Internoc24, or : the crisis, and its resolution

As you might perhaps remember (from the very logs in question),

adlai gets DNS_PROBE_FINISHED_NXDOMAIN and http://isup.me/qntra.net says down

This set various processes in motion, including trying to establish what the fuck happened with an entire cluster ; then - as the support chicklets gaped in amazementⁱ - to establish where the fuck did the sole proprietor of a small hosting outfit end up ; and also to buy more capacity and you know, normal things the COO does. As fascinating as the Agent 007 narrative of "hey, seems the UStards stole a bunch of servers all across Eastern Europe this week" might be, we'll focus in this installment on that last item in the enumeration instead.

So, I ordered some servers with Internoc24ⁱⁱ, which touched off the following exchange :

Mircea Popescu // Client - 19/11/2015 14:37
This is your notification that you are in breach.

As per our contract, you are obligated to respond to tickets within 8 hours in all cases. Thicket #602520 - IPs/setup is now approaching 16 hours without a response.

Let me know immediately what measures you intend to take to remedy this breach / make me whole.

David Marik // Staff

Hello,

There's no breach of any contract because that a sales ticket. Not support ticket.

By the way, our management told me that the Ukraine server are not available as offered in the moment. If you tell me your requirements we can it other available Ukraine server or maybe an another location like Russia.

-------------------------------------------
Best Regards,
David Marik [Sales Management]
Internoc24 LLC
Company No. 5095819
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19/11/2015 14:42You rated this response: Poor

Mircea Popescu // Client - 19/11/2015 14:53
What are you talking about ? THIS is a sales ticket. THAT is a support ticket, "Department : Support #602520 - IPs/setup".

To make it perfectly clear :

A. If your idea is that sales answers in five minutes but support never answers I want a full refund.
B. If your idea is that you ignore everything unless someone bitches I will actually sue you in England Monday morning. Why do I have to find out here that you do not actually offer what you advertise ?

Russia is no good. What else you got, and make it snappy because the 4 day clock is running since yesterday.

David Marik // Staff

Hello, your services are in pending state, this means that also an additional support sla is not active in the moment.

Your request is sales releated, not support related.

Also there is no reason to speak with us what you do.

Some data centers in Ukraine had a raid this week and we dont receive the information in time to set the offers out of stock.

I told you the available options, if you say Russia is not a option, please let me know, which country can be an option or what technical requirements you have, like cpu, ram, hdd.

-------------------------------------------
Best Regards,
David Marik [Sales Management]
Internoc24 LLC
Company No. 5095819
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19/11/2015 15:00You rated this response : Poor

Mircea Popescu // Client - 19/11/2015 15:25
Apparently your management doesn't do any training for you so I'm stuck doing it myself. How nice is that! Thank them for me, will you.

Part A - where you learn how to actually do your job.

1. You go look in the order I put in, and note down what servers I ordered exactly. You don't ask me, you don't need to. Homework rules!
2. Then you go through the list of places that you have available, and find the closest BETTER configuration that you have in each of them. Better is defined as "equal or higher in all specified terms". Thus if my order says 20 MB, another server that has 16 MB is not better and doesn't make it ; another one that has 24 is better.
3. You show me this list so I pick something. And yes, this means I am paying the same ammount for (slightly) better specs. This is what "make whole" means, because no, your problems are not my problems. And you can perhaps notify your "management" that while outsourcing your problems on top of your training to your customers might seem attractive, it is simply stupid.

Part B - where you learn how to not fail your job.

1. Contracts are binding the moment a tender has been accepted. What these mysterious unknown words (that you are encouraged to look up!) mean is that once you put something on the Internet and I paid you for it, that is a contract. How this "feels" to you or whatever is of no interest. The correct view is enforced on a regular basis, and it will be enforced in this case if it comes to it.
2. You are not welcome to have an opinion on wheter there is or there is not "reason to speak with us what you do.". I will be the judge of that. Do your job well, I might not have to point out to you that you are doing your job miserably.

So now, are we going to get some work done here today or are we going to just lose a very lucrative contract because hey, business is too hard ?

