[Warning: Rant eminent]

The following is an account of our tale of woe using Cintas Document Storage for our offsite tape storage. 

Background:

We currently back up our infrastructure to tape in multiple ways.  Including but not limited to:

- Critical daily backups, these get rotated off-site daily.  There’s a box with these tapes that get’s swapped out with the vendor every morning exchanging the tapes from the previous nights backups and retrieving the tapes for the next days backups.  These tapes never leave their carriers.  The carriers are stored at the offsite facility and are never opened by them.

- Weekly archives, every weekend we backup all the critical stuff, plus the next level of things deemed necessary are backed up every weekend.   These go off-site in bulk about 2x a month.   These tapes also live in a storage container and are never touched by Cintas unless we move them to the archive pool.

- Archives, we also backup everything, full server bare metal restore, at a minimum monthly.  We also backup *most* workstations on a best effort basis nearly ever 60 days.   These also go offsite for bulk storage approximately monthly.  these tapes are handled by the vendor, they are removed from the travel containers and are slotted in storage racks.

Service:

A little over a year ago we contracted with Cintas Document Storage for off-site vaulted media storage and tape rotation.   The rotation part has always been acceptable.   The tape retrieval process has failed miserably.  While we have been fortunate enough not to need our tapes critically fast, we contracted with them to have this ability.

They use a web based application to ‘request’ tapes or items to be delivered the next business day during their run.   On multiple occasions (3x in one year) they have failed to service our tape retrieval requests in less than 5 days.

They have miss-slotted our tapes, and simply miss placed them.  They have also miss-placed our daily rotational containers…   All of these things are bad, very very bad.

A better solution comes along…

About two months ago we were contacted by a competitor.  Unfortunately for Cintas this sales person called on us while we were in the midst of a miss-placed tape container episode.   So we were certainly open to receiving a quote for services.

This competitor is just as secure, and is actually geographically 30 miles farther away.  Their cost for the same daily rotation and tape storage space was literally 1/2 the monthly cost of Cintas and they don’t have any of our other document storage or shredding business (yet).   This may be too good to be true, but it honestly can’t be any worse so we agreed to switch.

While signing the contracts we were warned by this vendor that Cintas would not play nice.   That they behave like 3 year olds when it comes to customers leaving them.  They flat out told us we’d have trouble retrieving our tapes.   Imagine that… 

Well silly us, we thought they’d be professional.

The following Monday we requested our archival tapes through the website.   We should receive these tapes the following day (Tuesday) per our contract.  Tuesday came; no tapes…   Wednesday came; no tapes…   Thursday came and the Jig was up… 

We had already started our daily rotation with the new company so it became clear to them that we were no longer going to be customers.

This is when all hell broke loose.

Nearly a week went by with no contact from Cintas, emails and voice mails were not returned.   Then out of the blue we get a phone call from the sales person attempting to save the account.  Something that should have taken place after any of thier tape handling failures.   Once it became clear that the account wasn’t to be saved they decided to play hard ball.   We received an invoice for 3 months of tape transportation and a year and half’s worth of storage  (discounted 50%).   Apparently I didn’t realize we had to give 90 days notice.  Fair enough.   I was not aware that their contract is so one-sided. 

They can drop you at any time for any reason.

You on the other hand, have to give them 90 days notice, and 30 days to resolve any issues.   So when they misplace your tapes as long as they get them to you within 30 days, they are off the hook for their poor service.   As a penalty for leaving them you still have to pay them 50% of the storage fees for the remainder of the contract.   (In our case another year and a half’s worth).

Given their repeated failures, I was not about to give them that.   Regardless of what the tapes were worth.  (We have and still have duplicate archives of nearly everything we’d need on site anyway). 

About two weeks ago they sent out another representative to try and salvage the account and discuss the ‘settlement’.  This obviously wasn’t going to go anywhere, but we agreed that we’d pay for 90 days of service (the notification period), provided one of those months was the current month.   We’d pay the transportation/delivery fees for this period and a final delivery charge, but we wouldn’t pay for vault storage past the 90 day window.   We reached an accord.   I now have checks on my desk for the 90 day period, and the previous monthly invoice. 

We’re ready and willing to exchange these checks for the hostages  (our tapes), but even that has proven to be difficult.  Again they are non-responsive to emails or voice mails.  I suspect it will happen, but I don’t know when.

