Rant #1

Rant Subject: Captaris, the company that makes RightFax.

The company I work at uses an outdated version of RightFax. It decided to start doing something recently that I haven't seen in the year and a half I've been charged with supporting it. None of the usual troubleshooting or correction methods used in the past seem to fix the problem, and I haven't for the life of me been able to see anything out of the ordinary either in fax delivery, any of the mail server queues, the Exchange connector, Event logs or anywhere else.

I tried a Google search to see if other people had this problem, and a funny thing happened. There's next to no information about RightFax troubleshooting available via a standard Google search. It all seems to come up with either problems specific to obscure systems and software we don't use or it's all marketing sites describing all the problems that you can prevent by purchasing their software.

I decided to try the direct approach next, perhaps there was a Captaris forum designed to save a poor wretch like me. Turns out they do have one, but you need a "Valid Support Contract Number" to see any of their knowledge base articles. As I said, we haven't needed features used in the later versions of RightFax, so they let the subscription lapse a couple years ago, and nothing unsolvable has come up until now. The site did point to a phone number that would let you speak with an actual person about your faxing problems.

I called the number, tried to reach support, but it asked for a Valid Support Contract Number. I called back and tried the option for renewing a support contract, and to get through it asked for, I swear to God, a Valid Support Contract Number. To renew an expired fucking support contract.

I called a third time and just pressed zero to speak to a person. An actual person should be able to help with this. Surely they'd understand that I have several dozen people outside my door with torches and pitchforks asking all kinds of pointed questions about why the ancient software they refuse to pay to upgrade doesn't work nicely with anything written in the past 7 years. Surely.

As an aside, I'd like to say that an actual part of my well-being hinges on the hope that sanity exists somewhere. Not in incredible amounts, or even enough to become politically viable, but I like to believe that it does exist. Call it my own adult fairy tale.

I told the woman who picked up the call about the issue I was having, hoping for sympathy, I guess, if not a solution. She asked for a Valid Support Contract Number. I said mine had expired, and that I tried all the phone system options for renewing it, but they all asked for a Valid Support Contract Number. She repeated that that's because I needed a Valid Support Contract Number. Getting a mite testy, I asked how someone goes about renewing a support contract over the phone without a Valid Support Contract Number up front, and she proceeded to repeat to me, louder and slower, that I need a Valid Support Contract Number before I can renew. I asked about getting into the knowledge base, to which she replied that I needed a Valid Support Contract Number for that.

I know that most companies that offer tech support will have a script to make sure that troubleshooting is thorough before elevating real problems to higher tiers of tech support. Either this phone call was a psychological experiment being performed on me or her script was two lines long.

Obviously, being direct wasn't working. I changed tack.

I asked if there were still knowledge base articles for older versions of RightFax, and she said yes. I asked why they bothered keeping a tight rein on knowledge base articles for outdated versions of their software that they don't support, and she said that Captaris saw too many things being quoted in other forums and decided to lock everything away on their own site. She also said that they were in progress of getting rid of the older knowledge base articles.

I suppose that if you're that paranoid about your revenues and you assume further that quick access to solutions problem-solving techniques that save time for everyone capable of reading is a bad thing, then it makes a desperate sort of sense from a business perspective. I guess.

I asked if there was a motivation for Captaris not only locking down but deleting knowledge base articles for prior versions of their software which wasn't pure spite, and she didn't know that either.

I asked about a price for buying a new support contract just for knowledge base access, my last-ditch attempt at getting a Valid Support Contract Number, and she said they wouldn't sell me one (or even give me a price) because they don't support the version we have. I thanked her for her time and hung up.

I then found a printer in the office with fax capability, carried it over to the fax area, plugged it in and went back to my office to count the days until Captaris gets bought out. I estimate it within a year or so if that business model is accurate.

Game Addictions, Part I

My video gaming began a long time ago. I am the youngest of 8, and as such was raised by television, video games, ON TV (the precursor to cable in my hometown), books and whatever trouble I could get into otherwise. Some of you late to last children of a brood can relate to this.

I was around the age of 6 or 7 when my parents picked up a new Commodore Vic-20. This union signaled the end of any work ethic I ever might have known in my life. In the subsequent 20+ years I've played a lot of games, some of which I'm ashamed to admit I played as much as I did.

Platform: PC
Title: Diablo II
Time: Over a year

I played it, I beat it, I bought the LoD expansion, I trolled The Arreat Summit site for updates and strategies, I read several forums, I downloaded mods, I was in guilds, and in general, my interest just went on far far longer than it should have for a game with this little depth. I even may have called in sick to work once so I could keep trying to get elite items, which I'm equally ashamed to report that I never managed in all that time. DIII has been announced, however, and that purchase will truly be the triumph of hope over experience...

