The Life of Lou Ruppert

Apparently there are a small number of people whose job is to read every single blog posting that has certain keywords in it. I received a visit by one of my coworkers today regarding a post I made a couple days ago about my pork chops, and a certain brightly colored network appliance whose name begins with the letter G. Apparently one of their G-men called him to complain about it, because they thought I was complaining about the appliance itself. I was asked to remove the post, which I politely refused to do. Instead, I updated the wording to explicitly mention that the device was not at fault. But really. What kind of company needs to pay people to chase down people who might say bad things about them? The sort of company I won’t ever personally advise my clients to buy from unless there is no viable alternative.

The sad thing is, up until this point, I was really thrilled about their product. I think it’s one of our more exciting toys. What else will handle the crazy amount of traffic we have at our facility, and still allow us to filter, slice, dice, and rearrange, all in real time, and then share it to the cluster of machines and appliances that gobble it up and tell us what we need to know? And on top of that, they seem to know a thing about industrial design, which is refreshing in this time of datacenters full of soul-less black pizza boxes. But I won’t say a word more about it now. I’d just as soon not deal with their PR insecurities. It’s like what happens to your infatuation with a strikingly attractive and intelligent woman, once you realize that you can’t even take your first bite of dinner with her without having to sit through fifteen minutes of conversation reassuring her that her hips aren’t too big, or that the mole on the back of her neck doesn’t make her nose look ugly, or whatever Cosmo’s got her thinking this week. It’s creepy.

So that’s all I’m going to write about that for now. Meanwhile, check out my friend Erin’s blog in my blogroll, and Tina’s blog next to it. They’re both getting back into the swing of things in Southern Senegal, and have some really nice pictures.

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