Managing Expectations

I got a support call the other day from a customer -- they hadn't yet received their license file, and were wondering where it was. In these days of instant online purchases, I suppose I might wonder too. How come it takes so long to get a license file? For new readers, this might come as a surprise, but Quma is a one-man operation... and for most of Quma's existence, it's been a part-time operation as well. As a result, I have to make tradeoffs when it comes to running the business. Among those tradeoffs is the balance between development, and business process automation. Where will my time best be spent? So far, it hasn't made much sense to automate the order processing side of things because there are not that many orders. So, each order is manually entered into our order database, and each license file is created 'by hand' using tools I wrote to generate the license files. Since Quma is a part-time occupation, those orders get processed in the evening.

I hesitated to compose this entry, but one management activity that has merit is the management of expectations. From my perspective, I think I'm fairly accessible for support issues, and am responsive to support requests, etc. But my perspective may not be the same as someone who is expecting something that I cannot provide... so in the hopes of managing expectations...:

In general, I respond to e-mail support requests from anyone within 24 hours. Precedence is given to customers, but sales support is available. Orders are processed within 24 hours, with the caveat that I can only process an order after I receive it. Sometimes NorthStar and/or RegSoft are slow in forwarding orders to me which can lead to delays. If you need support, I much prefer e-mail to phone support. If you do call, you'll typically be reaching me at my day job. I won't be in front of a computer, and so may not be able to provide a useful answer from memory... so please use e-mail if you can. The forums are useful, but you need to email me in order get approval to post to the forums -- I do this to prevent forum spam, which would otherwise be a major waste of my time.

The predator is an optimist

Evolution almost requires that predators be optimists, and explorers. How else could they survive? This insight occurred to me after watching some nature show that had a lion of some sort chasing prey -- and failing in the attempt... only to try again, and again, until successful. The lion, by nature, must persevere or die. They must look forward to success and plan for success, even if they often fail.

This observation offers an explaination for human's possession of an optimistic nature. Often our optimism is completely unfounded, but it is our nature to be optimistic, because failure is an option, but continuous failure is not.... If at first you don't succeed, try, try again... look on the bright side.... etc.

QVCS-Enterprise 2.1.21 bug fix update now available

I just uploaded a maintenance release for QVCS-Enterprise. It fixes several problems that have turned up since the 2.1.20.2 release described here. 

The one new feature in this release provides a rudimentary hilighting of the changes on a 'replacement' line in the built-in visual compare tool. I say rudimentary because the algorithm for finding the beginning and ending of the highlight region is as simple as it gets: it compares the two lines character by character and begins the highlighting at the first characters that differ. The end of the highlight region is determined in a similarly simple way -- it starts at the end of each respective replacement line and defines the end of the highlight region to be the last matching character of each respective line. The goal is to provide some simple visual queue so your eye is drawn to where on the replacement line the lines differ. It usually works in a useful way, but it's not bullet proof and seems to occasionally produce inaccurate highlighting.... but it's better than nothing.

On a separate note, I'm continuing to make slow progress on what I'm thinking will be either the 2.2 or 3.0 release of the Enterprise product. The end is still a number of months away -- as in, the end is not yet in sight.

A Vacation to the Greek Islands

For vacation this year, we went to the Greek islands -- Santorini (5 nights), Naxos (5 nights), and then Athens (3 nights). We thoroughly enjoyed it. The views on Santorini... well, check out these pictures. We'll probably go back again next year. On Santorini, we stayed at Anastasis apartments. Highly recommended -- the staff is warm and friendly, and the views are great. On Naxos, we stayed here. It's not as up-scale as the place on Santorini, but the staff is friendly, and the location is great -- a short walk into Naxos town -- yet far enough from town to be quiet in the evenings. Overall, a relaxing time... that we hope to repeat (with some different islands) next year.

Make it easy to do the right thing...

One of the goals of good user interface design is to make it easy to do the right thing, and conversely, difficult to do the wrong thing. So the goal at Quma is to always make the right thing to do the easy thing to do. I don't always succeed, but that goal is usually in mind when adding some new feature, etc.

This same rule-of-thumb can apply also to institutions: good institutions make it easy to do the right thing, and difficult (or costly) to do the wrong thing.

