Keep up !

Welcome to life Scawen

Hoping the Scirocco as soon as you can...

Curiousity: How much time did you take to write this post? I took 15 minutes reading it

I must agree to what RIP2004 said basically.

I am too not demanding anything from the devs, not whining at all (as usual) but, ISP problems or not, it's that slight taste of disappointment that remains...

just had to get that off my chest...

i have stuff in oxes from 4 years ago i never opened :S
oh, and crap happens...

Quote :

on the one side, people cry out for more communication from the devs, and on the other hand when they actually do use that opportunity to shoot them down...

Save for the didascalic irony in the story about broadband issues, I can hardly see anything amusing in this thread. Nothing really new has been posted so far, more or less the same things and situations resurfacing from the Postponement announce thread.

Then we faced, and today still are facing, a very typical case of mis-communication. This time it's because Scawen has implicitly set some expectations (i.e. that he would be back working after the holidays) despite he already knew he was going to be away from LFS for some more time.

And it's typical in that it could be avoided altogether with very little effort, i.e. just by saying, I might stop working LFS for more than just the christmas holidays, rather than just now I'm going to enjoy my holidays full stop.

Really, there's no point in arguing forever that Scawen can do whatever he wants, he has no legal obligation bla bla bla - FWIW he could even post 'F-word you all! I'm not going to talk to you until S3' or stop working altogether on LFS, and yet we couldn't complain on a strict factual/legal/whatever basis.

But looking at the big picture I fail to see how both the community and the development team can benefit from the onset of situations like this one. From one perspective it is certainly a very minor issue, but as it happens minor things tend to pile up in huge stacks until they turn into big issues.

Then it's easy to see how this apparent carelessness, when put in a certain context, could be interpreted by some as a sign of a slow, painful death of LFS.

ScaViEr should really be able to work the way they feel like, AND at the same time provide just a minimum amount of clear information so that faithful users are not needlessly disappointed.

Quote from NightShift :

Save for the didascalic irony in the story about broadband issues, I can hardly see anything amusing in this thread. Nothing really new has been posted so far, more or less the same things and situations resurfacing from the Postponement announce thread.

Then we faced, and today still are facing, a very typical case of mis-communication. This time it's because Scawen has implicitly set some expectations (i.e. that he would be back working after the holidays) despite he already knew he was going to be away from LFS for some more time.

And it's typical in that it could be avoided altogether with very little effort, i.e. just by saying, I might stop working LFS for more than just the christmas holidays, rather than just now I'm going to enjoy my holidays full stop.

Really, there's no point in arguing forever that Scawen can do whatever he wants, he has no legal obligation bla bla bla - FWIW he could even post 'F-word you all! I'm not going to talk to you until S3' or stop working altogether on LFS, and yet we couldn't complain on a strict factual/legal/whatever basis.

But looking at the big picture I fail to see how both the community and the development team can benefit from the onset of situations like this one. From one perspective it is certainly a very minor issue, but as it happens minor things tend to pile up in huge stacks until they turn into big issues.

Then it's easy to see how this apparent carelessness, when put in a certain context, could be interpreted by some as a sign of a slow, painful death of LFS.

ScaViEr should really be able to work the way they feel like, AND at the same time provide just a minimum amount of clear information so that faithful users are not needlessly disappointed.

You are very right, my father win money to live being a self-employed and Scawen win it with LFS development... my father can't work when he wants, because he loses clients (so he's losing money, because the clients stop buying his products), and Scawen it's in the same situation... if he doesn't work, he won't be 'kicked' of his work, but he will lose buyers, exactly as my father...

Congrats on the new house Scawen. Last time I moved was 12 years ago and I still remember the pain it was. I eventually got over it and I'm ready to move again someday

Quote from NightShift :

:talktohan

Nothing you said hasn't really been said before - And anything new won't be read by the people that nag, whine and moan, so why bother?

can we all lift your block of stress off ov Victor, Scawen, and Eric? i can, not sure about you guys..

Quote from jjones :

WERE IS THE PATCH AND NO EXCUSES

he just gave one


Specsavers Ftw.

Quote from Scawen :

getting that Scirocco sorted out and continuing with other things we will be releasing this year.

MmmMmmm , Other things <3

^you made me happy

Quote from Scawen :

Dear LFS Community members,

I have not been able to easily browse the forum recently (you'll see why below) and Victor has let me know that there has been some unease in the community due to my absence.

The reason why is because of something I did not tell you before, and that is that Geraldine and I have moved house. Our old house was too small to work in now that we have a small child and a baby. One downstairs room was used as my office and the other was used for everything else - sitting room, play room and dining room of sorts. At this stage we really needed to have a dining table instead of sitting at a coffee table in the living room, so it was time to move. Actually that has been the case for a long time but finally we found the house we wanted, so we decided to take the opportunity and make the move. We managed to get in just before Christmas with a minimal amount of stuff so that was very nice for us and it's really great to have some space instead of being 4 people and two cats crammed into such a small house.

