A Donkey on the Edge

Got this in the mail this morning

The new Network Solutions embodies the fundamental changes we have made to our business in the past year including improved customer service, upgrades to our product lines, and simplified customer account management along with the promise of many more improvements to come. We have made these changes because we want to improve the level of service we provide to our customers and make doing business with us easier.
Network Solutions remains a wholly owned subsidiary of VeriSign. Be assured you will continue to experience the stability, reliability, and trust you’ve come to expect.

I particularly like the “stability, reliability, and trust” part. I can’t pin down exactly when it happened, but it seems to me that companies have decided to take a new approach to customer service.

The first step was to rid organisations of the infrastructure to write a letter. This actually takes a lot of resources, you’ve got your legal department, your typing pool, and don’t forget the manager who actually composes the missive.

Nowadays, you can write as many letters as you want to as many people as you want in a given megacorp and you won’t get a reply. Basically, if your business doesn’t fit into what are no doubt defined by process managers as “communications objects” and therefore doesn’t match any associated form letter, you just don’t get a reply.

What’s a little bizarre, is that this process has slowly happened during the 90’s while at the same time the growing business of customer relationhip management (CSM) systems has matured. What it looks like, is that the more resources companies pour into CSM systems, the less the end customer benefits:-(

Go figure…

Sitting at my desk in London listening to Hebrew a capella music on WFMU in East Orange New Jersey while the snow is building up outside my window…

Jed, (my Pa) designed this Bob Dylan poster in 1967, which is nice;-) Billy had this to say about the missing apostrophe…

Some wee health risks for those of you trying Safari use with caution…

I had major problems with Illustrator on my workstation yesterday (screenbuffer/mouse/drag manager type problems) making Illustrator almost unusable (as I struggled to get ready for a three p.m. client meeting grrrr…)

Then in the mail this morning I get the following:

I can duplicate this problem without too much effort. If Safari goes to site a that seems to overtax it, it shuts down, but takes with it part of the Quartz Engine, including most 2D rendering with exception to the windowing environment of Aqua. Anything that pulls resources directly from the Quartz rendering engine will most likely have lost most of its abilities.
All it takes is one site and you lose the ability to save any of your documents in Illustrator / Photoshop / Flash MX / InDesign.

So there you go…

So are there any gaspards out there who might search for Has ultrà metas requiescunt beatam spem expectantes and find themselves here? If so, I’m trying to find the origin of the term “gaspard” as used to describe the people who live in the subterranean tunnels of Paris. None of my French dictionaries define this term.

I thought it loosely translates to “sewer rat” but my Petit Robert doesn’t list it which is very odd as I thought it listed ‘mature’ argot. I think the word shows up any time history books report people hiding underground (political rebels, criminals etc) in the French capital?

I just wanted to post a public note re the ALA article. I’ve had lots of feedback and many requests for site debugging. I just wanted to apologize to all those who wrote with CSS questions: I debugged the first few, but after three days worth of CSS debugging I had to stop. So please don’t give up on your layouts, guys, and don’t think I don’t care—I do and the flood of mail has been fantastic. It’s just I’m way too busy right now:-(

Also, if you’re calling from a company with a CSS problem, please contact me through work, at pumpernickle and James will book your job through the proper channels;-)

…But enough about that. the real news is that we have a new arrival in this world.
Zora Wilde Bissell was born on Saturday, 9 pounds, 1.2 oz, 20.75 inches. Caroline’s water broke at one pm, I tore home from the office, and we were at the hospital by 1:25 pm — and Zora was born at 3:05 pm. Fast and furious, all natural, a beautiful birth, with Caroline alert and inhabiting the moment. Mother and babe are doing well. we’re in that rush of newness, of fierce joy and tiredness, theo is doing great and we all home now.

Congrats Bill and Caroline :-)

Ok, so I guess Greg Landweber and Arlo Rose got tired of learning new tricks. To be fair, Kaleidoscope was (and is) one of coolest Mac OS hacks. It allowed people to completely change the look-and-feel of their machine by using themes.

Kaleidoscope won’t be upgraded to OS X which in a way is to be expected as since the two desktops use completely different methods to describe stuff—it would be a rewrite from scratch and the guys are probably busy with their day jobs.

So getting to the point already, I wanted to say thanks to conundrum software for sorting out the theme thing on OS X and letting me use the super functional Pez theme that I used to run under Kaleidoscope. Give it a month or two, then download (and pay for) version 4 of Duality. It’ll be the first theme switcher on X to catch errors and prevent you messing up your system. Also, it will ship with a companion app that cleans up old themes, so the choice available should grow considerably at a stroke:-)

Their site is pretty slow and often down unfortunately (popularity?). Finally, if somebody knows of an OS X version of the “slibber” theme (you’ll know it if you use it) I’d be mighty grateful for a url.

I am grateful for Virgin Atlantic’s in-flight entertainment, and in particular, their natty disposable headphones;-)

I remember (OK, turning forty tomorrow—so lots of irritating reminiscing on the horizon…) when you had to pay for your peanuts and the ‘stewardess’ (remember those? they preceded the ‘flight attendant’) would do the rounds on landing and collect these cheesy headphones that were no more than rubber hoses. Not of course, that they would have had any use outside the plane but anyway…

Today. Fuck:-(

Lots of work and no play. Big fight with Nick over Pumpernickle offices:-(

I hate having fights with Clem around, you try and shield her from these things but she senses how upset everyone in the room is and it really freaks her out. Nicki reckons she makes her little gurgly noise when we argue as a sort of reconciliatory “hey aren’t we having fun now” kind of thing which is of course even more distressing…

On the plus side, Pumpernickle shipped a whole lot of work this week and a guy who was in school with Richard, Pliny and myself at the Ecole Active Bilingue in 1974 (I think) has got in touch, which was nice. I’ve got a number in New York, so will call next week. He sent a copy or our huitième class photo, which I knew I had kicking around somewhere but hadn’t looked at in ages. It’s amazing how much Nicki looks like Miss Glover my teacher

Spent Sat eve and Sunday on the Suffolk coast. Beatiful big sky on the way up. The flat landscape, half reclaimed fenland and half North Sea make for some serious oil painting vistas. Had fish and chips for breakfast on Monday before driving back to London. Unfortunately best fish and chip shop in world closed Mondays. Best pub in world was open for business but I figured Adnams not a good combination with driving.

Stopped by abandoned WW2 airfield at Glemham Hall on way back. Radio mast has fabulous “approaching, entering, etc., a prohibited place” sign usually reserved for serious cold war relics.