Technical Customer Service

Quoted from Joel On Software - Some interesting jobs:

"My pet theory is that if the person who takes the call when a customer is missing, say, the Pear Mail module, if this person is the same person who maintains the setup code, then they will eventually get sick of sshing into customers' servers and typing "pear install Mail" for them and they'll just fix it in the setup code once and for all. And I think a lot of people would find a job that combines problem solving with new software development is going to be pretty interesting,..." - Joel Spolsky

I agree 100% with Joel's theory on having the software developers also be the customer service department. I don't deal directly with external clients, but I do have to fix problems when things break. As a result, I like to fix them the first time so that I don't have to deal with it again.

It's a beautiful feeling when you can solve a problem the first time for N cases where N -> INFINITY!

As long as the business model empowers software developers to actually implement these solutions, this organizational style will be successful. I feel that I have this level of freedom at my company, and I'm fairly certain that this level of freedom exists at Fog Creek.

Multiple HTML Reply Signatures for Google Apps

Gmail HTML Reply Signatures Greasemonkey Script

The company I work for uses Gmail for email communications. Specifically, the service the company uses is part of the Google Apps bundle of services, and it's the same service that I use for my blog email.

As many of you may know, custom signatures through Gmail can't contain HTML by default. However, HTML Multiple Reply Signatures for Gmail solves this by using the Greasemonkey engine to inject HTML into the page. The HTML Multiple Reply Signatures Script (and Firefox Extension) injects a drop down list to the left of the Gmail editor where a user can select from up to four customized HTML signatures, which will be injected into the Gmail editor.

History of Gmail HTML Multiple Reply Signatures

About a year ago, I integrated the HTML Reply Signatures script into our company's global Windows profile. Since the global profile was shared across most of the company workstations, I created a DOS batch script that took the user's Windows login details from a workstation PC and generated the Greasemonkey script using this information. The generated script on each workstation is exactly the same, except for the filename of the signature image to use. The constraint is that all of the images must use a standard naming convention and all be located on the same public server.

Reliable Gmail HTML Signatures Solution

This solution has worked out quite well. It has been very stable and reliable in the last year and has required absolutely zero maintenance. Now that we have a need for certain people to have more than one signature card, I suggested that one of our managers install the HTML Multiple Reply Signatures Greasemonkey script. So far, he's pretty satisfied with it.

Not being on the global profile made this much easier; otherwise, I would need to write a new batch script that generates the HTML Multiple Reply signatures script instead of the HTML Reply Signatures script, which can only handle injecting one signature. In addition, not being on the global profile means that he could essentially name the image files whatever he wants, as long as he modifies the signature HTML in the script to point to the correct filenames.

I recommended the script instead of the Firefox Extension for three reasons:

• The script is actually more reliable and bug-free than the Firefox Extension.


• This particular manager is technically adept and fully capable of modifying the script himself to configure new signatures.


• Google Apps Gmail is not using Gmail's New Interface, so it has not been susceptible to the same bugs that standard Gmail users have faced.

New version of Gmail

Once Gmail moves these customers to the new version, we're likely to see problems. I wonder why they haven't done this yet. The bigger question is, with my organization's growing use of this particular tool, should we prepare for the change by using a plug-in that supports the new interface?

At any rate, it was cool to see the script being used in my own organization! It may be a good idea to seriously consider moving the script to Gmail's Greasemonkey API to support the new interface.

500 Gigabytes of Relief

Backup Humor

I just bought a Seagate OneTouch 4 Maxtor 500GB external hard drive. The hard drive is marketed for backup purposes and comes with the backup software installed on the hard drive. Below is a note included in the instructions for step 2:

Note: It is highly recommended that you copy the current contents of the OneTouch 4 to your computer before proceeding. Reference Seagate Knowledge Base article 4169 for more information.

It doesn't inspire confidence to know that I have to backup the software on the backup drive in case something goes horribly wrong. If the unthinkable does happen, the backup software is the least of my worries. I'm not too concerned. The really important things will be backed up on a CD or a DVD.

Solution to my Software Backup Problems

Having this hard drive will solve a big problem that I have. Lack of space. With two Linux installations, Windows XP, and several Virtual PC images, my 160GB internal hard drive has reached capacity.

This has led to many other problems that all stem from lack of space. I want to try more distributions of Linux, but I have so much data spread out on different partitions that I was afraid I might lose something important if I tried to install the latest version of Ubuntu or SUSE. Now I am free to proceed with an upgrade.

I also wanted to be able to convert my Virtual PC images to VMWare as part of the Microsoft Quit Date. This has not been going as well as I've planned, but it hasn't been going bad.

I am using the Mozilla Thunderbird Extension Lightning for my Calendar application; however, I'm still using MS Outlook for email. If I can get a solid Linux distribution running then this will help reduce my dependence. At the moment, Pandora is the only music that I have in Linux. I had MP3 support briefly, but for some reason G-Streamer is complaining about missing something.

Don't get me wrong, I like troubleshooting broken software, but not my music player. I just want that to work. I don't care why it broke, or why Novell didn't include it by default, after fixing it once and having it break, I am at a point where I just want to hear music without having to read a bunch of knowledge base articles.

However, overlooking media player issues, there are a ton of advantages to using Linux. As a programmer, it is 10 times easier to get things done. Web programming isn't the same when loading a local file in the browser. You're not using http when you do this, you're using the file protocol. AJAX, as well as other techniques, behave completely different under this scheme. To get an accurate idea of what a JavaScript library or technique will do when served on a web server, you need a development platform that mirrors this environment. In Linux, I can configure Apache, PHP, even Java's Tomcat servlet container, in under 30 minutes. In Windows, I'm not as confident.

I can also use tools like grep, vi, and locate in Linux. In Windows, I am lost without these. The cute puppy that appears in Windows Search is cool and all, but I don't have all day to search for a string in a file in the file system, I just want results. Grep gives almost instant results. Sure, there's no puppy, as my 7 year old nephew would say, but it's fast.

Little by little, I have been moving data to the hard drive. In the next couple weeks, I hope to have SUSE 10.3 installed on a partition. I might also install Ubuntu. We'll see what happens.

Oh, and in case something happens to the hard drive, don't worry! I've backed up the backup software on my computer. Now you can sleep at night.

UPDATE (7/5/2008): I installed Ubuntu 8.04 last month and love it! I also share a VMWare Image with Windows using VMPlayer on Ubuntu, which is a great alternative and enhancement to dual-boot setups.