Things go bad when you make it easy to do the wrong thing since most people choose to do the easy thing whether it's right or wrong. In software, there are typically few horrible consequences if the easy thing to do is the wrong thing to do – though I'm sure there are counter examples. In an institutional setting, making it easy to do the wrong thing can produce evil results. Among the horrific examples of this – imagine that you're a German citizen living during the WWII era. You're not some leader type, you're just a common Joe, trying to stay alive. The Nazis come to power, you're drafted, and now find yourself assigned to guard duty at Auschwitz. You thank your lucky stars you don't have to fight the Russians on the Eastern front. And then you're given the order to herd the Jews into the ovens. Here is an institutional setting where the easy thing to do (obey the order) is the wrong thing to do. Very few of us possess the moral fortitude to disobey – How many of the guards in the concentration camps knew they were doing the wrong thing, but chose to do the easy thing instead? The easy choice was to commit genocide; the difficult choice was to disobey and face an uncertain future -- either immediate death, or a trip to the Eastern front. The institutional framework was all screwed up.

A less horrific example from today's economic headlines – many bankers/lenders were aware of the sub-prime lending problem, and yet many of them chose to do the easy thing – continue to make bad loans. The bankers are not particularly stupid or evil – they are like most of the rest of us: when faced between a choice to do the right thing, vs. doing the easy thing, they chose the easy thing. The thing wrong with this picture is that the easy thing to do is the wrong thing to do. I'm not sure I could articulate all the wrong turns made that have put our instutions in their present state -- where in so many instances the easy thing to do is the wrong thing to do -- but it bears thinking about. If we're to ever get out of our current mess, one important step on the road to recovery will be to alter the design of our institutions so that doing the right thing is the same as doing the easy thing.

QVCS-Enterprise 2.1.20.2 now available

Oops. I introduced a major defect (a.k.a. bug) in the 2.1.20 release that is now fixed in the 2.1.20.2 release. If you downloaded the 2.1.20 or 2.1.20.1 builds, you'll need to update to the 2.1.20.2 build in order to be able to define new projects. The downloads are available from the usual location. 

QVCS-Enterprise 2.1.20.1 now available

Oops. I forgot to make a change in an ant build script which means the 2.1.20 build does not include the new client API classes.... So there is now a 2.1.20.1 release that does include the client API classes (in the gui_out.jar jar file). You can download it from the usual www.qumasoft.com/downloads.html download page.

Kindle 2.0 first impressions

I got my Kindle 2.0 today. It was supposed to arrive on Monday, but the Post Office did something wonderful -- they delivered it a day early. I am pleased.

Some first impressions:

1. It is smaller than I expected. I know I could have taken the published dimensions and created a cardboard cutout to mimic its size to see what to expect -- but who has time for that. No complaints about the size -- just that it really is only a little bigger than your standard size paperback book.
   
2. It has a nice heft to it. It feels sturdy.
3. It takes some getting used to the difference between reading on the Kindle vs. reading a real book. Well duh.... but it will take a while to get used to the differences. My current expectation is that there will be some changes to the way people read a Kindle book vs. the way that you read a paper book.
4. The text-to-speech is the best I have heard.... not that I have made a study of products in that category, but the speed is good, and it is easy to understand.
5. At this point, I think the biggest thing I will like about the product is that it will let me carry around a whole bookshelf of books. The navigation between books is an area that could be improved -- ideally the device would have a touch screen -- but I think I'll be able to learn navigation tricks to make it second nature.
6. I put a couple of .pdf books on to the device (an easy enough thing to do, though it does require an e-mail round-trip to amazon) and -- aside from the footnotes -- the translation to Kindle format worked well.
7. For avid best-seller readers (I am not), I can imagine the immediate gratification of being able to get your hands on a bestseller in just 60 seconds will be the most addictive part of the Kindle experience.
8. My Kindle came pre-configured with my Amazon account, and a 'personal' thank-you letter from Jeff Bezos on the device; along with a book that I had ordered while the device was being shipped. Pretty cool, and pretty painless. Nice that they pay attention to those kinds of details. It's like a book appliance.... you just turn it on, and it works.
9. What will the secondary market for Kindle's look like?

Conclusion -- it's a thumbs up...

QVCS-Enterprise 2.1.20 Release now available

I just posted the 2.1.20 release. You can read more about the changes here. This is the first release to include support for a client API -- which allows you to write a Java program that can query the QVCS-Enterprise server for information about the projects and files that are version controlled by the server. The client API javadocs can be seen here. 

Another QVCS-Enterprise beta...

I just posted another beta (2.1.19.2). You can download it here. This build fixes some issues I found in 2.1.19.1 -- in particular in the SCC IDE integration .dll. I've now tested this IDE integration with Visual Studio 2003, 2005, 2008, and Altova's UModel product. Things are looking good for the 'official' release on February 28.