My advice to you:

If you’re a Cintas document storage/vault customer, get out while the getting is good.   Review your contract, if it has clause 16 ‘SERVICE GUARANTEE AND TERMINATION’ you’ll need to be stealthy about getting your stuff back.   It appears even though they have you over a barrel contract wise, they think nothing of going Al Queda on you and keeping your stuff hostage.

Yes they will loose our other business, and that’s a damn shame.

It gets better…

As part of our settlement, we paid a Final delivery charge.  I just spent the last day and a half trying to arrange this final delivery (basically the exchange of the hostages for the ransom money).  I was just informed that:

“Apparently they trust their drivers with our entire business on our tapes, but they don’t trust their drivers with a couple of checks of their money.”

Because of this, we’ve apparently agreed to pickup the tapes.  I don’t think so… It’s the principle of the exchange and the fact that they charged us for final delivery.

As of right now their supposed to do the deal tomorrow.   I’ve never, ever dealt with a company (or manager in charge) that was so full of excuses for not doing their job.   Since they can’t commit on a time, they are to give us a call 20-30 minutes before they head over.  I highly suspect that won’t happen either.

Final Result:

As expected, they didn’t call they just showed up, and as Murphy would have it we were at lunch.  We should have made them wait longer but in the interest of getting our tapes back we rushed through our lunch to get back within 15 minutes.   We have our tapes and they have their ransom monies.   All is now well with the world.

Again, I highly recommend that you avoid this particular part of the Cintas organization. 

We have approximately 12 Blackberries from various carriers using our Blackberry Enterprise server.

About once a month one of them will just stop working.  Typically this is usually a device over seas or a device that one of our guys who travels over seas uses.  He’ll make a call to his provider (T-Mobile) to change his plan to something over seas and the break his data package nearly every time.

The conversation usually goes like this:

Salesperson: Is BES working?  I haven’t gotten email in a couple days.
Us: Yes, all 11 other phones are currently working and show activity as recent as a minute ago.  What did you do?
Salesperson: I called (T-Mobile) and asked them to change my plan for international use.
Us: call them back and have then fix your stuff.

Today was special though.  Another user who’s carrier is Cincinnati Bell (ATT under the covers regardless of what the tech support m0m0 tells you) called.

User: I messed up my Blackberry, can you re-activate me?
Us: What did you do?
User: I installed Blackberry desktop manager at home to sync my contacts at home too.
Us: That’s a bad idea, wipe the device and reactivate your password is xxxx.

A few hours later:

User: It won’t activate.
Us: After poking around on the BES server we can’t see any reason why it shouldn’t work.    Let’s call your carrier.

Placing call to carrier…

Tech Support:  How may we help you?
Us: A user jacked up his Blackberry and we’re trying to figure out why it won’t re-activate.  Can you look and see if there have been any changes?
Tech Support:  Why yes, I see we changed your account 48 hours ago.  The BES plan is now $20 more than the Consumer plan so we changed you to the consumer plan.
Us: WTF?  So when were you going to let us know this happened?
Tech Support:  I don’t know if they are going to send a letter out or not.
Us:  So 6 months ago we purchased the phone and told you we were going to use it with BES and you sold me a $30 unlimited plan.  Who made the decision to simply disconnect us from our company server?  Who there thought, Oh, this user doesn’t need the corporate package?  Let’s just cut them off at the knees.
Tech Support:  Let me transfer you to someone that can help.
Tech Support 2:  So I understand you’re unhappy about the price change?
Us: No, what I’m unhappy about is that you just broke my connectivity to my employer without warning.  That you made me look stupid to IT because I thought I may have jacked up my phone, or that their stuff was broken.   What I’m upset about is that I’ve spent quite a few hours figuring out how I might have done this, and IT has spent time looking into a problem that isn’t theirs.
Tech Support 2:  I understand, I can reactivate your corporate package, and offer you a $20 credit for 6 months will that help? 
Us: Yes that will help.

The price increase doesn’t bother me, most corporate data plans are around $50 a month.  What bothers me is that these fine folks couldn’t plan ahead 30 days and warn the user that the cost will go up unless they choose otherwise.   Instead they decided for this user that they no longer wanted/needed the package and defaulted him to a package that for the same cost did absolutely nothing for them.

