Tag Archives: incompetence

Valve, Steam and 1 expletive.

1

I have a Steam account. I have a Mac Mini 2.0Ghz. Zen Bound 2 was released this morning and as I like the game on the iPod Touch I wanted it on the mac.
Login to Steam, find the game and click to buy it. I choose Paypal. Steam then wants my name, address, county, country, postcode, phone number. Why? You do not need these to purchase using Paypal. We don’t on WordPress.com, you don’t when you complete software purchases elsewhere and you don’t at eBay. So why do Steam ask? They do it because they can, not because it is required.
Buy the game, download. It does not work properly. Windowed the screen is black, full screen the model is black. Unplayable. Why does not Steam download a helper program or have it in the client that identifies if the computer it is on can run the game? Why do Steam do not do this?
Go to their Support and try to contact them. You need to create a Support account, this is different from your main account. There is only one possible reason for this – to stop Support requests. There is no other purpose to creating that new account. It heads people off, it is a barrier. Which lazy bastard thought that one up?

I am perfectly aware that Steam are leaders in what they do, piracy is dropping, aren’t they great blah blah blah but the above is ridiculous and fantastically easy to solve.

iTunes. Buggy, useless and crap.

1

Copy one track from one album into one folder and have the computer see just that one track. It’s not much to ask and if that happens I am happy. What makes me unhappy is when iTunes is playing and I find a track playing twice even though I only own it once.

I deleted all the AC/DC tracks and re-ripped the cd’s. Some tracks showed up 3 times inside iTunes.

I remove all iTunes folder, prefs, and other files (yes, apple programmes stick crap everywhere too) I copy the entire Music directory to another HD. I remove all old apps, I go through all the albums and remove the junk left from the wife’s music. I use artwork view and do the same. I check for duplicates and it gives me hundreds. I don’t mean the same track on different albums, I mean the exact same track on the exact same album is showing up several times. I reveal in Finder and find the one track only. I buy Dupin from Doug’s Scripts and run that. After doing so I check iTunes and it says no dupes. I then use Pollux to find artwork for the missing albums. It does what it can – which was very good indeed – but another of Doug’s Scripts to embed artwork does not work for some reason. Now, this one small paragraph has been a huge amount of work. I think I started with 60-80gb of music apparently. So, it’s looking just about okay and I need to just check again the missing artwork and use Amazon to find the right images. I had quit iTunes, so I fire it up again and just check for dupes. It finds hundreds again but a different number. So everything I have done I need to do again with no guarantee that it will work. What.is.the.fucking.point?
I check more. The /Music folder is 81gb. I check iTunes. It says I have over 30gb of music. Using Daisydisk I find what is taking up that 81gb. My compilations take up 5.7gb (they don’t), iTunes Media takes 45gb (what?) and then I have some music. The media has 12gb of ipod touch apps. I know that but that leave 33gb of something when the music (in another folder) I have is 30gb (and no, it was not organising and no, it was not copying music). So what is that 33gb because it isn’t music. I have no idea and by now I really don’t care.
I would cheerfully see the iTunes programmers hang. Really. They deserve all the punishment possible and then some. But then it isn’t a music player anyway is it?

So I have an indeterminate amount of music which may or may not have artwork and a programme I have every intention of uninstalling. I don’t care if I won’t use it, I do not want it there.

I have Windows 7 installed, I have a Creative Zen Vision M and I will use those to rip and move the music to the Zen. If there is not enough space for what I really want to move I’ll buy another player – anythingbutipod should have the collective wisdom. And that will have the sound system plugged into it. This will actually give better sound, less tinny.

I have previously tried dragging and dropping album by album and now even though I have only added I find it dupes old tracks for no good reason. The same track across different albums is fine but what it is doing is not. I’ve gone beyond even thinking about other solutions. You know if you go to the apple forums people mention this constantly but the posters there must think it an acceptable price for being “cool”. It’s a bug. Treat it as such, put the tools in the programme to properly fix dupes and better still make it so it cannot happen.

iTunes. The biggest pile of steaming skank on any computer currently.

Asda management choose not to read

2

We shop weekly and for the last few years it’s been at Asda. But over the months they are increasingly having promotions which mean there are large displays jutting out into the main aisles. They also have those promotions at the end of the ailses but these are in the actual aisle. They significantly narrow the aisle exit. (The widest aisle? The beer one). Anyway, the frustration level has got too high recently. A wheelchair trolley is pretty wide, has a larger turning circle. I can manouvre it without a problem but with these obstacles it makes getting around other people impossible. We have to wait while some idiot hangs their trolley across the aisle while reading a label on the other. Battering through – which I have done – J doesn’t like. Being abusive just loud enough to know they are being sworn at but will be unsure what I said has J worrying we’ll be launched from the store. Not that I’m sweetness and light.
So we have Corporate policy that says SELL! (which reduces space) and moronic users (which reduces the in-store collective IQ). The sum of that is a decision to probably not use there again. Sure Tesco has it’s share of knuckle draggers but at least the aisles are wider. Except for the complete idiots who stop at the top or bottom of the escalator and wonder where they are going. They’ve had the whole moving journey to decide that frigging detail ffs.
Back to Asda. I used their contact form to tell them about the space and a wheelchair. I was really nice – I know this because J said so. I said their staff were excellent (which they are), that I know customers are an issue which they cannot solve (true) and that it is most obviously company-wide promotions to sell whatever that week’s product is. I said that this was the problem, that this was difficult for wheelchair users, that the result will be less shopping there. And I said the staff were wonderful. Yes, I said it twice because it’s true.
The email back from Asda:

I’ve now passed your complaint onto the store management team so they are aware of your complaint and can prevent this from happening in the future. All colleagues at the store will be spoken too & re-briefed on policies, procedures and the importance of delivering legendary customer service as customers are the most important part of our business.

Since when does that address what I wrote? The store manager can hardly stop the promotions and the “colleagues” are not the problem. Why batter the staff when I’ve praised them twice? Talk about avoiding the damn issue. And that non-reply makes me even more likely to avoid Asda. And why try to reply when they didn’t read the first?

And the email from Lucy?

Please do not reply to this email. This is not a monitored inbox and you may not receive a reply.

That says a lot.

Update:
The manager of the Asda we used called me. I told him his staff were wonderful more than once, he apologised for the navigation problems and I emphasised that I thought it was from Head Office that they do things etc, was not his fault. And he apologised. He sounded a really nice guy and I genuinely hope he was not offended but it was still a Corporate decision and he did not say it was not – because he couldn’t. But then he didn’t say it was – because he couldn’t. I’d have done exactly the same thing, have done. Asda Corporate need to get the clue, not the people working hard in the stores.