My name is Damon Richards. I was born and raised in Indianapolis. I attended Indianapolis Public Schools then went to the Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology in Terre Haute. I met my wife of 25 years while in Terre Haute. Along the way, I've lived briefly in San Antonio and Los Angeles before returning home to Indianapolis where Susie and I chose to raise our three children.

After having spent nearly five years in the Air Force and another three at Indiana Bell Telephone Company, I struck out on my own with a life-long friend to start Port-to-Port Consulting. We were pretty naive when we started, but we had the idea that technology was just as important to small organizations as it was to big ones. We had seen the kind of resources and knowledge that big organizations threw at technology. We had also seen what smaller organizations had to accept as technical expertise. Port-to-Port's goal was, and still is, to bring the power of technology to the smaller organizations so they can be as successful as they choose to be. We provide focus, comfort, and support through tactical and strategic implementation of your computer network.

Along the way we've learned more about business, and strive to keep up with the pace of technology. We developed a delivery model that we call Pertingo. Through Pertingo, we are impacting the work day of more than 1,000 people in a positive way. This blog will chronicle the things we've learned that make us believe that Pertingo is the way IT support ought to be delivered.

I invite you to join the discussion. Tell us about your successes and disasters in business computer support. We'll share some of our successes and failures as well.

Arthur C. Clarke once said, "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." I think about thatoften when one of my Indianapolis small business computer outsourcing customers asks me to explain how something works, or why it didn't work. The reality is that any explanation I offer will be no better than just saying "Abracadabra!" Any more I don't even know how much of this stuff works well enough to explain it.

This morning I visited one of my IT support services customers for our quarterly business review. I started by asking about her new (first) grandchild. Now I expected she'd whip out one of those little packets from the photo shop filled with 30 or so prints of the new baby. Instead, she pulls up a website and launches a photo show (set to music) of her new granddaughter. She did it as if it was the most normal thing in the world to do. It was magic.

Later, she showed me a website where she should be able to download a document but it didn't work. The site popped up a little window with a warning about downloading the file. We clicked to download the file and nothing happened. Why not? Sometimes the magic isn't strong enough.

Our office has been without air conditioning for most of the last week. We called an HVAC company because some areas didn't seem to be as cool as others. $6,000 dollars later, everywhere in the building was hot, and the HVAC people were telling us things that didn't do much to cool us off. They've promised to come back tomorrow to get it all working again.

I often take an objective look at the interactions I have with service providers. I think about the way in which my network technicians deal with our Indianapolis small business computer outsourcing customers, and wonder if they'd do better than the level of service I'm experiencing. Most of the time I think they do. First, we always practice the rule of "First do no harm." If we can't get the issue resolved, we do all we can to ensure that our help desk customer isn't worse off than when we got there. More importantly though, we take responsibility for the things we do, even when they turn out to be a bit bone-headed in retrospect. It's the bone-headed technical support that puts us into the frying pan.

In the end, we're human and we make mistakes. We don't compound those mistakes with attempts to pass the blame. This way, we can at leasy be sure we don't end up in the fire.

One of the fallouts of the Sarbanes-Oxley law is a renewed emphasis on disaster recovery planning. Most practitioners call it Business Continuation these days to signify that it is more than having a tape backup. Recently, we've been working with many of our Indianapolis small business computer consulting customers to review, rewrite, or create plans that are significant enough to pass the muster of the auditors who spend time auditing SarBox sized organizations.

What we found as we started is that most of our IT outsourcing customers had the kind of plan that would allow them to say, "Sure we have a Disaster Recovery Plan. It's right here." The truth being that these were just place holder documents. They've not been touched since they were first created, while their computer network has gone thru enormous changes. As their IT consultant, I have to take the blame for letting them get by with this. However, in light of the mishaps that get reported nearly every day in the media, we're tackling this site by site, starting with ourselves. That's right. We had a check-the-box plan as well, and I know that most of my peers in the computer tech support field are the same way.


Today I finished the Port-to-Port Consulting Business Continuation Plan. It represents our computer network as it exists right now. It has scheduled tests of all of its features at least once per year. Surprisingly, I feel more comforted after having done it. The process pointed out things we had been overestimating about our ability to get back to work after a disaster.

If your DR plan was slapped together by a summer intern six years ago, you'd do yourself and your organization well to dust it off and give it a thorough review with your IT service manager.

