Jason Powell - Church IT and Other Musings

Feet Recognition

I noticed tonight my blog traffic was way up ... typically it means somebody pretty popular has linked to something on my blog.  Hmm, wonder who this time?

Dig into the stats and see lots of hits coming from http://lenovoblogs.com/insidethebox/?p=129

Kewl, a link off the Lenovo blog.  Wonder what that's all about?

Ha, they linked to my past post where I'm standing on my former Thinkpad ... too funny.  Guess it just goes to show you never know where your feet will take you ... har har ;-)

Guess the Date

Wow!  It's been forever since I've offered up any bonus points ... that changes today.

Here's your challenge - guess the date and time that I will swap my max performance summer tires for snow tires on my car.  You get only 1 guess ... make it a good one ... and you have to submit your guess by noon Friday.

Hint (well, sorta): I always wait until I anticipate/hear there will be snow accumulation on the road the next day.  Any accumulation and I literally can't drive my car without changing tires.

What's up for grabs?  1000 Bonus points, your name listed on my blog for the world to see and thus the envy of all your peeps!  You know you want 'em.  Don't pretend you don't.  Consult your nearest weather oracle and submit your guess ASAP!

Current Leader Board:
Marcus Monroe 3000 (2000+1000)
Chris Marsden 1000
Shelley Templin 1000
Mike Utech 1000
Dave Marks 1000
Steve Lavey 500
Darrell Jordan 500

Void where prohibited by law.  Bonus points are bogus and will remain the property of jpowell.blogs.com and may not be used in conjunction with bonus points, bogus or non, from any other website, product, vendor, or individual.  Cash value of bonus points = $0.00  Any attempt to counterfeit bonus points is punishable by death or mostly death to be determined by casting lots during the next harvest moon.  Odds of wining are 1 chance in some large numerical term.

Studer Consoles are Live

Last night our Tech Arts guys made the final cut over to the new Studer boards ... this was one of those "no turning back" cut overs.  They were smiling once audio was actually pumping through the new system :-)

Good thing since they had to use the console for our junior high service and band rehersals tonight!  Doh!

Now the mad dash to get everything really tweaked and ready for our midweek service Thursday night and then the weekend.  Adam and team - our prayers are with you guys :-)

Help Tim with his new book

Our XO, Tim Stevens, is writting a new book and is asking for your input ... go here to help him out.

Oh, and mention that Jason sent ya ... if enough of you help I might get some free Taco Bell out of Tim :-)

How To NOT Communicate With Your Customers

Here's a great example of how NOT to communicate with your customers.  I recently received the following email from a Webroot Enterprise sales rep ...

From: Christian XXXXX [mailto:CXXXXX@webroot.com]
Sent: Tuesday, October 16, 2007 12:31 PM
To: Jason Powell
Subject: Webroot Software renewal

You are receiving this email because our records indicate that your subscription to Spy Sweeper Enterprise has either expired or is set to expire in the coming months.  To renew your license please contact either me or your preferred reseller for pricing and renewal information.

Due to the timing of this email, if you have already renewed your license and are receiving this email in error, please disregard this message.  As well, if I have already been in contact with you, please disregard.  If on the other hand you have not yet renewed and are unsure of the expiration date of your license, you can check in the admin console under:

Dashboard/license status/

Thank you and I look forward to hearing from you.

Sincerely, 

________________________________________________

Chris XXXXXX - Enterprise Sales

Webroot Software, Inc. - www.webroot.com

2560 55th Street

Boulder, CO 80301

cXXXXXX@webroot.com

And here's my email reply back ...

This is a joke right??

You wrote:

1) “your subscription to Spy Sweeper has expired or is set to expire” … So which is it? Your customer management solution doesn’t give you that info? Or did you just not take the time to check? Either is not a good reason.

2) “if you have already renewed your license and are receiving this email in error, please disregard this message” … Hello! I should NOT be getting this email from you in the first place if I already renewed … you should have done your homework already if I have or not.

3) “if I have already been in contact with you, please disregard” … Again, why would you think it’s wise to send this email to anyone that you’ve already been in contact with!?

4) If you are “unsure of the expiration date of your license, you can check in the admin console” … I shouldn’t be unsure. You should be telling me when my contract expires NOT making me go hunt for it!!

Everything about this email smacks of poor customer service and screams “we don’t care about our customers or value their time”. Is this how Webroot communicates with all its customers?

Now, based on your email you apparently don’t know or care if our contract “has expired or is expiring” … but let me assure you that I will NOT be renewing our contract with Webroot.

I’d encourage you to forward my reply up your management chain at Webroot. Perhaps someone can keep this type of communications blunder for happening again. And finally thanks for giving me a great blog post on the topic of how not to communicate with your customers.

Respectfully miffed,

Jason

Jason Powell
IT Director
Granger Community Church
630 E. University Drive
Granger, IN 46530

Part of what made me even more riled up is that I got a very similar email from Webroot last year ... I wasn't as blunt, but I let that dude know too that the email was ridiculous.  Of course I then proceeded to extend our contract another year ... but not this time 'round.  Goodbye Webroot.

And now in contrast I give you the following similar email I received recently ...

