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Spoiled and the sea shore

Today’s picture shows you my weekend exercise: working patiently on a sea shore motive. It sits in the living room now, as it is acryl paint and dries super fast, together with many other paintings in various formats, and me don’t know nada what to do with them. You know, my painting teacher told me to place the pictures in a way you have to watch them daily, to see them and learn. Here,  in the house of tauer, we thus discuss a lot about pictures. The comment I got for this one, the stones on the sea shore: Nice, pleasing, maybe too pleasing. So there you go: Thin lines everywhere.

I wonder whether my scents are sometimes a bit too pleasing, too. Or the other way round. Where are my perfume creations on a pleasing scale, going from 1 (super unpleasing to most) to 10 (super pleasing to most, but totally boring to the perfumistas)?, and from a commercial point of view: Where’s the best place to be on this scale?

So, yes, me don’t know nada. The same is true for my computer. Last week, my PC, windows 7, demanded to install updates, lots of them, some of them it actually did without me having a chance to say “no”. There were updates on a daily basis, probably fixes of fixes of fixes. And since then: Energy saving sleep mode is impossible. It got slower, especially the first 10- 30 minutes until all the backups are done. It does not crash, though. That’s already something. But it got slow and it feels like my computer lost 50% of its computer power over the updates.

I have spent a couple of hours over the weekend, exploring and entering the MS/DOS underground, this almost prehistoric interface to any windows pc, trying to get the energy saving mode back. No chance. I could call the hotline, but you know what: I am so sick of talking to some people sitting somewhere on planet earth; they usually are in a different time zone, and totally exhausted, and not often competent. The same is true when “talking” to service by email.

Many companies have outsourced their email support. And the results, sometimes, are amazing.

The other day, I had a trouble with domain.com, trying to stop one subscription. My email to customer support was crystal clear. Customer support 1 understood and tried to help. Customer support 1 handed over to customer support 2. This lady did not understand. But she felt empowered to cancel all my domain subscriptions. With one click. I learned about it over my dinner, and spent the next hour or two on the hotline, trying together with them to fix everything back.  In the end, I asked how on earth this is possible that one stupid lady sitting somewhere can click on button and delete your online presence without you wanting it.

The answer was: we are looking into it.

Anyhow; I guess I won’t call Microsoft’s hotline. Because I am sort of tired of my Windows based PC. I have a mac, too. And comparing to this apple, sitting in the other room, I have to admit: I have not spent much time there trying to “fix” something. It just works, including synch’s, backups and upgrades.

OK. I will probably get a mac, a retina thing, but… I am spoiled. I have seen them too often offered with a discount of 10-20 %. I will never buy this mac full price. And basically, that’s another topic. Ones you start giving discounts, there’s no way out anymore. Clients simply wait for the next “free shipment”, “15% off coupons” or other goodies. You educate them that way. This is one reason, why I do not offer discounts; besides my impression that my prices are ok.