Platform: C-64
Title: David's Midnight Magic
Time: At least 4 months straight.

This is a pinball game. No extra screens, no hidden extra anything, only one way to get a score multiplier, three flippers and you. And yet I think I played it for full-time job hours with overtime and weekends for an entire summer plus the majority of my free time otherwise for many more weeks. I picked up an emulator recently to see if I could explain why it was gaming crack for me for so long. I couldn't. It's probably connected to the reason that I thought Battle Of The Planets and Jayce and the Wheeled Warriors were good shows, however.

Platform: C-64
Title: Zork I
Time: Months.

I didn't play Zork steadily because I never made it far into the basement of the house before I was either eaten by a grue or my lamp died and I was eaten by a grue. Total gameplay time before I died was never more than about 5-10 minutes. I would play until I got fed up with the fact that the grues were never full, then would leave it alone for days until I'd forgotten my frustration with it, then I'd play it for another hour, get homicidal, rinse, repeat.

Platform: PC
Title: Civilization I, II, III, Alpha Centauri
Time: Days at a time, many times over.
I start playing at a decent hour, say 10 AM on a Saturday. I get to a point where I think I should take a break and it's suddenly 6:30 PM. I decide to play just one more turn, because I've almost got that wonder. Then it's 10PM and my eyes hurt from not blinking for 12 straight hours. I haven't started another game since buying Alpha Centauri because this happens with every version, it turns out.

Platform: Coin-op
Title: Gauntlet I
Time: 6 hours on one quarter.
I discovered that the 7-11 in my neighborhood had a Gauntlet game that they had on a setting where you could play as long as you wanted if you played carefully. During the break in my first exam week in high school I spent a lot of hours playing Gauntlet, including one game I played for 6 hours straight before selling it to a neighborhood kid for $0.75. Don't think I've actually played it in the 18 or so years since then, come to think of it.

Experiments in Lunch, Part I

Date: June 22, 1:55 PM
Place: Work.
Lunch: Life Choices Chicken & Bean Burrito Melt
Cost: About $1.50 Cdn.
Expectations: Disturbingly low.

The package indicates that the burrito is made of 86% organic ingredients, and the 86% is in green, so I know I'm doing my part for the environment. I also can't help but wonder what manner of sawdust and coagulant comprises that other 14%...

The burrito came with me to work frozen, but had the opportunity over the 6 or so hours I've been here to thaw a bit. A collective 3 minutes in the microwave was enough to make a lunchroom-sized burrito smell that hopefully will clear out over the weekend. It looks exactly like the kind of thing you'd see for sale at a gas station or a 7-11, which isn't helping morale a great deal. However, hunger and morbid curiosity must be satisfied, and you're obviously enough of a masochist to have read this far, so let's keep going.

First bite: Surprisingly tasty, despite my having dried out the outer "tortilla" in the microwave. I used quotes there because I'm still kinda wondering what and where that 14% is. I'm tasting cheese, beans, what I'm hoping is rice and the tortilla. Maybe the chicken is in the middle.

Halfway through there's no frightening aftertaste, the burrito is still warm inside and I'm finding myself somewhat won over to the potential of this foodstuff. Who knows, maybe the 14% is the plastic wrap it came in. Except for the green lettering on it, of course, which we all know is made of material so biodegradable you can't expose it to direct sunlight.

I can't help but notice that I have yet to taste chicken in this burrito. I know my palate is somewhat less than refined, but when it's billed as "chicken and bean", you tend to expect to see some of the stuff that got first billing. Maybe it brushed up against a chicken in the organic burrito factory, who knows.

Overall, and keeping in mind that my standards for success here were very low, I must say that I find myself quite pleased with this burrito. It's obviously not going to be served at your finer steakhouses in the near future, I'd still like chicken flavour to have made an appearance, but easily worth the cost of your finer K-D-esque dining experiences.

Frist Post!

Okay, here's the deal:

I write about the stuff that's going on in my head, and some of it will be published. This includes, and is not limited to the following:

-General nerdery, computery and my fascination with electronic blinkery.
-Video games I'm playing or reminiscing about.
-Discussion about sports.
-Observations and connections to obscure references that run the risk of entertaining some.
-Puddle-depth analysis of current events. This analysis will be horribly biased, so be warned that if you end up learning anything, it was entirely unintentional and shouldn't be held against me.
-Rantings about Intarweb illiteracy. My grammar isn't perfect, my spelling less so, but this is my soap box. You wanna rant, you get your own soap box.

One final disclaimer: This blog and it's content is worth exactly what you're paying for it, and if you don't like it, I promise double your money back!

All of that being said, welcome.

Let the rantings begin.