The situation has improved dramatically. This morning, first of all, I received several emails from the salesman I’d spoken to a week ago; he was very apologetic and got me the pricing information I’d been looking for. Considering that I was looking to renew a license that was six years out of date, the price was actually quite reasonable.

Even more encouraging than that, though, was the reaction to my disgruntled blog posting. Apparently the folks at SmartBear monitor for any mentions of their company and products, because a short time afterwards, I was personally contacted by Eric Sargent, the Sales Director at SmartBear. He too was very apologetic over the situation, and he went well above and beyond what was necessary to ensure that it was resolved and I was happy.

And I am happy. That they noticed my blog post so quickly tells me they’re actively watching for mentions of their company, and taking immediate corrective action when a customer isn’t satisfied. They took the time to email and call me, where many businesses might have just written me off as a garden-variety internet crackpot. And they more than made up for the irritation I felt. Clearly, SmartBear does care a great deal about their reputation, and they know that it depends on regular rank-and-file coders like me. They treated me very well and made me feel important, and you know what? That’s a nice feeling!

So now I’m looking forward to having AQtime back in my bag of programming tricks, and seeing what cool new features they’ve added in the four versions I’ve skipped. Seriously, the software was pretty amazing in v3, so I anticipate great things in v7. And I’m thinking that a bunch of my projects could benefit from a good bit of profiling. I may not have any glaring issues in my code, but no doubt there are plenty of areas that could be improved upon, and AQtime is the ideal tool for finding them.

So, thank you SmartBear Software, for restoring my high opinion of you!

SmartBear Software has a product called AQtime Pro, which is a profiler capable of profiling software at the source code line level. If you’re not a programmer, that won’t mean anything, but if you write code, you know that from time to time you’ll have a bottleneck somewhere in a complex program which you cannot track down. This is where AQtime comes in. It lets you see exactly how many times each line of code is executing, and how much time is spend on each line and routine. It is hands-down the best tool for doing this sort of detective work.

I’ve used it a couple of dozen times in the years I’ve had it, and on each of those times it has saved my bacon, quickly identifying exactly what code is causing my program to slow to a crawl.

About two weeks ago I had just that kind of a problem that needed sorting out, so I fired up my old copy of AQtime 3.16. After some struggling, I discovered that it won’t profile software written in Delphi XE. This is not at all unreasonable – that version came out in 2005 or so, and there’s no reason to expect that it could cope with the output of the very latest Delphi compiler. (Delphi XE comes with a limited version of AQtime that doesn’t profile to the line level, so it wouldn’t do what I needed). No problem, I figured, I’ll just upgrade. It is, after all, a good tool to have available.

So on 7/28/2011 I went to the SmartBear website, and logged in. Their system still had me in their records, showing that the last version I had a license to is 3.16. All well and good. I clicked the link for upgrade pricing…

… and instead of an upgrade price list it takes me to a web form that I have to fill out. Really SmartBear? You can’t just tell me on the website what my cost will be to upgrade? I buy a lot of programming tool updates online and none of those companies make me fill out a web form to get a price list!

Well, I needed the software, so I filled out the form. That was a Thursday night. The following Monday afternoon, 8/01/2011, I got a call from a salesman. I explained that my version was long out of date, and I had an immediate need for the software, and I wanted to know what an upgrade would cost me. He understood, and said he’d email me the price. What? Huh? You can’t just tell me the price over the phone?

Fine. Whatever. I put SmartBear in my spam blocker white-list so the email wouldn’t get lost, and waited. And waited. And waited.

Here we are almost a week later, and that promised email never showed up. I’ve filled out the web form again today, but only out of idle curiosity. You see, I don’t need AQtime any more for this problem. The bottleneck had to be fixed, so I muddled through the hard way and figured out the problem on my own. I’d have preferred to have a shiny new copy of AQtime to help me narrow it down in minutes instead of hours, of course. But I didn’t have the luxury of waiting around for a whole work week for SmartBear to get back to me. Oh well.

I’ve got some questions for them:

1. Why wouldn’t your website simply show me my upgrade price?
2. Why couldn’t the salesman simply tell me the price over the phone?
3. Why have I not received an email with the price almost a week later?
4. Do you no longer want my business?

SmartBear Software, you had a motivated customer, representing repeat business, who had an immediate need for your product and who was ready to buy. Too bad you dropped the ball.

I decided to do a photography experiment. I made my best guesses on focus, ISO, aperture and shutter speed, then spent about 45 minutes trying to anticipate the most active part of the sky to point the camera at. With the camera hand-held and set on continuous burst mode, I fired off 1300 frames, hoping for the best. Really. 1300 frames.

Of those 1300, only about 40 had any hint of light in them at all, and just three were shots that I consider good enough to show. I’m very happy with these results, but thank goodness for the digital age, as this experiment would have cost a fortune in film!

When I opened the garage door this afternoon, I discovered a dragonfly that had been bumping around in there all night. Despite the open door, he kept smacking into the back wall, and was dangerously close to a spider web. Poor, stupid, softhearted goof that I am, I decided I should help him.

So I stood on the top step leading into the house and gently, oh so gently, cupped my hands around the dragonfly.

By now, anyone familiar with me already knows what is about to happen.

With the dragonfly safely in my cupped hands, I turned to take him out to the flowerbed. Naturally, since I was concentrating so much on not hurting the dragonfly, I completely forgot that I was standing two steps off the nice, firm, concrete garage floor.

Yeah.

To my credit, my hands remained carefully cupped around the dragonfly, who came through the incident entirely injury free. Since I couldn’t use my hands to break my fall, I didn’t. Break my fall, that is. Eight hours later the feeling has mostly returned to my toes, and the badly scraped knee has almost stopped throbbing. By my standards, I came through it remarkably well.

I hope the dragonfly appreciates the assist.

This cute little critter was scooting around on my front porch this morning, and was kind enough to pause for a portrait.

I’ve photographed a famous model! How cool is that?

Caprock Canyons State Park, Texas

Clouds reflected in a pond.

Near sunset.

Exposed gypsum layers. Lots of these all over the place. Exciting for a rock hound like me.

Just slightly after sunset, with a longish exposure.

Wichita Mountains Wildlife Refuge, Oklahoma

View of a nearby wind farm from Mt. Scott.

Lichen-spotted rock on Mt. Scott.

Elmer Thomas Lake, seen from Mt. Scott.

These berries were all over the place. I only ate a few. They weren’t as tasty as they look.

Bison by the roadside. He was not impressed with us.

Prairie dog. I think his name was “Eddie”. Yeah. Eddie. That’s a good name.

Red Rock Canyon State Park, Oklahoma

Rappelling grooves cut in the cliff edge.

MJ contemplating the next step.

Roaring River Fish Hatchery in Missouri

Whirlpool draining the source of the spring.

Feeding frenzy in the raceway.

Big trout in the headwaters of the Roaring River.