At which point as you might expect the monkey finally takes the half minute to look at the bill, and kicks the matter upstairs. Therefore,

Dragan Slatjovic // Staff

Hello sir,

We have told you two availble options and what we can do. You are customer (and not the King of swaziland) and you dont know internal or Company releated information, to get the right view above these things. So please dont tell us, how we must do our Job. Also dont CLAIM any better configuration. We have the right to accept or decline any order (depending on availability and other important things). You discuss here with us is contra productiv and not helpfull for you and not for us.

So please be friendly and let us find a solution. If you not longer interested on any services from us, please let me know you bitcoin adress, we refund the payment within 7 working days.

(this is a exception, because all payment are final and we dont offer any gateway releated refunds, normaly we only refund to customers credit balance for future orders and invoices, thats only a Notice for you)

Thanks for understandig.

-------------------------------------------
Best Regards,
Dragan Slatjovic [Chief Executive Officer]
Internoc24 LLC
Company No. 5095819
-------------------------------------------
19/11/2015 15:40

Mircea Popescu // Client
I don't particularly care for the location - provided it's not Russia, China or a NATO / UK commonwealth member state . That leaves ~ 150 or so different countries, but obviously also takes out most of the common locations for hosting. If you happen to be able to deploy in any of them I'll be happy. If not - I understand, and will take the refund.

The servers I want are the servers I already selected, Intel Xeon X5450 - 20GB with 2x 1000 GB non-SDD HDD. If you don't have the exact ones, I'll want something as close as possible.

Let me tell you that while I understand your frustation - I also share it. You simply need better sales people, which will in the future save us both the aggravation.

All the best,
Mircea Popescu
20/11/2015 00:13

And it keeps improving from there, on which basis I estimate there's a 50-50 chance phuctor & all are going to have a new, more expensive but proportionately more accomodating home sometime next week. In any case Internoc24 does seem to live up to its good reputation to date, once one cuts through the barnacles.ⁱⁱⁱ

Congrats to the winners, which hopefully, my dear reader, is you.

1. To quote, for flavour :

   I am going to be getting this issue to Frank again first thing this morning, I'll ask him to look further into it, as everything is paid in full here, and it is saying active inside back panel, there is no reboot option there. I will have this seen 1st thing today for you.

   [↩]

2. An offshore hosting outfit run by the reasonably well known Slatjovic brothers. [↩]
3. This matter can not be emphasized enough : embarassing one's employer in the manner of David Marik is undoubtedly a hanging offense, no ifs or buts about it. Yet I have absolutely no confidence he is going to lose his job over this incident, nor any inclination to push for it.

   Well, why the hell not ?

   There's two prongs to this problem. One is briefly touched upon in the very logs in question : the evil of collective action. Just as in the case of "feminism", which readily reduces to "dumb women ruining the life of intelligent women", the problem with unions is that they promote the welfare of the flesh at the expense of the welfare of the spirit. So yes, to quote an ancient (if often disappeared) article,

   An immediate casualty were some hard-core traditional CS modules like complexity and compiler design. Why, argued students, elect to study some damned hard subject like compiler design, when you could study something cool like web design and get better marks? So these old hard core subjects began to drop off. Even worse, the School (following the logic of the market), having seen that these hard core subjects were not attracting a following, simply dropped them from the curriculum. So future students who were bright enough to study these areas would never get the chance to do so.

   The error of planners might be, if we're gracious (even if it most certainly is no error at all, but mere disinterest, irresponsibility, and fuck-you-all-I-am-going-to-Argentina-ism) that they failed to realise they were looking at a static image of a dynamic equilibrium, not at a situation carved in adamantine rock by the gods themselves. Yes, by all appearances the "esprit du corps" of professors and scholars at the end of WW2 (so in all practical terms - the pre-war image thereof) seemed strong enough to hold in check any efforts by students to organise the ruin of the entire life of the spirit as accessible to men of average means and below. Nevertheless, the desire, the drive and the proclivity of students to be lazy far, far, far exceeds the inclination of professors to make them do work, as the former is backed by one of the immutable principles of all existence, whereas the latter is backed by, in any serious analysis, nothing at all. It is mere fancy, a matter of personal taste, disposition and inclination.

