Now, about computers, or more precisely, the way that the computer dickheads have contorted the entire system. Remember, computers were supposed to make things simpler, and actually they do. So I’m not talking about everyone, only the dickheads who have twisted the way computers and software systems are sold. The equipment might be high tech (I said might be) but the methods used to gouge money out of the unsuspecting public are disturbingly primitive.One of the things plowed into everyone’s mind today was how you cannot trust small, independent “web programmers”. The totally asinine methods these people use to make money have polluted the entire computer market. I’m hard-pressed to say how bad the problem is, but for instance today I spent a half-hour [on the phone] trying to get five minutes worth of information out of a “web programmer”.
Maybe what he does iss needlessly complicated, but it was also made clear to him before he started that he had agreed he was being paid to sort all that out. Now to come back and say we needed a “fixed” IP address and such before we even started is a total failure on his part.
No, I don’t buy that line that we were supposed to know, because he was supposed to know and he was supposed to tell us everything we needed before he started. When you do things you shouldn’t and don’t do things you should, don’t expect a lot of mercy from me. I’d already had it up to here by the time I was twelve by people who expect to be paid and thanked just to get the hell out of the way.
Now, Ruth is stuck with a web page that looks and acts but does not work. The systems needed to make it function were not mentioned until today. Much as I dislike getting involved (I avoid all contact with web programmers because of this type of problem) somebody is going to have to take over responsibility for that web page. I am horrified that the person hired to set all this up neither did so or said anything.
I believe the book that spells all this web page and e-commerce idiocy out into plain English has yet to be written. You cannot get anyone to level with you because in the end, like car salesmen, they are all in it together. Not in on the sale, but in on the system. It turns out, and this is just wading into the problem, for registering your “domain name” does not mean people can find your web page.
Were you told about this when you paid for your domain name? Of course not. Silly boy, you probably thought that once you owned your name that all somebody had to do to find you was Google. Wrong. The meaningful search engines go for IP addresses, not domain names. That means, if you have the usual “dynamic” IP addresses, the search engine cannot find you. What is needed is a “fixed” IP address. (There is an exception called a spider search, but that is not relevant here.)
Wait, “fixed” is not quite enough, although they will sell you a “fixed” address any time you got the money. The address must also be “non-shared”, another thing they won’t get into before they swipe your card. I finally called goDaddy and got an extremely knowledgeable lady who could not simply tell me what to do next. Each question I asked her “depended” on how I decided to do something I did not fully understand. Plus, she could not avoid jargon no matter how sincerely she tried.
For example, if I wanted people to buy my stuff, I had two choices: find the guy who did our programming (who has not answered our calls in weeks, which is why I was calling her) or pay her to start over. I would like to point out that goDaddy did not say a single word about this situation when we bought the domain name, not one single word. You’re supposed to know. From the goDaddy point of view, if you register “www.pepsi.com” they can pretend not have a clue you were intending to sell anything. And they act most astonished if you mention it afterward.
It is not solely the fragmentation of the knowledge required that frustrated me, but the lack of good people. I did not say honest, I said good. I fully understand that an SSL (secure socket layer) is a process that takes your email traffic that normally travels on socket 80 and sends it to socket 443, which is encrypted so that bad guys can’t read your data. It’s a no-brainer. But what nobody would tell me is the order in which you need to set all these things up, as in you need to have the SSL before you apply for a Merchant Account to accept credit card payments. The operative word was “before” – I was after the order in which things had to occur, and every one of those numbskulls tried desperately to avoid telling me that order. Does one need this SSL before or after one applied for the Merchant Account? Seriously, it took nearly another hour to pry that tiny one bit of information out, and even then the dork acted like he was doing me a favor.
In the end, it appears our web page is set up, but that the “Hosting Plan” is owned by somebody else whose identity cannot be revealed by goDaddy even though it is our account. (Nor did goDaddy ever express to us in advance that this situation was possible or could potentially represent a problem.) There is also a secondary link to the “store” where people put things in your shopping cart. You cannot activate or switch your product list to this link without the identity of the person goDaddy just refused to tell. You’re supposed to know, get it? I could sure tell you what I think about goDaddy, but I won’t directly tell them. They’re supposed to know.
There, I feel better now. How about some trivia? The term “surfing” as in the web was coined by a librarian in Liverpool, England in 1992. Long before you even heard of the web. Her name? Jane Polly. Those were the days of dial-up only, which tips you off how much work she had to do all day long.
