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Must stay awake

March 24, 2010 by

I am still awake. This is despite the fact that I did not sleep well last night (computer/money/work worries).

I have another 20 minutes before I can safely take residence of my lovely soft (actually, not so much) bed.

Presently my means of staying awake have been to redecorate my cafe for facebook cafeworld.

Its one of those games you find yourself playing when, really, you should be working. I usually have it running in the background as I write countless pages of css, php and doodle about with photoshop.

This evening I had to complete, at least as much as I could, the intranet site for the Spanish media company. Its nearing its deadline and I have held back far too long – understandably so when you consider what actually happened as a result of the e-token and misc bollocks they provided me – but I will try and not repeat my sentiments on that score.

I have a few exciting and several not so exciting but equally lucrative projects in the pipeline.  The site for the sculptress is nearing the end of stage one and, very soon, the real project will begin. Her site was just the introductory phase, which actually fills me with just a little fear when I consider the amount of hours it took to complete just this single phase. The next stage is far more interesting however because it deals with a singular piece, one that is intended to embody the conscience within. There are big plans for this sculpture and will be an amazing feeling if, at the end of it, I can safely say I was a part of the project. In that respect all the tears and frustration will have been worth it.

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Not MY computer!

March 23, 2010 by

Last night I began work on the intranet site I have been contracted to create using WordPress (involving some pretty nifty gizmos and plugins I might add – including an active directory component)… Anyway, I set about installing or, rather, reinstalling the e-token and other misc bollocks that said company require me to have on my hard drive to allow me to access their precious intranet.

So, duly installed, I set about working.

Suddenly, and with no apparent warning, my computer reboots. And reboots. And reboots. And reboots…and yes, you guessed it, reboots some more. We are on a spiral of rebooting with no end in sight and no ACTUAL loading of Vista.

Oh my god.

I am here again. The owner of yet another knackered computer, needing more work and requiring more funds throwing down the toilet in a bid to rescue my shaky design career.

I try vaguely to resolve – no disks, no… well nothing of any worth whatsoever (note to self… do remedy this at some point soon Missy! you´re a born again geek, start behaving like one!)

So, anyway, I throw a few tantrums, scream, shout, and cry for around thirty minutes before finally surrendering to bed. I spend the night tossing and turning, dreaming of the various reasons behind my latest spout of bad luck, before waking at 7am to the doorbell. Yeah, thanks for that, I had only JUST  fallen asleep.

I call the local uber geek  and explain the situation. He takes pooter away.

Oh, my poor baby pooter!

Three and a half hours later I receive a call to say all is fixed. He also confirms my early appraisal – the e-token and misc bollocks were the cause of my system registry and corrupted file incident. I was elated to have this confirmed by someone with infinitely more technical knowledge than me and furious this happened.

Have these people not heard of testing their devices before sending them out? I was not best pleased when yet more denials were received from said company but by then I expected little better. Sadly I have no concrete proof.

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Technical Support is a pain in my…

March 20, 2010 by

The last few days I have been contemplating the benefits of working in Technical Support and, besides the fairly obvious income addition, I honestly cannot see one redeeming feature. Granted, occasionally, I get a wonderful customer who is genuinely grateful for the support offered. They are few and far between.

I have never seen this side of it before. I have always been the customer, never the technical support agent. I have never had to deal with customers who are impatient, abusive or unco-operative. It has been an eye opener.

Even if you do everything within your power to help – push the envelope of your job description and go that extra mile it is simply never enough. Its not that I don´t understand their frustration when the product doesn´t work – I do, more than they realise. There is only so much I can do – isn´t there?

Its just very frustrating and more than a little disheartening. I believe I am too thin skinned to work in this line of work. The angry throw backs hurt. I seem completely without the ability to shake them off and move on when the day is over.

I wonder if this will make me a more tolerant customer or, once this is over and I can put Technical Support behind me, if I will return to the normal. Though, I have to say, I have never been rude to someone in Tech Support… no matter how crap they appeared to be (and I am sure some of my current and past customers have left thinking me a complete quack!)

That old joke about IT Support being little more than “have you turned it off and on again?”. Its true. I have lost count of the number of times I have fixed an installation by doing or advising a customer to do the online equivalent…. have you tried uninstalling and reinstalling?

Filed Under: Design Tagged With: ,

Clients from hell

March 1, 2010 by

I´ve been calling by Clients From Hell a lot recently. It makes fascinating reading and, somehow, it does work to lessen the impact of my own client inflicted scars.

I have had my fair share over the years. The ones who thought designing a website was akin to writing a document in Word. The one who considered because I had designed his site once I was contracted to edit, maintain and upgrade the design for the rest of my life (free of charge).

