fouldsy.com

Well, I’ve been playing the guitar quite heavily for 7-8 years now, and used to consider myself as being pretty good. Have played various of guitars and styles over the years and been in a number of bands, playing gigs all over the North of England. Then, last night, I went to see John Williams in concert. For the uninitiated, this is the man, nay, God, that composed and performed Cavatina – The theme from ‘The Deer Hunter’. The speed of this man on the guitar, the clarity, tone and volume he got out of it was amazing. The other gentleman performing with him was one of the most amazing muscians I had come across – this guy must have played 25-30 different instruments across the evening, from woodwind to strings to panpipes! Quite simply, the pair were amazing and I’m having to re-evaluate what I do as playing that guitar or simply making a noise!

Anyone with a decent printer, let me know how this works out:

Guess I’d find anything funny at the moment – am in one of those moods.

A rather camera-shy bunny appears to be running around my living room. Not quite sure where she came from, but guess I could put in her in that little hutch I made…
She’s pretending to be all cute in this photo, but she’s running around quite happily falling over cushions, wondering what all the cables behind the TV unit are for and jumping and sliding on + off my magazines. Think I’ll call her Jessy.

but fouldsy can make this:

To get some kinda perspective, this is nearly four foot long and the same high, with a lower section over two foot in height with a ramp leading to the upper section and sleeping area. £120 in the shops for something that size, £25 worth of materials to do it yerself. Easy peasy. Bugger to lift though….

Well, it looks like a nice little amount of free software is winging it’s way to me direct from RM. Did they admit they were at fault? Of course not. Did they admit their support service was poor? Don’t be silly. Did they acknowledge wiping the machines wasn’t a valid support response? Not a chance. But, it looks like Local Support tools is designed to shut me up as I can quite happily schedule the machines to rebuild during the evening or allow remote re-configuration provided I quit bugging them constantly. Guess that means I won

Right, that’s it, I’ve had enough. Research Machines, more commonly known as RM, and one of the major suppliers of educational equipment and software to schools, seriously deserve an absolute hammering. Here’s a course for RM to arrange, and I’ll even prepare and deliver it for them – “Customer Support 101″.

“When a customer complains they have spent over 8 weeks trying to get your software working but are constantly encountering problems and being locked out of their own systems when logged in as systemadmin, do you:

a) Pretend to make a note of the customer’s complaint and never return calls or update the situation
b) Palm the problems off to the local LEA and get them to tell the customer they only solution to every problem they are experiencing is to rebuild all workstations affected, still ignoring the official complaints that were made
c) Act polite when the customer repeatedly calls back wondering why his LEA has to update him on the progress of things, and again pretend to take down the details of his complaints and promise a Service Manager will call them back
d) Hell, just do everything possible to wind the customer up even more whilst not acknowleding the problem or admitting responsibility and heaven forbid actually try to resolve the issue and get the systems working correctly

So, how you would answer? Well, the secret with RM Customer Support apparently is to mix it up a little, put it all together into one big bag, shake it all up and pick one at random. All are quite valid options, so remember folks, the less you help, the less work you have to do!”