Vail Life

How do you break up with a vendor? I choose this method.




I like the options you presented and the freedom of choices you allowed us to make. The quote you dropped off with me on 06/25/07 for the $54,786.18 was very attractive and was my lead quote until Compellent dropped their price by $24,000.

But talking to EMC and what they were talking about setting up for us they told me with the performance information I sent them that we would need a fiber connect for our Exchange server. They said during the weekend (unfortunately I was only able to get you a day of information instead of the full week I sent EMC) when our mail server does its backup for the 30 it takes hours right now it is doing a sustained 1 G of throughput. They said their solution would fit us best with its fiber channel background but since they didn't have the time to start crunching numbers with us to compete with Compellent that they are backing out of the race of SAN solutions.

They did say that being aware of LeftHand, EqualLogic, and Compellent, that getting the two fiber channel connectors with Compellent and the great deal that Compellent cut with us that they felt I was correct in going with Compellent.

I appreciate all the assistance you have given me but I just felt even though I am getting a great deal of space for the great price on the second two quotes of $32,000 and $36,000 I would be losing out on a fiber connection available on the Compellent and the fact that they are offering me more speed on a per disk basis is worth the extra 18K to 14K.

I appreciate working with you and will recommend to those who ask about SAN solutions that they look at all four companies as it is an extremely tight race but for our company I will be choosing the Compellent device for our SAN solution.

Posted by Coign at 2:38 PM | Permalink | Comments

So my stress free sleep last night? Nope, not so much. One of the vendors came back and said, "How much raw space are they offering you for $60,000?"

"Six terabytes."

"How about I give you six terabytes for $30,000?"

"I can't say no to that much in savings, send me a proposal."

This morning I get in a proposal from them for $32,980. Last night I just tossed and turned for about two hours going over all the numbers in my head. I don't want to work on this project anymore. It is one thing if it is my money and I make a mistake, it is another if I screw this up for the company.

Anyways, after crunching the numbers the $32,000 deal just isn't what it is cracked up to be. I will not feel sad about telling them no on that. I already talked to EqualLogic this morning and thankfully that turn down of a deal was relatively easy. I still wait to hear from EMC yet to see their proposal. And finally I wait for one small contract point to be resolved before we sign off on the Compellent deal. Once that is all said and done then I can tell LeftHand that I choose not to use their technology and to stop calling me, sending me e-mails, and leave my friends alone.

Breaking up is always hard to do though.

Posted by Coign at 11:02 AM | Permalink | Comments

I win.

I convinced a vendor for our SAN solution (for you non-techy people it is a really big hard drive that can run a whole company on one computer) to lower his $72,000 price tag to $60,000 and to lower support on it from $10,000 a year to $6,000 a year. I saved $12,000 off the top and saved us $12,000 over the next three years.

I have been working on this project for over a year and the last two months it is about all I have done. I have been working with five different vendors and learning more about SANs then I thought possible. The meetings, stress, and number crunching has been a total pain in the ass and I feel so much better now that it is so close to completion. I got the OK from our CFO, CTO, and CEO for the purchase and now only wait on a clarification on the contract information. Tomorrow morning I sign off on the purchase and this weekend I finally get some stress free sleep.

Posted by Coign at 1:37 PM | Permalink | Comments

Ah man no response to my flamebait this morning. I guess that brief fire fight is over. Although last night on WoW I was on a roll tearing in to some guy for being a prick in Barrens chat.

It seems a couple of the surprise twists of the new Harry Potter book have been leaked on the Internet and this asshole was spamming them in Barrens chat about every 15 minutes. Now I will still watch a movie and enjoy it even if I know the ending but to force a spoiler on a couple hundred people who just want to enjoy themselves, well that guy was a dickhead with a capital 'D'.

So after the third or forth time he spammed it I started laying into him. It went something like this:

Johnnrambo: [HARRY POTTER SPOILER] (Of course in all caps so you really notice it to.)

Zasarin: SPOILER JOHNNRAMBO HAS A SMALL PENIS! (My character's name is Zasarin)

Johnnrambo: [HARRY POTTER SPOILER]

Zasarin: Johnnrambo sucks Coks in the bus station bathroom. So what? (Misspelling of cock is intentional to make sure it gets past the profanity filter.)

Johnnrambo: Reported (Meaning he reported me to the WoW GM's for insulting him.)

Zasarin: Reported for what? That you are a dick?

Johnnrambo: [HARRY POTTER SPOILER]

Zasarin: Johnnrambo is a failed abortion who pulled through

Johnnrambo: [HARRY POTTER SPOILER]

Zasarin: Johnnrambo gave all his friends aids

Johnnrambo: Reported

Zasarin: Again for what? Now shut your crapper.

Johnnrambo: [HARRY POTTER SPOILER]

Zasarin: Johnnrambo was born in the dumpster of a crack whore alley. Now shut the fuck up or log off.


At this point he was quiet for about an hour when I had to leave to go to a different area where I could no longer hear if he continued to spam the spoiler. It is my hope that I finally pissed him off enough to shut up.

Remember if you really want to insult someone, get creative.

Posted by Coign at 11:59 AM | Permalink | Comments

OOoo I got a response on my post. I haven't really had a troll battle in a while. He throws the first one-two combo. Nothing really connects but I fake a head jerk trying to show a weakness and see if he comes in for more. I try using a combination of logical argument and subtle insults to stoke the fires of his hatred. Lets see if he takes the bait and goes for the jugular.

