It’s somewhat of a mystery how the writing process can conjure up results that weren’t initially intended. Case in point is the fact that another post was planned to be in place of this one, but it never made the light of day. This particular post started off as an introduction to a technology I had just learned, used, and wanted to share the experience with others. The beginning was fun and demonstrated how easy it was to get started. One of the things I’ve been pondering over time is that the Web is filled with introductions to new technologies and quick first looks, so I set out to add more depth, share lessons learned, and generally help you avoid the problems I encountered along the way; problems being a key theme of why you aren’t reading that post at this very minute. Problems that curiously came from nowhere to thwart my good intentions. Success was sweet when using the tool for the prototypical demo scenario. The thing is, I intended the tool to accomplish a real task. Having embarked on the path toward getting the job done, glitches began creeping into the process. Realizing that this was all a bit new, I had patience and found a suitable work-around, but this was to be short lived. As in marching ants to a freshly laid out picnic, the problems kept coming until I had to get up and walk away. Not to be outdone, sheer will and brute force manual intervention led to mission accomplishment. Though I kept a positive outlook and was pleased at the final result, the process of using the tool had somewhat soured. Regardless of a less than stellar experience with the tool, I have a great deal of respect for the company that produced it and the people who built it. Perhaps I empathize for what they might feel after reading a post that details such deficiencies in their product. Sure, if you’re in this business, you’ve got to have a thick skin; brush it off, fix the problem, and move on to greatness. But, today I feel like they’re people and are probably already aware of any issues I would seemingly reveal. Anyone who builds a product or provides a service takes a lot of pride in what they do. Sometimes they screw up and if their worth a dime, they make it up. I think that will happen in this case and there’s no reason why I should post information that has the potential to sound more negative than helpful. While no one would ever notice or care either way, I’m posting something that won’t harm. Joe
