Last Friday, we installed Zone Alarm Security Suite 3 on one of our workstation computers. During the install I had added our network as “trusted” but could no longer connect. On restart, the computer would no longer boot up. It would get as far as trying to find a network connection, then the blue screen of death flashed by – too quickly to read the error message – and the computer restarted itself.

It did not take long to realize that whatever had gone wrong was beyond my capability to find, much less fix. I checked the forums and support FAQs and so on, and experimented with a number of possible solutions, but nothing worked.

Rather than wasting more work time on the problem, I recommended that we get outside technical help. Consumer Reports had ranked Geek Squad as providing better tech support than any manufacturer but Apple, so we decided to give them a try.

We called a local branch, and left a voice mail message. No response.

After a couple of hours, we visited the Geek Squad web site to request an “agent dispatch” to “our coordinates” but their contact page form was broken. What?

On the second call to the local branch again, someone answered, but only to notify us that they were not authorized to schedule anyone to come to our location. It had to be arranged at the central 800 number. Right.

At the 800 central command post, we were told that all their systems were down. Systems down at Geek Squad? Hmmm.

I elicited a promise from the agent that he would call us back personally to schedule an appointment just as soon as the systems were back up. He dutifully took down our details.

It’s now Tuesday, and no-one from Geek Squad ever called or even emailed us.

Meanwhile, the support ticket that I submitted at Zone Alarm tech support came back (it took 3 days, but that includes the weekend). Their message wasn’t very helpful. The solutions they offered had been tried and were unsuccessful. My reply didn’t append properly to the support ticket. Unfortunately, we purchased a 3-license version of the Security Suite from Zone Alarm – intending to put it on three computers. I have submitted a refund request.

Fortunately for us, our computer “guru” friend made himself available over the weekend. He worked on it for several hours. He did not find a workable solution either, which actually made me feel a bit better about my inability to find or fix the problem. He was able to uninstall the program, and on his advice we have decided to install a different anti-virus solution for that machine.

So, what happened to Geek Squad?

Centralized systems were down and there was no return call or email that day, not even to notify us about the status of our request? Four days later, they still haven’t been in touch.

You would think that “geeks” would have a plan B.

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You may have noticed that we’ve had some problems with the blog again. It turns out that it is rather complicated to upgrade WordPress if you are hosted at Yahoo Small Business.

The first time I tried to upgrade, I could no longer access the blog at all. All that came up was a blank screen in the browser. I couldn’t find a solution. Yahoo couldn’t help me. I gave up. I backed up the database with MyPhpAdmin, and recreated the blog from scratch. (To do this, backup all your images and customized files, etc, then create an sql backup of your database using MyPhpAdmin to export. You can dump your old database on the new installation – of the old version – by running the export as an SQL query. I got server 500 errors, but eventually one of them worked.)

After quite a bit of research and experimentation, the blog is now updated. Since Customer Care is unfamiliar with the host issues, and corporate HQ is unresponsive to contact from clients, I have recommended feature requests via email from Yahoo Small Business: a one-click update feature (or auto-updates) so that their version of WordPress is reasonably up-to-date, and a feature request/status page. In the meantime the addition of instructions to their online help files would be helpful.

WordPress has upgrading instructions here, with common installation problems here.

If you are on Yahoo Small Business, though, here’s what you’ve probably got to do (thanks to the resources at the WordPress codex and users’ forum – which were buried a bit, but there – and some very helpful advice from Ray that got me going on the right track).

I’ve documented everything, and I hope that this is a helpful post for other Yahoo-hosted bloggers.

• First, update your plug-ins (Akismet will update by itself in the upgrade).
  
• Use the WordPress backup plugin to do a backup of your WordPress directory. Download it for safekeeping. You can also use your friendly ftp program to download the entire WordPress directory onto your hard drive, too. (Better safe…)


• Use MyPHPAdmin to export a back up your WordPress SQL database. Make several versions if you are unfamiliar with this. Make sure that use the right character set for export. Make one in the most recent sql, and any other format you might require – so that you have some options later if things look off.


• Go to the WordPress dashboard and disable all your plugins. This will save you a lot of headaches. Just trust me (and the people at WordPress).


• Now it gets complicated. From your WordPress backup on the hard drive, open the current wp-config.php file in the main directory. Delete the line “Define(’WP_CACHE’, true); //Added by WP-Cache Manager” and then save the file. Also save a copy of it under another name, like wp-configorig.php. You’ll need this file later.


• Edit wp-config.php file in the main Wordpress directory that you downloaded and change DB_USER and DB_PASSWORD with your yroot user and yroot password and save the file. That’s the username and password you set up to administrate your databases. Yahoo describes these here: http://help.yahoo.com/help/us/webhosting/mysql/mysql-09.HTML. Ftp the new wp-config file.


• Now run upgrade.php by browsing to http://YOURSITE.com/YOURBLOG/wp-admin/upgrade.php. It should succeed, in theory.


• Before you go any further, look at your blog and make sure it’s there. Is it? If you get a blank page, then you’ve put the wrong yroot user and password in the config file. Make sure it’s right and try again.


• If none of this is working for you, you’ll have to download the latest version of WordPress, ftp it up, and then run upgrade again.


• You may have to play with the permissions settings in MyPhpAdmin. Make sure that you have any needed permissions. Customer Care can help you with this part if you run into trouble.


