believe it

first off, the Eee PC order from Amazon got canceled because they could not deliver (and when isearch for "asus eee pc" why is it that the exact match is result #12?!). As much as I love prime, i love Eee PC more. then i tried to order a black one from mwave.com, only to find it was also delayed. finally, i got them to convert to a white one which is now shipped. can't wait!

today was a day of epic frustration; one of our vendor's still doesn't know how to program. there has been an error which crashes the client that i've seen since i first showed up. if you export the data and exam it, its 100% legitimate, but every time you try to open it with the vendor's software, regardless of version, you get thrown the desktop with a super-vague error. luckily the logs capture the truth of the matter: someone was trying to dereference a null pointer! checking if a pointer is null before dereferencing is day-one stuff and it's frustrating to have our support personnel from vendor telling us (this is a quote heard from our weekly t-con), "long ago I gave up trying to understand the software."

with an attitude like that from the support team and code that behaves the way theirs does, its no wonder we are fighting fires all day. i would love to be able to either help their support organization get it together or be able to spend some quality time with their developers to try to teach them a few things (or both). right now, we have team members burning out with frustration and lots of anger built up. however, as rewarding as it may feel to bitch someone out or experience the schadenfreude of watching said bitching, the end result of such venting is counter-productive too (pissing in an ocean of piss); it doesn't change their organization, it just increases the disconnect and apathy.

i'm trolling for good ideas about how to solve this set of problems, so shoot me an email or drop a comment if you've figured out a productive way to help your vendor let you help them so you can help yourself (lol).

lastly, i'm really into this irish post-rock band; can't get enough. at least i've got their stunning music to help me through the days (and nights).