I have hardly blogged since January — school and work has just been too much. I wrapped up one class this weekend and the remaining one is mostly done. My days have been one long series of homework assignments, or so it seems. It will take some time to acclimate back to a more sane schedule that allows me to pursue other interests.
One thing I have been doing is continuing to work on my Erlang skills. The tricks you can pull with that platform is outright amazing.
One year ago today, PGM passed away. I still think of him often and miss the many conversations we had commuting to downtown Denver together. I also miss his always pragmatic approach to software development. He just had a way of cutting through fancy designs and overblown ideas to identify the heart of a solution.
I suppose that these characteristics that I miss are really the most superficial ones; I know that family was far more important than any amount of code or elegant design to him. That’s how it should — code lasts only long enough to get re-written, typically.
I guess all of this is to say that I remember him and wish things had worked out differently.
After my last [post](http://www.dizzyd.com/blog/?p=102) about Monarch, I had pretty much given up on ever resurrecting my desktop machine. In an interesting turn of events, I was contacted by another computer company that was willing to honor my warranty with Monarch and help me out—[J&N Computer Services](http://jncs.com).
Their offer was simple, if there was no physical damage to the motherboard they would RMA it with Asus and send me back a verified, functional board.
One week, $25 in shipping (both ways) and 10 minutes on the phone later, I have a functioning motherboard on its way back to me. Obviously, I haven’t tested it yet, but my interactions with [J&N](http://jncs.com) left me feeling that it’s a skilled outfit that knows how to keep customers happy. More importantly, I find them to have a sense of class—they went out of their way to avoid flaming Monarch in my blog comments. It’s rare to find this sort of respect (if that’s the right word) for fallen competitors in today’s business world.
This the type of company I like doing business with—technically competent, user friendly and well-mannered. I wasn’t planning on ever building another system, but with a company like [J&N](http://jncs.com) providing good service…why not?
© Gradual Epiphany. Powered by WordPress using the DePo Skinny Theme.