This past week, former New England Patriots star Darryl Stingley passed away too early at the age of 55. The Chicago native’s remarkable career was cut way too short when a cheap hit from behind in a preseason game in 1978 left him confined to a wheelchair. He returned to Chicago and helped start a non-profit foundation to help inner-city youth.

I just read an article on the Patriots’ official Web site talking about Stingley and two other famous teammates drafted together by the team in 1973. At the end of the story is a poem that Stingley had taped in his locker during his rookie season titled "Don’t Quit" and the first stanza reads:

"When things go wrong, as they sometimes will, When the road you’re trudging seems all up hill, When the funds are low and the debts are high, And when you want to smile, but you have to sigh, When care is pressing you down a bit, Rest, if you must – but don’t quit."

I am fortunate to be surrounded by positive people in my life, but when things get somewhat crappy for me during the day, I will now think of this poem.

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If you use Vonage for your telephone service or you follow the tech community, you may be aware of the court battle they are having with Verizon. In short, the courts have ruled that Vonage has been using Verizon’s patented technology and not paying for it. The courts have ruled in favor of Verizon and ordered Vonage to pay $58 million. This article from the Chicago Tribune sums up the case so far and a court stay allowing Vonage to remain in business.

As a Vonage customer, I am undecided on what to do next. I am a content customer of the Internet telephony company, as I have never been really pleased with their service. To begin with, it took over 4 months for Vonage to transfer my phone number from SBC, then the name of the local phone provider now called AT&T. There were many outages early on as well, where I would lose phone service for hours or even days. Occasionally, voice mail and three-way calling do not work. However when it does work, I get a clear signal and email notification I received a voice mail message.

Last week the courts wanted Vonage to stop signing up new customers, and as I write this they have a stay of that order. That would choke incoming funds to the company, or as some may say good money after bad. Unclear is what the 2 million plus current customers have for options. Can I easily move my phone number away from Vonage? If so, what other telephony options do I have? Sorry AT&T – there was a reason why I wanted to leave you in the first place, and it’s still there!

Right now I am taking a wait and see approach. I doubt that any court would shut down the service before its customers were able to go elsewhere. Well, I hope that would be the case. Do you have Vonage, and what are you thinking?

Technology • (2) Comments • Permalink

Earlier I had posted about knowing who manages your domain names. I would like to build on this by adding being aware of solicitations that appear to be invoices for domain name renewals or services.

Recently the mail has increased with what appears to be an invoice for the renewal of a domain name or for Web site services such as search engine submissions. These usually come by US Mail, but are now starting to come by email. Where they look like an invoice, they are in actuality a solicitation, and further inspection will show small print to that effect. The hopes of these scam artists is to trick you into moving your domain name to them or to pay for services you may not want.

In that original post I said there is a big business around domain names. You can register domain names with any number of sources. My business Dunkirk Systems is a reseller of domain names, and all domain names are registered through ICANN-accredited domain name registrars. Asking a person or entity for their business is not deceptive or unethical itself, but it can be in the way it is executed.

If you receive such an invoice letter or email, verify who it is from. Contact whomever you have your domain names registered through to verify if the invoice is legitimate or not. If you do get a letter or have any questions, please post a comment here – I am more than willing to help!

Business • Domain Names • Technology • (2) Comments • Permalink

Forget snakes on a plane, there are coyotes on the loose in downtown Chicago! The capture of a coyote in a Quizno’s sub shop the other day apparently is not an uncommon occurrence, as several are usually sighted here every year.

After living in the suburbs and in the mountains, it’s when I live in the city that a coyote is in my midst!

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After taking a long weekend away from the computer (note PC, not Treo for email) I went back to check on the status of The Hot Iron and see if anyone posted any comments while I was away. While I checked this information, I also caught up on reading blogs that I subscribe to.

Here are my results:

• 92 comments posted since last Thursday morning
• 1 legitimate comment (thanks Adam!) meaning 91 were pure spam
• 100+ new blog posts were in my Google Reader, as it only displays accurate numbers under 99. For some reason, they can’t count in Mountain View

Where my blog is new and I am not expecting zillions of hits and comments, getting them from the far-away spammers was not a welcome after the weekend. As I do have moderating turned on, these were only my problem and did not impact any readers.

Technology • (5) Comments • Permalink