Wednesday, September 07, 2005
Wizards too, were scorned by those they served
I could only wonder at the though processes that lead to a customer leaving over 6,500 messages in their incoming email account, and then complaining about how long it took to list all the messages therein. I suppose they might be surprised to find out they have that many messages.
“But I check my email everyday!” said a hypothetical customer in a hypothetical conversation I'm making up on the spot. “Now you're telling me I have 6,500 new messages⁈”
“No,” I said, “but you neglected to delete the messages off the server.”
“But I don't want to delete the messages! And what's this server you speak of?”
“No, you misunderstand me—”
“But you said I have 6,500 new messages! Where did they come from?”
“They're not new messages—”
“So what are they then?”
“Messages you left on the ser—”
“AND WHAT'S THIS SERVER THING YOU KEEP TALKING ABOUT?” I can hear the capitals clearly. “Are you talking about this ‘mail.example.net’ you had me type into this obscure … thingy … in my … Lookout?” And yes, they inevitably always use Microsoft Outlook in checking email.
A disconnect this big … how can one even begin to explain?
“Think of the server being your physical mailbox. You don't leave your mail in your physical mailbox, do you?”
“No,” the customer said, sounding a bit suspicious.
“You remove it from the mailbox, right?”
“Yes … ”
“Well, you neglected to remove these 6,500 messages from your mailbox, so that's why it's taking so long to list all the messages.”
But only if it were only email. It's even worse when people are this clueless about their websites. Their commercial websites, that supposedly bring in money (and I won't even mention a certain website reseller with a website development process where “Byzantine” is an understatement and we're stuck with debugging the sites). I can only assume these people are also the type who don't care about their finances and just dump shoe boxes filled with receipts on their accountant's desk, saying “Fix it.”
Sigh.
What? No gas masks? What gives?
I've checked the Google AdSense™ Terms and Conditions and I don't see anything about not making editorial comments about the advertising appearing in the sidebar there (I can't however, force anyone reading this to click the links, or otherwise attempt to influence the vast amounts of money Google is sending my way, but I can mention that I've made a whopping $1.35 since April). So, with that aside, I just noticed an ad for RVs durring hurricanes (hurry, over 8,000 RVs available nationwide, about $40,000 a pop) and below that lovely ad, another one for sandbags.
Sandbags (overnight shipping available).
And RVs.
I'm beginning to wonder if the Google AdSense program is really worth it.
