The Jaded Tech

Despite all of our technical advances in the last couple of decades, there is still a lot to be said for the simple filing cabinet in your home or office. I mean, when was the last time you needed to defrag your filing cabinet? Or when was the last time it ‘crashed’ and you ‘lost all your files’? Did the latest update break the cabinet too? Seriously, this just never happens. So for someone with simple needs (i.e. single person/home budget), a complex program like QuickBooks is way overkill.

Let’s talk about the durability of media.

Harddrives are lasting about 3-5 years tops. How many of you thought about replacing your HD recently? A better question now to ask is ‘Can you afford to loose every, single piece of data on your hard drive?’. Now, this is only for the end user/home user of computers and mainly the PC people. See, you people cause your own problems. You want it cheaper and cheaper every year but then complain wildly when it crashes in 3 years and you have to replace it.

So people also burn their data to Disks. Well the shelf life of a disk is far from definitive. There are estimate of between 2 years and 50 years. The biggest problem is the environment in which disks are stored. so now even backing up to a CD isn’t all that helpful and apparent there is no data for DVDs as of yet.

So to sum up, you can’t trust HDs for extended periods of time, you can’t trust CDs/DVDs for extended times….what can you trust?

Options:

1/ Buy more expensive HDs and set them in a RAID format. This works great and is exactly what the big companies do. The problem is cost. People simply don’t have enough of an idea to believe they need such expenses even though the durability is significant.

2/ Outsource your storage. By that I mean use other people’s $100,000+ setup. This is the route I chose for my daily uses. I use GMail for all my email communications. Hell, Google makes enough money to afford outrageous machines. Let them worry about backups and data security. The downside, you have no control over where your data is. Hardly a downside for the average person really.

3/ Deal with replacement every 3-5 years of your media. For most people, this isn’t an option but a does to slap in the face reality. They wait till it breaks then call in a tech to fix it. I ended up charging one company $1500 for data recovery because 3 years of financial data was on the failed HD and they HAD to have it. Gues what they got now? An external drive to back up on. Harsh lesson to learn.

Speaking of deleting data. Why can’t people just take the time to think about what they are doing? While working for a company, one guy emails in saying to delete this one particular account. Being the obedient company representative, I diligently follow the client’s instructs and inform him when it was done. To whit he responded “Don’t delete this account.”. Sorry about your luck fella but maybe a few moments of thought before you asked me to delete the account would have been useful.

Upgrades and new software is common place and a given in the IT world. Every year there are tons of upgrades/updates/security patches for just about every operating system. Windows is notorious for their ’security updates’ and usually slow to release them only to find out that those updates have bugs with them as well. I can’t tell you how many times I have had to uninstall IE8 in the past two weeks because of spyware getting past all the ’security updates’. Hell, Microsoft even has a 10 page PDF document tell you how “Internet Explorer 8 helps keeps you safer online“. Opening it up you’ll find on the 2nd page the wonderfully ‘responsibility disclaimer’ clause of “MICROSOFT MAKES NO WARRANTIES, EXPRESS, IMPLIED OR STATUTORY, AS TO THE INFORMATION IN THIS DOCUMENT.”. Even though they make a claim, they rescind it within the first two pages of their document.

One of the most other common tools used are FTP programs. One of them I used to consider the best out there was FileZilla. That was until an update caused it to stop working. Like the good geek that I am, I researched why this happened and how to fix it. I found out that the author changed something in it to make it more standards compliant. The problem is that because some servers have not implemented this, the FTP program fails to connect.

Now, it is entirely possible to have this ‘update’ as an option and disable it but the author has basically said “tell your stupid server admins to fix the problem. It’s not my fault.”. See, right there is someone with absolutely zero business/customer relations sense. He feels his product works just fine (and for the most part it does) but refuses to listen to people telling him there are problems. He then goes on to tell these people to go back to their ’server admins’ and have them fix it. Riiiiight.

First, most people can’t possibly explain the technical details of why there is a problem in the first place.

Second, most people with the problems are dealing with incredibly stupid tech support with an web hosting provider. The sheer amount of effort to get the problem across to a second level person is staggering and will result in ‘other people are using other programs with no problems. Just switch to another FTP program”

Soo, effectively the author said ’screw you guys, I’m right and you can go pound salt for all I care.”. It was at this point I dumped FileZilla and started using something else. I don’t support people who simply cannot help their clients/customers and tell them to ‘get bent’. What an idiot.

Some things in life are pretty obvious. Like when there are no clouds in the sky, it is not raining out. Or a locked door means you need a key to get in. Not to mention that someone driving a Chev couldn’t afford a Mercedes. These things are obvious in life. They need no explanation, they need no directions or 4 year University degrees to understand.

So when you get a call on the phone and the client says the following, how would you respond?

Client: “My account is not clear. I want to know if I can add another product.”

Client only has 4 licenses and all show activated/in use.

“Are you using all 4 CPU license? If yes, then no. If no, then yes. Can I make it any more clear?”

Seriously? If you have 4 quarters of your tank showing full, would you call a gas station and ask if you can put more gas in your car? If you had a 4-course meal, would you ask the waiter for the 5th course? Damn people…..where the hell are your brains?

And yet another clueless client emails in with a paragraph-length problem. I advised client to contact another department and provided an email address. Client replies ‘it’s not that simple’. What? We tell you where you can get help and you say no? See, this is a prime example why I started this blog. Even when you give them the direction or help they need, they still just don’t get it. Much like neutered dogs. Ugh.