Rant: Unresponsive companies

Dear JetBrains,

A little while ago, you mass-mailed us, your customers, to announce the imminent arrival of your new product, IntelliJ IDEA 9. As a user of your product, I was excited to upgrade! Your e-mail solicited inquiries for upgrade pricing, which wasn't published at the time. I duly responded with an e-mail inquiring about upgrading. Guess how many replies I've gotten from you? Let me give you a hint: it's the integer just before the first natural number.

Fortunately for me, I'm also a user of NetBeans. I am in fact a very happy user of NetBeans, which happens to be free. I also happen to get great support from my local Sun rep too.

Unfortunately for you, this means you're losing me both as a customer and advocate for your product. Losing a customer is bad enough. Losing a customer who was an enthusiastic advocate for your product is far, far worse. Word of mouth is still one of the main factors for a sale these days. All it takes for you to lose business is for people to not say anything at all.

I bought your product out-of-pocket because I liked what I saw at the time and wanted my own personal (non-corporate) copy. I still do like your product very much but I'm not willing to pay for it again when there is a perfectly acceptable alternative in NetBeans. With the economy being what it is, you have to work hard at keep your customers. Everyone has to these days.

With a fantastic IDE like NetBeans around, I had to take a hard look at whether to purchase an upgrade to your product. Your one chance to sway me was your upgrade offer, which you flubbed. Now, I just can't justify upgrading to your new product when I can get a perfectly acceptable and free alternative which is as full-featured as your premium offering.

Never ever ignore a customer who wants to give you money - if you can't even get that right, I don't trust you to make the tools for my work no matter how pretty they are.

Yours sincerely,
A Former Customer

Cost of living

I've been very introspective lately. I'm not entirely sure why but I suspect it's a side-effect of the days getting shorter. There was a time when the winter solstice was one of my favourite days...but that is no longer the case now that I can step into the light boldly.

With Christmas coming soon, carols are in the air. That always makes me melancholy because one of the things I had to give up for this life was singing. Don't get me wrong, I can still sing but it...would cause problems for me. Those of you who know me well will know exactly what I'm talking about.

I've never had formal training in voice nor can I really afford to right now. I'm not sure my voice is salvageable, to be honest. However, I'm taking some steps privately to see if I can do anything about it. All I will ever be is a throaty contralto but I will take what I can get.

I love singing. One of my fondest memories from childhood was listening to my mother singing to the radio as she went about her daily household chores. I started singing when I was very young but due to parental opposition, I never had a chance to train properly. Still, I joined every choir I could and those were very pleasant times. There is a comforting anonymity being just yet another singer in a choir. I was never good enough to be a soloist - those parts went to people who had trained hard, as it should be. Of all forms of music, I love a capella pieces - those are the ones that I truly cherish. There is something indescribably beautiful about the human voice in full song that sends shivers down my spine and tears to my eyes.

My life since about two and a half years ago has been songless. I feel as though there is a void in my soul because of it. I gave it up because it was the right thing to do, survival-wise. Now, in my current state, I'm going to reclaim that part of my life. I might not succeed but the alternative is definite failure if I did not at least try.