Okay. Over on LinkedIn Bob Aiello (editor of CMCrossroads) made a comment on the reposted version of my last post about my frustration at being unable to attend the online ALM Expo. Here’s Bob’s comment:
Mark – you contact Patrick and I directly on a regular basis. I was in the middle of conducting live interviews and did not have time to follow up with Patrick to see why your IP was blocked. You also know that we have been getting spammed daily and we are trying to resolve that problem. Completely untrue that you cannot contact CM Crossroads and you know that.
Fair enough. It seems Bob thinks I was being unfair. The tone of the comment even suggests I was lying with malicious intent. It certainly contains some misleading information and factual inaccuracies itself.
Okay. I had written a rather long response defending my position. However, rather than post that I’ve decided to simply write the original post but with more content; a full account of proceedings and full disclosure (this seems to be what Bob is complaining is missing from the original). I’ve left the original so you can see the difference.
Before getting stuck in, I should just say that the original was simply a quickly dashed of blog post expressing my frustration. This one is much longer (I have some time to write it, unlike the original) and it is a slightly more thorough treatment of the topic.
To be honest, I’m not sure Bob’s going to be any happier with this account, but it is a complete account this time so I don’t think he can complain I’ve concealed any material facts (well, none that I know about. Bob seems to know better than I what I actually know, so perhaps he’ll tell you what I know, even though I don’t, or at least I’m not aware I do). [That last parenthetical minefield will become more meaningful by the end of this post.]
I’ve been receiving e-mails from CM Crossroads for some time telling me about the upcoming ALM Expo. They’re free. I don’t need to travel to attend. So, I don’t much care that presentations are basically product demonstrations. Hey, it’s an Expo, what were you expecting. It’s good to keep an eye on the various ALM tools and their noteworthy capabilities and this is as good a way as any of covering a lot of ground quickly.
So, November 8th I receive the following e-mail (characteristic of all the e-mails, it just happens to be the one that arrived to remind me that the Expo started the following day):
ALM Expo 2011 – Starts Tomorrow!
Dear Registrant,
Don’t forget – you’ve registered for the ALM Expo Virtual Show,
which starts tomorrow at 8:30 a.m. ET! Start your day off by
viewing the Better Software keynotes, streamed live from Orlando, FL.
You’ll also be able to choose from up to 11 hours of presentations
and chat with colleagues and peers. Take a moment to view the
schedule and set your Outlook reminders now! We are looking
forward to seeing you at the event!The ALM Expo Team
Day 1 Agenda:
http://www.cmcrossroads.com/day-1-agendaDay 2 Agenda:
http://www.cmcrossroads.com/day-2-agendaWe’ll see you November 9 and 10, 2011!
The ALM Expo TeamLogin Info: http://www.cmcrossroads.com/component/user/remind
Password Reminder link: http://www.cmcrossroads.com/component/user/reset–
Software Quality Engineering
340 Corporate Way, Suite 300
Orange Park, FL 32073 USA——————————
This is a one time email. But If you wish to update your profile
please use the following linkhttp://app.streamsend.com/private/Odst/srk/CXUGJyC/unsubscribe/15006423
I duly clicked the link the following day and received a message informing me that my IP address was blocked.
Hm! Perhaps my mistake? Perhaps the link was somehow bad. So I try the simpler http://cmcrossroads.com Nope. Same result.
You will, I hope, notice that nowhere on the e-mail does it warn me this might happen. Nor are there any contact details (other then a handy postal address, I guess I could have posted via snail-mail) that would allow me to ask for help.
At this point I dashed-off my original post.
Bob complains that I could have contacted him directly. And this is true. Had I been in a frame of mind suited to thinking it through, I could have e-mailed him at this point. But I didn’t. I was just pissed that the e-mail didn’t tell me anything useful about who to contact if I had any difficulties. (*SPOILER ALERT* Hang in there though, I DO contact Bob directly in just a short while.)
I received several other e-mails from the ALM Expo over the next couple of days. Each one announcing some highlight presentation and telling me how to log in and find out all this great stuff. The following is typical.
ALM Expo 2011: Orchestrating Agility – Now Showing!
Dear Registrant,
ALM Expo 2011 is now open!Please join us to view our next presentation, Orchestrating
Agility: Four Steps to Make a Truly Agile Enterprise, sponsored by
Serena: http://www.cmcrossroads.com/day-1-agenda/14219Please view today’s full schedule: http://www.cmcrossroads.com/day-1-agenda
and bookmark your favorite events.
Don’t forget to set your reminders for day 2, as well:
http://www.cmcrossroads.com/day-2-agenda.We hope you enjoy the live presentations, interviews and networking
opportunities available.See you there!
The ALM Expo Team–
Software Quality Engineering
340 Corporate Way, Suite 300
Orange Park, FL 32073 USA——————————
This is a one time email. But If you wish to update your profile
please use the following linkhttp://app.streamsend.com/private/Odst/srk/CXUGJyC/unsubscribe/15014379
See all those links telling me how to get in contact with the organisers if I have difficulties? No. Me neither.
Anyway, around 22:00 GMT on the 9th November (okay, 22:11:49) I sent the following e-mail to editor@cmcrossroads.com (this is the e-mail address that was sending the e-mails out. I completely failed to register the fact that this is also Bob Aiello’s e-mail address as editor on the site).
Would have loved to join you but you’re blocking my IP address, making it impossible.
To his credit, Bob replied with the following about an hour later (okay, 1 hour, 3 minutes and 40 seconds later—I know how Bob is a stickler for details).
