Dotty Parker

completely furious

I like to sew. La la la. It means that I am surrounded, in general, by women who are twice my age. Many of these women also share my desire to use software to make embroidery designs. La la la. None of the women I work with are programmers. None of the women I work with are big, huge fans of reading all kinds of technical crap. In fact, some of these women pay me, yes me, to come to their houses to fix their technical crap.

And now I have some technical crap that needs fixing. There is no one to call to fix my stuff. These embroidery software bastards really ought to know better, don't you think? All I want is a new driver. That's all. Really. I've gotten them before. It's been fairly painless.

The software geniuses have secured their software with a dongle. Dongle is not only a stupid word, but also an idiotic idea. Nevertheless, that's what we've got. They've purchased their dongles from Rainbow. Sounds happy, right?

Well! The instructions about what they want me to do are in a .pdf file that they won't let me copy. So I have to flip back and forth between windows. Generally a joyful, happy, skippy event. Not so with this software. It's notoriously fussy. It gets irritable when it isn't paid enough attention to. But I'm taking my chances.

The instructions tell me to go to Rainbow's site. Keep in mind that 90% of the people visiting this are women over 50 who are looking for a way to fix their damned embroidery software so they can stitch a stupid yellow duckie on their grandchild's blankie.

So they're hit with this delightful logo, which is enough to blow the blue hair right off some people's head.

[Even I'm kind of offended by it. She's not even shaped like she has bones in her body. I think she's a balloon animal. And her whip is half as thick as her arm. I'm surprised she can lift it with her weird boneless body.]

Okay, so now that I'm over the naked, s&m mistress of the dark, imagine these overwhelmed old ladies trying to navigate the damn site (hahaha!) to find a little driver ("James, dahhling, where are you? I'm ready for you to drive me to the Pink Pussy Cafe. Why are you only five feet tall? A little driver is all I need, but good help is literally so hard to find.").

I'm ready to call the software company to tell them I've had to revive five of their customers. I'll also mention that ten more had to go to the hospital with an aneurism.

I'm so angry with these people, all of these people, that I might even go get the mail so I'll be less hot-headed. I might even call them to insist that they give me back my money for a product I've had for over a year. While it does what I want when it works, I've already had to replace the dongle, call support, wait for two upgrades, search for tutorials (since they didn't provide any), and ask myself what the hell I was doing when I thought it was a good idea.

I totally want a cigarette right now.

Or maybe I'll go shopping for those studded leather bracelets and an Indiana Jones whip. Road trip to scare the shit out of Rainbow!

You know, I think I may have found an alternative that is less healthy than smoking.

Posted by dotty at December 9, 2003 12:02 PM