kozens blog

You are browsing our secure server

2011-11-30, on 09:53 | In computer science | No Comments | Dieser Artikel in Deutsch

I like those websites that state very prominently that their site is secure, yet it is not.

I know it says that I am browsing their secure “server” which might not necessarily mean that the connection to that server is secure. However, a standard HTTPS connection would have been enough for me. Lucky me, I didn’t need to pay for that T-Shirt so no credit card information was sent anywhere. Anyone who wants to get one too, can sign up at DevCon Asia.

Excited: OS X Lion

2011-07-22, on 20:59 | In computer science | 2 Comments | Dieser Artikel in Deutsch

The feature list of Mac OS X Lion sounds really good to me. When it was released some days ago, I got so excited that I wanted to get it right away. But I had to hold off until the weekend! As it is Friday evening right now, I got right on it, paid the lousy $30 and am downloading right now. This is gonna be an even more exciting weekend. Kozzi and his Lion are gonna have a dance!

To Google+ or Not To Google+?

2011-07-14, on 18:25 | In computer science | 1 Comment | Dieser Artikel in Deutsch

After having been invited by like 20 friends to Google+ and every time I tried, the Google+ website said: “New submissions are not accepted at the moment.” or “Submissions closed.” or something like that — I nearly gave up. Today, I gave it another shot, clicked the join link and actually got in there. It made me feel “special” somehow because I finally got in and now have a Google+ account. That was probably intended by Google anyway (a common method used by invitation only conferences, member clubs, conferences to raise the awareness of something usually ordinary). The disappointing at the sign up process though, was this one:

Especially the “You either share your photos or you stay the **** out of Google+” mentality is surprising. Well, I think I don’t have any photos in Picasa, so I didn’t have a problem with allowing that

You can find me here: Kozen on Google+

Stocked up the library

2011-06-17, on 20:21 | In work | No Comments | Dieser Artikel in Deutsch

The first Amazon order arrived and now I can actually start reading programming books. No worries, I got some interesting ones marketing books as well

P.S.: I hope that lifts us out of the “dummy” category.

Creativity with Colored Pencils at Work

2011-05-06, on 17:59 | In work | 1 Comment | Dieser Artikel in Deutsch

I felt a bit like back in Kindergarten where I was encouraged to draw lots of funny pictures with pencils and crayons. (Yes, socialist Eastern Germany had colored pencils too!) Today I could really leverage from those years of experience and bring in all my creativity to colorize some squares on a sheet of paper. One of the most important questions these days had to be answered: What color pattern will the new office floor have? Nearly everyone participated and a couple of minutes later we had some funky sketches flying around:

Yes, at a workplace where nearly everything is done digitally there is still space for some ‘offline’ work.

Office Stock – What kind of snacks do you have in your office?

2011-03-17, on 23:23 | In work | No Comments | Dieser Artikel in Deutsch

We have some free snacks in our office and due to incredible demand – we are mostly stocked with instant noodles, chips, chocolate and nuts. For drinks we have coffee, tee (black, red, green, flower, power), Coke, Pepsi, milk, ice tea. Here a photo one part of our cupboard with some instant noodles. Got to keep the coders happy! (and everyone else too )

(photo was taken behind a glass wall, with very low light on a BlackBerry Torch – sorry for the bad quality)

What snacks do you have?

China Copy – They can’t even take their own photos

2011-03-17, on 11:23 | In work | No Comments | Dieser Artikel in Deutsch

I just received a spam email to a non-public business email address that is forwarded to multiple people. The title of that email is: 專業..CCTV..DVR.. (Tel: 6063 7382) So obviously this was a spam email and everyone of us is getting those every single day. We can’t do much about it and still, sometimes we even open those spam emails and take a look into them. This one was quite surprising.

This is what shows in that spam email:

[...]
IT Solutions

[...]

There were also other images with CCTV equipment and stuff.