Just want to cc Patrick
Sent from my Windows Phone From: Mark Bools
Sent: Wednesday, November 09, 2011 17:11
To: CM Crossroads
Subject: Re: Now Showing at ALM Expo: Is DevOps Practical For Real
World Enterprises?
Would have loved to join you but you’re blocking my IP address, making
it impossible.
(Time discrepancies in the e-mails are due to server time differences, I’m always using the timestamps as they appear on my e-mail headers.)
And that’s the last I heard of it.
So, to recap:
- Got e-mail invite.
- Clicked on link to attend—IP address blocked.
- Went direct to site home page—IP address blocked.
- Wrote brief blog post.
- Sent e-mail to editor (Bob Aiello)
- Received CC message that Bob had forwarded this on to someone else (maybe Patrick Egan)
And that’s all I heard until 11:33 this morning (14th November) when Bob left his comment on my LinkedIn cross-post of the original blog post.
In the interests of full disclosure, I also received, at 11:59 today (14th November) the following CC’d in to a message to Patrick Egan (for sure this time).
Mark’s IP is blocked and Mark claims on a linkedin posting that he cannot contact us.
Bob
Between receiving Bob’s comment (11:33) and just now (17:20) it seems my IP address is now free to contact http://cmcrossroads.com (I checked at lunch time and was still one of the disenfranchised then.)
That then is the full account of what happened. I leave it to you to decide what to make of it.
As for Bob’s comment.
It is absolutely true that the hyperbolic statement ‘completely unable to contact’ was an exaggeration (it’s in the nature of hyperbole) and one that might appear disingenuous or even malicious on my part. I intended neither. I was frustrated and reflecting how I saw the dearth of information in the e-mails regarding remedial action available to users wanting to attend who found themselves blocked. It’s like being sent an invitation to a party, turning up to find not just the door locked by the gates to the entrance of the property locked and no note saying ‘call me on my mobile 0555 1657343′. Instead you leave me to guess how to contact you.
You knew…
Despite Bob’s statement that I ‘knew’ the site was experiencing a spammer attack, I knew no such thing (I don’t even recognise the term ‘spammer attack’ in this context), and am surprised that Bob thinks he knows what I know with sufficient insight to be able to make such a statement.
Sorry Bob, but asserting that someone ‘knows’ something, not matter how assertively you say it, does not actually make it true.
I did suspect (suspect, not know. There’s an important distinction) I was caught up in some sort of DoS attach and a range of IP addresses were blocked from accessing the server (a range that included mine). Okay, a brutal, unsophisticated but ultimately quick, easy to implement and effective means of slowing or stopping such an attack. But one that ultimately creates significant collateral damage.
Quite what me ‘knowing’ this has to do with the issue at hand escapes me anyway. I can see that had I known about the situation then I would have to be a special kind of asshole to subsequently blog negatively abou… Oh! Is that what Bob was trying to imply? I hope not because that would be very unpleasant. I shall assume Bob simply mis-spoke, or that he thought I did know (although it says a lot about his opinion of me if he thought I would write that unqualified post when I knew).
Understand, CM Crossroads actively blocked IP addresses. Going from Bob’s fallacious claim that I ‘knew’ this was going on, I can only assume that they knew they were doing this. It was not something done to them. It’s not something of which they were unaware during the ALM Expo. A simple note on the e-mails explaining that
Some users may experience problems while we combat a denial of service attack. If your IP address is blocked, please e-mail your IP address to blah.blah@whatever.com and we’ll try to get you access as soon as practicable.
Too much to ask?
Evidently.
You’re always contacting us…
I don’t think I contact either Bob or Patrick directly ‘regularly’. In fact I have never directly initiated contact, I always use the CM Crossroads site, which, as we’ve been discussing, I could not use this time.
I’ve looked over all the e-mails I’ve sent to Bob directly over the past four years (yes, I’m one of ‘those’ people who archive everything) and the most recent sent e-mail to Bob was 7th March this year, and that was a reply to an e-mail he sent to me. One e-mail response in eight months is not what I would characterise as ‘regularly’. And certainly not me contacting him. Perhaps Bob means something else when he says ‘regularly’.
Even accounting for my contact and interaction on the CM Crossroads website, I would hardly say I contacted either Bob or Patrick ‘regularly’. In fact, the more accurate adjective I would use is ‘rarely’. Both begin with an ‘r’. Easy mistake I guess. I communicate with them maybe two or three times a year, if that. And then most often in response rather than initiating.
I accept that Bob was busy. In fact so busy that it has taken nearly five days to restore access. Fair enough. It’s really not a problem. I don’t care that much about access to the site or the Expo for that matter. I was not complaining or badgering them about access, more about the complete lack of helpfulness to anyone unable to access the ALM Expo after being caught in the IP blockade. If I had not been privy to information about contacting Bob then I really would have had no way to resolve my issue, and that has to be bad. Doesn’t it?
The weird thing with Bob’s comment is the way it seems to imply that I was being unfair in the original post. That I did have a means of contacting them and as such it was unfair of me to post about being denied access after receiving the invites. As I hope I have illustrated in the preceding account, having direct contact available did nothing to actually resolve the core issue. Nothing. Bob’s comment is akin to a banker complaining that his name was misspelled in the coverage of the collapse of his bank. Me? I think the mismanagement is the important feature.
Anyway, hopefully, now I have given a full, open account of proceedings Bob will be happier.
On balance, I think I’d prefer the original post myself.
I certainly feel better knowing that I didn’t conceal the heinous truth about my secret, if useless, knowledge of e-mail addresses a moment longer.