   Thus obviously once the demon of sloth was given the tools to make itself heard, it readily reduced everything else to silence. As you might expect "nobody could have predicted" this, of course, except the people who are actually good at ruling over the lives of men - but we don't want to listen to those! They're mean, and also undemocratic, and if we don't want to listen to them that means we don't have to! Ha-HA!

   And so in this context, one (properly anonymous, for lack of any merit or value) sack of wasted flesh screaming

   "This is not about creating an intellectual space! Do you get that ? It’s about creating a home here!"

   at some unfortunate professor caught in the flood of dumb not only nicely bookends a decade of US "academic achievement" touched off by all the MIT students that couldn't power a lightbulb, but is also exactly to be expected. What did you think was going to come out of "involving students in their own education" ? Certainly not education, that's something else.

   All these worms, contemptible, subhuman worms that "made a home" in the university just like a worm would make a home in a book, they'll age out of school, eventually. All efforts of everyone involved, all "master's" programs conceivable, all the easy credit and miserable (but free!) housing imaginable won't keep them there forever. So what then ? What happens once they finally leave the alma mater ?

   Why, they're going to want to "make a home" in your company! What else ? This is what they do, and you didn't shoot them, so it means you must agree. You didn't exterminate them, which is the only signal vermin understands, and so therefore their presence must in your eyes be a good thing. That's it. They have needs, so why shouldn't they get paid ? Income divorced from the value of the work product, you say ? What is a "work product", the worm wishes to know ? Are you willing to pay it for the tunnels it makes ? Then sure, he'll pay you for the book he ate. And if not... hey, the word is SYRIZA, or something. Your problem, really - the worm is the worm and it'll go right on doing with what it does. This is what lower life form means, after all.

   The other prong to the problem is related to a point made in another article here on Trilema (Bitcoin is creating a whole new set of problems). To quote,

   This problem is currently - at least in my eyes - the largest issue plaguing Bitcoin. On one hand, its fascinating ease of use is possibly its greatest asset. On the other hand, kids' ease in disregarding reality and highly esteeming themselves may not be their greatest asset, but it is statistically and from a species point of view their only utility. Neither can reasonably be made to go away, neither can sanely be dispensed of, and yet their contact creates a huge problem.

   The tragedy here is not merely that kids wish to strut, as the male mechanism of learning, but the world is too dangerous for them to apply this and so they either get killed in large numbers or else get divorced from reality (for their protection). No, the problem is - you'll never guess, I wager - but the problem is the absence of time.

   You see, maturation in 2000 BC involved throwing rocks and spears at moving objects, and running. Maybe some basic "crack a rock and attach it to a stick" industry, and a vague idea of when to laugh. By 1000 AD, it involved a lot of disparate various bits of knowledge. Cutting hay is a fine example, as it has a gotcha - the trick is not to approach it in force, but to use mommentum. This has to be learned, and it takes about a half summer, for the average boy. A half summer on top of whatever it took him to throw rocks at moving objects and run. But by 2015, if the traditional method were to be employed systematically (and it would work, too!) the age of maturity would by a safe margin exceed life expectancy, and for most people tend towards infinity.

   To make matters worse, it takes anyone not mentally retarded (this term means something, by the way - and what it means is that the traditional method always works, but it takes some time ; for some more than others) a coupla years and a stead supply of rocks to learn how to throw rocks at moving objects, but how long does it take them without any rocks ? What do you do when there aren't any teachers around available to teach you all the things you wouldn't discover on your own this side of Creation ? What if the rocks weren't there to learn how to throw 'em, what if the elders weren't there to laugh at your attempts to bruteforce haycutting, and explain and demonstrate the correct approach ?

   There isn't enough time, there are no rocks and the flesh worms are overabundant already. There are no solutions to this situation that can be deployed by the manager, which is why I don't push for David to be fired nor will Dragan fire him. We might privately welcome the carnage already, to reintroduce rocks and other valuables into the table of accessible resources just as it culls the overabundance of perambulating flesh sacks, but other than that, there isn't terribly much we can presently do. [↩]