 

From: dws@dameware.com [mailto:dws@dameware.com]
Sent: Tuesday, November 06, 2007 12:13 PM
To: Jason Powell
Subject: SPECIAL ALERT: DameWare Mini Remote Control maintenance agreement is due to expire

MAINTENANCE RENEWAL NOTICE

NOTICE DATE: 11/6/2007

REGISTRATION #: XXXXXXXXXXXX

ATTENTION: DameWare Development Customer.

DameWare Mini Remote Control Maintenance Agreement for registration # XXXXXXXXXXXX is due to expire on Thursday, January 03, 2008.

Granger Community Church
Jason Powell
630 East University Drive
Granger IN 46530

To ensure that you continue to receive free product updates and upgrades, we encourage you to renew your maintenance agreement today! By renewing the maintenance agreement you will be saving over the regular upgrade price. Be sure and have your registration number available when contacting your sales representative.

For additional details please contact our Sales department by replying to this email.

To calculate your maintenance agreement renewal cost, please follow the instructions below.

Click on this link to open the Software Maintenance Renewal section of our online store.
https://www.dameware.com/sales/store/Default.aspx#3

Insert your registration number into the Registration field and click "Buy Now" button to view the maintenance renewal cost.

If you wish to renew the maintenance agreement online with a credit card, you may proceed to the "Checkout" section of our online store.

Please note: You are not obligated to purchase the maintenance agreement in the online store. Simply remove the item from your shopping cart after you have seen the calculated price for renewing the maintenance agreement.

You may also purchase with a company Purchase Order by faxing your PO with the Registration Number and calculated renewal price to 985-871-7510.

If you have any questions, please contact our sales team at sales@dameware.com

Sincerely,

Sales Team
DameWare Development, LLC.

That's obviously an automated email reminder, BUT it gave me the info I needed and didn't leave me feeling devalued.

This is also a great reminder for us in IT.  Our end users are our customers.  When communicating with our customers let's be sure to value their time and give them them just the info/details they need.

People VS Policies

David Drinnon has a great post on people vs. policies and IT.  This is required reading for my team ... so you might want to check it out as well :-)

Here's a small excerpt:

Some IT professionals I know are bent towards liability and as a result they rule with a heavy hand. They are rules driven, black and white, and often misunderstand the consequences of their own rules on the mission of the organization. There is often a disconnect between senior leadership and IT staff. However, as IT professionals, we want to empower our pastors and staff. We exist to support them in being efficient and effective in the ministry of the church. So how do we maintain the balance???  continue reading

Ahh yes, the classic IT struggles.  Many of you already know my bent towards wanting to find a way to give everyone local admin rights without creating a support nightmare ... well, Monday I made a big decision in that regards that could come back to bite me down the road ... more on that in a future post ;-)

 

Big Cheap Raid Options Part III

Good grief it's taken forever to get around to posting our final solution to this thread I started way back in the spring ... post #1, and post #2 ...

So here's what we put together way back in June when we revamped our backup methods to include Disk-to-Disk before spinning backups off to tape.

I decided this time I didn't want to go completely ghetto-tastic like this, but I also didn't want to spend much on just D2D storage space.

Final solution is as follows:

Norco DS-1240 12 bay SATA Storage Array = $681.21 from mwave.com
12 Seagate 750GB Hard Drives = $2855.88 from Ciber.com
3Ware 9650SE-12ML 12 port SATA raid card = $714 from Ciber.com
4 (got one spare) meter long SFF8087 to SFF8470 cables (hard to find!) = $223 from Technical Cable Concepts

For a grand TOTAL of = $4,474.09 for ~8TB of RAID5 storage!  Not bad!

Of course when Ed went to install the RAID card we encountered our first snag.  The card is PCIe ... none of our servers had PCIe slots!  DOH!!  Since we had volunteers coming that evening and backups were part of the agenda, I headed off to Best Buy just down the street.  My objective - find the cheapest PC with a PCIe slot.  I landed a nice Gateway desktop for $484.95 ... Ed slapped Windows Server 2003 on it and then our CommVault Galaxy Express backup software.  Our volunteers had a bit of a struggle getting an old SCSI card to work in the Gateway, but after some firmware updates they were successful and got our tape autoloader connected to the box.

Yup, our backup solution consists of a cheap-o Gateway desktop hooked up to a sweet 22 tape IBM autoloader and the Norco storage chassis  The best part?  It all works way better than I expected ... so good that it's still on my radar as an option for our 50TB project.

Where Megachurches Are Concentrated

Interesting NY Times map showing the locations/concentrations of the 1,300 megachurches in the U.S.

Granger is easy to find ... we are the dot as far north and mid Indiana as you can get ... right on the IN/MI border.

According to the article, a megachurch is a church with an average weekly attendance of 2000+ ... huh, somehow this definition has eluded me until now.  So what do you call those churches like Willow, Saddleback, etc?  mucho-megachurches?

Now to find out who the dots nearest Granger are ...

Slow Internet ...

On the heals of the speed test I just ran at home ... here's the results from my parents home. Yes, it really is that slow. So slow that the upload test wigs out every time ... 351 ... shaaa right.

More Pipe At Home

Tonight, for no particular reason, I decided to run a speed test on my comcast connection since I haven't checked since spring.

Not only is my download faster than before but my upload is now at 1.5Mbps ... that's T1 upload speed.  Thanks for the boost comcast :-)

speedtest courtesy of www.speakeasy.net/speedtest