Tuff as nuts? Really?

I'm on my third Nutshell case. The case I ordered for my new Nokia E65 just arrived and it is exactly as I expected it would be: perfect.

Here's the thing. I got my first Nutshell case years ago for my Palm TX. I researched long and hard before I got that case, and I loved it. My second case was for my now-retired Blackberry. I also researched that case long and hard. You'd think I'd have learned, but when I got my E65, I researched long and hard again. Next time, I'm just going to order the appropriate Nutshell case at the same time I order my next phone.

Why? These cases are darn near perfect. Each case is individually hand stitched from a single piece of high grade leather. The interior is softly lined--no scratches on your gear. The belt clip is firmly embedded in the case and is heavy steel. Anything that gets the case off your belt is probably going to take the belt and part of your hip, too. I've never worried about the case falling off. I like the D ring on the belt clip--it's handy for clipping the phone to the strap on my laptop bag.

Really, these cases are bombproof. I've used the belt clip on my last two cases, but my first case had the belt loop. I liked it, but it was a bit of a pain because the belt has to be threaded through the loop. The clips just attach and go--you don't have to take your belt off to put the case on.

If you're protecting an expensive piece of kit, these cases cannot be beat. They are a little pricey, but if you Google around you can sometimes find discount codes. I'd publish the one I've used, but I don't know if Nutshell would like that.

Highly recommended.

Communication is key...

When teams are geographically dispersed, communication is key to a successful operation. When we talk about communication, we don't mean email. Email is an interrupt and a time-waster. You have to learn to manage email, and one of the keys is to be prepared to ignore it for long periods. That's a topic for another post, though.

Real time communications are key. Your team members need to have access to each other whenever tasks are being performed. It may be early in the morning or late at night. The reality, though, is that having at least two people on a task makes the task go easier, so communication is key.

Here, we use OpenFire, a Jabber based server, to facilitate instant messaging. OpenFire allows both individual and group based chats. Getting instant feedback on questions is invaluable, and using OpenFire gives you just that.

If you don't want to go to all the trouble of putting up your own Jabber server, Google Talk is a great alternative. It's free, works from a web client, does voice, and has Google-level reliability. It also works great with Pidgin, a cross platform, open source client.

If it's not documented, it didn't happen...

Fortunately, I didn't have to make much of an argument for documentation in Project Recover. I told the company owner that we'd need a couple of hours up front to document the existing system. At first, he grudgingly agreed to the hours, saying "Well, if you need it". I told him that I didn't need it--he did! I pointed out that the reason he brought me in was to get things set up so that the people he hires to maintain his systems can do it with minimal ramp up. Documentation is the way to make that happen. Every system and process needs to be documented. Without documentation, there's no way to ensure that you're being consistent in how you care for your systems.

The tool we use for documentation is MediaWiki, the same wiki software that powers Wikipedia. It's a drop in wiki that's incredibly easy to install and, for our purposes, incredibly light weight. We found a machine that's underutilized and installed MediaWiki. We then began the process of documenting all of the systems.

Project Recover Underway

I've been hired by a small company to help them recover from a SysAdmin termination. That is to say, their SysAdmin left them and left behind a poorly documented setup that's incredibly hard to figure out and, as a result, even harder to maintain. I'll be blogging some of the steps I'm taking to get them back on track. In the course of all this, I'll be talking about some of the tools and techniques I use in my daily work.