Thanks, Cincinnati Bell Wireless.

What’s a Linked In Whore?  Where do I find one?   Are they cheap?  Just what will they do for money or a connection?

In case you’ve been hiding under a rock for the past couple years.  Linked In was one of the first online contact managers/social networks.  Probably not the first, but certainly one of the better, and one of the first to embrace Web 2.0 stuff.   So it’s kind of like FaceBook Lite, without all the touchy feely “Come be my friend stuff” and about 11 million times more professional than MySpace.

It’s supposed to be more professional, more business like.   Store your contacts online, see who they know, etc, etc.  Through these connections you can ask to be introduced to your connections, connections.  If you’re in public relations or sales this is probably a good thing.   They do try to protect you though.  Just because you can see my connections doesn’t mean you can contact them.   Instead you have to ask me to be introduced.  You get to play match maker.  Instead of going up to the woman in the bar and asking her out, you have to ask a friend to introduce you.  Again this is generally good because it’s on the Internet and you don’t know these people, it’s also virtual, so you can’t turn them down directly or slap them if it’s appropriate.  So a referral is generally welcome.  But Linked In whores are screwing this all up.  They’ll introduce anyone to anyone.

My 115 legit connections link me to 730,400 other professionals and I’m not sure that’s a good thing.  It might be a good thing if I were selling something directly, or in the job market.  Otherwise not so good.

For the record I submit if you have: (500 or more connections) you’re a Linked In Whore.

This means you’ll link to anyone just for asking.  You have no scruples.  (You’re also likely to be a recruiter which only validates that you have no scruples).  I also proclaim that if you have 500+ connections you don’t know most of them, and couldn’t recognize them if you saw them.  No way no how.   So why are you connected to them?  Why am I connected to you? 

Of my 115 connections I’ve personally met probably 110 of them.  In fact that’s one of my personal criteria for linking with someone.  I’m sure I have a few (less than a dozen) with whom I’m only vaguely familiar with.   What value is there to having them on my list?  I’ve probably done business with them or may want their opinion on something, some technology, or maybe some person some day.  Everyone else is out.

All my bad Linked In experiences come from Linked in Whores.  Generally connections to them, like a bad STD, they just want to spread.  They want me to introduce them to my connections and I don’t know who they are.   Just because they are connected to someone they must be good right?  Uh, no, especially when their a whore connected to another whore.

The biggest epiphany for me came from Sales people using Linked In.  (Generally also connection whores).  These typically seem to be those those that I’ve met in the past, or one of their co-workers.  If I’m not a customer now, what makes you think that just because you’ve found a way to be connected to me via a group or other connection that I want to buy stuff from you now?   I don’t.  I don’t like cold calls, I don’t like solicitations for business.  I don’t want that through Linked In.  Linked In for me is a network of people I trust.  I submit that nobody knows and fully trusts and respects 500+ people.  Not for any length of time.  Not really.

If I were Internet Czar, I’d make these connections expire.  If you haven’t contacted me and I haven’t contacted you in 6 months to a year, then I don’t really know you, don’t do business with you and probably don’t need you.  But more importantly I don’t need you or any of your connections trying to sell me stuff.   Maybe they don’t really go away, but they go into a “Time-Out” state where they can see my connections, but none of their connections can see my connections.  I *might* need them someday, that’s why I probably Linked to then in the first place.  

If you find yourself in job seeking mode you can ask your connections to hook you up again or take you out of “Time-Out”.   Yeah, that would help out a lot.

The Internet is full of wonderful stuff, but as with anything else in life it only takes a few to screw it up for the rest of us.

OK…

They warned me that search engines would display that datapoohbah.com might contain files that could hurt your computer. WTF?

I know I can be harsh at times, and there may be links to some utilities here or there that might be of dubious nature. But there isn’t a damn thing here that’s harmful to your computer.

They claim that my site might have been hacked… Uhm, OK, I’d probably notice if it was but can certainly understand that some folks might not notice. Fair enough.

But what they didn’t do was tell me what exactly it is that they think is “potentially unsafe”.

This is a crock. I couldn’t reply to the email as it was a notification email only. I found the program and sites used to ‘rate’ unsafe sites like mine and have sent several emails asking for clarification. All to no avail.

Thanks Google.