Now everyone who reads Joel On Software might have already noticed that the photo above somehow appeared somewhere before. The actual article from Joel back in December 2008 “The new Fog Creek office” showed that very photo – here is the ‘original’ one:

(Courtesy Joel Spolsky at FogCreek)

I doubt that Chinese factory actually obtained a license to advertise their products with that image. Darn, the photo is not even one that has been taken with one of their CCTV cameras

Freelancer.com – I tried to deal with their support

2011-02-09, on 10:30 | In work | 5 Comments | Dieser Artikel in Deutsch

Yes, we use Freelancer.com for outsourcing projects. I purposely don’t publish the link here. For over six years, we have had a good relation ship with them; though we barely interacted with the people behind Freelancer.com. For some reason, one payment to Freelancer.com did not work because PayPal messed something up. This resulted in our PayPal account to be locked down (which we easily re-activated) and our Freelancer.com account to be suspended as well. Freelancer.com still gets US$510 from us, but we can not pay them as our account is still suspended. Therefore, I took the chance to consult their online support – and I am not the first person who did that. This is what came out:

Myla: Hi there, how may I help you?

HR Department: Hello Myla
HR Department: Please review ticket YHV-383840
HR Department: We are still waiting on our account to be re-activated.
HR Department: Our PayPal account is back working and we would like to settle our debt with Freelancer.com now.

Myla: I will be more than happy to assist you.
Myla: Please give me a minute while I check this for you.

HR Department: I will be leaving for a congress soon and therefore, I will not have much time to take care of this the rest of this week. So it would really be great if we can get this resolved now.

Myla: Thank you for your patience. The ticket that you submitted have been forwarded to our Tier2 department. Unfortunately we will not be able to view the updates or status of this ticket from our end. Kindly wait for the reply from that department for the resolution of this issue. We are hoping for your understanding.

HR Department: Myla, we just want to pay you.
HR Department: Please connect me with your superior. If I can’t get this resolved within the next 30 minutes I will have to close our company account. Which means, your company will loose $510.
HR Department: and future projects we were going to post. As you can see from our track record, we are a respectable service buyer and actually bring business to your company.

Myla: We undestand how the situation can be frustrating for you. That is exactly the reason why the ticket was forwarded to our Tier2 department for accurate resolution. You need to wait for there reply regarding this concern. Rest assure that we will follow on this.

HR Department: Yes, frustrating and extremely disappointing.
HR Department: If you can not help me. Please put me in touch with someone who can. A phone number would be great for example.

Myla: We do not have a voice support in our site. We need you to wait for the reply on the ticket that was already forward to our Tier2 department.

HR Department: Please provide me a form to close our account.

Myla: We understand that you want to close your account . However, you have to reinstate your account first before we can process your request.

HR Department: You are kidding.

Myla: I am afraid not. Do you have any other inquiry?

HR Department: Yes.
HR Department: 1) I want our company account re-activated now!
HR Department: 2) If this is not possible, I want to close it now!
HR Department: These are my inquiries. Please help me with those.

Myla: Please understand that we need you to wait for the reply from our Tier2 department to resolve this issue. We cannot just reactivate or close your account without following the protocol. We will appreciate if you try to understand this points.

HR Department: When will your Tier2 department be working again? They did not do anything yesterday …

Myla: We will follow up on you ticket for the resolution. Rest assure we will reply to your ticket as soon as possible.
Myla: Thank you for contacting Freelancer.com, please don’t hesitate to contact us again if you have any other questions or concerns.

Myla has left the conversation
Click here to leave a message

I understand, that it might be out of Myla’s control, but then it is a massive design failure in their support system. However, Myla should never ever just hang up on a customer without any confirmation that he is not satisfied with the result of the support. May be that’s just my understanding of customer support and may be that’s the way how customer support works in Australia or Sweden?

