welcome to the funcave

mirror mirror

for starters, have to give credit to eric “mr. licensing” ligman and sharon “my last name is peterson now” erdman (peterson), both of whom recommended our company participate in the customer satisfaction survey available as a free benefit to microsoft certified and gold certified partners.

at first i was pretty skeptical.

ok, I’ll admit…i thought no way in h, e, double-hockey-stick are we ever gonna do that.

but that was then…this is now.

take it from your friendly neighborhood happyfunboy, the process couldn’t be simpler.

all you need is a list of your clients in an excel spreadsheet with last name, first name, e-mail, company name, language code (1 = US English). upload it to the customer satisfaction portal site. done.

honestly, the only thing that takes any time at all is getting the ok from your customers to include them as participants.

like most things, we’re using it as a “touch” opportunity.
usually…such “touches” reveal that our clients have a few little things to take care of now. and a couple of bigger things coming down the pike that we get started thinking about and planning now.

translation: more work.
which is always a good thing.

as far as the survey…we’ll see how it goes.
we’re obviously wondering:

• how many participants will actually complete the survey
• if it will be as simple for participants to complete as it seems
• how we will stack up against other partners, rank-wise

but most of all…

• what we will find out about ourselves

i have the distinct feeling we’re gonna get a few surprises.

as in…areas where we think we’re pretty solid, but that in actuality are seen as weak spots in the eyes of our clients.

that kind of info is worth its weight in gold…because it is nigh impossible to truly see yourself, or your business, the way others do.

but i don’t think we can grow our business without first taking a cold, hard look at where we are today. and that kind of self-scrutiny takes a pure gut check moment.

speaking of gut checks…

amy…we’re still in the hunt for gold, but i’m not obsessing about it anymore, honest.

and if we make it…i promise you’ll be the first to get an e-mail.
and that’s because you’re the very first person i want to thank.

|| posted by happyfunboy under uncategorized || comments (0) || ||

ask…and ye shall receive

the tool to enable qb transaction history migration to microsoft small business accounting 2006 arrived on microsoft download center today.

get it while it’s hot!

and give the blue badges some long-overdue credit…for listening to our feedback (which, to the untrained ear, usually comes off like complaining) about something, and taking said complaints not as personal insults, but as opportunities to demonstrate excellence.

well, that…and a great big swat at their main target.

|| posted by happyfunboy under uncategorized || comments (0) || ||

way to go, eriq!

looks like q finished his sbs book, and it’ll be out in time for the holidays! you won’t find a more perfect gift for your sbs admin friends.

besides ordering a copy, be sure to drop a congratulatory comment over on his blog. q is one heckuva force for good here in the smb/sbs community, so give the man his props!

|| posted by happyfunboy under uncategorized || comments (0) || ||

wake up mayor..time to give the people what they want!

now, until two weeks ago i wouldn’t have known a single thing about this, nor would i have cared at all.

but since my trip to redmond, wa…and having spent a very brief amount of time in seattle while out that way…hearing today about the political machinations to kill the seattle monorail project totally bums me out.

i’ve been a monorail fan for a loooong time, ever since riding one as a kid in the late late 70s at disneyworld.

i can still remember being totally enthralled by the ride, especially the first time we went right fracking through the contemporary resort!

still gives me chills thinking about it.

elevated transit systems simply kick the ass of buried transit systems.

at least, they do in happyfunboyland.

the current seattle monorail, which has been around since 1962, runs a pretty simple route from seattle center to the westlake center mall downtown.

but besides being quite handy, reasonably priced, fast, and quiet…well, it’s just fracking cool!

absolutely no downside to that, in the opinion of this happyfutureboy.

in fact, i’d say we all could do with a good many more things that are cool in our lives.

so…in that regard, let me pass on a link to some folks who are pro-monorail out there in seattle. it’d be great if visitors to the funcave showed them some support…even if it’s nothing more than dropping them an encouraging message via e-mail, or leaving a comment at their blog-quarters about this issue.

important to keep in mind that projects like this often serve as role models for other cities. but even if smp never spawns initiatives anywhere else…the simple fact remains that the elected officials in seattle are obviously, blatantly, ignoring the stated will of the people.

that’s what your friendly neighborhood happyvoterboy calls a bfp, or big fracking problem.

’nuff said.

|| posted by happyfunboy under uncategorized || comments (2) || ||

when is a hard drive failure not a hard drive failure?

no idea if any of the visitors to the funcave have seen this issue, but thought i’d pass along this handy tip.

over the last 6-12 months, perhaps even a bit longer, your friendly neighborhood happyfunboy has had several clients who have had fairly new machines (less than 2 years old) start showing strange crashes, freezes, and even data corruption. and this behavior has been seen on both desktops and laptops.

at first we thought it was a uptick in hard drive failure rates…maybe a bad batch of drives, etc.

lo and behold, as we tested the machines on through, we found the real culprits!

failing memory chips.

and in every single case, it was factory-installed ram, not any memory that had been installed as a subsequent upgrade.

so…before you go calling for a hard drive replacement, run a decent mem tester on the computer first. here’s one that has a place in my utility belt.

and…in case you are wondering about the make of the computers in question…

starts with d, rhymes with hell.

stay frosty, kids.

|| posted by happyfunboy under uncategorized || comments (2) || ||