How about a little punctuation for that misdirected support email?

May 2, 2006 D. H. McKee

Off

This is funny. An end user sent a support email to his ISP, instead of the company they bought the software from. It caught my eye because there’s at least three sentences crammed into one, and it was a little hard to read:
“I recently installed [foobar application] and it really didn’t help at all the first day it seemed to but after that nothing so I ran a test and it told me to send this info to you maybe you could help.”
This kind of misdirected email comes in frequently, and it’s really our fault, since our default support string is “Contact your ISP”. It’s supposed to be changed when a service provider brands our software, but some SPs are lazy, and leave the default strings in. To make matters worse, the ISP looked at the application and said, understandably, “no, you should contact the software manufacturer,” which the user did next, which is why I got this email. Unfortunately, the service provider gets away with little or no support calls, pocketing this user’s money, and putting the load squarely on us.
It seems pretty obvious to me that if I’m paying someone for something and it doesn’t work, then I go straight back to that someone who’s got my money. I do that first. If that fails, then I go to the manufacturer. Since this isn’t an iPod or something, and the user’s essentially buying a subscription to a service, they shouldn’t really be going to the manufacturer, not even if the service provider says so. We don’t see any of this user’s money, and we can’t cancel their account or put a stop-payment on their credit card. Still, we see a lot of these calls, and we never quite know what to do with them.
Update: OK, now this guy’s getting on my nerves. He sent in two more emails, and paged me on my Blackberry. I’m going to kill him.

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As a guy who occasionally curates art shows and wrangles artists together, I often have to edit and post artist bios, profile pictures, and artwork images. This can be a problem, since many artists and writers aren’t used to selling themselves. Artists rarely know how to present their art for display in a brochure, and writers aren’t used to writing about themselves.

Writers often treat the bio like it’s an interview or something. Maybe like they’re having a conversation with you, the reader. While it may work sometimes, the most common way to write a bio is to write in the 3rd person.

I’m like those writers, and I’m talking to you directly, unlike the common way to do a bio. You should see my About page. It makes sense to me, since this is a bit which describes my blog’s website. When I get famous enough that I don’t have time to talk to you, I’ll have an intern write everything in 3rd person. Until then, you get to talk to me.

Like blogs of old, this one is a personal document of the comings and goings of me. Articles I’ve written, links I’ve posted, videos I liked, etc. Here, a first-person perspective is the way to go, at least for now. So, this is my site. I’m D. H. McKee, a sometimes artist, sometimes writer. Mostly just a guy on the internet.