26th October 2009

Bowling a Googly. Ah, the joys of opening a laptop of an Autumn morning. The thrill of picking up editor's letters from Googlemail. The adrenaline rush of diving into the Google analytics stats. The puzzlement at discovering one's Google settings have been changed (again) and edited for no obvious reason (again). The memory from many similar cockups that you can't email or phone Google, a company providing electronic services. The long, desert trek through Help Topics after the search box has produced 'No results were found' as an 'answer' to the question 'How do I login to my account?' The frustrating trawl in ever-decreasing circles until one can eventually zero in on a minute option 'type your own question'. The irritation as, with every word I type, I am given irrelevant options to consider which obscure my typing when all I want to do is, um, type something. The sense of entering a Black Hole as I remember that this message is only going onto a forum anyway, in which all the answers say 'Hi, gee - I got this problem too. Bummer we can't email Google'. The minor satisfication in applying acidic sarcasm to the issue:

'Since I began to access my largely dormant Googlemail acct (notbornyesterday@googlemail.com) the Google settings on my homepage have gone haywire. This morning I find I can't access my analytics account at all - the login option has disappeared - and as of yesterday I can't read my online mail either.
Is this a subtle form of blacklisting or mere inefficiency/geekitis*?
Anyone any views on this?
Regards
notbornyesterday (www.notbornyesterday.org)
*Geekitis. Pandemic that swept the world around 1998, from which the only escape for geeks has been to sit in silos 24/7/365 and change things twice a day without reference to customers. Incurable.'

The realisation that it's now 9.10 am, I got up at 7.35 - and have achieved nothing except wrestle with Help which is about as helpful as dysentery in a famine relief camp. The release as this gets out of my system into the Slog column.

The depression of knowing that my observations as a rational customer in search of some service will be written off by 91.2% of the audience as Grumpy Old Man.

The desire to go back to bed and start all over again.

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