You’re Fired!
Now it can be told.
Over the last year I’ve discovered that poor quality, poor customer service, poor whatever-I-paid-for-and-didn’t-get-really is just not acceptable anymore. I’ve stopped putting up with it. Even better news: I’m not the only one.
It all started last year, with Microsoft Windows Service Pack 2. No, I’m wrong. The changes really started with programs like Microsoft Outlook (open to just about every virus and worm on the planet) and Microsoft Front Page (which can clean out perfectly good .jsp code and replace it with its completely incomprehensible font formatting code). Let’s not forget Internet Explorer, the web browser open to every pop-up spyware imaginable. And so came Eudora (and later Thunderbird), Homesite (and later Dreamweaver), and Firefox.
Last year came Windows Service Pack 2, the non-consensual software update that nuked countless computer systems around the planet. The one with a 16% failure rate. The one that was so bad, IBM delayed using it company-wide. Here at the House ‘o’ Chaos, every other computer in the house went blue-screen up–except for mine, which was still running Windows 98. Anyway, the result of that debacle was three weeks of running an outpatient computer clinic , and performing 24/7 tech support for friends and family. If you haven’t read Mark Morford’s blistering diatribe “Why does Windows Still Suck?”, well, do it now. I’ll wait.
Meantime, we were going through
And…on the telephone front was SBC, who carefully connected my phone line while leaving the house line disconnected for weeks; and Sprint, my cell phone carrier, billing me a stupifying amount for basic usage, while spotty network coverage made it impossible to use the phone in my own home.
Somewhere in there, I know that the few brain cells I can claim work reliably got together and proclaimed:
“F**k this s**t.”
Fast forward to a year later:
- Microsoft Windows: “reassigned”. Replaced by Ubuntu Linux, I basically keep Windows around for playing Project Entropia.
- Earthlink web hosting: fired, replaced by Speakeasy.net.
- Earthlink DSL: fired, replaced by Speakeasy OneLink.
- Sprint PCS: fired, replaced by Cingular.
- SBC: haven’t been given the pink slip yet, but they’re on the chopping block.
Since then, I’ve started to notice a few things about my new “fired-up” lifestyle. For instance, I no longer have to perform the weekly virus/spyware/malware exercise of updating, scanning, deleting. A week or so ago, I woke up from a nap to discover my computer displaying the dreaded blue screen. It took me a moment to realize that the blue screen was there for entertainment: it was a screensaver being run on Linux. I pick up my cell phone and use it all the time now; no more “dammit, I’m at home” moments. Customjuju.com runs silky-smooth–no more clicking through web page after web page, only to arrive at a login screen that won’t accept any password I give it.
So that’s my story. What are the rest of you waiting for?
