Poker Perambulation

Yup, it is the weekend off-topic blog. This one has moldered in the files for months. Well, your luck just ran out.

After many years in Sales and Consulting in the Grocery industry, I got one of the first TRS-80 made. I am an amateur radio operator (KB9EU) and there was a teletype machine emulator (The Air Force had trained me in teletype repair about the time they were ready to go the way of the Dodo.) that I wanted to play with. It was a piece of junk but I got hooked on programming and would stay up all night writing trashy programs. It evolved into opening one of the early Radio Shack Computer Centers – strong advise: never work for RS.

Anyway, I moved to computer consulting and had a number of clients who’s systems I maintained and did custom programming for. One owned the RS Mod II-16 which ran Unix. Unix is a geeks delight. I had the AT&T manuals for it and they were about 2-inches thick with a lot of small print on near tissue pages. It was even too geeky for me to really fall in love with but it was flexible and powerful.

About that time IBM brought out their PC and the world changed. It sold for a whorehouse price; but, all computers in that era did. IBM made the biggest mistake in computer history and got Microsoft to do the operating system. But, it did give me a foothold with a major corporation and a nicer gig.

I ended up programming database applications for a steel mill. If I say so myself, it was pretty neat and state of the art in DOS applications. In writing such programs there are known gotchas. You need to maintain compatibility. From DOS they moved to Windows NT and my applications transitioned with only minor problems. Yes, even the most simple programming like PRINT “Hello World!” can use the wrong library and introduce incompatibility.

Today, my skills are antiquated. Having done early network applications I understand the problems and the need for good quality control. Poker site’s QC vary widely and some have next to none. I can still identify why that happens for the most part. But, I can’t excuse it. There are some that have made the same mistakes over and over. One I recall could not release a version that didn’t break backward compatibility with older versions of Windows. That shouldn’t happen with decent QC.

Poker sites provide updates frequently. Some do it too frequently. Cosmetic changes are marketing ploys. Adding usable features or new games serves the customer. Management is often enamored with the wrong priorities. Regardless of site, the complexity of the programs is going to cause the player problems. There is no programmer that can take into account every little possibility and those will regularly crop up.

As a user, your only standard cannot be the problem itself – unless they remain unresolved. And to resolve them the programmers need a cogent example of the problem. Give as much detail as you can and include the system information about your computer. If it remains misaddressed at that point, you need to review the pros and cons of continuing as their customer. But, give them the chance. If the site is regular in stopping your loading the site to update the software, it will often indicate a cavalier approach to customer service. The house is placing its wishes ahead of yours.

There will never be a bug free application. But you do have a right to a stable application with few problems and prompt resolution of those. It may be the trade off is worth it for the profitability the site provides. Yet, you need to remain vocal and demand support resolve your issues in a fair manner. Your rake should get you something beyond a seat.

ADDENDUM:

Do you get all those credit card offers littering your mailbox? You can do away with them and add a few points to your credit rating in the process. WWW.optoutprescreen.com allows you to turn off those offers. The offers come from mailing lists provided to the credit card companies by the big 4 credit evaluators. It seems that they consider this a responsible act on your part; hence the increase in your credit worthness. Ironic that now you aren’t getting the offers you are even more qualified for one of those “You’re pre-approved!” pieces of junk mail.

This entry was posted on Saturday, May 5th, 2007 at 6:19 am and is filed under Journal, Off Topic, Site Talk. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.