Companies

I was renewing a SSL-certificate for a customer. They had been using GeoTrust earlier, so I went there. It was the first and most likely the last time I do business with them.

The order process was pretty similar to the competition. A CSR was submitted and all the necessary information was given. After submission there was a thank you -page and they sent an automated e-mail with information that the order is pending, and will be processed after 5 to 7 business days.

After that, nothing. After waiting for 12 days out of with 8 were business days, my patience ran out. I contacted them and requested to expedite the process. Yet another business day passed, and then they called me after 7 in the night and informed, that there was a mistake in the information I had gave them. I corrected the info, got automated e-mail about it and went into yet another wait.

Two more days later they sent an e-mail that the verification call to customer failed. Their mail had the number in it and it was obvious, that they assumed that the customer was located in USA. Even though, the information stated Finland as the country. I got an e-mail about that too.

At the point, when they issued the new certificate, I was surprised. Against all the odds, they managed to verify the customer in less than three weeks. The real suprise was, that at that point their e-mail replies started pouring in. The lag in their e-mail processing was huge. Last of the replies came 6 days after the certificate was issued. It's beyond stupid, that none of the communication I had with them were actually recorded for the purchase process. Apparely all of them went to a distant support site, which has nothing to do with any of their other actions or operations.

Is it just me, or does GeoTrust's way of doing business suck?

A while ago I a friend send a link to Jamie and Adam Tested -YouTube channel. I'm a fan of Mythbusters, so he knew that I'd love their stuff. One of the videos they have there is Inside Adam Savage's Cave: Hacking a Flashlight for Adam's EDC. So, I felt that I should blog about flashlights too.

Last year my old and trustworthy MagLite Solitaire broke down after serving me well for 18 years and I had to get a replacement. My old Solitare became un-fixable due to some sort of stress in the inside plastic parts. They broke down to a number of new pieces that didn't fit anymore. Apparently my key chain with number of keys in it cause stress to a flashlight's guts.

In the above video Adam is doing a hack to his JETBeam. Me as a Leatherman man I went for a Led Lenser (apprently they are owned by same company). Model K2 to be specific. However it turned to be a mistake. The LED is bright, it really is, and the flashlight is really tiny, but its aluminum body is not built to be hung in a key chain and stuffed into a pocket over and over again. It broke after 8 months of "usage". Actually I didn't use the lamp that much, but ... It broke. Aow come on! My previous lamp lasted for 18 years!

Here is a pic of the broken Led Lenser K2 (the short one) next to my new flashlight:

Thankfully my favorite flashlight company is back! I don't know what MagLite did for 15 years or so, but they certainly lost the market leader position by not releasing any new products for a very, very long time. So... after failing with Led Lenser I went back to MagLite. Their new LED-products are really good and I got one of their new releases a Solitaire LED. I'm hoping it lasts a minimum of 18 years!

The way Apple chose to implement changing iCloud-account is far from making any sense at all. The phrase "Delete Account" puts every users' imagination into high gear. By clicking this red button what could possibly go wrong! Does it implode your entire iCloud-account with all the data in it so that everything is gone permanently and forever? Or does it simply disconnect that particular iOS device from the Apple's cloud?

_{Image courtesy of http://assets.ilounge.com/images/articles_jdh/ask-20121114-1.jpg}

Apparently it is the latter one. The user interface is really poorly designed, no matter what. I think the idea was to scare users from testing what happens if they click it.

The discussion-thread in Apple's forums (HT4895 How do I change my iCloud account to my new apple ID?) is one of the sources for confirmation, that it does not wipe your account. It just detaches that particular device from your cloud-account.

To actually change the device to use a new iCloud account is much more tricky, as the article points out. And on top of that, iMessage, Facetime and AppStore still need to re-connect separately. Luckily that's not a big deal at that point.

However, if you combine changing the account with taking a new iPad into use, then you see a flood of e-mail from Apple. The e-mails come from different systems at Apple, but it certainly made me laugh a for a while. There are e-mails from Find My iPhone (my device was iPad), then there are security notifications about Apple ID being used in a new device and when all is set up, there is the welcome to a new device -mail. It would sound like a better idea to switch the account into some sort of changing-devices -mode, but they don't have that yet.

The good thing is that it is possible to change accounts. The bad thing is that they implemented the bare minimum of it.