by ezs | Nov 1, 2005 | evilzenscientist, Uncategorized
I’ve been using Zappos for a while – it’s a great example of how a web-based service can and should work.
Here are my positive pieces:
- if you know what you want – it’s really easy to find and buy a pair of shoes. Look at real shoes in a real shop; buy online. (Oh how traditional stores must hate that)
- if you want to look for something new – it’s nice and clean navigation to find what you want to compare. The images of the shoes look clear and realistic. That’s good.
- great shipping policy. Free shipping – I’m often ‘upgraded’ to 2 day priority at no cost. That’s just splendid.
- excellent returns policy. Print out the return label online; put it on the box; arrange pickup. No cost, no hassle. Compare this to other online stores (urg – Swatch are awful for this) where they issue an RMA then make you ship the product back. Or they ship you a return document. It’s all time and hassle.
- feedback on purchases. Just like any other successful site you can comment on the goods purchased (shoes – how much can you say about a pair?) and on the service itself.
- purchase history. I liked those shoes so much I’ll buy some more. Or you can view what you did purchase and look for similar things.
Overall Zappos is pretty splendid.
by ezs | Nov 1, 2005 | evilzenscientist, fun stuff, Uncategorized
[Edit – it’s not me in the gorilla suit – it’s Peter Worsnop – one of my colleagues!]
by ezs | Oct 31, 2005 | evilzenscientist, Uncategorized
I first heard Foreheads in a Fishtank in 2001 on John Peel. I got a tape of the albums from Andy. We saw them (the only people in the audience) at the Old Angel in Nottingham – they did requests…
I lost the tapes a long time ago. I’ve been hunting down a CD of ‘Yeah Baby Wow’ for years. I found a copy in good condition on eBay today. A steal at UKP3.50.
by ezs | Oct 31, 2005 | evilzenscientist, Uncategorized, Utah
It’s been slow blogging this last week or so – it is the end of the fiscal year at Novell – and that’s been taking up a lot of my time.
There is fresh snow on the mountains – and it is freezing overnight in Utah – I’ll get some photos of the snow posted later today.
by ezs | Oct 25, 2005 | evilzenscientist, Uncategorized
I lost a blog server.
postmark.net were a free web-based email provider.
Their homepage tells a sobering tale:
Early last week, Postmark’s repositories of user mail and account information were lost to a serious hardware failure. The resulting damage left us unable to recover any useful data, and as such, Postmark.net is shutting down. In its stead, we recommend Google’s own Google Mail service, which offers superior storage and search capacities.
by ezs | Oct 25, 2005 | evilzenscientist, fun stuff, Uncategorized
This caught my eye – a local Salt Lake company 360 Electrical has a whole new take on the standard US power outlets:
Now that’s useful.
by ezs | Oct 22, 2005 | evilzenscientist, Uncategorized
Typical isn’t it – you get on a plane and one of your serves dies.
My blog server decided to complain about the lack of attention last Sunday evening – just as I was getting on a flight to London. Cycling the power really didn’t help – it needed fsck on the filesystem.
Now I’m back it’s a lot happier.
Apologies for the lack of updates in the last week!
by ezs | Oct 17, 2005 | evilzenscientist, patching, Uncategorized
I seem to have won the task of writing a short paper on ‘how to update and patch Novell systems in the enterprise’.
I’m working on this in conjunction with my ZENworks 7 Linux Management white paper – which is still being written. (Sorry it’s late – I’m on the road again!)
My summary so far is:
NetWare – use ZENworks Server Management. Deploy CPKs of the Consolidated Support Pack
SLES 8 – use ZENworks Linux Management. Mirror content from a YaST Online Update mirror.
SLES 9 – use ZENworks Linux Management. Mirror content from update.novell.com. Note: Make sure you have migrated your SUSE portal account!
NLD 9 – as SLES 9
RHEL – use ZENworks Linux Management. I know it’s not a Novell product – but mirror content from Red Hat Network using your RHN credentials.
There are probably some other platforms I need to add here – small biz server and some applications spring to mind – but I’ll be working off this list.
Comments welcome.
by ezs | Oct 11, 2005 | evilzenscientist, patching, Uncategorized
A busy one:
Microsoft Patch Disclosure – October 2005
Nine Microsoft patches: three Critical, four Important, and two Moderate.
Internet Explorer is the target of another Critical update. All nine of these updates are available via ZENworks Patch Management today.
by ezs | Oct 10, 2005 | evilzenscientist, Uncategorized
I posted a few months ago about how Sudoku had hit the UK – the wave has now reached the US.
United have a set of puzzles in their in-flight magazine; I see them in newspapers; they have been on CNN – everywhere.
Bored on a flight I tried them – and they are certainly interesting. The harder puzzles really appeal to my sense of problem solving and pattern matching.
So – somewhat addicted – I purchased some cool software – Soduko from SadMan Software.
Great – I’ve now got an endless supply of really hard problems – along with built in tutorial advice. It’s interesting – since reading up on some of the pattern matching concepts I’ve halved my time to complete some of the harder problems.
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