http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5ilil_Nrb6dbT0EVgeYLZcee4lndw

Great news, google buying one of my favorite social services.  I hope this means great things in the future for vark.com!

I’m planning to give an “Intro to Microsoft SQL Server” class for a friend who is interested in learning SQL server for work.  I’d be covering basic administration via SSMS and SQL, commonly used SQL like INSERT/UPDATE/DELETE with JOINS, and maybe some basic performance tuning/evaluation/troubleshooting via DMVs, execution plans, logs, etc.  It might take about 2-3 hours, and would only be useful for those with little to no experience.  Would anyone be interested in coming along?  It would be nice to show a few people while he’s learning, and would provide more people for asking questions, talking about confusing parts of my lesson, etc.

If you’re interested, or know someone who is, just email me or have them contact me directly, or leave a comment here.  We haven’t set a date, yet, but it will probably be next weekend.

I recently had my Kindle screen crap out.  I called in prepared to get read the riot act and have a bunch of irritating paperwork and possibly charges thrown at me.

I was really, REALLY wrong.

I spent about 10 seconds on hold, got a friendly rep that apologized and told me how it must be frustrating to not have my Kindle working.  They cross shipped me a brand new unit, no questions asked, and asked me politely to send the old one back.  I had my Kindle at 10am the next day.

That kind of customer service is amazing, and Amazon is a model for all other companies to follow.

Anyone else have any awesome Amazon customer service stories?

Please, go and fill this out, he needs to know that we know!!!

 http://mccain.senate.gov/public/home/contact/webformActionIAV2.cfm

Dear Senator McCain,

In my opinion, your net neutrality bill is very, very harmful to US citizens, and very very beneficial to the rich, and corporations.

My name is William Harris, and I am a United States citizen from Nevada. I’m contacting you about your recently proposed bill that would block the FCC from enforcing “net neutrality.” I want you to know that I disagree with your bill, because the concept of net neutrality will actually help to defend my 1st amendment rights as an American.

What net neutrality does is guarantee to me that I will never be silenced or slowed down by people or companies who have more money than me.  I am tired of people with more money than me claiming that because they have more money than I do, they are more worthy.  They are not more worthy.

Bandwidth costs consistently go down year after year, and ISPs do not need to charge more from the site owners, if they want more money they can raise their monthly fees.  This is a burden that we will all share as a people should they decide it is necessary in order to protect the Internet and content delivery in general.  Thus far, it has not been necessary, because bandwidth prices are not increasing!

I was puzzled by your opposition to something as American as free speech as you have always been someone who seems to support such things, but I was not at all surprised by a report I read on America Online’s service “Daily Finance,” which states:

“McCain, who introduced the bill to undermine the new rules, has received some $894,379 in contributions from AT&T, Verizon, Comcast and other broadband interests over his career, many of those dollars directed to his 2008 presidential campaign, according to the Sunlight Foundation.”

I hope you will rescind your bill and put American citizens before your own private interests. It is far past the time that politicians accept campaign contributions and later proceed to do terrible things as a means to repay favors to those donors.  This is one of those terrible things, and because of a neutral Internet I am able to know what you’re doing.  Given your bill, ISPs could easily “manage” this dissenting opinion and we as a people would have no recourse.  This is UNACCEPTABLE for them to hold this power.

Sincerely,

William Harris

An open letter to Digsby, regarding the recent installation of malware on everyone’s PC!!!

See this lifehacker article for more information.

Dear Digsby,

I have always been OK with companies installing profitable software on the side as long as I can turn it off.  Digsby has always been cool about being up front with what would be installed, and giving me an option to go without it.

The latest “research” feature installed without an option was a bit of a break of trust, but I’m glad that you’re “fixing” the issue for future installs.

Digsby is a good client, but make sure that when you’re installing things on our PCs that we are aware of the nature of the install, and give us an easy way to disable the feature. If you can consistently conform to this, we will always be happy.  Power users will rarely get trapped by the software, and normal people probably don’t care…but you have to make sure to appease the power users because we’re vocal and tireless, and we are the influential group that will dictate what the ‘normals’ are using by our recommendations.  I have probably introduced 50-100 people to digsby in the past, but would not hesitate to call or email each one and tell them to drop it if I felt digsby weren’t being honest about their revenue generating programs.

I hope digsby can learn from this to know that as long as everything is up front and in the open, people will be happy.  Digsby has been installing “crapware” since forever, but notice no one complained until it came in stealthily and under a slightly misleading and hard to find menu item!

Good luck in the future, you’ve got a great client, I hope that you continue on the path you’ve forged so far, and I look forward to using digsby and recommending it to my friends, coworkers, clients, and family for many years to come.