyone. Be prepared for a few ups and a whole lot of downs. Be prepared to bet against the odds. It's fun to dream about a huge IPO but if that's your sole focus...

I'm not going to deny that a large payout would be great. But in the meantime, I'm content to enjoy the adventure. You should checkout the full article.

I didn't immediately grok git because it is fundamentally different from subversion. Subversion tracks the history of files whereas Git tracks the history of content. That difference may seem minor, but the shift brings a lot of flexibility. You can expect a small learning curve, but don't give up! If git works as well for you as it does for me, you will not want to go back to subversion.

So, what are my favorite things about git?

• Branching: Coming from a CVS/SVN background, I didn't think git's "cheap branching" would matter to me. I am not exaggerating when I say that it has dramatically changed the way I work. Because branching and merging are so easy, I create a new branch for each feature or bug I'm working on. I am never tempted to check in broken code just because I want a checkpoint.
• The index: It is really nice to be able to just check in a portion of the changes in my code rather than having to commit the entire file.
• git stash: If I'm in the middle of some big change and need to fix a small bug, I can hide my outstanding changes, make the fix and restore my changes without a checkin.
• git rebase: Sometimes it is really handy to be able to rewrite history.
• Git is a DVCS: My work isn't crippled when I am not connected to the network. I can check code in and out. I can branch and merge. I have a full history of the repository. Awesome!
• Very flexible workflow: With git I can push/pull to a central server like CVS or SVN. Alternatively, changes can bypass the server and be sent directly between working repositories.
• Git is fast: Neither CVS nor SVN come close to git's speed.

Is git perfect? No. Off the top of my head, here are some things that I would really like to have in git:

• git checkout -i: Sometimes I want to rollback a few changes in a file. I imagine this would work very similarly to 'git add -i'.
• git stash -i: Sometimes I only want to stash some of my changes. This too would work like 'git add -i'.
• Local tags: Local branches are great; local tagging would be too.
• Track empty directories: I understand why this doesn't currently happen, but it can be obnoxious.
• Comments on branches: It is easy to make a lot of branches but unless your branch names are super descriptive (and therefore super long), it is also easy to forget what each of them is for.
• Better/more documentation: In general I am able to find what I'm looking for, but I still don't know what the "fetch-all" in git svn fetch --fetch-all actually does.
• Windows support: Not that I've actually tried it, I've just heard that it doesn't work well.
• GUI options: Most of the time I work in the cli but sometimes a gui is more convienent. I've heard multiple people ask for a tool that would allow them to branch and tag without checking out code. gitk and gitx just don't offer all the flexibility that some other tools do (e.g. WinCVS, SmartSVN, TortoiseSVN, etc.).

Why do you like (or hate) git?