Because of the increasing number of complaints about inadequate service, suggestions for improvements, and general unhappiness of Site5 customers, Site5 decided to remove the service forums from their message board. The other forums are still there, but if you were posting because your server was down, not responding, adding domains, and other service related questions, you no longer have a place to go. Of course, their official reasoning was because it was creating a problem for support.

Today, in their open discussion forum, a post was made asking what others thought about them closing these forums. Many people responded during the post’s short lifespan, including Site5 staff itself. Obviously, once management (I’m talking about you, Mr. Lightner) found this out, it was deleted. Luckily, another forum member posted a pdf on his site of what was said. You can read it here. Now, call me crazy, but having support forums where the community can support seems like it should reduce trouble tickets for support. I can probably come up with 5 occasions off the top of my head in which I didn’t have to open a ticket because I found the information in the forums. If anything, this new policy will only increase support’s already busy workload. Don’t be fooled by the response times on Site5’s homepage. At one time (when I signed up) they were this low, but they neglect their customers in order to oversell their hosting and try new products to entice people, none of which are actually implemented (think RapifReflex, Webmail 2.0, Flashback). They say they respond in an average of 25 minutes, let’s take a look at some of mine:

Avg. Site5 Resp. Time: 211.5 minutes
Avg. Site5 Resp. Time: 354.6 minutes
Avg. Site5 Resp. Time: 84.5 minutes

And most of the time, they don’t even answer your question, so you have to wait another 100+ minutes for another response.

The thread also stated that management will respond to each and every one of the emails that people send regarding this issue. I find this to be a joke as well. I put in a management review ticket months ago with no response. I emailed Matt Lightner and never got a response. I even had a thread put into the Management Review hidden forum and got no response. And like another customer said, site5 webhosting…the only way to deal with bad pr is to delete it. (by the way, this site is hosted on A Small Orange now.)

EDIT: It seems they have added some forums for “customer-to-customer” support. My faith has still not been restored though. Unless they start listening to their customers, stop overselling, and quit with software promises that never get implamented, they are a sinking ship.

Wow, now this is funny. Anyone who is remotely familiar with MySpace can understand where David Lehre is coming from on this excellent video.

A while back a buddy of mine, Mike Goodspeed, wrote about his party profession. What he meant by this is changing what he did for a living when people would ask what he did. Computer programming just isn’t that interesting to most people (especially the ladies). Since reading this, I’ve noticed I get the same two questions when people ask me what I do. When I would tell them I am (going to be) a teacher they either say:

Cool, are you going to coach?

or

Wow, that’s awesome. That is so noble. Teachers really should get paid more. They, like, shape the future.

I’d say the first one I get more often than the latter. Now, I don’t want to not tell people I teach. I’m not ashamed of it, I’m proud of the fact that I will be doing this. What I get tired of is those two questions people ask me. Will I coach, it’s a possibility, but unlike the majority of history majors, I did not become a teacher so I could go back to my old high school and coach. Coaching is not my life-long goal, and to me, is not much of a goal at all. As for teaching being noble and teachers should be paid more, I agree, but most people don’t really feel that way. Most people hated their teachers in high school. They just tell you what they think you want to hear. Every profession is noble in some way. Since I don’t want to lie, I continue to tell people I’ll teach, but I’ll continue to smile and nod while they go on an on about how great teachers are.

Unfortunately I was tagged by tunarider to fill out the Four Things. It’s been going around for a while and I knew it was a matter of time before I got hit. Well, I got hit, so here it goes (and I don’t feel like making this nice and pretty with styling):

Four Jobs I’ve Had:
Domino’s Pizza CSR
e-Backups, LLC
Missouri State University Computer Services
Dr. Badass

Four Films I Can Watch Over and Over:
The Boondock Saints
Field of Dreams
Old School
Good Will Hunting

Four Places I’ve Lived:
Dellwood, MO
St. Peters, MO
Springfield, MO
St. Peters, MO

Four TV Shows I Enjoy:
House
My Name is Earl
Smallville
Seinfeld

Four Places I Have Been on Vacation:
The Lake
California
Connecticut
Florida

Four of My Favorite Foods:
Pizza
Hot Wings
Cheeseburgers
Lasagna

Four Sites I Visit Daily:
Google News
QN5 Forums
BOTD
Podz

Four Places I Would Rather Be Right Now:
College
A Cardinals Game
A Bar
A Cardinals Game

Four Bloggers I’m Tagging:
Caleb
Anna
Teh Jibbster
RD

Allow me to entertain you with a little diatribe on stupid people. The internet is a great place/thing. I’ve met many great people and increased my knowledge on a variety of subjects exponentially. That being said, I now loathe the internet. The internet has become a bastion for the stupid and ignorant. It really does surprise me how many dumbasses there are in the world. What is really eating away at my brain is the fact that each day more and more of these idiots are getting on the internet and bugging the shit out of me and others that actually have an IQ above that of a box of rocks. I seriously wonder about the future of America, or even the world. How can humans be this dumb? It amazes me that they are even able to turn on a computer. I don’t know what else to say, besides the fact that I hate stupid people.