* * * * *

          “Yes, you are the only one who understands this stuff … ”

“There is … broken image,” she said. Granted, English is not her first
language.

“I'm not seeing any broken images,” I said. Not only did we move her site to
a new server, but it has a new domain name. Lots of breakage because of this
insipid control panel software we're using to administer the servers and you
have to do things its way. Yes, you can kind-of work around it at the command
line (as I have) but admitting that (shhh) breaks the warentee on using the
control panel and of course things like database names are based off the
domain name. Lot's of breakage today, but the database issue was resolved
earlier, and that's not the current problem. The current problem is a still
broken image. The previous broken images were due to permissions problems
(which is odd, given that rsync preserves permissions, at least in my
experience it has, but hey, something could have gone wrong in moving the
site from the old server to the new one) but that was fixed.

“But … see there … to the right the [mumble]?”

“I don't see any missing images,” I said.

“To the left right … I mean upper right corner, the [mumble]?”

“The what?”

“Bride.”

Ah, the bride. In the upper right corner. “I'm seeing that image.”

“Yes … below that … broken image.”

Oh wait … the page is just a tad wider than my window. I scroll right, and
yes indeed, there is an image. “Oh,” I said. “There it is.”

“Yes.”

“Okay,” I say, now more talking to myself, “properties … ”

“Properties?”

This is now our fifth or sixth conversation today. And it has come painfully
clear to me that this person does not understand websites, which I might be
able to live with.

But she's not a realtor [1] trying to understand this web … thingy … stuff …
a-ma-bob; she's a resellor of websites. Who barely understands how this stuff
works.

“Oh, I'm must mumbling to myself,” I said, dreading that I might have to
explain my web browser will display the properties of an image from a
webpage. I continue probing. Okay, the broken image is top-new.jpg. I then
start looking through the server, cursing under my breath because of cut-n-
paste, which works differently between Windows and X-Windows. To make matter
worse, putty, the terminal program I use under Windows, handles cut-n-paste
not as Windows, but as X-Windows. Makes me wish I was hiking Mount Everest
[2]; at least then my only concern would be hypothermia.

Eventually, I'm able to track down the problem. “The webpage is referencing
top dash new dot jay peg,” I said. “The file on the server is actually called
top dash menu dash new dot jay peg.”

“So the file didn't copy?”

“No, it did. It's just that the name of the file doesn't match in the
webpage.”

“Thought you said you copied files?”

“I did,” I said. “It's there—”

“But it's not showing up.”

Am I the only one that understands this stuff? “It's a typo—”

“So I'll have my people look into it,” she says.

“Okay,” I said, not convinced she even knows what I said.

I'm dreading the next phone call …

[1] gopher://gopher.conman.org/0Phlog:2004/11/19.1
[2] gopher://gopher.conman.org/0Phlog:2004/11/22.1

Email author at [email protected]