Here is the blow-by-blow battle now.



Aaron Jun 19
HEY COIGN:

Macs just work. Just because you are used to working with PCs, no reason to be a whiny bitch about how you can’t properly repair them. Once again, Macs just work. And your website sucks. Looks like something my parents would design to post their vacation photos.



Coign Jun 20
@Aaron

-First off with the comment, “Macs just work. Just because you are used to working with PCs, no reason to be a whiny bitch about how you can’t properly repair them. Once again, Macs just work.”

A couple of questions, are you an IT guy? Do you work on machines? Do you do networking? Have you tried to manage multiple Macs?

My comment is that Macs break. And then break about as often as my Windows based PCs do. And when they do break, Macs do not follow the current path of operation that every other Operating System ever designed does. To make them “simple” they hide everything you need to fix them. Hell they are based off of a UNIX/BSD system now and still don’t even follow those rules of engagement.

So until you can back up your insult with some listed experience, you are the whiny bitch in that you are just repeating crap spewed from someone else.

“And your website sucks. Looks like something my parents would design to post their vacation photos.”

I have never claimed to be a web designer. I have web designer friends and their sites are much much prettier than mine. The last time I was into pretty was when I scribbled on my high school folder 13 years ago. Hell why do you think my webcomic is created with Stikfas, other then the fact that Stikfas are the coolest toys in the world?

You should have seen the first two incarnations of my website. That was bad. Like almost MySpace bad. So am I insulted that you made fun of my website?

Not really. It just shows that you are looking for a hopefully hurtful jab letting me know that you are a complete dickhead in case I hadn’t gotten that point across by you calling me a whiny bitch.

So show me your website, let me know that you know what the hell you are talking about. Or give me something beyond the fact that you are coming off as a 16-year-old troll sitting in his mommy’s basement designing her website for her family vacation photos. And if you can’t, why don’t you just keep your insults to yourself.

Posted by Coign at 8:49 AM | Permalink | Comments

While surfing the Internet I ran across this comment.

"We got my dad an ipod nano for father’s day. He’s been asking for an MP3 player but was never specific about which one. We gave him the ipod expecting a steep learning curve, but nope. He just knew how to use it. At one point he said “Man, this is SO SIMPLE to use.”

I started to pipe up with “Now imagine if your entire computer worked that way, dad.” but my brother shot me the “Please don’t start.” look." -Scott Kurtz

I was in the middle of kicking in screaming at a Mac at the time. (Actually I still am but at least now I figured out how to boot the damn thing.) Here is the reply comment I left on his message board.




I have never posted a comment here before but I am so ticked off at work that I had to respond.

Background: I am not a Microsoft, Apple, or Linux fanboi. I come from an ISP work background that used all UNIX boxes run Solaris. I am currently working for a Microsoft Gold Member company using all Microsoft products and a few Macs. Both my current company and the ISP company have had a handful of Macs for graphics work and thus I know how to use them and work on them. Or at least I thought I did until today.

One of the Macs at work started crashing with a CPU0 read error and a lot of garbage on the screen. I had another Mac to replace it with while I work on it. The replacement Mac needed to be reformatted and rebuilt. So what do you do? You put in the boot disk to do a clean format. That is the way it works on every OS and machine in the entire UNIVERSE. Hell they used a boot disk to upload a virus to alien machines in ID4.

And what does a Mac do? Well it just loads up the operating system and then crashes. Why god why? Why do they have to feel they are special? Why do they hide everything you would use to fix them? Turns out you need to know the "secret" code to get a Mac to boot from CD.

Need to add a host entry? Good luck on that. First you need to find the hidden terminal window just to find out that your administrator account you created doesn't have su rights. Then when you go to su, it doesn't know what the password is. This is because deep in the bowels of Mac is something called a Master password. Did your Mac ask you to set this when you reformatted it like ANY OTHER OS would ask? No, it didn't.

Macs just work. Like hell they do. And the fact that you thought to use that argument for your dad. GOD PLEASE WHY?!? Do not perpetuate the myth that Apple and their propaganda machine tries to foster on us. Macs don't "just work." No OS just works.

Another case in point, I needed to test and introduce Vista to my employees as we are a software development company and needed to test scripts, code, and websites on Vista. I was also tired of being asked for assistance on the company scanner attached to the Mac. Even the Mac users can't figure out the horrible networking interface that Mac tries to implement so you can moved your scanned files to the network drives to access them elsewhere.

I moved the scanner to the Vista using the Areo interface and all its bells and whistles to show people what it is like. Now don't get me wrong, I don't care for Vista either. It is bloated, slow, and annoying with its security prompts all over the place. But as soon as I moved the scanner over it immediately detected it and had the correct drivers for it unlike the four hours I had to spend finding the Mac drivers for it. (And I bought the scanner specifically for the Mac in the first place so you would have thought drivers would not have been an issue.)

And users. Well users ask me, why didn't we move the scanner over sooner? It works so much better then on the Mac.

Mac just works.

If I hear one more person spew that crap, I will grab a sniper rifle and you will find me in the bookstore across the street from the nearest Apple store.

Posted by Coign at 1:24 PM | Permalink | Comments