When you alert me that a server is running out of swap space, I really don’t want to log in and find out that you’re the one using up all of the virtual memory.

[Update 10/24/08: after informing them on 10/2 that the replacement was also defective and that it was heavily used (the one I exchanged for it was pristine, by the way), I have never heard from them again. Their customer service is as bad as their engineering.]

[Update: the replacement arrived used. Not “previously owned”, used. As in filthy, sticky, and filled with hair and food from the previous owner. It’s also even worse for typing, generating phantom keys under even more conditions, like attempting to type the word “since” (which comes out “sincey”) at a normal speed. It’s junk, and I’ll never buy a keyboard from them again.]

Fuck you. “Thank you sincerely for eventually agreeing to replace the defective product and ship the replacement in parallel.”

When I sent a support message about my still-under-warranty expensive keyboard suddenly generating spurious keystrokes, I expected a better answer than this:

What you are experiencing is called a "shadow key" or "phantom key" or "ghost key". Every keyboard has them (in different locations) but most people don't notice them, because they don't type the key combinations that produce them. They are an artifact of how keyboards are built.

There is a workaround...

You can turn On the Sticky Keys feature on the Universal Access control panel, in System Preferences. This will allow you to press & release the Command and Shift keys together, and then press the key being modified on its own.

We are very sorry for the inconvenience...

This is the most useless “workaround” I’ve ever seen. “Can’t touch-type on your keyboard? DON’T TRY!! Problem solved!”

Never mind that I simply don’t believe their explanation…

I love the feel of the Matias Tactile Pro keyboards. The plastic case is so cheap that my first two are now held together with gaffer tape, but the key action is great. So, back in January, I bought the new 2.0 version, with programmability that I don’t need and a USB 2 “hub” “dock” extension cord that turns out to be spectacularly useless. And the same horribly cheap plastic case.

I haven’t broken the case on the new one yet, but in the past few days, the damn thing’s come close to breaking me. It generates spurious keystrokes, you see, and its current trick is generating “/tmpu/” roughly 1/3 of the time when I type “/tmp/”. If I plug it into a Windows box, it generates “/tmp/u” instead, and more frequently.

For weeks, now, I’ve been wondering about the gradual increase in the number of typos I’ve been generating. I just thought I was tired from all the late-night testing sessions and the stubborn persistence of my sinus whateverthehellitis problem.

Nope, my keyboard is trying to kill me. Do you have any idea how many times a day I type “/tmp/”? Aaaargh.

“We are not responsible for any mutations that cause your virus-infected laptop to wipe out human civilization after your return to Earth. Unless you land in Berkeley, in which case we’re totally claiming the credit.”

from the BBC: "Nasa has confirmed that laptops carried to the ISS in July were infected with a virus known as Gammima.AG.

"The worm was first detected on Earth in August 2007 and lurks on infected machines waiting to steal login names for popular online games."

Blow me.

“Hi, I’m a badly-written installer for a small utility that does only one thing, and does it poorly. You’re stuck with me, though, so I can fuck up your machine as much as I want and make you spend half an hour getting your environment back the way you like it.”

“PS: this update might fix your problem. Or not. But I’m going to make you reboot just to find out. Nyah nyah.”

I think I’ve figured out why the Creative Suite 3.3 Standard (upgrade version) installer insists that you exit every running application and not try to use your computer at all until it’s finished: you don’t want anyone to find out that the guy who wrote it doesn’t know how to manage memory.

I made the mistake of trying to open a file containing all my software licenses, so I could look up my CS2 keys if they were needed to validate my upgrade, and I couldn’t fork a process to do so.

What’s more, the act of opening a terminal window to look at the file caused the installer to fail on the current and pending pieces of the application. I had to stop, undo the partial install, clean up some other cruft, and do it all again.

Later, after I started using my computer again, I ran the updater, and since it looked like it was going to take forever, left it overnight. Sometime in the wee hours, the InDesign update noticed that Safari was running and aborted, throwing up a dialog box that blocked the rest of the updates as well.

Gosh, thanks. I just remembered why I hate upgrading your software: my time is worthless to you.

PS: remember when complicated expensive professional software came with documentation? Yeah, didn’t think so.

Here’s what I think of your “modes”:

(defun perl-mode (&optional foo) (interactive "p") (fundamental-mode))
(defun cperl-mode (&optional foo) (interactive "p") (fundamental-mode))
(defun text-mode (&optional foo) (interactive "p") (fundamental-mode))
(defun html-mode (&optional foo) (interactive "p") (fundamental-mode))
(defun sgml-mode (&optional foo) (interactive "p") (fundamental-mode))
(defun sh-mode (&optional foo) (interactive "p") (fundamental-mode))
(defun java-mode (&optional foo) (interactive "p") (fundamental-mode))
(global-set-key (kbd "TAB") 'self-insert-command)
(setq-default inhibit-eol-conversion t)
(setq default-tab-width 4)
(put 'narrow-to-region 'disabled nil)

I’m sorry, but companies who forge email headers do not inspire customer confidence:

From: 
To: "J Greely" <______@ooma.com>
Reply-To: "Parallels, Inc." 
Subject: 2 Licenses. Only $20 Each! Parallels Desktop 2-Pack
Date: Mon, 23 Jun 2008 10:03:40 -0700
Message-ID: 

Please fire the idiots responsible.

[Update: they sent it out again with a decent From: header:
“From: “Parallels Inc” central@parallels.com]