Tuesday, March 27, 2007

On the Rag #1

Because hey, there’s always something to rag about...

I’ve decided to create my own “must blog” days because I can never seem to find the time and this will force me to make time—well that’s the theory anyway. And so I’m starting off with my new “On the Rag” because there is ALWAYS something to rag about... LOL

I hate bugs!

And I’m not talking about the your average annoying, winged, eight legged, flying, crawling, garden variety. I’m talking about programming bugs, software glitches. The kind that make you want to take a sledge hammer to your computer and smash it into tiny little bits. And then gather up all those bits into a box and toss them into the ocean!

But the truth of the matter is, it’s not the computer’s fault, it’s the developers!

For the last three months, I and Meister E have been working on my other website, Historical Romance Club, dedicated to promoting historical, fantasy, time travel, and paranormal romance. For three months we programmed, we tested, over and over again, fixing programming glitches. Finally we had it all figured out, and three days before the big “Grand Re-Opening” we slammed it onto the website and did a thorough test. Well guess what? Everything went wrong. The Iframes were conflicting with each other, the java buttons were moving as slow as molasses in the dead of winter, and the Ajax was ignoring it’s instructions and sitting at the top of the page overlapping a bunch of other text... Oh, the aggravating list goes on and on... By the end of the first day, I was about ready rip out every single strand of hair on my head! I mean hey developers, why don’t you test your scripts before releasing them to the programmers! Okay, we DID get everything fixed and HRC is running smoothly (no worries there), and I’m proud to say it looks and works beautifully...

But this got me thinking about all the other computer glitches and bugs WE as consumers have to deal with every single day. How many times have you downloaded an update for Windows, and suddenly your computer starts acting screwy, and then three days later Microsoft sends you an emergency patch? Lets take a look at the new Internet Explorer 7, shall we? Ohhh... Ahhh... Yes, it looks great (though it kinda looks like a copy of FireFox if you ask me) but what about all the bloody glitches? It is suppose to be ten times more secure than the old one, which is great, the last thing I’m gong to complain about is more security on the internet. But how well does it work? Almost right off the bat, I had a problem with Google and Blogger. The damn IE7 wouldn’t accept ANY of Google’s or Blogger’s cookies, no matter WHAT I did. No matter how many times I put them on the acceptance list, it didn’t change a damn thing. The only thing I COULD do was turn the cookie controller off, which really doesn’t help in making your computer more secure if you’re surfing the net and accepting ALL cookies. So finally I gave up and had to go to FireFox for all my Google and Blogger needs. And then my computer had a major crash which had to do with IE7, and suddenly I had 13 emergency downloads from Microsoft, which really has to make you wonder!?!?

Whatever happened to beta testing your software, and THEN releasing it to the public “bug” free? Nowadays, the only thing the big and little software companies seem to care about is the bottom line (no surprise there). Yeah, they “beta” test it for a while and make sure the program isn’t going to make your computer explode, but after that, they leave it up to the consumer to find all the glitches. I don’t know how many times I’ve been writing in WordPerfect or Microsoft Word, and suddenly there’s an illegal shut down and I just might loose a day’s work, but it wants me to send and error report back to the company... I’ll give you an error report! @#*%$!

The bottom line is, developers need to start thoroughly testing their software BEFORE releasing it to the public. Come on, start taking some responsibility for your actions and your bug-filled programs and leave the glitch-free results to your customers.

A rant a day, keeps the doctor away! LOL

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