Month: April 2015

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Ok Folks… This Ain’t Rocket Science!

angrychimp

This is one clearly destined for the annals of “how to really piss off your customer”

I’ve got someone for whom I put together a web site.

What I built is much nicer than the site they’d built using their web hosts “Web Design” package.

Honestly, the “web designer” used by their hosting site was barely functional. While it did produce a web site; Well you know the old saying about Shakespeare? The one  about 10,000 monkeys with typewriters and 1,000 years???

Lets just say what the web designer output was less than pretty. 

monkeyfangs

That my friend could make the site look decent at all is a tribute to a lot of patience and time spent on their part.

Had my friend NOT spent all that time and energy his website would have looked like a rabid, syphilitic, palsied, drunken howler monkey, on acid had cobbled together some HTML. Or the great technologist Hillary Clinton, whichever floats your boat.

But that’s not the worst of it.

confusedmonkey

See, my friend was paying for this… Where things turned due South was when we tried to upload the site I built, to his host.

Turns out that even though he “Upgraded” the web hosting service wouldn’t allow FTP access. Additionally, they provided no way at all to simply upload HTML files. He asked again, and again he upgraded his service giving them MORE money and still FTP was denied.

hillary

FTP is one of the basic underpinnings of the internet. Virtually every operating system has the ability to FTP built right in. You have to specifically block this ability. In most modern Operating Systems, FTP access is blocked by default by the manufacturer, but during installation there is usually some question about enabling it, and a couple of other things. Many average consumers answer “No” or they skip the question. This leaves the service? protocol? (I honestly forget which FTP is classified as,) turned off and thus doesn’t leave a security hole open. If the consumer find they need FTP later, they can enable it. Often, if the customer has purchased an FTP front-end package, (Something that pretties up the service) during installation of the package, FTP is enabled.

Then I tried talking to his hosting site, and WOW! What an unmitigated cluster fuck!

Gandalfclusterfuck

I could log into the site as my friend, but when I tried making changes, I was sent to another site, and another site.

I’m not just talking about different webpages here, I’m talking about entirely different web sites all of which you have to log onto independently.

I started out logging into something called OptimalWebhosting.com. But that wasn’t the real host, they were called Wild West something something.com

But they weren’t the actual web builder people, and the web builder people weren’t the security people, and at one point godaddy.com popped up performing some function.

As we tried dealing with these people it became clear that there was no single entity in absolute control of his domain name.

Since there were so many people with fingers in the pie, nailing someone down for answers, getting something fixed, or getting anyone to take responsibility for anything, proved impossible.

Famouslastwords

My friend said he was completely tired of dealing with these people.

I said, “I think I can help.”

Famous last words!

I contacted my hosting service HostGator.com.

I’ve been very happy with them and their service over the past 3 years. In that time I’ve always been able to get ahold of someone that knew a lot more about some of this stuff than I do. I’ve always closed a chat, or hung up the phone thinking, “Dang! It’s really nice to talk to folks who are on the ball and have a ‘can do’ attitude.”

So I called them, I asked if my friend’s domain could be transferred to HostGator, how much, and how long?

The answer was, “Yes we can transfer the domain, it’ll cost $20 and once we have control of the domain name it usually takes only a few hours.”

I said, “Great! Clicked on the little transfer button, entered the domain name, and told my friend to authorize the transfer when he got an email about it.”

That was almost thirty days ago.

badserverroom

We went down the rabbit hole of politics, greed, stupidity, and really shitty corporate policy. 

Optimalwebhosting, A.K.A. Wild West Hosting, dragged its feet at every possible turn.

They refused to answer HostGator, they allowed transfer tokens to expire requiring that those tokens be recreated twice! They annoyed my friend and whined because he was leaving them, but wouldn’t expedite his leaving and wouldn’t correct the issue that was causing him to leave. 

They finally figured out that they wanted yet MORE money to provide FTP services that would allow him to upload a website. They also wanted to charge him by the web page!

So lets take a look at this business model shall we? 

14.95 Yearly domain registration.

75.00 Yearly hosting service using their web builder (rabid, syphilitic, palsied, drunken howler monkey, on acid, HTML code.)

25.00 to upgrade site to have more web pages. (YET MORE, rabid, syphilitic, palsied, drunken howler monkey, on acid, HTML code.)

Grand total… 114.95 to STILL have no ability to upload a custom site, and have crappy support spread across who knows how many different  companies.

Uh NO! This is not value for the money… this is death by a thousand cuts. This kind of billing structure makes you look like you’re running your business on retired or defective equipment that you’ve cobbled together out of dumpsters in Silicon Valley. 

As of today, it looks like the transfer may finally be nearing completion of ‘the domain transfer from hell’. I’m not holding my breath, I suspect that Wild West Hosting has something else up its collective sleeve. They’ve gotta have at least one more monkey wrench to toss into the works, it’s their nature.