Most recently however the clients from hell have been found during my part time occupation in technical support. Its seems that no matter how much you do for some people it simply is never enough. It also makes me realise what a argumentative inconsiderate customer I have been myself in the past. Seeing it from the other side definitely opens up your eyes.

Today a client accused me of causing his site to develop a php memory allocation error. Seemingly on purpose? He declared because he had never seen it before therefore it must have been caused by me.  I have no idea why I would do this, maybe to prolong the delight of having my support ticket inbox full of messages just from him. That must be it. Its not the 30+ plugins he has installed, or the server thats so slow I could eat a three course meal and dunk a biscuit in the time it takes the control panel to refresh. Nah, its the poor TSO that is allocated the job of trying to assist him getting a plugin up and running .

</rant>

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Refreshed

February 22, 2010 by

I woke up this morning (prematurely thanks to amarous neighbours) full of the joys of spring. It might not actually be spring yet, but I can feel it approaching and thats all that matters.

The only problem is I am just not feeling inclined to do any work. I completed a server transfer this morning. But even though my bank balance calls me immediately to station, my head and hands refuse to enter work mode. At some point today I will have to force myself because I have some really fascinating projects in progress.

  1. Intranet powered by WordPress – including user integration with Active Directory, category specific stylesheets, a role manager facility which either allows or prevents users to post on certain categories, user modification and comment file upload facility
  2. Completion of website for well known Italian Sculptress
  3. Site for Topical Tuesday winner “Kerri´s Klutter”
  4. Then there are my personal projects which I am keeping firmly under wraps until completed.

Its great fun, albeit exceptionally challenging at times. I will admit to a little “blagging” at times in order to win these contracts but, in my favour, I do know WordPress exceptionally well. So, I never blag unless I know full well there is probably a way to do it, I just have to find it!

One of the reasons I am enjoying doing the intranet site so much is because it is for a well known design company based in Madrid. Thats right, after almost three years in the country I am finally landing work in Spain. Just after I made plans to save up and leave. Typical! A further challenge is that I am having to work on this site in Spanish – sure the code is the same in every language, but there has been some challenging moments.

“What the hell is that error message supposed to mean?!”

Filed Under: Journal 2010 Tagged With:

Cheeky Individuals

April 6, 2006 by

Haven’t you just wanted to say to hell with it all? I’m getting that urge right at this very moment in time. Joe’s sickness, no sleep, and a client who expects me to re-design their entire site for free, are pushing me rather quickly to the end of my tether.

I don’t overcharge. I’m patient, and I do what I can to help. Yet still clients expect me to re-design their site months after the original was finished for no fee. They come back a year or two later with numerous revisions, and are surprised when I give them a quotation.  Here’s an email I received this morning -

hi you designed my blog a couple of years ago i was using blogger then but have decided i want to use wordpress instead i want this done now so if you would get back to me and get it done quickly i would be much appreciated i assume cos you did the site design originully that you will not be charging me

Hello? Do you work for nothing? If your boss asked you to work six hours overtime would you happily do it without pay? Well, would you? No, if you are in your right mind you wouldn’t.

Just because I designed your blog once does not mean I am contracted to maintain, fix, add to, or re-design your site for the rest of my life. OK? Thank you.

Filed Under: Design, Journal 2006 Tagged With: , ,

Immitation v Flattery

November 14, 2003 by

Nearly every single time I have complained that another individual has ‘borrowed’ my designs or copied code without asking or crediting I have had the same phrase thrown at me ‘but immitation is the greatest form of flattery’. Could there possibly be a more annoying phrase than that when you are mid rant? I don’t think so. But it does beg the question, is immitation still the greatest form of flattery? I would argue not.

Now I am back at college I am constantly reminded about the ultimate academic sin “plagarising”. Its thrown at us from every single lecturer, is in every single skills handbook. Yet, in jutifying design theft as flattery are we simply condoning the same thing out of the academic sphere. Is design theft any different to theft of written work or artwork?

Code borrowing has become pretty standard practice among designers, and it is now fairly common for web designers to immitate the ideas of others in both design and content. We find an effect we like on a site, we immediately peak at the source code. We cut and paste the code, sometimes even the entire template and modify it for our own use to such an extent not even the original designer will often recognise it.

But the copying of entire sites including graphics and sometimes even text is becoming more prominent. This mirroring is quite often infruriating for the designer, even when it was copied with the full of intention of requesting permission.

So where does immitation end and theft begin? When is the line crossed? I know where my personal line lies, and it is quite often crossed, especially lately. So tell me where does your line lie?, more importantly, is immitation the greatest form of flattery?

Filed Under: Design Tagged With: , ,