I’ve half a mind to start sending out emails warning that Sergey Brin, just might have an STD. Apparently I don’t need to disclose what STD it is, or even if it’s true.

I certainly hope this isn’t part of their strategy to provide that killer graphic on their home page showing the internet’s major routing changes.

We’ve sent them a cease and desist, let’s see how long that takes to get them to stop.

InternetPerils, Inc. provides quantification and visualization products to help insurers, financial institutions, banks, telecommunications providers, government, and enterprises manage their Internet business risks.

It looks like they do this by pinging and exploiting other companies networks as opposed to building networks and offices of their own, or using those of their clients.

-Nice.

The seizure of ThePirateBay.org’s entire server farm will guarantee this BitTorrent tracker will remain offline until the police complete their investigation. The uncertainty on the part of the police may stem from the fact ThePirateBay.org's servers only host .torrent files, not actual copyrighted material. As a tracker, ThePirateBay.org's function is to index .torrent files and to direct BitTorrent traffic and maintain the swarm (uploads and downloads.) The downloaded .torrent file contains all the necessary information to locate and download the queried file. The legality of indirectly linking to copyrighted material has yet to be tested by Swedish courts.

Whether this will keep ThePirateBay.org offline indefinitely is another matter.

“We are not sure when it will return, but we are moving it to another country if necessary,” brokep said.

Time to find another source for your warez.  You know who you are. 

Found here on Fast Company.

"There are as many lies in business as there are people in business."

Lie: "People are our most important asset."
Truth: "People are our most worrisome and unpredictable asset. Our most important assets are really our financial assets."
B.S. Detector: This may be the leading lie of our times. "When management starts talking about how important people are," LaFontaine says, "you can bet there is going to be an unpopular human resources decision coming soon."

People are replaceable. It’s often painful, but they are. Sure you can lose time, and knowledge, but everyone can be replaced. The minute you think they can’t be, you have a whole other set of issues.

I applaud companies to take this to heart. But nothing lasts forever. Anything given in good faith becomes an entitlement in a short amount of time, and it takes a purging to reset expectations.

Lie: "This was a rational decision."
Truth: "I wanted to do this."
B.S. Detector: People "want what they want just because they want it," says LaFontaine.

While this can certainly be a lie and often is, you can’t always label this one this way. There are too many variables. Too often those that label this statement as such simply don’t have the data to support it.

Certainly, there are those managers who “want to do this”, and if their folks don’t have the authority to question the decision and get back up for it then there again are other issues at play.

Lie: "We judge people by their performance."
Truth: "I judge your performance based on how much I like you."
B.S. Detector: "Why do most people who keep their jobs keep them?" LaFontaine asks. "Because the people they work for like them. And you get fired when the people you work for don't like you anymore.

This is unfortunately too true. Because this is true, and people want to be liked, they become “Yes Men (or women). As such, they do what ever is asked and that’s not always the right answer. It appears they are performing because they are doing what is asked but what’s being asked is often the wrong thing and they know it.

But rather than do what’s right, they do what will help them be liked. They aren’t going to make waves, or rock the boat. They fear not being liked, because that’s what helps them keep their job.

There’s a local company now going through this. Everyone is scared to death to speak up and help improve the performance of the company, for fear they won’t be liked. The last person that did was fired.

Folks that are leaving aren’t giving feedback as to why. They don’t want to burn bridges either.

Lie: "This is business, it isn't personal."
Truth: "Everything's personal."
B.S. Detector: "As people, we get mad at each other," says LaFontaine. "Attempts to avoid it are cowardly. So get mad. Then get over it and move on." LaFontaine believes that any disagreement can be handled with an honest conversation.

See above.

Everything IS personal. We are people. We have feelings and they get hurt. Get over it because it’s also a business. You owe it to the business to be personally involved. If you aren’t then you are in the wrong job.

Lie: "The customer comes first."
Truth: "I come first."
B.S. Detector: "More often than not, 'the customer' is an abstraction," LaFontaine warns. "People take care of customers when it benefits them and ignore customers when they can get away with it. Nobody says 'I come first,' which is what's usually going on."

Amen.

Technorati Tags: Five Business Lies, Five Business Truths

 They must defend themselves in this lawsuit:

Winternals Sues Best Buy for Stealing Their Software.

