andersonfam.org

I’ve been listening to (and greatly enjoying) a *lot* of podcasts lately, so I thought I’d share my current subscription list.

• Speaking of Faith – This is public radio’s “conversation about belief, meaning, ethics, and ideas”. In this podcast, Krista Tippett performs hour-long interviews with religious leaders, philosophers, and others.
• Geeks and God – Rob Feature and MF host a really great weekly podcast in which they talk about how we, as Christian geeks, can help our churches and ministries make better use of technology.
• Lightroom for Digital Photographers
• Lullabot – Lullabot is, perhaps, the current premier Drupal consulting shop. In this bi-weekly podcast, they discuss what’s currently happening in the Drupal world. Apart from the first 10 minutes or so (which usually consists of random chat), the podcast is very informative.
• The Moth – The Moth broadcasts short stories by various writers, performers, etc, told live, without notes. Without fail, they’re incredibly entertaining.
• Mustardseed Media Video Podcast – Bob Christenson, half of the Geeks and God crew, puts out a short Drupal videocast every few weeks. I’ve found them to be very helpful.
• Car Talk – What more needs to be said about Tom and Ray?
• Planet Money – In response to the ever-quickening rate of change in the current economy, NPR started producing this daily podcast, in which they discuss the day’s economy-related news.
• This American Life – IMHO, this show is *the* single most entertaining, most consistent, and most well-produced hour of audio one could listen to every week. For each episode, Ira Glass and crew pick a topic and bring us a variety of stories on that topic. Yes, it sounds dry and boring, but you *need* to give it a try. I implore you to listen. It’s that good.
• Radio Lab – I love Radio Lab. This is a more science-related podcast produced by the WNYC, the NYC NPR affiliate. It’s extremely well-produced (second only to TAL, in my opinion), and they do a great job of explaining some very complicated concepts in a way that non-science people can understand.
• Woodland Hills Sermon Podcats – I have a great respect for Woodland Hills church, and take a keen liking to the sermons from their senior pastor, Greg Boyd. I listen to this weekly, and it never ceases to challenge me on a very deep level.

So that’s my current list. What have you been listening to lately?

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We’ve been quite busy the last few weeks getting to know Toren, enjoying time with friends and family, and trying to catch up on our sleep. :-) Following are a few picture highlights from the last few weeks.

We’ve started learning how to entertain two kiddos at once:

We’ve been blessed by many visits from family:

We discovered that 1-week old babies can indeed accumulate toe jam:

We took a trip to the Coon Rapids Fire Department annual open house:

On this, the day after our seventh wedding anniversary, Meghan and I are overwhelmed by how lucky we are. The Lord has given us two beautiful children, an incredible marriage, and so many supportive friends and family. Thank you all so much.

(the rest of the photos from the last few weeks can be found here)

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Toren Erik Anderson has arrived! Two weeks overdue, no less :-)

He was born at 10:48 on Sunday evening, September 21st, 2008. He weighs 10 pounds, 10 ounces, and is 22.5″ tall. He’s a big boy already! Both Toren and Meghan are doing perfectly. Thanks so much, friends, for your prayers.

Click on the picture below for a quick view into Toren’s first 12 hours.

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Ever since receiving a bottle of limoncello as a Christmas gift from a friend last year, I’ve wanted to try making it. That dream finally came to fruition this evening. I used Peter’s recipe as a base for this batch. As is recommended by the author of Limoncello Quest, I purchased a Microplane Grater to assist with the lemon zesting portion of the process. That turned out to be a really great recommendation. I couldn’t imagine trying to zest 15 lemons without it.

For this batch, I also took another piece of advice from Limoncello Quest – I filtered the everclear through a Britta pitcher 4 times. From what I’ve read, that will take a significant amount of time off the “aging” process.

Like I did for my homebrew entries, I’m going to use this post as a place to keep records on each batch – dates, times, details, reviews, etc.

• 2008-08-13 – Filtered 2 bottles of Everclear (4 times), added one to jar and set one aside for later in this batch. Zested 15 lemons, added to jar.