 My Indianapolis small business computer consulting company has sponsored a golf league for more than a decade now. We call it the Port-to-Port & Friends League. Every Wednesday night from May until September, 30 to 40 golfers hit the links for nine holes of fun. I started this league because many of my IT support services customers would talk about their desire to play more golf. Over and over the conversation would end with, "I just can't find the time."

One of the things I pride myself on is that our company focuses everything we do on making our customers better at everything they do. The solution to this problem seemed simple enough: Create a way for my customers to play golf more regularly. In order to demonstrate that computer consulting is a part of nearly all that we do, I found a piece of software that would handle the management of league stats.

I give this as an example of the kinds of things that are unexpected of a computer services vendor. We don't view ourselves as the vendor. We think of ourselves as a part of each and every one of our client businesses. It's why we started offering our bundle of computer network services that we call Pertingo^®.

I've written in the past about the great browser wars that have been rekindled recently. Microsoft, Google, Apple, Mozilla, and Opera have all recently announced new versions of their respective browsers. We here at my Indianapolis IT services company believe that this battle isn't over bragging rights to the fastest browser. We believe it's because the migration of software to a web-based subscription model is making the operating system less important. The company that produces the best browser will have access to the most eyeballs when they figure out how to take advantage of them.

The change that will make even the browser obsolete will be the coming onslaught of Rich Internet Applications. These are programs that run on your computer, looking like regular applications. However, they are really customized browser windows that are the interface to a web-based application. Microsoft has a development environment for these applications, as does Adobe and Google. The latest to enter this fray is Mozilla. They did it by way of a plug-in to their Firefox browser that allows you to turn any website into a Rich Internet Application of sorts. Now the purists in the audience will say that Prism doesn't really create RIAs, but I say if it looks like a duck and walks like a duck and quacks like a duck...

My network technicians are playing around with various approaches to RIA development. We're watching the changes that are taking place in the development of web browsers. Google's Chrome has first place in my mind, but the Prism plug-in to Firefox has me trying some things that can only be done there.

Imagine if every car manufacturer used a different type of gasoline such that you had to go to a particular gas station in order to tank up. That's been the way computer software has been written in the past. Once you chose a word processor, for instance, you were stuck with using that word processor if you wanted to be able to open your documents. Further, if your friends or associates wanted to open your documents, they had to use the same word processor that you used. Of course there was a huge advantage to the biggest player in each application segment because he locked in his customers and forced others to switch to his application for the convenience of trading documents.

As I'm sure you know, the big guy was Microsoft. Their reluctance to use an open format for documents led to some of the success of Adobe's Acrobat software. With Acrobat, we can convert our documents into something that anyone using the free Acrobat Reader software can open. Now Microsoft is starting to see the benefit of sharing documents with other applications. Their adoption of the Open Document Format (ODF) in Office 2007 has been slow coming and it still has issues, but it brings us one step closer to being able to share ubiquitously.

This shift to support of ODF allows some of my Indianapolis small business computer outsourcing customers to consider alternatives to Microsoft Office for some of their staff. Most of us don't use more than 10 - 15 percent of the power available to us in the Microsoft Office. We won't use more than 15 percent of the power in Open Office either. Their version 3.1 makes the applications nearly interchangeable with similar Microsoft offerings, at no cost.

It is incumbent on your IT support services consultant to bring you money saving ideas. Some ideas may be too risky (or not rewarding enough) for you to do, but you should be allowed to make the informed decision about things. We've mentioned the Open Office suite to several of our customers where we believe it makes sense. As of today, we've had no takers.

Years ago, when Open Source software first started to attract public attention, I joined with the bulk of IT support services companies to deride the stuff as amateurish, buggy, and unsupported. I realize now that I was reacting to what appeared to be a potential threat to my livelihood. More than that, I had underestimated what could be accomplished by a group of people working for free at something. I shouldn't have. Today, I stand with many of my computer network consulting peers and say that Open Source software is changing the rules for small business computer support.

I have a computer at home that runs nothing but free software. It's too old to run the current versions of Windows, or Microsoft Office, or Internet Explorer, or Adobe Acrobat, or just about anything else that would cost me a couple hundred dollars at the local Office Depot. Nonetheless, I have an office suite, a web browser, an email client, a photo image editor, and loads more on the box. So why haven't we started using more of this stuff within the offices of our Indianapolis small business computer outsourcing customers?