Best Buy was smart enough to admit it and come forth, but then weaseled out like the slime buckets that they tend to be from time to time.

Of course the corporate wheels turn slowly there and apparently they forgot to issue a cease and desist memo to the Geek Squad to stop using their pirated tools.

Now lets face it, everyone participates in a little software piracy-light from time to time, and everyone has extended an evaluation, but if it’s a tool that you use on a regular basis as part of your arsenal to resurrect computers for your paying customers, you are obligated to license that software.

Especially after you’ve come clean and admitted you’re out of compliance. At a minimum you owe for your past sins.

Someone at Best Buy will lose their job over this one.

Make em pay Mark.

Technorati Tags: Best Buy, Winternals, Lawsuit, WTF, Are You Stupid?

Every time I visit a Best Buy I walk out with the same feelings, and I swear I’ll never go back. But time passes, usually a couple months and I’ll need or want something and figure they are just as likely to have what I want as anyone else. Probably more likely so I give them another shot. Tonight was one of those nights.

I just replaced my cell phone. Now I know better. I know not to buy my accessories from the Verizon store. Nope, I don’t need to pay $30 for a car charger or $30 for a leather case. For $10, I can get everything I need on eBay plus another $5 for shipping.

But being impatient, I thought; what the hell, I’ll just pop into Best Buy and see what they have. I thought, if they did have a case in the $10 range I’d save the shipping and the time and just be done with it.

Walking in the place I’m hit up at the door, greeted I guess you could say. Does that make me feel welcome? No not really.

I know what I’m here for. I don’t know I’m sure that guys good for something but he’s certainly not as charismatic as the Walmart greeter up the road.

I go straight to the Cell phone aisle. There’s actually a couple aisles, but they were pretty clearly marked.

No sooner had I stepped foot in those aisles and I’m hit upon again. Do you need any help? “Nope, I know what I’m looking for”. I browse through the cases and chargers. I’m not paying $34.95 for a travel charger. They are $2.85 on ebay (+$5.00 shipping) all day long, as many as I can carry. So that’s no good. Nope, I’m not paying $29.95 for a car charger either; they too are $2.00 on eBay all day long.

Then I’m visited again, by employee number 3, “Can I help you find something?” “Nope, looking at Cell accessories, I think I’m in the right place”. I move over to the cases. They have a fabulous leather case, but it’s not my style, it’s nice but it’s pink. It’s also $40.00. I don’t like the wet suits, not for this phone. Then again, no more than 5 minutes later, another person, the 4th in total if you count the greeter, asks me again if I need help, or if she (a girl this time) can help me find what I’m looking for.

This time I bite; “Sure, I want a case for the RAZR, I’m looking at both the clips and/or maybe a leather case”. She reaches over and grabs the only clip they sell. It’s $20.00. I look at it, put the phone in it. It’s fine but the same thing is $3.00 on eBay. Now I know that Best Buy has rent to pay, and they have overhead that the eBay stores don’t. But nope, I’m not paying $20 for this either. It’s not what I had in mind.

I also don’t want to be hassled, 4 times in 15 minutes or less just for the privilege to shop there.

Normally, I’ll toy with them. Get them to show me some laptops and camcorders and ask about things that don’t make any sense. Can I record to DVD with this? While I’m holding up a Hi-8 camcorder to get them to explain the process, or have them really get into the details of what’s different between Windows XP and Home and why I should have one over the other. It’s often amusing.

I have walked out of Best Buy not buying more times than I can count because they are simply too damn aggressive.

They try to mask it as being helpful, but it’s not, it’s annoying.

Technorati Tags: Best Buy, Annoying, Sales Pressure, Sucks, Truth Hurts

If you have a degree, and 2-5 years experience, you can work for one of Detroit's 101 best and brightest companies.

You get to perform intrusion detection and response on all nodes to ensure data integrity and protect stuff. (for this rate of pay I guess you're just going to ping things).

Develop and maintain IRP's.

Oversee computer systems.

Research and integrate security best practices.

Perform System Upgrades

Administer the LAN.

Bennies are somewhat weak, especially for a bank, 401k match up to 1% woohoo! Medical reimbursment for your dependents, but no mention of medical.

They must be the 101st of the best 101 in Detroit. Oh and you get to live in Detriot and earn between $28-$31k

Do the words: You get what you pay for mean anything?

