Hot off slashdot, apparently some Apple employee has started a blog anonymously. Seems like a smart fellow and asking the right questions in terms of relationships and support.

There are really two kinds of support requests (from a company’s perspective): people who have a problem that is your fault and people that don’t. I think many people are frustrated by the latter, when something doesn’t work and they talk to the wrong people about it. So to all of them, too bad, you gotta figure out how to talk to the right people.

The legit kind of support is when we, the company, fucked you, the customer. No one wants to contact support. The only result they want out of support is that the problem be gone. My guess is that 99% of the “legit” support cases fall in this category.

If you have AppleCare, Apple is pretty damn good at this, from my experience. Prove it’s broken (and that you didn’t drop it) and they will fix it. They get this only because of their retail presence at the Apple Store. Calling Apple is as bad as calling anyone.

I think Apple is really on to something with the Apple Store on the support side. It probably pays the bills on the sales side, but more likely it saves them a lot of money in support. It does this by quickly resolving 98% of the cases. Then they deal with 1% at the store in back and the other 1% gets shipped off to hardcore tech dorks.

Support matters. It matters hugely. It’s what bean counters call a Cost of Sale. You wouldn’t have (or won’t have) the sale if you don’t do the support. Apple (and all companies) should engineer their support processes as well as they engineer their computers. Those that do will run and those that don’t will limp.

You’ll be happy to know that roughly 0.2% of the people that arrive at my site via a search engine are searching for “i feel like vomiting”.

23         2.15%  lolife
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Marijuana’s Key Ingredient Might Fight Alzheimer’s

First of all, I blame John Stewart for the fact that I use the word “retard” way too much now. Many people, when you use that word, think of people with mental disabilities. You shouldn’t. While the word “retard”, interpreted literally, is probably accurate in many ways when applied to some people with mental disabilities, the word is not and cannot be used in that way. It is a harmful word that I would never, ever use in regards to people who have mental or learning disabilities.

I’m justifying, here, that I am not comparing people to people with disabilities. I’d define the word, in this slang context, to mean people with ridiculously faulty logic.

To use it in a sentence, when I say that Tony Snow, for example, is a complete fucking retard, what I mean is, his high-suction ass-kissing ability, his blatant mischaracterization of facts, his evasive and misleading statements and his inane word choices reveal a man with his head so far up his ass that it is actually probably a compliment to simply refer to his rather lagging development!

Yes, this is all very snide and condescending. My point is, as I felt myself slipping into using the word retard (thanks, again, to John Stewart) I thought about it in terms of whether it was PC or not, and I came to the conclusion that I’m OK. But I still worry about it, ’cause my goal is to offend only those whom I intend to offend.

Your thoughts?

I’ve been as shocked and pissed off as most of you about the recent killing of innocent GIRLS by fucked up, bat-shit crazy, retarded, misogynistic, evil bastard, waste of carbon fucking asshole MEN.

Listen up, you fucking losers, put the gun in your mouth right now and pull the trigger. You are insane and evil and we will not let you act out your fucked up fantasies as part of your police-assisted suicide.

I think we should make a new law that says any adult that walks into a school with a gun will be instantly shot in the fucking head. No questions, no warnings, shot in the head. Dead. That is the correct response when these freaks get near our children.

This case with the Amish is particularly frightening because the fucking asshole lost a daughter and was devastated by it. What does he do? He steals the daughters of other innocent people. And he brings fucking KY jelly along with him. Death was way to good for that evil fuck.

Listen up, people (the rest of you, the ones who aren’t bat-shit crazy). We cannot stand for this. We cannot stand around waiting for the police to be dispatched. We have to lay down our lives if necessary and kill these fucking criminals before they lay a hand on our children. Grab the gun, grab them by the throat, every able-bodied male should hog pile on these retards and then beat them to death. We cannot stand for this.

Let’s not let our cultural sensitivity turn us into complicit pussies. There are evil, dumb people of all persuasions. This is so moronic it is hard to imagine:

“If one is asked which one is more dangerous, naked women or the Bali bomb, the answer is certainly the women with such revealing clothing,” he said.
[…]
Bashir, 68, was released in June after serving more than two years for his role in the Bali blasts, which killed 202 people, including 88 Australians.

Maybe we better put him back in jail. Killing 200 people vs. looking at natural human bodies? Anyone see some faulty logic here?

From AlterNet:

Three weeks before he died, Paul voted against war in Iraq. At the time, his opponent was aggressively accusing Paul of being weak on national security. Polls told Paul a vote against war would lose him the election. But as he told the Washington Post two days after the vote, “I think people want you to do what you think is right.” He then added, in typical Wellstone fashion, “how would I have had the enthusiasm and the fight if I had actually cast a vote I didn’t believe in? I couldn’t do that.”

A few days later Paul delighted in the fact that his vote resulted in a surge of support among Minnesotans, a surge that almost certainly would have led to his reelection.

The last guy with real conviction, real morals, real ideals and real balls. His influence is sorely missed.

Mark Drake is the smear master of the Minnesota GOP. He is also a lying rat bastard.

Hey Mark, did Kennedy take any money from K-street? Did he take any money from special interests? Of course he did you twit. You are accusing Amy Klobuchar of doing what every single candidate in the GOP does. QED you are a retard.

Don’t listen to the lies of the GOP. They have abandoned you.

There are just too many of these. Little pussy retard Eric Hainstock was mad at the principle for disciplining him for throwing a stapler at a teacher. He then proceeded to murder the principle in cold blood. Because he was mad. About a stapler. He threw an object at a teacher and was mad that he was in (minor) trouble for it. Now he is going to jail for the rest of his life (hopefully). WHAT THE FUCK.

Fear of offending Islam spurs hot debate in Europe

This bugs the shit out of me. This opera was written by Mozart over 200 years ago. It is a historical work of fiction. How can any one take offense from this?

There is a hard part to this issue, though. If a group of people are constantly subjected to negative stereotypes, they are going to get pissed off after a while. In this sense, I can understand why Muslims are tired of being portrayed as violent extremists. As we all know, Muslims don’t have the market cornered on violent extremism.

On the other hand, we need Muslims to stand up right now and say “We are not going to take issue with performances of works of art created 200 years ago.” History is filled with discrimination of all kinds and it can’t mean that we throw away all of the art from those periods. It’s the same with Tom Sawyer — it encapsulates a mindset of that period and we can and should learn from that. We need to take the good and learn from the “bad”.

We also can’t get so scared of outrage that we all cower in our little shells. Outrage is fine as long as it is non-violent.