They are still afraid of it. That's why. And to some extent, so are we. Afterall, if we have a problem with Microsoft software, we know exactly who to blame. With Open Source, we don't have any idea who to blame. Does it matter though? After we blame Microsoft, we go looking for non-Microsoft resources to help us fix the problem as often as not. The same could be done for the Open Source applications.

Don't think that I'm recommending we all abandon the major software vendors and send them running to Congress for a bailout. I'm only suggesting that it is past time we started trying to use some of this on the periphery. That's what I've been doing.

 I've written before about my foray into the world of Twitter. It has some strange kind of hypnotic appeal, similar in many respects to the way in which we gauk at accidents as we pass by them on the road. I feel like I should "get it" but I don't. I keep trying to figure out what it is but I can't. Now a company, Purewire, has evaluated Twitter usage with a new tool they created for grading Twitter users (mine is an A- right now). As they did research on more than seven million Twitter users, they found:

• 40 percent of Twitter users haven't tweeted since the day they created their account
• 25 percent of users are not following anyone
• 30 percent have no followers
• More than one third have never posted a tweet
• Over 80 percent have posted less than 10 tweets

These statistics seem to indicate that perhaps I'm not the only person who can't figure out what the big deal is. Yet so many of us feel like there is some kind of big deal there that we just can't figure out. Like when those 3D Stereograms were popular, I just think if I stare in the right spot or catch it out of my periphery, it will suddenly become clear.

The hang up for me is that my Indianapolis small business computer outsourcing keep asking me what they should do about Twitter. How do I answer that question when I don't even know what I should be doing about it? For now, I'll keep posting from time to time and reading my followers more often than that. I certainly won't be the last one to abandon Twitter when its popularity follows that of the stereogram.

Earlier this year, the Center for Disease Control and Prevention released the results of a survey that indicates more than 20 percent of US households had a cell phone and NO land line. This is notable because the number of homes that had a land line but NO cell phone was only 17 percent, making this the first time that the cell phone only homes outnumbered the land line only ones. The rate is accelerating too. In the first half of 2003, the same survey found only 3 percent of cell-only homes and 43 percent of land line only ones.

More interesting is that 15 percent of the homes have both cell phones and land lines but don't make or receive calls on the land line! This is reminiscent of some conversations I have with my Indianapolis small business computer support customers about old technology in their offices. It seems we become attached to things that we used to use all the time. So much attached that we don't even realize that we're paying for something that we don't need and won't use. We justify it by considering how small the payment is.

I'm not a keeper or collector of things (except for the coffee cups that drive my wife batty). When something has no ongoing use for me, I'm quick to get rid of it. Realizing that about myself cause me to speak gently with my computer outsourcing clients about throwing out old information technology equipment that has little chance of providing any future service. Yet, telling them that it's time to let go is a part of my job as their IT support company.

So, if you can't remember the last time your home phone rang other than pollsters and solicitors, perhaps in addition to getting rid of that monthly bill at home, you should ask your computer systems consultants to give you a list of "things that should be gone."

 Two new smartphone opportunities will become available in the next week: the Palm Pre (only on Sprint) and the Apple iPhone 3G S (still only on AT&T). As soon as the media started reporting these events, my Indianapolis small business computer support customers started calling me to get my take. Everyone knows that the portable device is my weakness. True to form, I've been looking at all of the reviews and reading the pros and cons. As of this moment, I've decided to pass on either of these new choices. It just feels to me that the Palm brand has sailed, so I'll have to wait until I hear Earth-shattering advantages before getting too excited. I do, however, have a line on a couple of people who will be getting them so there will be some play opportunities for me. With the iPhone, besides the new name being dumb, I can try out most of the new features by upgrading my current iPhone to the new firmware, which I will do as soon as Apple's servers get over the initial shock of downloaders.

The bigger reason I won't jump to get one of these new devices (aside from the fact that my partner won't have anything to do with me buying yet another device) is that even more is coming. HTC is working on a couple of Android based phones. Palm has all but announced that they will debut more WebOS based phones very soon. And my iPhone is still a fabulous way for me to get things done while on the move.


