TECH: MICROSOFT activation … one more reason why I’m going to Linux

Tuesday, August 8, 2006

My old desktop has always been balky with the wireless networking. I stop and start the zero wireless configuration or restart the wap and it usually works. This time it’s not. AND, somehow — by doing nothing — I have triggered the dreaded Microsoft activation! Arghh. I can’t activate cause I can’t get the wireless working. I gave up my dial up inet account besides the phone line in the room ain’t working either. (I’m a mess!)

SO I may be going to linux sooner rather than later!

Leave a Comment » | Technology | Permalink
Posted by reinkefj

TECH: Yahoo adds a search control

Tuesday, August 8, 2006

Offer specific searches on your web site. (This wasn’t what I thought when I read their write up?) But, I did one for Jasper Jottings and it seems to work. Now what’s the difference between this and site:www.jasperjottings.com I don’t know. Aggh, so much to learn and grok!

Leave a Comment » | Technology | Permalink
Posted by reinkefj

TECH: “LINKEDIN” … a good tool … but there are some process issues

Tuesday, August 8, 2006

Imagine my chagrin when I thought that I nailed a bug in LinkedIn, but was wrong!

My vampire process detected a “silent” change. Someone had shifted up a position. Immediately I was on the hunt for the “missing” record. I visually compared my two lists. And found the “lost” one.

Ahh hah! I had proof of them losing a contact’s record. I complained to LinkedIn support, and notified my counterpart.

A return email from the contact, told me he had nuked me to “eliminate my messages to him”.

How embarrassing!

Now, if he had been amenable to some question, the I would have like to ask him:

(a) What do you expect to get out of LinkedIn if you don’t want to have a conversation?

(b) How does nuking it prevent me from emailing you? Not like I am going to forget your email address. IF you had responded “buzz off”, I certainly would have honored your request. If I wasn’t on top of my game, you’d still be getting my email.

(c) I sent you exactly one personally addressed individual message. Politely, offering some ideas and extending an invite to engage in a networking conversation. And that is “too much” email. What are your expectation in networking?

Now, I am still undecided as to the value of LinkedIn. All though I did sign up for an upgraded plan, it has yet to show benefits. But, I’m hard headed enough to keep trying. I know those benefits are in there somewhere.

I did take away some lessons.

Lesson #1: Investigate the entire list to confirm that there is more than one defect. If I had done that, I’d have been more suspicious if I found every thing else was right. I jumped to a conclusion.

Lesson #2: Try to extract what people’s expectations are up front. Perhaps this fellow thinks that LinkedIn is like the yellow pages.

Lesson #3: LinkedIn’s removal process is flawed. (a) It’s a manual request. (b) It’s “silent”. They mess with my data and I don’t know about it. (c) They have a bug since it didn’t take it out of the search result set that showed him still in my contacts.

Hmmm, jury’s still out.

1 Comment | Technology | Permalink
Posted by reinkefj