Fanatical Support Creates Fanatical Customers

The past few months have been somewhat of a whirlwind at work. The person who was handling IT and server issues is no longer here so much of that duty has fallen to me. While I have some basic knowledge of how things work, I'm a much better programmer than server admin. Also, we starting publishing stuff to the cloud - The Rackspace Cloud. Then we began moving our clients mail services off of their servers and started using Mail Trust and all this while migrating every domain off of an old server to a newer server. All I have to say is thank goodness for Rackspace and their fanatical support. In learning how to best manage our servers, I've learned to rely on Rackspace and their expertise, rather than attempting to teach myself the necessary skills. Plus, they are always doing their best to handle requests for things they are not even required to do. Then when the cloud came there were many unknowns for us, but the benefits were to great to pass up. Once again, Rackspace - having bought the Mosso cloud - has made the transition fairly easy. As for email, our clients were very worried at first - and rightly so. Email is the communication pipeline of many businesses. Now our clients are singing the praises of a much better email system and Rackspace makes it much easier to support. Finally, in regards to server migration. Well, server migration sucks anyway because there is so much time involved but moving SSL certificates and Unique IPs was a breeze ( for me anyway ) thanks to Rackspace. In fact, the migration was finished ahead of schedule.

Rackspace and their fanatical support reminds me of a book I read once - Raving Fans by Ken Blanchard and Sheldon Bowles. There fanatical support makes them worth every penny we spend with them.

Cloud Computing

Perversion of a classic?

Tonight I decided to watch a movie I hadn't seen in a while, The Musketeer. This is the movie my wife and I were watching when we chose D'Artagnan as the name of our first child. Having such a fondness for my french heritage, I loved the name. Unfortunately, I had only seen D'Artagnan as portrayed in The Musketeer, The Man in The Iron Mask and Disney's version starring Charlie Sheen, Keifer Sutherland, Oliver Platt, Chris O'Donnel and a host of other big names. Since then I have also seen a cartoon made in Australia based on the novel and a year ago I finally started reading the books.

Reading the books, quickly made the movies a disappointment. They each take so much liberty with the story that it isn't the same story at all. In fact, the one that keeps closest to the original is the Australian cartoon version that is barely 30 minutes long.

Who can blame the movie companies though? The Three Musketeers is a long book with enough sub plots to make 3 or more full length movies easily. The second book in the D'Artagnan romances doesn't even start until 20 years after the first ends so there probably aren't plans for a sequel. Finally, if they kept precisely to the book(s), people of today would not understand the culture of gentlemanly honor - something that makes D'Artagnan and company ( especially Athos ) much more interesting. In fact, I would say it defines their characters and the time period.

So, when I first started watching The Musketeer I quickly became annoyed. It just wasn't as good now that I had read the book. Especially since "The Musketeer" is the least similar to the actual story in the book. So I started to think about why a movie could still be about The 3 Musketeers. As I thought through the different version, I noticed something. The major concepts, if not plot points, are there but just modernized and presented in a differing fashion.

For instance, The Disney version portrays the bonding brotherhood between D'Artagnan and the 3 Musketeers quite well. The Man in the Iron Mask shows how so much has changed since the Musketeers were young and yet as they come together much of their youthful vigor is returned. The Musketeer... well at least that movie has Planchet in it ( sort of ) and Cardinal Richelieu isn't pure evil. And of course, it was marketed as The 3 Musketeers like you've never seen them before.

So in much the same way as most people call facial tissue the brand name of Kleenex, any movie with D'Artagnan ( and possibly Porthos, Aramis and Athos ) is somehow The Three Musketeers. The names, locales and even the story may change but it all goes into the same cultural mythos of musketeers. I guess that's not really a bad thing, considering the stories are works of fiction anyway. Perhaps all the rest are just Musketeer fan fiction - with a budget.

That reminds me, I really should try to find episodes of Young Blades. [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0cnJUmmWAJA&w=500&h=405]

Watch The Guild

No really, watch The Guild.  It is a great short episode web show that is about to start its 3rd season.  If you are into MMOs, know someone who is or enjoy watching Felicia Day then this is a great show to watch.  For a little taste of the humor ( which may be best for those who are already fans ), here is a video for you. [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=urNyg1ftMIU&w=640&h=385]

And, if you are now interested in watching the series from the beginning: [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=grCTXGW3sxQ&w=480&h=385]

Just Another Magic Monday - Jeff Mcbride

Jeff Mcbride is my favorite magician. He is great with card and coin manipulations and that's what he is known for.  In fact, he has Guinness Book World Records to prove how good he is.  Coins and Cards aren't the only thing he is good at though.  The following clip shows how well he involves his audience.  He definately solidified this kid's love of magic for the rest of his life.  He may have also turned that kid into a future magician.[ad#Ellusionist][youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MNSec8j9rOs&w=560&h=340]

Moved Servers

Ducharme.cc has moved servers so I decided to start all over with this site and just turn it into a word press blog. This way, I can centralize my blog postings and actually have content at ducharme.cc.

