Saturday, April 24, 2010

Douchebag Dmcgraw on virtualbox forums

I'm not using windows, and I go to the forums looking for help. As with most "forums" - a piss-poor way to provide customer service by the way, it's run by the self-proclaimed asshat who spends more time fucking with people than answering questions. dmcgraw proclaims rather usefully "we don't discuss pirated software." The post had NOTHING to do with pirated software, rather this TOOL has decided to persecute someone who isn't using some software that Mr. McGraw approves of.

This is the kind of snake-oil attitude that makes open source look bad. His insipid harassment of a hapless user is without intelligence, merit, or purpose. The question was never answered, and all my searching on virtualbox's semi-putrid help forum resulted in no answer, rather in each case, the fucktard berates the user for mentioning OTHER software that has nothing to do with virtualbox.

Nice.

If virtualbox was expecting contributions from my corporation, they can forget it. I HATE HATE HATE idiots who think that a gods-damned forum is in ANY way resembling actual customer service. It's proof of laziness, evidence of lack of effort, and certifies an absence of intent to provide quality service.

I universally view unilateral forum-linking to SPAM activities, a denial of customer service, and a general lack of intelligence on the part of the programmer/group who promotes it.

1. I don't want to register for your website to pump up your advertisement revenue so that I can get service from you, or more accurately, be harassed and denied service, witness your asshole attitude to other users who're attempting to get help, and read your sycophant's butt-licking posts about how great you are.

2. Twenty years of experience with support, infrastructure, and management in large corporations has taught me that the best way to ignore a customer and avoid the costs of providing service is to push everyone into VOICEMAIL, FORUMS, and SUPPORT TICKETS. Contrary to the popular perception that a support ticket system will increase accountability and customer service - the opposite is an absolute truth. These features of "customer service" will cause me to take my business elsewhere. Telco's are famous for doing all of the above, and most people despise telcos.

3. Google searches which lead to forums will cause me to unload and delete your product. I've seen repeatedly over the last decade a movement to push all responsibility right out the fucking window. Developers DO NOT WANT TO PROVIDE SUPPORT. They'll do anything to avoid work, most of them, and that's why they became programmers. I'm a programmer, and I'm the same way, so the shit doesn't work on me.

4. Of the thousands of attempts that I've sincerely made since the 90s to get support from Email-based systems, forum systems, "online help" pages, and user groups... the ones that ACTUALLY PROVIDED HELP were never websites that were in any way connected to the software corporation or owners. Private blogs, hobbyists, dedicated artists, and other individuals who blog about walk-throughs and provide reviews of software do a much better job.

5. My google search string includes the default "-forum -faq -group -asp -mailing". So, not only do I now routinely NOT SEE results that include forums and other crap, but I've begun marking websites that publish addresses to "help" forums as Spam in Adblocker so that I NEVER SEE THEM AGAIN.

Way to fail, asshole. Dmcgraw just cost his parent software company about ten thousand dollars in direct sales/support, and gained this blog post about what an asshole he is to everyone online. This will further the lost business as my blog post will gain more hits than his one-liner retorts to people who dare to ask him for help on his personal soapbox - the virtualbox forum.

~D

Monday, April 5, 2010

Rhyme Paradox

12 hours at work, and yet far from challenged. Tired, but completely bored. I practiced bass for less than an hour, and now my hands feel so much better although somewhat tired - and I could almost hear the music in my head. I need lessons though, or this will be a longer road than it needs to be. Genius or not, self taught is slower than having someone hand me a set of instructions.

Another 12 hour day tomorrow, and my exam next week on the same day as the Dentist. Too damn busy, but it's all going to be worth it. In the last few years I've experienced something that's never happened before: hard work actually pays off. Not labor though, the work of learning. Work smart, not hard. The more mentally challenging my landscape, the brighter my day.

Almost hurts to type, but I'm sure I'll get over that.