Congrats on new toy. It's like a miniature Wurlitzer, but with more
records, yes?

Have had no work at all much for the past couple of months, then this past
fortnight flat chat most days updating, revamping and building new sites.
One for a mate with a business jet charter operation - I get to go flying
in a Citation as part payment. Another for a US client for his toy - it's a
160 foot yacht with a 3 million dollar helicopter on the back, total
package worth well over $30m. He'll pay me for the site about what he spent
on lunch yesterday.

One of my clients went mad, but they didn't shoot him. He shot himself. In
both feet. As briefly as possible: he gave me oral instructions for large
number of mods to site which someone else built. I emailed him a precis of
those instructions as I understood them, carried out all I could very
promptly and emailed his associate for items I needed to complete a part,
and phoned him about another part - in particular my repeated request for
the registry key so I could move the site to another server as the one it
was on I could not give him access to. He wanted access so he could update
the site himself, but as access to the server also gave him access to other
sites on that server security would be compromised. He knew all this, as I
had made it very clear what the story was.

Some weeks went by after I'd emailed him yet again with an outline of where
I was up to, and still no replies or phone calls. I didn't worry, as I'd
had this happened with them before.

Then an email comes, firstly accusing me of doing none of the work
requested, and demanding access to the server. I replied that there must be
some misunderstanding, and later that evening re-sent one of the emails
which made it obvious that it had been sent twice before, one requesting
images to finish part of the job.

The following morning he phoned, absolutely frothing at the mouth, again
demanding access to the server. Let me mention here that this is a guy who
up until very recently could barely spell "internet", let alone update a
website. Of course I again refused access. He began calling me all the
names under the sun, repeatedly using foul language, and threatening to
send thugs around to "sort me out". I twice hung up on him, the second time
taking the phone off the hook.

As you may imagine, I was very upset.

I sat down and wrote him a terse letter, giving him seven days to pay his
outstanding account (he hadn't paid it for 9 months, mind), and to move his
domain elsewhere.

He replied with a long rant of almost incomprehensible gibberish with
further threats (tho not this time of physical violence) and very little
punctuation. He writes the way he talks. 

I did not reply.

So there he is, hopping about on one foot. He'd tried to bully me to cover
his own incompetence - he actually used the hackneyed phrase "the customer
is always right" - and ended up losing the best webmaster he's ever likely
to come across. (That's me, in case you were wondering, so shut it!)

Now for the second salvo. It seems my prompting did the trick, coz as I was
doing an update which involved his site (more on that below), I discovered
it wasn't there anymore. Great news, says I, and dash off to see what he'd
put up in its place. Nothing. Nada. Just a nice white server page saying
there might be a site here one day. BANG! Perfect shot!

Did I chuckle, or what? :)
 
 

And re the Amazon thing, I think I've sussed it, at long last. I believe
that it is the use of the highlight pages used on numerous sites to
cross-link with others. My guess is that these have been interpreted as
link farms, and have been penalised accordingly.

And the really nice thing is that I found it when I was researching the
link structures used to get aforementioned CrazyGuy's site to the top of
the pops in the search engines (#1 in Sydney, #2 in Melbourne). I won't
know for sure whether I've fixed it until the hits jump back up again. This
past month has been a total disaster - [Deleted]

If I recall correctly, it was around last August that something similar
occurred, and once I fixed it the hits came back in a matter of days. If I
get so lucky again, I think rather than send CrazyGuy a writ, I'll send
roses. And maybe a get well soon card. :)

Cheers,

Russell.
 

Add a box of nutbars, Snickers perhaps ;)

J.
 

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