Someday

I feel bad whenever a client leaves for another service, but I try to explain things the best I can, being very straight forward with the cost a client may need to pay due to extra services. I never charge to make a very large and maybe that’s my problem.

Maybe I should charge high-end prices, this way a person feels like they are getting a better product. 

The story began with me explaining to my client that the server they were on (cloud hosting) was insecure. How do I know that? The company explained it to me. The server was being replaced and I had to move the emails to another service they offered.

The problem was that the owners of the domain had a whole heap of emails which they paid very little for yearly. Though that is about to change for them, as they decided to go with a company that charges 7 times more a year than I did, plus extra (per email)!

They were, (I suppose) trying to get a deal where their email would not cost extra, but here’s the catch; I offered to move the site to another server I had, where they would incur no extra cost. 

But due to the client site manager not wanting to set up the emails again, they went with another business altogether. Mind you, she will still have to set up the emails again and at a much higher cost. 

Well done! Good luck with that!

I will bet that most of the people who post those ads are Windows users who at no time felt troubled having to call tech support outside of the US for help. Then they feel the need to have someone local to work on their online site. I mean its one thing if you are developing on a localhost, but dude, your site is online, you can seriously get anyone, anywhere to log in and fix it. 

The saying goes, according to Larry Wall, the original author of the Perl programming language, there are three great virtues of a programmer; Laziness, Impatience and Hubris.

I, unfortunately, believe these are actually 3 great Christian shortcomings, which  I happen to have. Though I make due to take advantage of them, as they actually help me out sometimes when they are wrapped up with a touch of grace.

Laziness: The quality that makes you go to great effort to reduce overall energy expenditure. It makes you write labor-saving programs that other people will find useful and document what you wrote so you don't have to answer so many questions about it.

To me, lazy might mean looking up the exact theme someone might reference on another website (when I’m asked to do a redesign). I mean, the customer is always right. Right? In which case, there is little use to re-inventing the wheel.

Impatience: The anger you feel when the computer is being lazy. This makes you write programs that don't just react to your needs, but actually anticipate them. Or at least pretend to.

Impatience is something that can affect many levels of development, which is probably why Lorem Ipsum text filler was even invented. Just saying.

Hubris: The quality that makes you write (and maintain) programs that other people won't want to say bad things about.

I noticed recently that WordPress was hiring, but it never occurred to me as to why. I mean, after all, they are a big company, they probably hire all of the time. 

But then yesterday, I had the pleasure of updating one of my sites to the latest install of WordPress (5.0) Gutenberg. While it is a lot like Tumblr in its new writing/editing section, making a site in it feels a bit, clunky. 

I know that Gutenberg is not a page builder, in fact, it really is just like editing text here in Tumblr. Yes, by itself it looks very nice as an editor. The problem (or the wrench) comes in when using it, means that you have to throw away the baby with the bath water. Just ask the #testmonkey below ->

Gutenberg strips your old menu for editing and replaces the entire interface. So you either use the new functions or install a classic plugin which strips the new functions. It is literally one or the other. It does not allow for a seamless function addition into the future, it just stops you in your tracks and says, “Forget all of that stuff, the future is here.” 

Which is fine, I guess, if it were a product which didn’t depend so heavily on its community for additional software, functions, and support. But as it turns out (while looking for Gutenberg compatible themes), I came across a project called ClassicPress where apparently, some people got so pissed-off at the latest version of WordPress, that they started their own branch of it.

Surely, there has to be a Zen place in-between the two extremes. On the one hand, I would like if WordPress were to incorporate new features into its core while keeping the old GUI available, so as not to toss away years of familiarity with it. While at the same time, I see the need for change, as the world of tech is always changing and advancing. Just maybe, the happy place is in smoother transitions, without having to make such sudden “like it or not” type changes.

After being somewhat “iffy” about blogging again, I think I may have something to blog about. Not here, however. Although I will keep this for small pet peeves I’d like to vent about, I think I want to start an actual blog.

I like to give free advice on how to manage a website to people who really need it. Often I’ll go on Craigslist and write pointers to help people out with stuff on their sites.

One thing I won’t do, give free advice to a client who cancels their service with me. For some odd reason, I’ve had a couple of post-service advice calls recently.

One guy called me up concerning his Facebook advertisement fees not going through. I could feel my face scrunch up in confusion as to what in the world I had anything to do with his problem, as he no longer paid for services from me. I waited in a slight anticipation of him saying something about paying me, but no, he just waited for me to walk him through a solution to his problem.  

I paused, looked up at the ceiling for a moment and told him what he should do. “Do you see the help button on Facebook?” “Yes.” He replied. 

“Well, click that.” 

“Okay.” He continued.

“Now, type in your problem and get Facebook support.”

Silence. 

“You need to get Facebook support for your problem, do you understand?”

“Uh, yeah, um, okay...”

The call concluded with, “Have a nice day.”

Next, is the famous and never boring call, where the former client or their new “#webdev” can’t figure out what a nameserver is.

It usually goes something like:

“Please release our domain. This is our domain and we can not get it to work.”

The general response, “We are not holding your domain. Please change your DNS settings to default.”

That almost always gets the same answer, which is, “How do we do that?”

Now, while I am obviously willing to help change a person’s DNS to point to my server, I’ll admit I’m not the most helpful person when it comes to hand holding a cancellation. 

“You have to call your domain name registrar and they will walk you through that.”