I'm not making promises or commitments that I'll still be using my iPhone 3G at the end of the Summer, but I'll keep it thru June. Right now, if my computer network consulting customers asked me what to get, I'd start by asking what carrier they have. On Sprint, the Pre. On AT&T, the iPhone. On T-Mobile, the G1. On Verizon, well, you've got that great network.

 The battle for desktop supremacy has definitely moved to web-based services, or "Cloud Computing". I can't open a trade magazine without coming across another service that Microsoft or Google are taking into beta (which is where they tend to stay until they figure out how to make money with them). The other day, I watched part of a video about Google's coming soon communications app called Wave. I signed up to be an early user. It looks like what email would have been had its original designers had any idea what they were creating.

Today I signed up for Microsoft's Live Mesh. It's one of the newer offerings in Microsoft's ever-expanding suite of applications available thru their live.com site. I carry around an 8 Gb USB drive that holds all of the data I'm currently using. I back it up online using Data Deposit Box so I can recover to within a day. Every now and then I need a file that isn't on the flash drive. With Live Mesh, I can create folders online that I can access from anywhere. I can also share those folders with others. I can even use Live Mesh to remote control any of the machines I've added to my mesh. This single app does for me what I currently need two applications and a piece of hardware to accomplish. And it's FREE!

Don't need all of that capability but would like to have some online disk space? How about 25 Gb from Microsoft SkyDrive for... you guessed it... FREE!

I've been telling my Indianapolis small business computer outsourcing customers that they shouldn't expect these services to remain free forever. If they do, they'll be so awash in advertising as to make you want to avoid them (see mapquest to understand what I mean). While they are free though, we have lots of time to experiment with them to determine what we'd be willing to pay for when the time comes.

 
On Thursday, May 14th, Google went offline. It took only moments before Twitter and Facebook lit up with people wondering if it was something wrong with their stuff or if Google really was down. Minutes after that, all of the amateur and professional journalists on the Internet were investigating the extent of the outage so they could break the news first. They missed that it had already broken right there on Twitter.

In the weeks since then, every one of the trade magazines we receive at our Indianapolis small business computer outsourcing company included an article (usually an editorial) in which the author lamented the great risk of Cloud computing as demonstrated by the Google crash. I guess that makes it official that we've lost interest in Swine Flu. The next great scare for IT support services is that the cloud doesn't work all the time.

So back to the question that titles this blog. Did you notice that Google was down? I'm guessing not. First, because the outage lasted less than an hour. Second, because the rest of the Internet worked just fine while Google figured out a routing problem. Even if you'd been heavily dependent on Google's suite of services for your operation, I'll bet you could hav found something productive to do for that hour. And given that the average downtime for a server crash in a small business is well over an hour, one shouldn't feel better served by having the machine in the back room.

I tend to be a reader of the genre I call "Pop Business." I trace its roots to Tom Peters and In Search of Excellence, but it probably goes back to Machiavelli or thereabouts. Generally, these books tell about a good idea upon which the author has stumbled. After describing the Earth-shattering impact of this usually obvious idea, the author goes on to provide examples of his idea in action, usually quelled from other pop business books. I only deride this genre because it can cause damage to a good company if the leader decides to swallow the idea whole without applying a little common sense and knowledge of her own situation to it. From each of these books, I learn something that I believe can be applied to improve the way in which we provide computer network consulting in central Indiana.

One always needs an exception to prove the rule. Here it is. Hisashi Sakamaki, the CEO of Canon has written a book in which he proposes that you not allow your employees to sit down. That's right! He's taken away all the chairs. If that could be overlooked as an idiosyncrasy, how about the sensors in the hallways that alert workers if they walk too slow? Even better is the sign on the floor that tells employees: "Lets rush - if we don't then the company and world will perish."

Currently, Sakamaki's book is only available in Japanese. I can only imagine that it will get published in English at some point. The computer help desk technicians on my staff don't have to worry about me trying to pick up good management tips from that book.

Every now and then we drop the ball on a network support project. We don't do it because we're incompetent. We don't do it because we're mean. There is absolutely no malice intended. We sometimes drop the ball because we're human, and people make mistakes. I've discovered over the years that our response to those mistakes determines the kind of relationship we have with our Indianapolis small business computer outsourcing customers. I've also found that it isn't in the normal nature of most Information Technology support companies to handle these mistakes correctly.