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Over the the last several months, I’ve become more and more frustrated with Microsoft’s eOpen licensing/download site. I finally reached the point today at which I *needed* to vent some frustrations. Luckily, I had recently been provided with the contact information for a local “Strategic Engagement Manager”. I typed up my frustrations and emailed her, hoping that she’d be able to put me in contact with someone on the eOpen team. The email I sent is below. I’ll post updates as I get them.

Hi [name redacted] – I realize you’re not part of the eOpen team. As explained below, in writing to you, I’m hoping that you’ll be able to refer me to someone in the eOpen team as attempts to get support on this through the official channels have always been unproductive.

(While the below stated issues are separate from what [name redacted] wrote you about yesterday, both issues are indicative of the problems that are endemic with the eOpen website)

We ([company name redacted]) started using the eOpen webpage for licensing and product downloads about a year ago. Ever since then, 90% of the time I visit the site, either the licensing section is down, the product downloads section is down, or both. In most cases, these downtime episodes last for 12 hours or more. Needless to say, this is *incredibly* frustrating. Due to the way the “online licensing” scheme works, we tend only to visit the site when we’re in need of licensing information/product downloads. Because the service is down so often and for such extended periods of time, many of our internal projects have gotten delayed due to us being unable to get licensing information from you. As you could expect, these delays don’t go over well with management. It also goes without saying that, when management hears of the reason for the delay, it gives them pause as to whether or not it’s a good decision to go with a Microsoft solution in the future.

In the past when there has been downtime, I have made attempts to contact the MVLS tech support desk. From what I can tell, the only way to contact them is via email (or at least that’s the only way published on the eOpen site). In each case, they took long enough to get back to me (usually 36 to 48 hours) that the outage had resolved itself, rendering useless whatever troubleshooting tips support had recommended.

I certainly understand the desire for Microsoft to use the web to disseminate licensing and product downloads. I’m also of the mindset that, in most cases, online license management is preferable to the customer as well – *if* and only if it’s implemented in a stable and reliable fashion. That is not the case with the current eOpen website.

Try doing a google search for “Microsoft eOpen down”. You’ll see that there are many, many people around the world that are experiencing the exact same frustrations as we have been. Many of the complaints go back two and three years. This tells me that Microsoft has done nothing (or very little) during this time to improve the service. That’s unacceptable.

I fully realize that [company name redacted] is a small customer of Microsoft and that in and of ourselves, we don’t have a whole lot of “pull” to get things changed within your organization. In this case, I see myself as speaking for the larger community of IT professionals that have to use eOpen on a frequent basis. I just desire to be put in contact with a clueful eOpen team member that can respond in a coherent fashion to some of these concerns and who can also provide information as to what Microsoft is doing to resolve the issues and when we can expect them to be resolved. I don’t think that’s too much to ask.

Thanks [name redacted] – please let me know if you’d like more information about this.

-Erik Anderson

Update: 2008-08-06, 12:26pm:
I received an out-of-office response from the MS contact. She’s going to be out of the office until August 11th. Fortunately she gave an alternate contact in her autoreply. I’ve forwarded the original message to this alternate contact.

Update: 2008-08-06, 7:00pm:
The downloads section of the eOpen site has officially been down for 36 hours now. I still haven’t heard anything back from the MS contacts I emailed. I decided also to send an email to my Dell sales rep, in the hopes that he’d be able to put me in touch with their MS licensing rep.

Update: 2008-08-07, 11:45am:
Just got off the phone with MS MVLS support. They’re aware of the eOpen downloads problem. Supposedly it has been down due to “maintenance” since last Thursday. That’s one week of downtime. Nice, huh. Anyway, due to the downtime, they were able to dispatch a physical media kit to me. I asked for it to be overnighted, which they weren’t willing to do unless I provided our own UPS account number. I’m guessing that I would have been able to get them to foot the overnight shipping bill if I kept pressing them on it, but at this point, I was frustrated enough I just didn’t want to deal with that. So…if you’re in the same situation, call MVLS support at 866-230-0560 or email them at eopensup@microsoft.com. They’ll hook you up with a media kit.

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