After all, they are actually getting paid for such a call. So, no, no free walk-throughs after cancellation. These people played ghost when their renewals were up, then they call me up like I owe them a favor. Psh.

Yesterday I noticed that a bottled water we had purchased had ingredients listed on it. “That’s odd.” I thought to myself.

Apparently, I’ve never noticed magnesium in my water before. So I asked my husband if we could get just pure water next time we went to the store and he replied,”Pure water, you mean like Lab water?”.

Well, that’s a term I never heard before. I can’t help recall that clip from Idiocracy: Water? You Mean Like In The Toilet?

Okay, I just want a fucking pack of cigarettes. My mood swings are not worth this vaping shit. I literally feel like running away from home just to hide away somewhere smoking, ‘till I pass out from tobacco inhalation. 

While there is no good way to lose a client, there are some ways which are worst than others. This week I sent out a very typical reminder and invoice to a client whose credit card was declined. 

After a few days, we called the client only to find out from his new wife (of 5 weeks) that he had died. Yeah, sometimes people give out way too much information over the phone. 

Upon hearing this news, I felt a genuine sorrow that he had passed away, then a little while later it hit me that I had just lost a client. 

Last week I was surprised to hear of an unplanned visit from my mother-in-law, she stayed at a local hotel and only spent a few days in town.

During her visit, she expressed her displeasure with the fact that both my husband and I smoke. So, right before she left, she bought us both e-cigarettes. Neither of us had agreed to stop, in fact, we said nothing of the sort and quietly took the e-cigs saying nothing more past, “Thank you”.

While I didn’t really feel pressured into using it, I thought that perhaps I could use it to cut back on smoking. 

I’m going on day 6 on vaping and while I am smoking far less, up to 5 cigarettes a day vs a full pack, I feel WAY more irritated with life in general.

I’m hoping this will pass, maybe I’ll get used to the slow nicotine release without all of those fantastic chemicals I have grown so attached to.  

I’ve lost and gained many clients over the years, many that were lost for practical reasons, mainly an inability to afford the continuation of my services. Either their own businesses were lost, or their own efforts of making a website saved them enough money to make it worth their effort to at least try to design and manage their own business sites.

But there is a first time for everything and I suppose that this is the first time that I lost a client because his girlfriend felt insecure. I had this particular client for four years, with steady updates and straight forward, timely communication. That is, until earlier this year, when a call I placed to my client was answered by a woman who questioned who I was and why I was calling. I gave her every professional and typical answer I had, after which she asked me to call back. Well, that was the first brick in the wall. 

My next communication with my client involved him giving updates over a phone call, during which, the call got muffled, and proceeded with him pass the phone over to what I assume was his new girlfriend. 

She then began a rather long rant about how the site was a mess, it was incomprehensible and that she’d seen websites that make sense but that this site did not. She ordered me to delete heaps of content, add blank pages and passed the phone back. 

My client simply said to do as she said and I felt a moment of actual sorrow, as I knew how much work we had gone through to word and set the site up over the years. 

The only thing I could do was mention in an email the loss of SEO that would occur in deleting so much of the site's content as well as keeping published empty pages. It was all in vain, as in the end he (I suppose) was pressured into having a guy he knew make another site altogether. 

It seems that the internet can only reflect the crazy that surrounds us. Yesterday I  read several made-up articles and even watched a video that had been edited to tie someone to ISIS.

Several people claimed publicly that they were no longer supporting Ted Cruz, because he blamed Trump’s rhetoric's for the violence which has been escalating with protesters his at rallies.

Others claimed that they changed their minds to vote for Trump, because some protester tried to hop on stage yesterday. 

Apparently the worlds gone mad, chasing after a man without policies, with several illegal ideas, who’s spreading hate and a fuzzy illogical ambiguity to our country, all in the name of some new twisted patriotism.  

Put short and simply, if he were poor, he would be labeled mad.

Right, so: When hiring a developer to make a site for you,  you should really let them do what they are good at. 

But no, why make things easier? Instead, you’ll find the occasional person hiring someone else to make them a site, only so that they could then do their gosh-darnedest to incorporate their very non-professional opinion, into something they had to hire a  professional to do in the first place. Until finally, the continual bad input ends up turning out something like this:

After watching a mass amounts of conspiracy videos, I’ve determined that I could  make a way better interpretation for I Pet Goat II. 

Why? Well, because little secret...I was raised as a Theosophist. Many, so many things strike memory cords so to speak.

I am now, an Orthodox Christian, so my retrospect is a bit of a different flavor. I can  see so many things which  most commentators can’t. Granted the dude on the boat is the Antichrist, the evils of 9-11, blah-blah-blah.  Point made short, they are missing SO MUCH. 

I guess the saying is true...

Reading Craigslist again, that’s always a mistake.  All it does is behoove me. 

Today’s pet-peeve is brought on by an ad for a  WordPress X-Theme expert. Which is pretty stupid, since you really don’t have to “master” any “themes” in WP to set them up. At best it should take a seasoned  WP designer no more than  15 - 30 min to read the doc files to set up everything with basic ease.

Anywho, it’s just one of those things were I’m really tempted to write an email to the ad lister.  Which, I’ve actually done, just to explain that their theme isn’t that freakin’ special.  Psh,  they’re all like, “Yeah, I know WordPress, but this theme really needs a <blank-> theme expert.”  

My 7 year old son is writing his first blog post on his very own (private) blog.