Day: March 26, 2004

Ok, it’s time for one of my world-famous quick quizes.

Suppose you are in the business of selling computers with Linux and other free operating systems on them, and you just posted an announcement to comp.os.linux.announce about your latest deal. Somebody emails you to tell you that you spelt the URL wrong in the announcement, and not only that on the very front page of your site you’ve used the word “suit” several times when referring to OpenOffice.org when you really meant “suite”. Do you:

• Thank him for helping you project a more professional image, and fix the front page of your site and look for other typos and grammatical mistakes before resubmitting an announcement to comp.os.linux.announce or
• Send him what is probably a very witty retort in your native language, even if you’re not 100% sure how to translate it into English.

If you chose the latter, then there might be a (very short) future for you in retail sales.

To quote in full the response I got: “I don’t mind your criticizing that way. It shows you are only just THOSE kind person!”

I think “I am only just THOSE kind person” will become my new catchphrase.

So much for Rants and Revelations: And some ever better news about the iPod. Last night, with the iPod down to only 3 out of 4 bars showing on the battery charge meter, I tried several times and found I had about a 1 in 5 chance of actually turning it back on after an auto-shutoff. And sometimes when I did the menu+play hard reset, it would take forever to come back up again.

Strangely enough, it seems to work great while it’s plugged in. Since 90% of the time I do have it plugged in at work, I’d be tempted to just forget it and say this is as good as it’s going to get, except I had over a year of an iPod that worked right, so this one is too damn annoying.