Bottom line,

If you see Optimal Web Hosting, or Wild West Hosting offering really cheap domains and webhosting… 

RUN AWAY!

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KILL ALL HUMANS!

BenderKillallhumans

After careful consideration and study.

The inevitable conclusion is, to solve climate change we must kill all humans!

After all, the California Delta Smelt, The Wyoming Sage Grouse, The Spotted Owl, and innumerable other species deserve to live in peace with their habitats intact.

As I’m sure you’ll all agree, the only viable solution is we must all die.

To that end, extermination booths will be set up in your neighborhood. When you see the booths, be the first of your friends to step in and die with dignity. It’s quick, painless, and fun!

StarTrekATasteofArmageddon

Persons not stepping into the booths voluntarily, will be hunted down and shot.

Do Mother Earth a favor, kill yourself!

That’s what goes through my mind every single time I read about another EPA or BLM report describing the plight of some creature, in an attempt to guilt us into … WHAT?

Accepting Climate change is real? Irrelevant! 

Paying some stupid ass carbon tax? Pointless!

Turning over yet more control of our daily lives to a bunch of bureaucrats? There it is! That’s the reason for the guilt ridden landfills full of newsprint.

bueaucrats

I get pissed off.

Species come and go all the time on this planet. They have done since before we came down from the trees, and they’ll no doubt continue to do so long after our bones and our civilization is dust.

Stop guilting us!

If we all resolve to live taking actions daily that minimize our impact on the planet, things will get better.

Stop pumping out children that you simply throw away!

forest

That goes for you Catholics, and you folks in India too.

Stop rushing out to buy the newest latest and greatest of whatever widget is out this month to replace the widget from last month. Come on folks, how much packaging do we really need to fill our landfills?

If you’re so damn worried about carbon emissions… Allow next generation reactors to be built. Take a look at a documentary called Pandora’s Promise. I’m not saying base all public policy on one documentary, but stop dismissing a viable energy source out of hysteria not facts.

Here’s an idea, plant landscaping that is appropriate for your environment. Cacti are adapted to grow in the Southwest for a reason, your weeping willow and Kentucky bluegrass is not!

earthafterhumans

My point here is that we should all be less wasteful, not because it’s mandated, or because we’re terrified, or guilty, but because it simply makes good sense.

If you’re less wasteful, and adapt your habits to the natural world instead of trying to make the natural world adapt to you, things are likely to work a lot more smoothly. 

An additional perk is that climate change becomes part a natural cycle and it no longer has to be terrifying. It no longer matters if its man made or not, because we’re all by choice, making decisions that minimize our impact.

The alternative is…

For the good of the planet…

KILL YOURSELVES!

Update 6/10/2015

And once again I’m ahead of the curve.

I can’t believe that there’s actually a “Voluntary Human Extinction Movement”.

http://www.breitbart.com/london/2015/06/10/wipe-out-humans-to-save-the-earth-group-says/

WIPE OUT HUMANS TO SAVE THE EARTH, GROUP SAYS

Crowd

by NICK HALLETT10 Jun 2015543

 

Human beings urgently need to wipe themselves out to avoid ecological catastrophe, the leader of the Voluntary Human Extinction Movement has claimed.

In an interview with the Big Issue magazine, Les U Knight (pseudonym assumed) said that the extinction of humanity would be a good thing for the planet and that humans need to reduce their numbers before they run out of resources.

Mr Knight, who in his day job is a substitute teacher in Portland, Oregon, said that his main motivation for wanting to see the extinction of his own species was “preservation of Earth’s biosphere”.

“Diversity is the strength of the biosphere and the fewer species there are, the weaker it becomes. We’re pulling strands from the web of life and at the same time putting more pressure on it due to our increased consumption.”

He added that increased human population was making it harder to feed the poor around the world.

“People are not doing too well. Two billion people don’t have potable water, almost a billion are experiencing food insecurity – we used to call it hunger – it’s not a pretty world for half the people on the planet and it won’t be easy to improve their lot as long as the progress is gobbled up by our increased numbers.”

One solution, Knight said, could be for the West to introduce a “one child policy” banning couples from having two or more children, as China does, although even this may not be enough.

“One is twice as good as two as far as procreation goes but our population momentum would take a while to start decreasing. In terms of energy consumption, when a North American couple stops at two, it’s about the same as an average Indian couple stopping at 30 or a Bangladeshi couple stopping at 97. At least China has done a lot to control their increase. There would be 400 million more of them today if they hadn’t instituted their policy.”

Knight followed his own logic at the age of 25 when he underwent a vasectomy. He claims he “never regretted it for a moment” and “I only wish I’d done it earlier.”

“It’s dangerous having those wigglers,” he added.

If humanity does not voluntarily wipe itself out, Knight warned, it will face “involuntary extinction”, either through ecological catastrophe or nuclear Armageddon:

“The end of humanity would be good for humanity. That seems contradictory but as we phase ourselves out, the lives of those left behind would steadily improve. And those of us who don’t exist won’t know the difference.”