The most addicting App on Facebook...

I'm on facebook just about every day. I play chess, mostly with coworkers, and due to my history I also play Wrestler with some regularity. I've also tried and stopped using all the popular apps my friends play.

What I find interesting is that the most common tag line I see for facebook game application advertisements is "The Most Addicting Game On Facebook." While on some level it disgusts me that this sort of advertising works, I am intrigued by the psychology of why it works. Is it because of the nature of facebook and other social networking sites? Is it just human nature? Why is addiction something we would knowingly chase? Is it the man trying to keep us entertained so he can keep us down?

Needless to say, one can spend a lot of time analyzing this simple phrase and why it is so popular. So, in an effort to crowd source with the 1 or 2 people who come across my blog :) I leave it to the comments for discussion.

Only because I mentioned the 2 game apps I use on facebook:
My chess challenge URL is:
http://apps.facebook.com/chessfb/?page=create_game&challenge_to_id=590273940
And for those of you who wish to see the facebook incarnation of Deacon (the wrestler) may go to: http://apps.facebook.com/wrestle/Wrestlers!show.fb?id=590273940

Geek Fruit Salads

A friend of mine at work and I were talking about healthy geek foods and of course we started talking about apples. When I came in the next day he had made a few salad recipes that I thought I would share with you. He said these recipes are open source - completely. So without further ado, here are the open source geek fruit salads created by Devon Scott. ...

The Java Applet
Cubed Juicy Red Delicious Apples Mixed with Chocolate covered Coffee Beans

The Web Server Serving
Sweet Apache Corn Mixed with diced PHP Pears

The Mac Classic
Sliced Mandarin Oranges mixed with Sweet Blueberries and Sliced Cinnamon Coated Macintosh Apples

The Variabowl
String Steamed Noodles Mixed with Honey Nut 0's and topped with Soft Dates

The Firewall
Sweet Steamed Honey rice and Walnuts covered by Spicy Sauteed Peppers, Mushrooms and Onions drizzled in Hot Sauce

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What's next? We need some pictures to go along with this post.

My Wimbledon What If...

I was watching Wimbledon this morning. Specifically, I was watching Venus and Serena face each other. The first set was so insanely close and tough fought it was enjoyable to watch. Now I'm not an avid tennis watcher but such a close final matchup between 2 big name sisters of tennis got me thinking something I often think about professional sports. ...

Once again, I'm not an avid tennis fan ( or any professional sport for that matter ) but I enjoy the athletics of it. What I'm about to say has annoyed a few people as I've brought it up in conversation, but really it is just a what if. What if professional sports are moving more towards entertainment like professional wrestling. Long ago, professional wrestling saw the money to be made in having more entertaining matches and things got less real. What if other sports are moving in this direction?

We've seen inklings of people's greed making certain sports less about the competition and more about someone making money, but it usually doesn't benefit the entertainment value of the event. Watching the Williams sisters play together made me think, it was something for the network to sell and it was also quite entertaining. There were many things a good play by play team could discuss to make it even more entertaining.

So, despite the negative connotation that goes along with "fixed" games - what are some of the ways we could benefit in watching sports where outcomes ( or at least some level of play ) are decided before we even start watching. For example, how could it look in baseball? football? tennis? soccer? Remember, focus on how it could be made more entertaining, not just how some unscrupulous people can make money betting on the events.

Just Another Magic Monday: Florian Zimmer

I may focus on my French heritage too much, and this JAMM post continues this tradition by showing a video from France 2. However, this post is now sharing the love of my wife and her German heritage. Florian Zimmer is an amazing magical artist from Germany. He definately has his own style. ...

This video shows an extremely creative routine based around graffiti.

I also wanted to share this short clip of him doing a little street magic. I doubly like it because it uses the same music as the parkour video, vaults 102.

First test with the g1 Cupcake update camcorder

The following video was shot with the Android Cupcake update camcorder app. It seemed to upload fairly quick over the air and the quality isn't too bad for what it will be used for. I wouldn't be shooting a movie with it, that's for sure.

PS - the camera reacts much quicker as well, which is very nice.