Friday, December 7, 2007

the c list penny pinchers

Oh the big C list and the cheap skates, I mean the frugal persons. The ones that want to get a dollar estimate and give you completely insufficient information to base it on. If you do give an estimate, they will try their best to hold the poor soul to it. There is a saying and I think it goes something like "penny wise and pound foolish"

Oh but I try in case the requester is unfamiliar with the topic at hand. Though maybe just fruitless effort on my part, I attempt to give a little insight as to what they may receive.

Here is a reply to just such a request. May be this is why I do not get a lot of responses. The dollars amounts are fictious, though the percentage factor is correct for the message.
"--
I can not state how long in hours this would take, due that I am not aware as to how much page/form editing you will require. Adding/modifying/removing the records should not be a problem at all. I can tell you that I charge 100 dollars an hour and the time I charge you could be two hours for actual time spent coding or I can tell you that I charge 50 dollars an hour and charge you for six hours for the time spent thinking about what to do next and the actual time spent coding. As you can see, you might get a lot of different values for the total cost of ownership.

I have references to what I can accomplish and to my nature of responsibility.

Please reply to this email if you are interested in further discussion.

--"

Result the same and it makes me wonder. Does this classify me as "insane?"

Tuesday, December 4, 2007

This is not working any more..

You know the ones that say "This is not working any more.." and no specifics given. Well here is a generic response that can be used. In my case it is also true.

Not a lot of information to go by so these are just randomly selected guesses from commonly ignored problem spots.

Could be software, cabling or hardware. My system runs video great when it is cold and clean. Seriously, I smoke and there is a lot of string lint like dust that collects on the fan blades, cooling fins and such with the smoke residue being a glue. I get better performance off my video card when it is cool and clean. CPU also needs the same attention.

Also, a stuffed hard drive with minimal room left and fragmented badly. If you run swinedows, as I do, and have run several other applications the paging can start to have an effect.

The difference being a year and all was working great and now it is not, can point to these or the myriad of applications and drivers that could have been installed and un-installed and leaving contaminates behind.

Cleaning up the inside of your box and checking the hardware, cabling and any other place that the environment can cause havoc on is always a benefit even if it does not solve your current issue.

Tuesday, November 27, 2007

piss and moans

Hey you, you know, the one who asks for our email addresses to register in to a forum.


Don't email a registered user and then CC everyone else that is registered on the board. What you just did was give any spam house that has a nym registered on the forum a complete list of email addresses to spam to.


Instead, email each directly or email your self and BCC all the others. At the very least, this will imply that you intend to keep the members information private.