Alfonso Montesano passes away

I am sad to report that one of my very favorite cousins passed away
on Sunday.

He was the kind of guy that made you realize what living was all
about. Family and friends and cool adventuring like taking a cigar
boat from Naples to Capri. He will be very missed.

CS4 Sorta

Well aint that a kick in the pants. All the hype about Dreamweaver
CS4 being out today and it isn't even available for download. And if
you read the fine print it might not be ready until the middle of
November. I'm on the announcement list now and expect to get spam
from them when it is ready.

I hate hurry up and wait. And just cause Adobe throws a big party
doesn't make it a product roll-out. Half-baked grabs for hype around
vaporware doesn't make anyone think you've got your stuff together.

Update: I poked around a bit more on their website and apparently the
only products ready to go are Acrobat 9 and Lightroom 2. No
Photoshop, No Dreamweaver, No InDesign.

Welcome Donovan Warren

I'd like to share the arrival of Donovan Warren at the home of Dale
and Nora Glaser. Congratulations and welcome to the club.

Tech Support Transition Update

Just an update to let you know how our transition to this new tech
support system is going. This morning I moved all outstanding tech
support issues from the old system to the shiny new system. That may
mean that you got an email telling you that your support issue has
been received and that you can login and check the status of your
issue. If you don't want to signup/login you can always send us an
email at support@rnsoft.zendesk.com or support@rnsoft.com. We'll be
working diligently to clear this backlog of support issues and will
get solutions out to you as quickly as we can.

Thanks for your patience as we make this change to serve you better.

Emilia in Pictures

So everyone can see what little Emilia is up to (and so I can fight the urge to post baby pictures to this blog) I've started a photo blog for Emilia. I'll be posting every day or two with new pictures I'll be taking on the fly (probably from my iPhone) and over the next few weeks I'll also be posting some older favorite pics so they're online as well. I hope everyone enjoys this.

http://emiliainpictures.rnsoft.com/

New Tech Support System

OK, I admit it -- I've been very bad at staying on top of tech support. Sure, I've been out on paternity leave, but really things have gotten far more out of hand than I had hoped they would. But as of today I'm gettin this ship turned around with the help of Zendesk.

There are a lot of new features and tools that I hope will help folks find solutions to problems they're having with our products. The Forums add an entirely new level to the support system that should help highlight important and useful information. There's also a completely open user-driven forum called Tips & Tricks that will be whatever people want to make of it. I'm hoping this will give them the opportunity to exchange their own great ideas. Also, commenting is available on almost all Forum entries so they can add their perspective to any issue we're working on.

On the back end, there are a lot of useful new admin tools that should bring things to light quicker and allow us to be much more responsive than we have been in the past. It also has a great toolkit for mobile use so even while I'm on the road I'll be able to stay on top of things (yay iPhone).

I've got the basic system up and running at http://rnsoft.zendesk.com and I think it should work much better than the old system. I'm going to transfer the support archive to it today and then I'll monitor it closely over the next few weeks. Let me know what you think.

Broken Blog

Not sure how long the blog has been broken, but the display page on the RNSoft website was not displaying properly. Actually it was completely blank. I'm using a beta version of RSS Replay 2 (coming soon) to replay the content from my blog at whoisron.blogspot.com onto the page. Its really cool, but a bit too specific to the source -- and blogspot added something to the entry tag that tossed the thing for a loop. Of course, its beta software -- and that is exactly why I'm using it. Still, I wonder how long that page has been blank.

Welcome Katherine Mae

Congratulations are in order to my very dear friends Cyrus and Patty
Robl on the arrival of Katherine Mae. It's a good year for it.

Welcome to the world, Katherine Mae.

Back in the Big Chair -- At least for a few hours

OK, so I'm back at work today, for at least a few hours. The daycare
for Emilia hasn't started yet, but she seems to be settling down
enough that she doesn't need my constant attention. Also, a few hours
in the early morning will help too. I'm watching my time carefully
and if I can manage 4 hours -- even if broken up -- it will be a big
step forward.

My mother came for a visit last week and took care of Emilia for a
few days and it got me hungry to get back to work. I really was only
playing catch up with tech support (and I'm still doing that -- more
in a later post) and doing a little strategic planning for the next
round of updates, but I got some stuff done and that made me very happy.

Mom managed to get Emilia to play on her own for a while on the floor
and in front of the TV. She honestly never did that for me. She
always wanted me right there next to her and would fuss up a storm if
I was even just on the other side of the room. I guess Mom got her
through it and she seems quite content to watch Winnie the Pooh (for
20 minutes now anyhow).

Well lets see what I can get done...