That's all good news so far... and we are very happy in our new home, but sorting it out has taken longer than expected, as with many things, including LFS development, there are a lot of unforeseen issues that take a lot of time to sort out.

Anyway, to get to the point, I expected to be back on LFS full time in mid-January, but I'd say now it would be mid-February before I can be totally on the case again. The main reason for that is the actual reality of packing and moving and changing addresses and finding places for things and hanging things on walls etc, etc... as anyone who has moved house will know.

I'd also like to relay to you another problem that has taken up some of my time and definitely kept me off the forums to some extent, and that is the incompetence of BT and Virgin media, who have let me down in their attempts, or lack of attempts, to provide me with a broadband service.

I feel it is fair to mention how both of these companies have let me down quite significantly. Originally, in mid-December, I ordered phone + broadband from BT. What I actually got was just the phone line. Something looked wrong as things were not happening as BT had said they would, but customer services informed me that everything was 100% OK with my order. They only believed that something was wrong when my activation date had passed and I had no equipment and no broadband activation. Unbelievably they also lost all record that I had orginally ordered broadband at all! So, after half a day of phone calls to various BT customer service centres, I finally realised that I had really vanished from their system.

Naturally I turned to another ISP at this point, and why not Virgin Media who had served me very well with a cable service in Twickenham? I made my order which would be activated in 7 to 10 days. Amazingly, once again, I was served with a wall of silence. None of the promised emails, text messages and letters informing me of the progress. Even more amazingly, when phoning customer services a few times, I was informed that my order was proceeding as planned. Total disregard for the fact that I told them I was not receiving any of the progress reports and the order tracker was reporting a fault. Anyway, once the activation date had passed, Virgin Media finally admitted there was a problem, and it had supposedly been due to someone entering my old address with my new phone number. I was told the only way forward was to order again and wait at the back of the queue for 7 to 10 days again. Well... guess what I'm going to tell you now... it failed again! Once again, this second Virgin order "errored" at an early stage, once again I got no emails and texts and letters, once again customer services reported that they were 100% certain that the order was progressing as planned. And once again, it was when my activation date had passed that they finally agreed there was a problem. And only now could someone actually report what the problem was...

Now for the technical bit - there is something called a "tag line" that Virgin (or any other ISP) can use to connect a phone to an ADSL service. But "BT Wholesale" (who have a monopoly on phone lines except in cabled areas) had only got the first part of my post code down in the tag line. Of course Virgin were trying to connect using my whole post code. Anyway, yesterday I spent 6 hours phoning around. As Virgin were referring me to BT to sort out this "BT" problem. Only problem is, it's not possible for a customer to phone BT Wholesale. You cannot get the phone number and if you could, they would not talk to you anyway unless you are an ISP. Virgin kept referring me back to "BT Retail" but that was ridiculous, BT Retail informed me they are just another ISP like Virgin, and could not sort out the problem of another ISP! Back and forth I went, each company telling me that the other was the one to sort it out. Finally I had to contact the regulating authority, Ofcom. Ofcom quickly contacted Virgin Media head office and they got in touch with me quickly, to their credit. But even then I was informed that I had to contact BT Retail! It's quite incredible that Virgin Media don't believe that they can actually contact BT Wholesale to sort out a problem. Anyway within an hour the postcode problem, that had been discovered about 6 hours earlier, was finally resolved, when Virgin decided to "take a chance" and contact BT Wholesale. But to make this happen I actually had to tell them that I had two small children who have no curtains because I've been unable to do the necessary internet research, and have delayed using alternative methods to find curtains, etc, because I have been continually told that I would have internet within a few days.

Quite an unbelievable story I guess you will agree. I thought I should relay that to you - it's my duty to British people to report what I have gone through trying to get a connection. What bothers me is not that there was a technical problem or a typo. It's just quite sickening that they could keep saying to me that everything was fine, instead of admitting there was an issue and actually finding out what that problem was. Unfortunately I still have no connection, but now the root problem is apparently solved, it should be possible to get connected. I need to get on the phone again on Monday to see what is the way forward, and if I need to re-order again and wait another 7 to 10 days, or if they can do something more quickly. One thing to note is that my neighbours have broadband - I would not have moved into a house where broadband was not available! So don't worry, there is no possibility that I will not be able to get a connection eventually.

Anyway, that has affected my browsing and kept me away from the forums, but actually it has not been the main reason why I have not continued my side of LFS development so far this year. Even with dial-up I would be able to upload test patches for the community or get the Scirocco finished with the beta testers. I've just been sorting things out and there aren't all that many boxes lying around any more, my office is basically set up and waiting for the connection. There's still a bit more to do here before I get right back into LFS full time work, but as I said, I expect to be on the case in two weeks or so, getting that Scirocco sorted out and continuing with other things we will be releasing this year.

Thank you for your patience!

Scawen

Verizon did the same thing to us. Sent us back and forth. To DSL saying oh no a Fios techinician will help you. Then Fios says back to DSL. Then fianlly after 1 week. They worked together and fixed it for us! Verizon doesn't communicate very well for a communications company.