Not everyone is convinced, however. Dr Kristian Niemietz of the Institute of Economic Affairs told Breitbart London: “Apparently, Les U Knight believes that his statement is incredibly profound and thought-provoking, but it is really just a slightly more extreme version of the lame old eco-miserabilism which has been the conventional wisdom among Western ‘intellectuals’ for more than a generation. Fretting about overpopulation and overconsumption will guarantee you approving nods at every dinner party, but fashionable though those run-of-the-mill greenish views may be, they are theoretically and empirically wrong.

“Over the past three decades, we have seen a spectacular decline in global poverty. If you use the World Bank’s definition of extreme poverty – having less than the equivalent of $1.25 per person per day – then as recently as in the early 1980s, over half of the world’s population were extremely poor. Today, that share has dropped to just below one fifth.

“Poverty is not ‘caused’ by overpopulation. Poverty is the natural state of mankind. Up until about two hundred years ago, virtually everybody in the world would have been poor by the World Bank’s standard. It was only then that we began to grow out of poverty; initially only in what we now call the industrialised West, and over time, more and more countries joined in.

“Malthusians like Knight have an unrealistic view of economic activity. They see human beings as akin to locusts, but human beings are not just passive consumers of whatever they happen to stumble across. We are active problem-solvers, we are innovators, and we are producers.

“For example, the reason why the world can sustain a much larger population than ever before today is that agricultural productivity has improved so massively. It could improve much further still if we dropped our childish paranoia about innovative farming techniques like GMO, and if we moved towards untrammelled worldwide free trade in agriculture.

“Population growth is irrelevant. What matters is institutions and economic incentives. Countries move out of poverty to the extent to which they adopt the basics of a functioning modern economy: the rule of law, impartial courts, and secure property rights. They also need to allow the free formation of market prices, so that prices can act as signals of scarcity, providing incentives to overcome that very scarcity. With rising prosperity, we also grow more resilient to natural disasters, and we can afford to adopt production techniques that go easier on the environment.

“If we continue on anything like the current trend, we may well come close to the eradication of poverty within our lifetime, although doomsayers like Knight will no doubt find some other ‘impending catastrophe’ to moan about.”

Follow Nick Hallett on Twitter:  or e-mail to: nhallett@breitbart.com
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One of these days Alice, POW! Right to the moon

oneofthesedays

No, I’m not advocating violence towards women. I’m just frustrated by the constraints of this future. When I was growing up, the Future was about everyone being closer.

Yet our technology is having the opposite effect. There’s far less human interaction today, than in my youth. 

The weird thing is that in our technological isolation, instead of allowing each of us more freedom of thought and expression, is often being used to enforce an homogeneity that is rather oppressive.

At least Ralph and Alice talked to each other in the same room.

The isolation was highlighted for me recently because I needed some help with a misbehaving bit of software. So I went to the manufacturers website looking for a phone number to give them a quick call.

I know,, I know, I obviously thought I was still living in the 20th Century, instead of the 21st Century. Phone numbers? You want to call us?

Villan1

Ohhhh No Mr. Bond, I expect you to email!

In reality, I ended up on a chat application. Thrilling! At the end of the Chat session, I got to answer a survey too!

After waiting for about 5 minutes, I ended up with a “Technician” in chat.

I explained my problem, He, She, It? put me on hold then came back after a couple more minutes. Then sent me a PDF file that was instructions concerning how to fix my problem. 

Okaaaay, the instructions were all about Windows, and the PDF had a link back to the website for the solutions to the Mac version of the problem. Unfortunately, their explanation of the cause of the problem was in no way true on my system. So I couldn’t follow the instructions to resolve it.

It was only an activation number that wasn’t being accepted. I figured there was something simple like wiping a configuration file then trying again. Apparently that was beyond this chat “Technician”. 

He/She/It,  couldn’t understand that I couldn’t execute their instructions because the initial condition didn’t exist. After being put on hold again (Hold on Chat?) He/She/It determined something was wrong. DUH!!!

Chats

After more pointless back and forth, I deleted the application, then re-installed it from the 6 original CDs. After the reinstallation, the application accepted my activation number without question.

It dawned on me that the Chat does a couple of things for companies.

The person only has to be able to type English. It doesn’t matter if they have a thick accent. They have to be able to figure out what document to send and then they hang up. That’s exactly what He/She/It did to me.

Once I confirmed that I’d gotten the PDF, He/She/It was gone.

southparkIndiansweat

Great way to save money and time for the corporation. The “Chatters” are in India or wherever. They’re probably being paid a 1.00 a day and after only 10 years are eligible to be considered by their company for an H1B1 Visa!

Lately, I’m feeling more and more on my own when it comes to problem solving. The really sad part is that I’m pretty high functioning when it comes to computer crap.

I hate to think of my poor mother chatting away with someone expecting help.

Welcome to the future.