Thanks for the updated copy for the ad. This copy is definitely the copy we should go with if we want the copy to be worse in every way. You're right that the previous version was a bit strong. I don't know what I was thinking. It's obvious to me now that modesty and humility should replace bold declarations in advertising copy. I hope you like the use of the word 'bold' there. I notice you kept slipping the word 'boldly' back in, even though I took it out again every time. Sadly the word 'boldly', about a science book will only ever evoke Star Trek, and with the new film out, it makes us look like a bunch of fucking retards to use it here. I also noticed that every time you suggested a 'compromise' version, you've simply reverted to the original, terrible copy you suggested this morning, word for word, disregarding all changes and the reasoning that accompanied them.
From a copywriting perspective it's interesting that you've decided to kick off with a muddled description of which category the book falls into (science? culture? politics?). After all, that's part of the reason the hardback failed to sell - no-one knew what it was supposed to be. It's best we lead off with this, and explain to the readers that it's neither one thing nor the other. We wouldn't want them to feel duped, and assume that we knew what we were trying to achieve. It's a fascinating approach, and in the ten years I've been writing professionally, I've never known anyone use it.
Thanks for the updated copy for the ad. This copy is definitely the copy we should go with if we want the copy to be worse in every way. You're right that the previous version was a bit strong. I don't know what I was thinking. It's obvious to me now that modesty and humility should replace bold declarations in advertising copy. I hope you like the use of the word 'bold' there. I notice you kept slipping the word 'boldly' back in, even though I took it out again every time. Sadly the word 'boldly', about a science book will only ever evoke Star Trek, and with the new film out, it makes us look like a bunch of fucking retards to use it here. I also noticed that every time you suggested a 'compromise' version, you've simply reverted to the original, terrible copy you suggested this morning, word for word, disregarding all changes and the reasoning that accompanied them.
From a copywriting perspective it's interesting that you've decided to kick off with a muddled description of which category the book falls into (science? culture? politics?). After all, that's part of the reason the hardback failed to sell - no-one knew what it was supposed to be. It's best we lead off with this, and explain to the readers that it's neither one thing nor the other. We wouldn't want them to feel duped, and assume that we knew what we were trying to achieve. It's a fascinating approach, and in the ten years I've been writing professionally, I've never known anyone use it.
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Editor. She did apologise to me, just after I posted that because apparently the idiot feedback was coming from the author. Although that's still her fucking fault for involving the author in a process from which they should be totally excluded. I don't get involved in the writing of the books, so they should just keep their fucking beaks out of the marketing side.
Actually that's a whole other rant: Bafflingly clueless marketing suggestions I get from authors. One guy suggested that "a good way to sell a lot of books would be to get to number 1 on Amazon", which is like... yeah. I didn't really know what to say to that. Another author complained that we hadn't placed an ad in The Economist (rate card is about £50k for a half page) and I had to explain just how many books we'd have to still to recoup fifty grand's worth of advertising, and if he flicked through the economist he'd notice that ads were for things like cars, and watches and other things that cost more than £9.99.
The thing that amazes me, as a wannabe author, is how clueless they all seem to be about how much money their books are going to make. As soon as you start thinking about writing a book, and do the tiniest smidgen of research into the process you're deluged by a torrent of people falling over themselves to declare that you're very unlikely to make much money at all. And yet... somehow we manage to scoop up all the remaining idiots who think that publishing a book about elephants is going to allow them to retire. Bah.
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I've never had anyone talk to me like this in my whole career. Your conduct is a disgrace and bearing in mind my superiority in years and rank, nothing less than career suicide.
...
... and yet
... you are... so.. bold....
Meet me in the stationery cupboard at 11:00 and you may well boldly go where no man has gone before
I know that you'll never receive this email. This is because you are a buffoon. You see, when you call me at 8am in the morning, from home and demand I reset your password for your laptop so you can get onto the network, I am obliged to tell you I can't. Or more precisely, I won't. This is if I update your details on the system Nigel, that your laptop isn't connected to, then you'll never experience the benefit. In fact, when you remember what your password is and finally log into your laptop, you'll find connecting to the network is going to be a right fucker, Nigel.
I don't want to patronise you Nigel, so what I'm going to do is explain your fatal error as succinctly as I can. When you take your laptop away from the office, it will remember all the information recently saved on it. If I change the password on my end, Nigel something strange happens. Allow me to explain.
First the information is sent via micro bullet train to admin world. A mystical place where the magic happens. The network pixies take the new password, get very, VERY excited and write it down on a big bit of paper. Then (and this is the clever bit) they sit around making it into a nice picture for you. drawing on it with crayons. Sticking on pasta shapes, that kind of thing. They take this, this card with the new information and they scamper out into the internets whooping and shrieking. Now, because they are system pixies, this happens very very fast. But Nigel, becasue you are connected to the internets they system pixies don't know where to go! They just go scrambling around and get lost and one of them cries until Colin, the oldest system pixie gets out some Um Bongo and gives it to the littlest crying system pixie. Eventually after getting very angry at us for your own mistakes you will log in with your old details and connect to the network. The laptop goblins inside will get to work, doing their thing until the pixies arrive at the front door of your laptop and the problem begins. They get in a right royal rumpus Nigel. Let me tell you. Now because you've forgotten what your password is you'll continue to put in the old one and ignore what I might have changed it to, because you don't understand all this complex work the system pixies are doing. Then there will be fails of epic size. Then you will call us again, Nigel. Angrier than ever for fulfilling your request.
I know, I know. It IS ridiculous, I agree. Let's say it together in the same idiotic but outraged blustery tone "bbb....but this is RIDICULOUS!"
