I was hoping I wouldn't have to do this, because it's largely personal, but it's impossible for me to ignore issues when someone attacks my faith and beliefs.

We have a client who's disgruntled, to say the least. Not that she's the only one, we're not perfect, but she is the most vocal. We've had a pretty rough time over the past few months, and we've had an insane amount of pressure to deliver with very limited staff resources. It's mostly web design related. The hosting services are running very smoothly.

The details are complex, and I know we are largely at fault because we made promises that we failed to deliver, due to circumstances beyond our control. But in the end, we delivered a functional site that was unfortunately rejected a few weeks later.

It was the most unfortunate of circumstances, we made a lot of presumptions right from the beginning, and yes, we made a lot of mistakes as well. I personally made promises I failed to deliver despite the countless hours I spent working overnight to get my workload cleared.

In brief, over the past 5 months, we've had two designers leaving us, leaving us with effectively one designer. You may have seen the job ads we've been posting. We had equipment breaking down, like expensive computers and our trusty power generator leaving us at the mercy of Umeme with constant blackouts. Then I had one massive project I'd committed to very early at our church, Miracle Center Cathedral, the Christmas Cantata which took away a very large chunk of my days and nights during the Christmas season. My world was turned upside down as I lost one dear person after another, I was away from the firm for weeks on end upcountry. We're still recovering from the effects of all that.

In essence, to sum it all up, there is an african proverb, african i think, if I can paraphrase, "When misfortune comes visiting, and you tell him there are no seats for him in your home, he says, don't worry, I brought my own stool". But God has been faithul to us in all this and has kept us going strong.

Many other clients have suffered, but thankfully they understood and stayed with us.

I will wait until the said client has finished blogging about it so that I can know where to start.

My comments on her blog are being moderated, so people have no idea of our side of the saga. She is choosing only specific sections of my email and comments that work to her benefit, essentially, my hands are tied.

Now, the issue that's hurting me most is the direct attack on our faith and our christianity. We're being labelled non christians, we're being accused of being ashamed of Christ.

The same person who, during the Kenyan crisis, asked me as a christian to make for her "Please pray for Kenya" banners, of which I put one prominently on our site for a month, the same person who has asked me, as a christian to keep her several times in prayer. Does that make me/us righteous? Not in the least, our works do not make us righteous, but only His grace. What it does show, is where I stand. And she knows that.

At Node Six, we are not ashamed of Jesus Christ.

I will repeat that, we are not ashamed of Christ.

Almost all our clients know my story, how God helped me start this firm 5 years back with nothing but a borrowed flash disk. Through all the trials, starting and closing one firm after another, now we're an 8 man dedicated Node Six team with two other sister firms.

My friends and the Node Six team all know the story of how God guided me, then us, brought the right people into my life, caused some people to leave, however painful that was.

Node Six is a Christian family.

We hold fellowship every Tuesday morning, we pray every morning and evening. Sometimes we fast, we tithe company money every single time we get paid, individuals tithe as well, on their own. In the process, we're always running broke, but we never complain. We've had clients frustrated because we can't come for meetings on Tuesdays since we keep that time aside for fellowship. We have middle men frustrated because we don't handle work for beer companies or cigarette firms, we don't bribe, we don't give kickbacks, we don't overcharge, we don't pad invoices for a middle man's benefit.

As Christians, we are not perfect, we do not claim to be so and we most definitely do not go around accusing other people of being non-christians or trashing their faith. What kind of example would we be if we were to point fingers? Who are we to judge what they are and what they are not? We have our flaws, like everyone else, and it is only by God's grace that we can wake up everyday and call ourselves children of God.

I'm not trying to justify our faith or rightousness here, far from it, only God can make us righteous. I'm just saying we try our best to live as Christians, and if what we do is not good enough for you, then I'm truly sorry.

To be frank, I absolutely do not care whether someone thinks we are born again/christians or not. Who are we supposed to please in our works? Man or God? What I care about is someone telling the whole world things about us that are obviously a lie. Spreading facts that you cannot even verify. Accuse me/us of anything else, but do not attack our faith as though you spend every single waking hour with us.

God looks at man's heart, not at the outward appearances. We know where our faith lies, and we know who our God is, and we know who our saviour is. The entire team at Node Six can testify to that.

She is most likely going to pick some stuff from here and use it on her blog. Feel free, there is nothing I have said that I am ashamed of. In fact, I only wish after reading this that she stops moderating her blog to remove my comments.

I won't talk about this anymore, but let God be our witness.

I'll wait for her to raise all her professional and business grievances and then handle that side of the story.

God bless.

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We're having a major problem here at Node Six. There seems to be a laxity on our client's part with Domain Name renewals, which is essentially connected to hosting renewal.