I suppose there may be a glut of auto-workers looking for a career change but that's just sad.

Technorati Tags: Job, Detriot, Evil, IT, Tech, no-good

CYA in the IT realm can mean many things:

Backup before you move forward (duh) if you don’t backup your work, you shouldn’t be in IT or you won’t be for long.

-or-

Have a backup plan, such as, if I make this change and it makes things worse, can I un-do what I just did so that I can “at-the-very-least” get back to where I was? Or if things really go wrong. Do I have a plan B? Such as: If I put this piece of hardware in this server and puffs of smoke come out. What will I do then? It’s not supposed to do that, but what if?

That is technical CYA and failing to do that may very well get you thrown under a bus, but that’s not what this particular article is about. No Sir.

———————
The other type of CYA is political CYA.

This is the most difficult type of CYA for us IT types because we tend not to recognize it. We tend to look at things in black and white. Working or not working. Broken or not broken. Fast or slow. On or off. Access Allowed or Access Denied.

For us stuff works or it doesn’t and when it doesn’t it’s our job to make it work, fix it if it’s broken, and generally the sooner the better right?

When was the last time a user complained to you and did so with your job in mind?

• “I can’t check mail, or my email is broken, but I understand you can’t fix it right now. I’ll sit tight until maintenance night so you don’t impact all the other users”
• “My VPN connection doesn’t work but I understand you can’t help me because I’m not at home to test it.”
• “My XYZ application is really slow, do you have a work around that I can use until the real solution (hardware/resources/etc) that are beyond your control can be put into place?”

Oh, Never that’s when. We’re expected to routinely read minds and perform miracles on a daily basis with little to no information and do so without ever interrupting anyone, anything or any service.

But we try, and try as we may to short circuit the process, to help folks be productive and fix these problems and not make users wait it will sometimes cause rifts.

We constantly have to weigh the risks of making changes to things now vs. waiting to make change later and the impacts that may cause. We have to react to requests of upper management who may not have all the data to support the changes they are requesting, but we have to do it anyway, because, well, they said so.

All you can do in this case is document your role. Document the fact that you’re trying to do what’s best for the organization from your point of view. That you’ve worked with the right people and received adequate permission. Documentation is the key, and it will save your ass every time.

While it’s true people don’t argue with their own data, they won’t argue with yours either if it’s well documented and logged. If you produce evidence that you did everything in your power to reduce the casualties and got permission to make the changes to improve the results then life will be good.

Our informal corporate motto is “Don’t be evil.” We Googlers generally relate those words to the way we serve our users – as well we should. But being “a different kind of company” means more than the products we make and the business we’re building; it means making sure that our core values inform our conduct in all aspects of our lives as Google employees.

The Google Code of Conduct is the code by which we put those values into practice. This document is meant for public consumption, but its most important audience is within our own walls. This code isn’t merely a set of rules for specific circumstances but an intentionally expansive statement of principles meant to inform all our actions; we expect all our employees, temporary workers, consultants, contractors, officers and directors to study these principles and do their best to apply them to any and all circumstances which may arise.

The core message is simple: Being Googlers means striving toward the highest possible standard of ethical business conduct. This is a matter as much practical as ethical; we hire great people who work hard to build great products, but our most important asset by far is our reputation as a company that warrants our users’ faith and trust. That trust is the foundation upon which our success and prosperity rests, and it must be re-earned every day, in every way, by every one of us.

So please do read this code, and then read it again, and remember that as our company evolves, The Google Code of Conduct will evolve as well. Our core principles won’t change, but the specifics might, so a year from now, please read it a third time. And always bear in mind that each of us has a personal responsibility to do everything we can to incorporate these principles into our work, and our lives.

Apparently, evolving corporate principals mean that if China wants you to actually be evil, you say, “sure!”.

Also, this is why Codes of Conduct, Vision Statements, Etc. have such a dismal reputation among American corporate workers. They’re either rah-rah bs designed to get us to put more time and effort into a company than it’s worth. Or simply a waste of time to keep the executives busy.

For once I’d like to see this on a company “vision” statement.

We plan to make money on making and selling widgets. We want to make the best widget we can so we can sell it for a higher price. Also we want to make as many widgets as we can, so we can sell more.

A great roundup on the Google Evilness at BizzyBlog.com.