But I am merely the pixie keeper. I did not give birth to them, or invent them. They are simply the product of Modern Fucking Technology™ You should no more demand of me for a password reset in the hopes it will fix your stupid cretinous brain than I would drive into a garage, smoke billowing from the hood of the car, doors falling off like a clown car and exhaust trawling across the floor and ask you to inflate the tires a bit more to fix the problem. So Nigel, if you are too carefree to remember your password and insist to me that you do I have only one thing to say to you. Think of the pixies, Nigel. Think of every last one of the poor things.
[ 19.05.2009, 06:14: Message edited by: New Way Of Decay ]
quote:Originally posted by Thorn Davis: As soon as you start thinking about writing a book, and do the tiniest smidgen of research into the process you're deluged by a torrent of people falling over themselves to declare that you're very unlikely to make much money at all. And yet... somehow we manage to scoop up all the remaining idiots who think that publishing a book about elephants is going to allow them to retire. Bah.
Ha, yeah. I had another of my Great Ideas recently and started looking into the feasibility of making it work, only to be handed an enormous list of all the people who will rip me off for every penny and how no one ever makes any money from such projects and invariably ends up bankrupt.
I'm still convinced it's a goer though. And it doesn't even involve mp3 vans.
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I am writing to thank you for the past 7 months of employment in the IT department of ATB. I have thoroughly enjoyed my short time here - I have gained a plethora of knowledge, mostly in minutes, in many cutting-edge technologies, often just because "nobody else knows how it works" and learned a lot from the severe dressing-downs afterwards when it almost failed. The back-of a fag packet approach to documentation of secure systems which our banking license is based on have introduced me to a whole new can-do attitude, even though I couldn't, and often wouldn't dare risk such actions on production systems with so little aforethought, yet somehow your cowboyish charms and threats drove me into the corner to thouroughly throw that caution to the wind, This new sense of "deploy and be damned" has really refreshed my outlook on Information Technology within the modern banking industry, and I wonder why so many established banks I have worked for before do not follow this breakneck speed implementation route. After all, who needs test systems, and you are right, it does indeed just get in the way of those juicy bonuses at christmas time!
I have also come to appreciate the way in which you force learning by witholding information. This revolutionary approach of blame culture and learning not necessarily by your mistakes, but by literally just not knowing has made my transition from a respected IT proffesional to a clueless fool both rapid and painful, and it is refreshing to see a dictatorship operating so effectively within a modern business, especially one with so much influence from the Stasi! Who have honestly thunk that spying and whistleblowing on your colleagues like you so regularly demanded, and fear not respect could drive a department so well? Well, at least you seemed to think so. And it did so keep us on our toes - one minute promises of resources, the next being tried by kangaroo juries for non-existant crimes - wow it was never a dull day, and by golly it kept us alert!
But the biggest thank you has to be for you showing me your wonderful survival tactics in modern business - and when the shit hits the fan, and the board bays for your blood - just blame the new guy! What an inspiring choice!
I wish you all the luck for the future, though I think I might need some myself - unemployment eh? And so sporadic too! Never saw that one coming, especially after the weeks prior being so bolstered over those trips to Prague. Oh well the Wencesslas Bridge must wait another year, as must that emergency surgery I was planning. Never mind eh?
Seriously, hope it all works out for you, and remember - keep dodging them bullets! The next one might be real. You **** .
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I did a decent chuckle at that Wayne. I got suckered by a colleague rently, well today in fact. I'm really trying to build a bridge between the work that comes through the helpdesk and the developers or 3rd line support. So I went to see someone about a problem we had. It won't hurt to mention it as I'm sure you'll get the jizt. Basically we have a tool which is coded to work in IE7 and until recently worked perfectly in Safari for Mac. The user called to complain it didn't work in Safari anymore. I explained that this is becasue we don't have any standards compliancy or indeed, documentation outling what browser the tool is supposed to be run on and in fact we aren't told what and when changes are made. The fact it worked in Safari was a happy accident and was never intended to be run in the app. The user was on brilliant form 'well it did work and now it's broken' I told them the costs to recode would be enormous and silly for the benefit of one person so use IE7 through citrix. He complained a simple task takes 5 minutes that way instead of the 30 seconds (I don't believe the user, but I hardly get the time to test and contradict what I'm being told, so I rely on feedback from the departments that roll out the releases)
So anyway, I went to a DBA today and mentioned all of the above, and she nodded in the right places. Great! I thought, hoping someone understood my plight and sounded interested in putting it straight. 'Can you put all of the above in an email and I'll get onto the developers' so I hopped off, pleased someone was not patronising or looking down on us for a change. It wasn't until I clicked 'send' it dawned on me. She wasn't going to do anything, I'd written out all my findings and she was going to put it in the hands of the coders. I'd done all the ground work here, assessed what our user base wanted, bothered to get clued up on the situation and the person responsible for the application is going to get the developers to do the testing. I realised it's very easy to take ownership of projects and support tools when you actually do nothing with it. No testing for you! No siree. All the feedback and testing is basically done at the start and end and the middle guys sit around doing project management for double the wages. I mean, you know how much a DBA can take home.
On top of this (and this is sweet) we have two accounts for users. A standard account and an 'a-account' - the a account is basically just the same name as your normal account but prefixed with an 'a' to indicate it has admin permission groups on it. So you know what happened when we asked our 3rd line to create an 'a-account' for a user? They copied a standard account in AD and typed an 'a' in front of it. Those fucking thick *****.
I would like to order three bottles of vpxl please. Can't wait to grow my penis by 3.72 inches! And produce some stronger rock hard erections... and no more of those pesky premature ejaculations either, I'm gonna be a STUD! The wife is in for one hell of a treat!
Please continue to keep me updated on your amazing offers.
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