Why sometimes "FREE" sucks...

I joined Blogger in 2002 and started this design-oriented blog because, at the time, Blogging was starting to really take off and become a viable publishing option for this kind of stuff. I particularly liked Bloggers ease of use and best of all, free application. Who knew it would become such an important part of the world's media as it has today. As an example, when CBS and Dan Rather were caught cheating and lying about a fabricated story that the venerable news agency had aired, it was bloggers who disseminated that back story and brought that attention of the other "elite" media up to speed on the story. At the time, Dan Rather made a comment about the on-line blogging community being "unfiltered, unfair, biased, inexperienced" and basically, a bunch of people sitting around in their pajamas during the daytime writing whatever they felt like without any checks and balances. Basically Rather said that blogging was goofy and could not be taken seriously as a means of news reporting.

Now, however, there is talk in the blog world about vote-stealing and vote-rigging in the past election. The elite media like Mr. Rather are saying "there is a great concern about this election-specifically from the on-line blogging community. So much concern that we should look into this..."

Oh so now blogging is important to the elite media?

And that's what the mainstream media does...

Dan Rather is a douchebag. So is Brad Pitt, Susan Sarandon, Bill Maher, Robert Redford, Richard Belzer, Ben Affleck, and Babs Streisand but I digress...

Since using Blogger, I have noticed a couple of things. The updating process for my blog has completely quit. My statistics are months out of date, and my newest posts do not show up any more. In essence, this blog is broken.

I all started when I began publishing this blog in two locations simultaneously. That being here at www.patryan.com and the other at patryan.blogspot.com. One day, mysteriously, I tried to access BlogSpot in order to update it and it prevented my from that by telling me that " Sorry, that address is taken. Please try another." So that was very strange. I began a process of trying to contact Blogger Customer Support through their email contact. I received the standard automated response informing me that my request for technical support was being processed. And processed. And processed. And processed...

At any rate, I sent another email. Finally some dude named Graham wrote the following:

"It appears that while your blog was on FTP settings, someone else took the
'patryan' address, which is why it is no longer available. I'm sorry about
that, but I'm afraid it's just a risk that you take if you're going to try
to switch to and from a certain address. Unfortunately we can't recover
the address for you unless the new owner decides to release it."

Sincerely, Graham Blogger Support

also this:

"No one had to get control of your settings or password to do this.
Whenever you change your settings away from BlogSpot to FTP, you are
relinquishing your hold on the BlogSpot address, and making it available
for other users. This is because most people only make that change once,
rather than switching back and forth, so we recycle the used addresses.
You've just been lucky so far that you've been able to come back to your
BlogSpot address without anyone else taking it. I'm sorry if that was
giving you the wrong impression about how this worked."

Sincerely, Graham Blogger Support

The problem with this response is that no one has changed the blog. No one is publishing to it. They just took it away and won't let me have it back even though I have requested it. If you go to my BlogSpot address, my posts are still there. Only it has not been updated since August because I have not been able to access it since then.

I tried to get them to work with me to get it back but they made a point to never answer any email since then. Nice.

Now, since I must have pissed them off for questioning their flawed technology, they have stopped updating my blog and have removed any reference to it from Google. It used to show up easily within the first five sites when someone searched for it but now it is no where to be found. What a bunch of babies these people are.

I have made a backup of the entire blog because I am sure, once I publish this, they will attempt to erase it or something similar.

With the millions of blogs out there, I am surprised they would single out my simple problem as being threatening.

Consequently, I am now in the process of moving the blog to MovableType as many thousands of former Blogger members have already done. When you look at the amount of criticism of BlogSpot out there, I understand that I am not the first to feel the wrath of Graham and the rest of the unresponsive Blogger Customer Support.

Now, my profile is never updated and my newest posts don't show up. All this because I had a problem with the flawed technology that Blogger claims is "just the way it is".

So, while I make this transition within as quickly a time frame as I possibly can, I will continue to publish here (making detailed backups of course) so that I can migrate this blog over to another blogging application that works.

Although I have enjoyed the ease of use of Blogger, I feel that, even though it is free, the worthless customer service and childish responses I received in addition to the deactivation of my blog account simply shows me that there are much better companies out there who's technology has evolved from this level.

Just because something is "free" that does not make it good.

Why I do this...

This week, we are working on a very challenging interior railing project for a beautiful home in Boulder, Colorado. The project calls for a stainless steel railing that was designed by the architectural firm of Knudson Gloss Architects.

Normally, I hate fabricating architect-designed railings because most of them suck as well as are usually badly designed. By badly designed I mean, that the details such as code analysis, angles, terminations, and installation logistics are completely ignored.

Usually, they leave it to us to figure out.

However, this railing was designed well and "works" on paper. I simply took the architects fairly tight drawings and converted them into CAD shop drawings for Mike and I to use for the fab and install.

The main challenge of this railing is to fit the stainless panel sections perfectly between maple balustrades that are already set. Simple? Not quite. Fitting steel of any kind tightly to wood is always challenging because there will always be variations in the material that makes for a highly unusual "perfect" fit. Sometimes, it becomes a matter of simply finding the best way of hiding mistakes. This is only possible after a lot of years of experience in high-end applications. Wood workers do it all the time as well as metal fabricators. Tile installers do it. Painters do it. Just about any finish trade has to know how to work with mistakes. Most of the time, in the final installation of any custom piece, the installer only has one shot at it. A complete do-over is impossible. I can say with great confidence that no craftsman or craftschick has ever been flawless. Never. So the great ones learn to work around any possible outcome good or bad.

Such is the case with this project. In a perfect CAD world, every line is straight, every surface level, every corner a perfect right angle and as we all know, that just does not happen in any real world where we humans live.

Usually, you would hear a bunch of whining and complaining by the people who have to deal with all this crookedness and skewed reality. "Waaa Waaa everything is off and wrong blah blah..." But not us. At least not this time. I have welcomed this challenge because it has been too long since I have has to think at this level of complexity. I missed it. We got into a rut of a string of "meatball surgery" projects that basically just needed thrown together. I hate those. Oh, the client loves the outcome because they don't really care how we achieved the outcome, just that it is, in fact, the outcome they envisioned. We make the final piece look good of course but the reality is there just is not any challenge involved with the engineering or fabrication techniques. They are just boring for the most part.
So finally, with a little attitude adjustment, we are moving ahead with this project with a renewed sense of fun and enjoyment of the design-build process. This job is a welcome relief to the mundane and so-so. It is a chance for us to feel a good kind of stress again; the kind of stress that comes with an intellectual challenge.

I'll post the final photos of the project within a week or so.

Finally, the kind of project that reminds me of why I do this.