Some Goodly Things

Some goodly things that happened yesterday

Yesterday a number of goodly things occurred.

Telstra have finally got their act together and I have “broadbands”. Hooray! The downside is I’ve now got to think of something to do with it. After a year and half (or so) of living with slow, unreliable dial up I’m used to hopping online and then franticaly trying to achieve a few brief things before the connection dies. The luxury of always-on, speedy access leaves me kind of stunned. I spent a good ten minutes (OK, maybe 30 seconds) just sitting there looking at the screen thinking “Well what do I do now?” 🙂

My fancy ergonomic mice arrived. I’ve been getting pains in my wrist and arm, and rather than bothering to get in shape or spend less time on the computer or adopt a healthy lifestyle or anything I plumbed for a band-aid solution and bought two vertical mice. One for home and one for the office. They look very cool and funky, and (at this early stage) are about as easy and comfortable to use as a house brick on a piece of string – but no doubt I’ll get used to them. And they seem to be doing some good – I’m still getting arm pains, but they’re in different places, so I figure that’s an improvement.

I discovered that I’d somehow managed to misplace two Wonderfalls DVDs – meaning there’s eight entire episodes I haven’t seen (as opposed to none). Well, I know what I’m doing this weekend!

I still have no hot water, but this may be down to the gas problems which are supposed to be fixed today – so maybe I’ll be able to have a shower tonight.

Oh, I almost forgot, two new additions to the client stupidity file emerged this week!

Example 1

Client: I was wondering, I’ve been taking orders from my website for the last year and shipping the goods – when do I get the money?
Us: Sorry?
Client: Well I’ve sent out $4000 worth of goods, when are you going to give me the money?
Us: Ah… You have been clicking the ‘Process Credit Card’ button when you process your orders – right?
Client: No – What’s that?
Us: The button you click to actually charge people.
Client: Oh. Can I do that now?
Us: Well, yes, except for the orders that are more than 6 months old because they won’t have credit card details anymore.
Client: Oh.

(For the record, all our clients receive full training on how to process orders, get a manual including full instructions on how to process orders and when they have their first order come through we phone them up and step them through processing it.)

Example 2

Client: Thanks for spending the last two months building our database driven website – the $3000 has been really worth it. Can you talk to these Suppliers? We need you to integrate their search form into the site.
Us: No worries
Supplier: Right, this is how you add the search form.
Us: OK… right that’s working fine.
Supplier: Great. Now how are we going to switch the rest of the site over to our systems?
Us: Sorry?
Supplier: Well I’ve had a look at the site, and they’d be much better using our database system. We can offer them a lot more.
Us: Right…..
Supplier: We can set up the rest of the pages the same way at the search results – that way they’ll be getting a lot more value for money.
Us: Er….
Supplier: Our system works a lot better than the way the site is currently set up. I can run you through some examples of other sites using it if you like. They’ll find it a lot easier to use and maintain.
Us: Uh… I think you’d probably better talk to them about this.
Supplier: Really? Are you sure?
Us: Well, considering we’ve just spent the last two months building their website and setting them up on our system…
Supplier: But our system has a lot of advantages. They can get figures direct from our database and integrate them…
Us: Yeah, um, look, talk to them OK?.
Supplier: (surprised) OK…

Now that’s optimism. Attempting to steal a contract by pitching the idea to the actual people you’re trying to steal it from. Been to one too many sales seminars I think 🙂

LATER: Podcasts! Of course! Thanks Ryan 😀

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