Promises of Progress

Sometime during friday, some of my sites (including this one) dropped off the net. I was out drinking, so the fix had to wait until saturday. The reason seemed to be related to the hardware in the soekris powered gateway. A quick Google search returned something interesting: The Soekris-shipped power supply, SMP 12V 1.5A, part no SBD212, is known to spontaneously fail. A quick run to Brinck Elektronik, and I had a replacement unit (12V/1.7A SMP at 169DKK) – and we were back up. 

I would have loved to know of this risk before stuff died. 

And honestly – supplying a crappy poweradapter like this with quality hardware – seems a bit like serving a sirloin steak on a paper plate.

And you’re right – I have no idea of the reliability of the replacement adapter.

When travelling by air, I prefer to fly with SAS. The tickets are typically a bit more expensive, but the service level is good (and pretty consistent).

A couple of days ago, I received a mailinglist newsletter from SAS, asking me to participate in a questionaire with the title “what does time mean to you”. Among other things, the survey showcased the various special benefits that SAS offers in order to reduce wasted time while travelling.

So I entered the site and began answering the questions. The only problem was that the server was so bogged down that it took more than a minute after you answered, before the next question would show up.

“What a waste of time”, I thought – and dug up the e-mail address of the VP of marketing in SAS Denmark.

The next day, I got the response from SAS that they certainly did not intend to waste their customers time. Excuses (“we did actually do a load test”) and promises of fixing the issue took up the biggest part of the email.

I just checked – and the server is now responding pretty fast – as you would expect in the first place. The only problem is that the really busy people (that the campaign probably was directed towards) has long forgotten that site that didn’t work. The email is in deleted items. Their input is lost. You fail.

Once you have learned from your mistake you may try again.