jon torresdal - Support incident from the 90’s

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Monday, January 28, 2008

Support incident from the 90’s

Somehow I got reminded about an old support incident I had in the first company I did development for. On a regular basis we sent out disks with text files containing data that our system should import into its database. Embedded with the disk was an explanation of how to import the files into our system. Here's how I remember it:

Open the command windows (DOS) (Somehow all our customers knew how to do this)
Write A: followed by Enter (Return)
Write install.bat followed by Enter (Return)

One day I got a call from one of our customers:

Customer:	"The instructions you sent me do not work"
Me:	"Ok, what seems to be the problem?"
Customer:	"The install.bat thing does not work. None of the data is getting imported into our system."
Me:	"Do you get any error messages?"
Customer:	"I don't know. I just followed your instructions."
Me:	"Could you walk me trough it on the phone?"
Customer:	"Sure"
Me:	"Have you opened the DOS window"
Customer:	"Yes"
Me:	"Then enter A: followed by Enter. Does it now say A:\ in your window?"
Customer:	"No. It says NOT READY READING DRIVE A:"
Me:	"Have you put the disk in?"
Customer:	"No, your note didn't say anything about that!"

Other | Software | Work

Monday, January 28, 2008 11:40:02 PM (W. Europe Standard Time, UTC+01:00)

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Friday, February 08, 2008 4:46:50 PM (W. Europe Standard Time, UTC+01:00)

haha:) utrolig bra! Har hør lignende historier.. Helt utrolig:)

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about me!

Hi, I'm Jon Arild Tørresdal. I’m an Architect for the Norwegian insurance company Frende Forsikring, chapter Lead of Norwegian .Net User Group (NNUG) in Bergen and .NET editor for InfoQ. I've been coding professionally since 1998 and on .NET since 1999. I'm an early adapter always looking for new ways to put technology to use for the company I work for, at NNUG or just as an excuse to do some coding at home.

I’m a great fan of Agile practices like XP, Scrum, Kanban and Lean. My first experience with Agile was in 2006, when I introduced Scrum to CMA Contiki (my former employer), which was a great success. Later I found the lack of engineering practices in Scrum pulled me closer to Extreme Programming. I’m constantly trying to motivate developers, testers and other agile team members to adapt the Agile way of thinking to improve the overall quality of software delivery. My motivation for studying these practices is to constantly improve the way I and others work in my organization; both by having fun and adding value to our customers.

I’m also a speaker, focusing on engineering practices (clean code), Agile and best practices (often represented in forms of patterns). At work I often find myself doing presentations on technologies we're about to adapt or how to improve our agile process.

Except from work I am married to my beautiful wife, Gry Helene and we live together with our son Jesper. I love good food and wine, especially red wine from northern Italy. I'm trying to start a collection without any great luck so far :-)

If you want to cantact me please use this form.

Hope you enjoy my blog!

Disclaimer. The opinions expressed herein are my own personal opinions and do not represent my employer's view in any way.