Typical scenario is, 3 months to a domain expiring; we get a notice from our registrar. We inform the clients about the pending expiration. The client says, "okay, we'll pay when the time comes".

Over the course of the next 3 months, we keep constantly informing the clients of the expiration, via phone and email, and we keep getting the same response. "We're aware, we'll look into it,  we'll pay".

Then suddenly, the domain expires.

First we suspend the hosting, because their domain has expired. Sadly, it's the most effective way of getting the client's attention.

Once the domain name expires, it goes into a 10 day grace period. During which time, it is very advisable to renew the domain name, no additional costs are incurred.

If it's not renewed within the 10 days, it goes into a 30-45 day redemption period, meaning to get your domain name back, you'll need to pay an $80 penalty fee (about 140,000/=) plus the 25,00/= for the renewal, plus the hosting fee.

So basically, by ignoring to renew the domain name, you incur an extra 140,000/=

Ironically, some clients still refuse to respond at this point.

After the 30-45 day redemption period, the domain name goes back into the public pool, meaning anyone can buy it. At this point, there are hundreds of companies eyeing the domain knowing that it has an owner and the owner will pay to get it back. Once they hijack the domain, it's a very painful and expensive process to get it back.

A reluctance to clear a 120,000/= fee can end up costing thousands of dollars, or worse still, a hijacked domain. 

My concern then, is this: Why would a company, organisation or indivual sacrifice a domain they have been using in their public relations, print campaigns, email, even their website?

To any client reading this: Please please please renew your domain name and hosting within the 3 month window we give you. It's only fair to yourself. I wouldn't mind you shifting your hosting elsewhere if you really have to, but secure your domain name, it's a big part of you or your company's future. 

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We're honoured to be regarded by the editor at Citizen Uganda as the best redesigned website in November.

We've been given more than our fair share of kudos and props for this new site, and for the older projects we've handled as Node Six and Elemental Edge, but for someone to actually blog about it, I believe it's a sign we're making decent progress in our journey of excellence.

And in our pursual of Kaizen (small incremental changes), this just might be the start of global recognition.

With bated breath, we can only hope.

Citius, Altius, Fortius

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Node Six is in the final stages of experimenting with various anti-spam solutions in order to curb a seemingly rampant influx on spam on client's websites and email. We've zeroed in on SpamAssasin as the tool of choice, and we will be rolling it out to all clients in a couple of weeks.

We strive hard to be able to create and develop solutions that are relevant to our client's needs and which also aid in general productivity on the client's side. No one wants to be encumbered with trying to sort out junk mail and spam from their business email.

One solution we introduced a long time ago was using CAPTCHA images on all our feedback forms. The CAPTCHA technique involves generating ramdom text into an image which is then placed at the bottom of the form. The person filling in the form then has to input the exact words and  numbers they see into a box next to the CAPTCHA image. This curbs spam by ensuring that whoever is filling in the form is not a form-filling spam robot or script, but an actual human being. Click here for a full explanation of CAPTCHA and to visit the CAPTCHA homepage .

There are all sorts of complex algorithms and scripts that need to run to achieve this, and with the help of open source tools and Jason, our inhouse programmer, we were able to pull off an effective CAPTCHA system.

And now as we experiment with anti-spam solutions, we have discovered a whole new level of scripts, algorithms and different approaches to some of these solutions, just a few lines of code short of rudimentary artificial intelligence.

For example, the very first time I came across the word "heuristics" in a certain anti-virus program's deep functionality options, I was sufficiently impressed by its assumed meaning and complexity. I could understand what it meant from context, but I was even more impressed when I went ahead to find out it's exact definition:

"A problem-solving technique in which the most appropriate solution is selected using rules. Interfaces using heuristics may perform different actions on different data given the same command. All systems using heuristics are classified as intelligent."
http://www.acypher.com/wwid/BackMatter/Glossary.html

and

"A rule-based method of identifying new viruses. This method of scanning does not rely on specific virus signatures. The advantage of the heuristic scan is that it is not fooled by a new variant of an existing virus."
http://viruscenter.freedom.net/html/glossary.html

Further reading was deeply insightful and helped me appreciate the level of commitment some people and companies go to to make things easier for the average computer user. I later found myself applying that same term in all sorts of relevant (and sometimes irrelevant) scenarios :-)

And now, as Node Six finalises its research into anti-spam solutions, we believe that this kind of research, however long and tedious, will go a long way in ensuring that our clients get the dedicated service and support that we promise.

We'll keep you updated on the anti-spam solutions as we progress. Please remember to register for our newsletter (details on the home page) to get the latest news and updates from Node Six.

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