When is an L key not an L key?
L key not an L key, originally uploaded by james_mk_green.
When is an 'L' key not an 'L' key?
I had a speaker on a shelf. I pulled the cable accidently, it fells and landed on my Macbook Pro, causing superficial damage to the L key. Well over a year later Victoria mentioned I should really get it fixed.
After seeing positive reviews of The Bookyard I on Thursday ordered an L key - made easier as they accept PayPal. Saturday it came in the post.
Notice the (now) obvious ommission. I didn't actually realise you could buy an L key minus the numeric... Correct one now on order, have emailed shop to check for refund possibilities.
Update: Refund agreed.
My First Graze Box
Graze provide lunches via the Royal Mail. Google them.
Well it arrived well on time, that's the first hurdle crossed.
Pitted green olives in a citrus marinade - can't say I'm used to olives nor the marinade, the combination of which proved a strong taste. Ate all, pretty sure I'll vote it down however.
Little Lichtenstein - gorgeous
Wasapea - Mustardy, which I'm not too fond it. Still sitting on my desk.
Apple strudel - 2 of my 5 a day, only reason I ate it.
The nutrutional sheet is a nice addition - lets you know you're eating good things. Hopefully.
Graze tell me to post this to my blog, Twitter & Facebook - it's a link that entitles you to a free box yourself provided you're not already a Graze customer, and if you do I get £1 off a box myself. What I don't know is how long that link will remain valid for.
CRMs, Issue Tracking, SCM, Oh What a Mess
We have assigned our most recent member of technical staff the task of evaluating the CRMs available with a view to implementing the software, replacing our current "solution".
I say solution, it's more a collection of individual software components that really were not designed to talk to each other. Collaboration is a fashionable term in these days of the social web - it's a pity these software components don't collaborate by themselves.
Our CRM, Act, incurs relatively high licensing fees (for a small business) and can only be accessed by a Windows client (a major problem). There appears to be no way of exporting the data for use elsewhere. Our issue tracker, Mantis, manages change requests for our software & support calls for individual customers (a natural reference to our customer accounts). Resolving issues in Mantis often involves code changes committed to Subversion. Releasing new versions of our software requires documentation within our Mediawiki installation.
On top of that, we have home brew software that periodically checks the "health" of our customer accounts, maintaining issues in Mantis where problems occur and persist.
As you can see (and I've summarised) we have a number of components which individually are pretty good at their job but collectively don't actually talk to each other. Mantis, for instance, has a patch we created to support account numbers & corresponding company names. We shouldn't need to patch it though.
So we need a "solution". My boss is experimenting with Jira from Atlassian, which is now more appealing given their $10 licensing strategy for small businesses. There is a plugin to connect Jira with SugarCRM or Salesforce.com ($995 at time of writing).
I spent some time on the Atlassian web site today, learning about the company (larger than I had expected) and their products. With this story in mind, it seems unfortunate they don't have a CRM package that binds everything together...
Hello world!
A gentle introduction appears to be warranted. My name is James Green, I was born in 1978 and currently live in Cambridgeshire in the United Kingdom.
My career is heavily focused on the rather wide area that is technology, perhaps hence this blog. To pay the bills I work for Soft Option Technologies Ltd on their Mjog platform, providing text (and more recently, voice) message reminders to people about their appointments.
Away from the office I enjoy good food (no, I'm not obese at all), cinema, and I'm a keen aquarist (that means I keep fish, tropical ones more specifically) having a 4x2x2 foot tank in my lounge. I also enjoy photography.
More recently (since late January 2010) I've begun to run to get fit. That's a subject associated with some pain at present...
Even more recently, I became engaged to Victoria. We have a date set in 2011 for the wedding.
Recent Posts
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Recent Comments
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- Anderson on ASUS AI Recovery Exception Error Solved
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Pages
- @mojavelinux correct. Eclipse supports it but not Netbeans. Most annoying.
- Maven on windows downloading dependencies from nexus. Stalls repeatedly at cmd prompt and from Netbeans. #sucks
- @tsohost we switched to magrathea due to reliability issues with gradwell. Have had no complaints since and are cheaper.
- @mairin bbc broadcasts not paid for by state. License fee is very different.
- @tsohost gradwell, I assume?
- Why won't @BT_UK let me paste a complicated new password into their account reset screen? Must type in a simpler one instead. #insecure
- Amazing how fast new dell tool-less rack mounts go in compared to old types needing to be measured and screwed on.
- 1100 lines in a php class, 11 static, 24 public and 0 private/protected methods. Argh! Where's @unclebobmartin when you need him...
- @simonbrown @palmerj3 @jitterted software is like a road. Travel along it for the most reliable current documentation. A map is a quick ref.
- @simonbrown @palmerj3 @jitterted I think you mean the code mustn't be the *only* documentation..?
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