martinopia.com

Today I seem to have been in contact with customer service reps from two planets: After one hour of normal working on my PC with internet connection suddenly my Internet connection by Cablecom was broken. As always in situations like that I disconnected both – the cablemodem and my Zyxel router from the power suppy for around one minute and reconnected then.. well for this time that did not help, so I contacted Cablecom on their help line. After a music listening happening of more than 20 minutes the phone was finally picked up by a Cablecom employee who of course wanted to disconnect and reconnect the cablemodem.. Well, after some time he found out that my cablemodem was “not active”.. the reason for that: they sent me a new cablemodem today. And because of some “optimizations in their processes” they had to disactivate my old (and still working) cablemodem in the moment when they sent out the new one. Knowing exactly that so I will have no internet access till the new cablemodem arrives. The sales rep even gave me a tracking number for that parcel – but that tracking number seems to be incorrect or the modem was never sent out – at least the Swiss Post which is supposed to be in charge for delivering the parcel does not know about that number.

After having asked if there is no alternative to get internet access till I get the new modem – e.g. by reactivating the old modem and waiting for one week with activating the new one – I was told that was not possible. Also my sorrows that I’m unable to work without internet connection just did not interest Cablecom at all. They sent out a new cablemodem which is active – so there is no reason for them to act in any further form to help their customers.. hmm.. I was pretty upset, but what should one do.. I needed a solution..

So I went to Swisscom to buy an Internet Unlimited USB card to access the internet by UMTS. Within less then 20 minutes I had a new mobile contract with such a UMTS/GPRS/Edge-card to access the internet anywhere I am for really cheap prices (I couldn’t believe how cheap mobile internet has become in Switzerland). But even better – when I was in the Swisscom shop I asked for my reserved iPhone which they managed that I got my new iPhone today – although I was not on top of the waiting list – but more about that in an upcoming post.

Being back on my PC I wanted to install my new Mobile USB card – which did not work (I got a connection error). So I had a kind of déja-vu regarding not working internet connections on the same day but still contacted the helpline, for this time the one of Swisscom. After less than 2 minutes I was talking to a help agent who could not solve the problem immediately. So another after one more minute of music I was talking to a *real* competent tech supporter who checked all possible options. After he did not recognize the problem at first sight he proposed to check internally and to call back later. Well – to be honest, after my Cablecom experience I was already planning to pass my day drinking Starbucks coffees and using their WLAN… but how wrong I was – less then two hours later I got a call back and my connection was and is working.. That is customer service how it should be..

So let’s see how long I have to work on that Mobile solution because of Cablecoms incompentence..

Der Skype-Dienst ist seit Stunden offline. Wenn man bedenkt, dass Millionen User täglich Skype benutzen und Skype selber auch immer mehr versucht, Business-Anwender zu gewinnen, ist die Kommunikationspolitik geradezu ein Schlag ins Gesicht: die Statusmeldung spricht lapidar von 12-24h, bis man das “Softwareproblem” behoben habe. Kein Hinweis, warum dieser plötzliche Aufall – nichts. Die Gerüchteküchen in den IT-Foren brodeln über und das Vertrauen schwindet von Stunde zu Stunde.

Damit manövriert sich Skype gleich doppelt ins Abseits: man beweist, dass das vielgelobte P2P-Netz eben doch nicht so redundant ist, wie immer angenommen und zeigt auch gleich noch die eigene Unfähigkeit, proaktiv zu kommunizieren. Ich werde mich auf jeden Fall nach Alternativen umsehen.

One just must have seen Bill Gates and Steve Jobs at the D5 conference.

Peter Kurth in einem Salon-Artikel über seine Zeit als Terrorverdächtiger in Wormwood Scrubs, Muslime aus Sicht eines Gefangenen und die britische Art der Terrorbekämpfung (all die ach-so-USA-und-Bush-kritischen Europäer scheinen hier sehr gerne wegzuschauen, hat man doch mit Bush ein so perfektes Feindbild gefunden).

Ein Softwareprojekt, das über die Komplexität einer Hello world-Applikation herausgeht, wird nicht innerhalb des vorgesehenen Zeitplans fertiggestellt werden, geschweige denn auch nur annäherend den ursprünglich geplanten Funktionsumfang enthalten. Die Räder werden mehrfach neu erfunden und die Leute ausserhalb stehen kopfschüttelnd da und fragen sich – warum.

Nun, Antworten, wie dieses Phänomen zu verhindern sein könnte, findet man zu tausenden in jeder Buchhandlung in der Abteilung für Projektmanagement. Doch noch selten habe ich eine so lustvoll geschriebene Darstellung des Phänomens als solches gefunden, wie bei Scott Rosenberg. Kein Wunder, dass man bereits von Rosenberg’s law spricht…

Dreaming in Code: Two Dozen Programmers, Three Years, 4,732 Bugs, and One Quest for Transcendent Software