• Assuming that your blog is up, check to make sure that your category links and other links are displaying. If you see an error like [Unknown column ‘link_count’ in ‘where clause’], you’ve got to detour at this point (Try a web search on the exact phrase of that error to get a sense of how many blogs are affected). If you’re upgrading from the version at Yahoo, there has been a major change in the way categories are indexed. I haven’t been able to find the perfect fix for this if the upgrade doesn’t do it, but there are two suggestions. The first didn’t work for me in MyPhpAdmin on Yahoo – perhaps because of yet more permissions issues, or maybe an older version of MySql – but you could try it because it’s probably the better fix:
  Run this SQL query:<br />ALTER TABLE --database--.wp_categories ADD COLUMN link_count BIGINT(20) NOT NULL DEFAULT 0 AFTER category_count,<br />
ADD COLUMN posts_private TINYINT(1) NOT NULL DEFAULT 0 AFTER link_count,<br />
ADD COLUMN links_private TINYINT(1) NOT NULL DEFAULT 0 AFTER posts_private;<br />
  


• The second suggestion did work on Yahoo, but I hope it doesn’t mess anything up:
  First, save your home copy of wp-admin/upgrade-functions.php under another name, like you did with the wp-config file. Then, edit the original file and delete where it says
  // We are up-to-date. Nothing to do.
if ( $wp_db_version == $wp_current_db_version )
return;
  Ftp it up and run upgrade.php again. Then upload the original version to restore it.


• Now, go get the wp-configorigin.php you saved earlier. Rename it back to wp-config.php and ftp it up.


• In your blog template, replace the current call for your blogroll with < ?php wp_list_bookmarks('title_after=&title_before='); ?>. Some of the older tags have been depreciated.


• Enable your plug-ins one by one to make sure they are compatible. If something breaks the blog, use ftp or the online file management at Yahoo to delete the applicable folder from the wp-content/plugins.

Another problem solved: The bottom navigation on the index page disappeared. Some think that it has to do with plugins as well. I’m not running a “sticky post” plugin, which seems to be the primary problem for others. There is also a thought that there might be an incompatibility between the upgraded Akismet plugin and the Yahoo hosting. Aha! I fixed it by removing a call to the FAlbum plugin on the Index page.

Continuing Problems

Warning: Do not attempt to use the newer version of the WP Cache plugin or the Yahoo version of the Customizable Permalinks Plugin. I haven’t found a fix for this yet. Keep them disabled or they will break the blog, and you’ll have to go back and do a lot of this again. If you know a fix for this, please comment.

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This morning, our WordPress installation and the database did not play nicely together when I attempted to manually update the WordPress installation. Everything had to be reinstalled. We did manage to import a slightly outdated backup database, and were also able to retrieve the last several posts from the Yahoo cache for the pages. However, the comments are lost. Sorry about that.

This blog is hosted as a beta version of WordPress through Yahoo hosting. They are several updates behind now. I put in a feature request some time ago. It would be nice if the automatic updater would update the installation, as it did at our old host. This is my only real quibble with the Yahoo hosting so far.

Success! See the update, and how to upgrade WordPress at Yahoo Small Business Hosting.

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DO UNTO OTHERS… how?

As a corporate behavioral specialist, Art Schoeck has some advice for managers and employees who want to improve relations: Forget the Golden Rule.

“The Golden Rule is totally wrong,” says Schoeck, founder and CEO of Data Dome, a clearinghouse for assessment tools. “You don’t treat people the way you want to be treated. You have to treat them the way they want to be treated.

Such straightforward advice has helped to make Schoeck an award-winning trainer and sought-after speaker for companies such as BellSouth, Hewlett-Packard, and Marriott International.

“We help companies analyze their positions, assess their people, and then apply their people the best way,” says Schoeck, a member of the One Ninety One Club in Atlanta.

In the past 15 years, Schoeck has spoken to nearly 18,000 executives and managers through his workshops, which touch on everything from preferred communications styles to helping companies increase productivity.

“The employee and company both have to have a win,” he says.

The top corporate mistake Schoeck says he sees is that managers “hire people like themselves.”

The former restaurateur also embodies the good advice he tends to offer others. As he puts it: “It’s not just what you’re good at. It’s what you like to do.”

Reproduced from Janet Mefferd, Do Unto Others, Private Clubs, March/April 2007 issue, page 88. Photography by Marc Climie.

Note: We have gotten some feedback on this. To clarify, there is nothing wrong with an ethics of action based on treating others as you would yourself prefer to be treated.

However, in terms of behavioral styles and communications, the way that you prefer to be treated may not bear much resemblance to the way someone with a different style would prefer to be treated.

For example, a low S has a quick pace. If they communicate with a high S at the pace they prefer, a high S will feel rushed – causing stress. When you understand what the positions in the four quadrants really mean, you can adapt your behavior to treat others more as they themselves prefer to be treated rather than projecting your own behavioral preferences.

We have found that it is not unusual for people to make value judgments based on behavioral style differences. For this reason, too, the distinction is valuable.

There is an implicit ethic in specifically adapting your style in order to better communicate with someone else: It can be a way of paying attention to – and honoring – their differences from you.

Ultimately, though, an understanding of behavioral styles equips you with a neutral language for understanding behavioral differences among us. Whether you use that insight for good or ill is another question (and that is when the original version of “The Golden Rule” applies once again!).

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