Many of my competitors in the Indianapolis and Carmel area will, as soon as they discover a problem, start looking for someone other than themselves to blame.
"It's stupid Microsoft!" 

"I can't believe they didn't put that in the instructions."

"Who would make a part that doesn't fit a standard jack?"

And on and on until they get to the worst one: "That's what you told me you wanted!"

If my dear IT outsourcing peers would stop for a minute and consider what these excuses really say to their computer services customers, they might not ever make excuses again. Didn't you hire them because they are the experts? Aren't they supposed to investigate the IT solution they recommended to be sure it meets your needs? Shouldn't they have known going in how stupid Microsoft is? What my friends in Indianapolis IT consulting are saying is, "We don't have the necessary knowledge to provide you with a working solution." They're screaming it with each excuse until they finally turn on you. 

Not at Port-to-Port Consulting. When we drop the ball we take responsibility for it. We'll tell you what went wrong, and why, and what we're going to do to get it fixed.

"We should have expected that Microsoft was exagerating their claim and tested this in advance. We'll put things back while we go do that testing."

"It's surprising that this part doesn't fit a standard jack but we should have checked that back in our office."

"When you told me that this was what you wanted, I should have questioned more to be sure we had the same understanding."

We'll continue to make mistakes. If we don't, we'll have difficulty learning. We understand that it's a part of doing business as a computer consultant. We won't go on witch hunts when mistakes happen. We'll own them, just like we own the computer network that powers your business.

As a part of my regular business reviews with my Indianapolis small business computer outsourcing customers I have an agenda item titled Technology Update. I describe it as information that will at least give them something to talk to their geek relative about at the next family gathering. My real goal is to inform my customers about upcoming changes or new trends in the Information Technology industry that may have an impact on the way they operate their businesses. Recently, I've included a little blurb about Cloud Computing.

I start by explaining that the concept isn't as new as the term. Before it was called Cloud Computing it was called Software-as-a-Service (SaaS). Before that it was called Application Service Providing (ASP). Way before that it was called Client/Server computing. This background is what will help them impress that geeky relative. Next I give them a short description of it: Cloud computing is the process in which the software actually runs on a computer somewhere outside your office that you connect to via the Internet. Finally I explain why I'm telling them about it. In this case, I take the opportunity to point out that Cloud Computing is a win-win-win for them, the software vendor, and their IT outsourcing company, us.

I also point out that they will hear all kinds of horror stories from our competitors here in Indianapolis and Carmel. These are the technology support companies that still bill by the hour in a Time and Materials mode. They don't want you to switch to cloud computing because it simplifies your internal network. A simpler network means fewer things break which reduces the number of billable hours they can generate at your office. Since our Pertingo Computer Support Service is a fixed fee program, we're all for things that will increase the availability and effectiveness of your IT resources. While I can't deny that there are risks to Cloud Computing, I can say they are overblown by the naysayers. For each risk that Cloud Computing increases, there is at least one other that it decreases.

In the end, we may all have to move to Cloud Computing for some (or all) of our small business computing. That's because it's a more efficient way for programmers to deliver patches, fixes, and updates. It also makes technical support easier because every person using the software is using the exact same version. I didn't start out as a fan of this model of application delivery. I realize now that it was because the early software was just bad. Today, I'm telling my customers during our business reviews that they should expect to move one or more of their applications to the cloud in the course of the next year. They will be more comfortable with the idea when it becomes a decision they have to make.

I came across a phrase recently that I thought was a good way to summarize what is happening as we do more and more online. We are creating our own "digital shadow" online. It follows us around and gives indications to viewers of who we are. Just like a real shadow, the size and shape of our digital shadow depends on the angle of the light and the vantage point of the viewer. And just like our real shadow, we can impact the size and shape of our digital shadow by altering "where we stand." That gets a little tricky online. So many factors impact our digital shadow that it becomes important to think in terms of our Online Presence. That is more than the information we put out about ourselves online. It includes all the information that others put out there too, and the rumors that build up around the information out there. Add to that the annonymous data that gets collected as we search and visit sites looking for information. It sometimes gets connected to us as well.

Some of my Indianapolis small business computer consulting customers think they can manage their digital shadows by keeping their private information to themselves. This ostrich approach will not work any more. The level of information growth on the Internet means that we'd all better take a "best defense is a good offense" approach to our online presence. If you don't manage your online presence, it will manage itself, and that usually doesn't result in the best picture of you.

