Chroder.com

ROTSS Episode 2 is out

I find these podcasts quite interesting, maybe you will too

I saw this story on digg, thought I’d share it.

This is like that free WinXP SP2 CD I blogged about before. They actually send you the CD, free, and pay for S&H. So the grand total: $0.00 Get your copy here.

read more | digg story

My cat is in heat! She has been howling for like 3 days straight so far.

We have to wait 2 weeks before we can get her fixed — why oh why did we wait until the last minute? Got some cute pics of her though in the gallery lol.

I got around to making a new theme. It has a lot of the same concepts as the old, default theme — it’s easier that way

So anyway, there are a few things to fix up but I’ll get around to them tomorrow. This time I really do intend to put up a gallery and an “about” page.

I’m working on another plugin for WordPress. It’s one of those “I’m listing to” type things. It gets the current song from Winamp, then sends an update to your server. You have to download a small app that runs in your taskbar for it to work. I don’t care if anyone wants to use it, but I’m practicing my C#.NET and decided I wanted to try working with the Windows API. As a result, here we are

Pretty useless considering there’s a Winamp plugin that sends requests to any URL you want

Post syntax highlighted code, or simply post code that is not affected by the WordPress text replacement features.

Note: This plugin does not work correctly with WP 2.0. I’ve tried to get it to work, but the new WYSIWYG editor is causing a lot of trouble. I’m leaving the download up for anyone who wants to give it a try (re-release if it you wish. I will link to you from this post if you do). I am working on a new plugin that will let you post code, but in a different manner. I am trying to get something together so at least old posts will still display correctly.
You can Download what I’ve done so far and work from that. The problem is something to do with HTML cleanup, I believe. TinyMCE (or a plugin) cleans up invalid code — I’ve tried to fix it by converting HTML into entities, but the cleanup takes place before my TinyMCE plugin can work on it.
(more…)

Saw this and thought it was pretty funny!

read more | digg story

Don’t you just love it when members think the admins are some all powerful entity?

It’s been happening a lot lately. Someone spots some spam and complains about how we don’t do anything about it. Or if they see some person offering illegal templates, they get pissed off at us because we don’t ban the user right away. It’s not like we know every single post that is being put up on our forums. It’s not like we keep track of every single user.

But this isn’t enough for some members. They want to hear us go, we should be acting faster, banning more, deleting more. We should be taking peremptory action, dammit! Sure.

So for anyone reading that acts like this, you should look at it from our perspective. We’re extremely busy; we have business to take care of other then reading each post ever created, and we actually do have lives of our own. If you spot some spam, then report it. It doesn’t help anyone when you reply to a thread bitching at us — if anything, you’re giving the spammer exactly what they want by bumping their thread to the top of the list. And before you start getting pissed off at us for taking too long to ban scammers, note that we discuss each situation and try to be as fair as we can. One persons hearsay isn’t quite enough.

How do you treat customers? What is the bottom line when paying customers are concerned? In my humble opinion, there are two over-generalized ways to treat customers: the right way, and the wrong way.

The right way should stem off of that “customer is always right” theme. Of course, the customer is hardly ever right. But I think it’s important to make them feel like they are being heard, they are being understood, and that something is being done about whatever the hell they’re complaining about. Along with these basic ideas, you should treat your customers with the respect they deserve.

The wrong way to treat your customers is pretty much the complete opposite. For example, if a customer made a negative comment about an upcoming product, say it was called “IP.Dynamic”, the wrong way to handle the situation is to ban them from your customer forums, say it was forums.invisionpower.com.

Now if you haven’t got the hint already, this entry is basically a rant on the way IPS handles their customers, specifically one customer named Gregg Heifetz. After one negative comment, the IPS team saw it fit to actually ban him. The comment was simply a personal opinion; it wasn’t rude, it wasn’t racist, it wasn’t anything bad at all.

Quote: Gregg Heifetz
The sooner Matt gets Dynamic out, and nobody buys it, the sooner the focus of the company can go back to improving, bug fixing, and speeding up the forum. Sorry, IPB, that’s just the way I see it.

So he doesn’t think that IP.Dynamic looks like a good product. Big deal. Why not just delete his post like you do with the other negative comments? Why in the hell does he deserve to get banned? This is probably one of the least negative comments I’ve seen with people complaining about online products.

Moving on… Gregg, coming back to find that he is banned, shoots a message off to Charles Warner (IPS President) and asks why he was banned. Mr. Warner’s reply is as follows:

Quote: Charles Warner
That wasn’t negative feedback it was a rude, abusive statement designed to damage the company.

Not to mention you have multiple 2.0 series boards running without a license.

We do not ban people for negative feedback. There are plenty of people who post more than you do but none that go as far as you.

I highly suggest you quietly fade away.

I read this reply and I seriously wonder what is going through Charles’ head. I didn’t find the comment rude, abusive or damaging. Nor do I think it’s going further then anyone else has gone before; in fact, I think it’s quite a light comment. The most I’d go to say is that Gregg is just one of those customers that doesn’t need what’s being created, so he makes a shallow comment. Call him ignorant if you’d like, perhaps that’s true. The comment isn’t the most helpful criticism ever conceived, but I definitely don’t think it warrants a ban.

The one line that really flabbergasted me was “I highly suggest you quietly fade away”. Here is a paying customer that got banned for a fairly shallow negative comment being told to cut his losses and be on his way. Now that is no way to treat your customers.

By now you’re probably wondering why I’m sticking up for a software pirate (“Not to mention you have multiple 2.0 series boards running without a license”). You must be thinking, “No wonder this guy is upset! He’s stealing their software!”. The sad truth is that Gregg was not running multiple boards — he wasn’t even running a single board! Gregg replies to the original message stating this, and Charles’ says:

Quote: Charles Warner
As to point 3 I apologize as it seems I mistook you for another customer.

The other points stand. A lifetime license is not refundable. Technical support is available in the client area. We have never provided support via the forums a fact which is made clear all over the site. We also make the fact clear we reserve the right to restrict access to the forums if we so choose.

Besides, if you truly do not use the license, as you mentioned you would not need support.

If you are accusing your customers of theft, then I hope that you make sure they actually did steal something. Check, double check and triple check that you have your facts straight. The last thing you want to do is falsely accuse a customer of theft.

And what about his other comments? Is that any way to treat a customer after you just falsely accused them of something they didn’t do? Way to go, Charles’, that was a first class apology.

Now that’s only two parts of the IPS-Gregg communication trail. You can read more about this on WHT, where Gregg started this topic. You’ll notice that there are no IPS representatives denying the accusation, and that after Gregg said he was going to the BBB — they finally gave him a refund.

It’s up to you to determine how much of Gregg’s story you actually believe. I for one, believe much of it. IPS is still a “small” company (relative to other commercial software producers) so I don’t think an appearance on WHT to dismiss this bad publicity wouldn’t be too far fetched. In fact, Matt (IPS CEO) is known to visit WHT from time to time; and they definitely know about the thread because a dozen or more people sent emails to IPS staff.

I have an IPB license hanging around. I bought it to compare vBulletin and Invision Power Board, and I’m not totally dissatisfied with the purchase. The features are quite good, the support forums are friendly, and Matt is an exceptional programmer. But from what I see and what I’ve seen in the past, IPS really needs to bring their customer service up a notch. This was just a defining example.

I finally upgraded wordpress to the latest version.

I’m going to skin it later, bit busy at the moment. But I like this default style so I don’t mind. I like it better then mine, actually. Hmm. I think I’ll make a new one based on these colors, nice and light.

We’ll see.