Did you have a bad experience with them too? Feel free to leave a comment below or tweet your experience to them @freelancer @geta@freelancer or about them #freelancer #getafreelancer. I did: @kozen23

299 Top Executives, 1 Chief Executive und 1 Koz

2010-07-05, on 17:52 | In in hong kong, work | 5 Comments | Dieser Artikel in Deutsch

So liest sich das offizielle Intro:

The Chief Executive, Mr Donald Tsang, today (June 22) hosted a cocktail reception to thank the foreign investors whose presence in Hong Kong is a testimony to its position as Asia’s international business and finance centre. The cocktail reception, attended by about 300 top executives, is an annual event to warmly welcome overseas, Mainland and Taiwanese companies that have set up or expanded in Hong Kong [...]

So lief Kozzi’s Version ab:

Vor ziemlich genau 2 Wochen hatte der Kozzi mal wieder einen öffentlichen Auftritt. Da dieses mal der Chief Executive von Hong Kong Donald Tsang zu Speis und Trank einlud, hatte der Koz auch eine Ausrede, um sich mal nen ordentlichen Zwirn maßschneidern (oder mit 3 ‘s’?) zu lassen. Eigentlich bin ich ja überhaupt kein Freund von solchen Veranstaltungen. Ein Informatiker ist für sowas einfach nicht gebaut worden. Obwohl ich gehört habe, daß Special Ops Field Engineers auf alles vorbereitet sind.

Donald hat am Anfang eine kurze über weite Strecken langweilige Rede gehalten worin er z.B. meinte, dass die HK Regierung ca. 10 mal pro Woche verklagt wird und er das gut findet. Offener Markt, Rechtsicherheit usw. wollte er wohl damit hervor heben. Wie auch immer, ich habe mich an den Rotwein, Lachs und Kaviar gehalten. Achja, und die Peking Ente bitte nicht vergessen, da war nämlich ausschließlich die gute Haut am Start und es wurde einem von nem Koch direkt mundgerecht zusammengerollt.

Irgendwann zur Mitte der Veranstaltung war dann Photo-Runde. Ein bißchen angeschwipst habe ich es auch aufs Treppchen geschafft. Ich glaube aber, das leicht ist keinem aufgefallen… Wer findet den Kozzi mit den roten Wangen auf dem Photo?

Mehr zu dem Thema:

• Hong Kong benefits from the flow of foreign direct investment (FDI) into Asia

Reply-To kann auch als solches genutzt werden

2010-06-09, on 16:26 | In computer science | 1 Comment | Dieser Artikel in Deutsch

Habe gerade mal wieder eine Email von JobsDB.com (größte Jobbörse in Asien) bekommen. OK, sie haben mal wieder den Preis für Job-Anzeigen erhöht, aber das ist eigentlich das weniger nervige. Ich weiß nicht, ob es daran liegt, dass Leute den Sinn von bestimmten Email-Feldern nicht verstehen oder sie einfach nicht richtig nutzen wollen? Habe mich ja schon dran gewöhnt, dass ich komisch angeschaut werde, wenn ich jemandem sage: “Bitte ‘BCC’ mich, wenn du dem oder dem antwortest.” Hier aber kommt es interessanter Weise schon von einer Firma, die ihr Geld im Internet erwirtschaftet. So sieht der Header der Email aus:

Am Ende der Email steht dann:

Hmm … ich weiß nicht genau, was ich mir darauf reimen soll? Vielleicht vollen die auch einfach nur ihre CS Email-Addresse nicht mit “unzustellbar” zugemüllt bekommen? Wobei das allerdings helfen würde, deren Mailingliste mal zu säubern. Naja, jedenfalls, finde ich, dass man die CS Email-Addresse ruhig in das “Reply-To”-Feld hätte reinpacken können. Jedenfalls empfehle ich das jedem, der mit Massenemails hantiert. Es ist immer gut, wenn Kundenfeedback nur einen Klick entfernt ist.