Also congratulations on the new house! I hate/kinda love moving houses. I hate it becaue You have to unpack everything. I love it because its fun to explore more things in the house.

I have been a customer of virgin media since 2004...

The Internet Service itself is good, fast and little maintenance outages, but i agree the customer service is diabolical

The last 3 or so months they've been trying to overcharge me on my bills, sending me out wireless routers and adapter cards i did not ask for and trying to charge me for them... they've sent me 1 router and 1 wireless card so far and tried to charge me £40 a time for each of them,

Quote from master_lfs.5101 :

Verizon did the same thing to us. Sent us back and forth. To DSL saying oh no a Fios techinician will help you. Then Fios says back to DSL. Then fianlly after 1 week. They worked together and fixed it for us! Verizon doesn't communicate very well for a communications company.

Also congratulations on the new house! I hate/kinda love moving houses. I hate it becaue You have to unpack everything. I love it because its fun to explore more things in the house.

verizon is hard to talk to... thats why they suck.

Virgin media. "We treat every order like It's our first time."

Sorry to hear Scawen. good luck getting everything sorted out.

Quote from Becky Rose :

The whole point of doing LFS was to give Scawen the flexibility in his life to work as he wanted. I dont see the issue, I dont see why he even felt sufficiently pressured to post an excuse tbh.

Quote from Scawen :

Thank you, yes. To add to what you say, I worked as an employee from approx age 19 (pizza delivery) to about 30 (at Lionhead). Then I took the risk of leaving a good job and setting up my own business (with Eric and then Victor) and lived very frugally for a couple of years until we could sell S1 licenses!

The reward now is that we can take our time to get things sorted out in our life, and work as we wish, when the inspiration takes us. The result... LFS....

Employed people do most probably have to go to work even when their house is still full of boxes, or at other times when they should really have a few days at home. There are some advantages in being self employed!

I haven't been around here long at all. A little over a year. I spent most of the time on the forums observing until recently. What I have observed by the actions of the LFS project team confirms the bold statements or words above are big part of the reason why LFS is such a success. It is obvious that your expectations of quality for LFS are higher then most of the people that have purchased it. This is the only way in which a great product is produced. You don't to answer to a boss or company that has invested money and is tapping their foot waiting on a return. This is the freedom to be great and you have already paid the price to get there. I can tell you simply love what you do and when the time is right you do it with whole heart....and I'm sure some head banging on the keyboard. But that comes with the territory.

All I have to offer is my thanks for taking the path you have chosen for LFS and promise to support your teams efforts financially as services or products are released. After I discovered LFS was a project backed by only 3 people my admiration for what LFS is was put to a new level of appreciation.

My only question for you is:

How do you find the guts to put it all out on the line and work for yourself? That is such a hard choice to make.

Thank You for your time and this amazing product. Please don't ever give in to the pressure. You have earned the privilege to operate in the way you see fit.

Jay Odom

Quote from Scawen :

I decided the ISP story might be of some interest to British residents...

Absolutely, my ISP continually mess me around just the same. If i phone them with a problem i have to speak to an Indian in India who can barely speak english & furthermore can do nothing to help. It takes 3 phone calls just to speak to tech support!

I think we should all march on BT head office with pitch forks & flaming torches. (or at least get watch dog onto these pathetic excuses for service providers)

Congrats on the new house Scawen, good too se you alive

Quote from Scawen :

incompetence of [...] Virgin media

Haven't I ranted about VM on these forums already Get Be's service if you can. Quality and quantity! Good to hear everything else was getting sorted. Btw, how long did you live in the old house after completing the renovation (of which you've posted pictures)?

Quote from master_lfs.5101 :

Verizon did the same thing to us. Sent us back and forth. To DSL saying oh no a Fios techinician will help you. Then Fios says back to DSL. Then fianlly after 1 week. They worked together and fixed it for us! Verizon doesn't communicate very well for a communications company.

Also congratulations on the new house! I hate/kinda love moving houses. I hate it becaue You have to unpack everything. I love it because its fun to explore more things in the house.

Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh why did you quote the entire post. :doh:

ISP's are terrible though.

All the guy said was he is moving house and his internet broke, and this thread is 5 pages long

Fan Boys FTW!

Quote from S14 DRIFT :

so why bother?

Everything has been said, everything has been done... and apparently that thought didn't stop you from posting 5k times

Ok seriously now - as long as the same problematic situations pop up, there's a chance for pointing out the underlying issue in a moderate way. The moment I'm not interested in LFS anymore, I'll stop bothering.

lol scewen, BT ar'nt that bad.

When i moved house my dad phoned up BT and asked for the broadband+didi box deal.

They came in about 2 days and set it all up at no extra charge. we had no problems what soever.

Quote from NightShift :

Everything has been said, everything has been done... and apparently that thought didn't stop you from posting 5k times

Ok seriously now - as long as the same problematic situations pop up, there's a chance for pointing out the underlying issue in a moderate way. The moment I'm not interested in LFS anymore, I'll stop bothering.

It's just that no matter how logical or factful we are, no-one really listens, the "idiots" will keep on acting as such.