Over the next few weeks, I'll make suggestions about things we all can do to improve the look of our digital shadow. For now, be aware that yours already exists, and it's growing all the time.

Remember the days when most business communication was via the US Postal Service? That was true in just about all of America at the end of the 1970s. Then came messenger services, FedEx, fax machines, and the current but aging leader, email. Email started to lose ground when Instant Messaging crept into the workplace. Now twitter is looking for its time in the spotlight. Already there are a few services that claim to be the follow-on to twitter. When my Indianapolis small business computer outsourcing customers ask me about it, I still tell them that most of us are looking for a good way to use twitter in our businesses. I also tell them that someone surely will and we'll all be better off for it -- for a while.

This is the same advice we give to our IT support services customers about most new technology. Oftentimes its much easier to say whether it will benefit their operations or not, but those days may also have gone the way of the fax machine. The way in which we do business with one another changes rapidly any more. While there will always be a place for good old fashioned face-to-face meetings, much of the routine interaction between our computer support customers and their stakeholders is becoming automated. It's machines talking to machines with no human interaction. Even many of the computer services we provide have gone that way.

Perhaps Twitter will be the point where the pendulum starts to swing the other way. Maybe it will be as instantaneously connected as any of us care to get and we'll go back to slower, more intentional interactions with one another. Yeah, I doubt it too.

I was invited to speak at the Ingram Micro SMB Alliance meeting this August in Charlotte, North Carolina. The invitation isn't unusual. I have been invited to speak at several local, regional, and national events over the past few years. I enjoy sharing my thoughts with others, and my presentations always lead to people coming up to me afterward to share information that makes me smarter. The interesting thing about this request was the topic. I'll be speaking to my peers in the computer network consulting business about Search Engine Optimization, or, more precisely, Online Presence Management. SEO is no longer enough in the Web 2.0 world. In fact, having a great website with all of the structure built around your important keyword phrases is only a decent start at getting yourself found online by people who truly want to find you.

The fact that a conference full of people who do business computer support is going to have a session on SEO says a lot about the way in which computer services have changed and will continue to change. It is no longer good enough for your IT outsourcing company to keep your computers running (or fix them quickly when they break). Those of us who profess to be professional computer services providers have to recognize that our customers only have the computers because they want to accomplish a business function for which the computer is supposed to be uniquely suited. In order for us to help our Indianapolis area computer outsourcing customers succeed, we spend time finding out how they define success.

Lately that definition has included some element of their online presence and how they can leverage the power of the Internet in their business. They want us to help them with SEO, with cloud computing, with online interactions between them and their customers and suppliers. The reason Ingram Micro wants me to talk to my peers about Online Presence Management is that my peers had better start figuring out how to talk to their IT support customers about it.

I can hardly wait to see what I learn from this presentation opportunity.

I recently read an interview with JJ Abrams, the director of the new Star Trek movie (highly recommended by the Port-to-Port Consulting crew). In the interview, he talks about how the Internet has created an Age of Immediacy. He discusses how we no longer feel compelled to get good at anything that takes skill or effort. Shortly after reading this article, someone sent me a link to a video of Louis CK on Late Night with Conan O'Brien where he make a similar point, albeit a bit more humorously. Both of these gentlemen bring up an issue that seems to be coming to a tipping point as our economy becomes more volatile. People cannot stand to wait for even the smallest amount of time to get gratified.

In our dealings with the Indianapolis small business computer outsourcing customers that use Pertingo, this immediacy manifests itself in our quest to determine the severity of the issue at hand when they call our computer help desk. We know that in a perfect world, most of these calls would never take place. We also know that on many days we live in a far from perfect world. It's on those days that we try to do a bit more triage to determine where best to focus our resources in our attempt to keep all of our computer support customers working productively. In recent times, our customers took that into consideration and helped with our effort to prioritize their concerns. Today, we are always told that, "This is an urgent problem and it is having an enormously detrimental effect on our ability to work."

Now we understand that we are all living in stressful times, and we don't expect that our computer network services customers are going to call us with truly trivial issues. Perhaps it's too much to ask that everyone remember back to the days when everything didn't seem to happen immediately.