Wednesday, April 8, 2009

Introduction To A Kerfuffle.

I mentioned yesterday that I've been taking part in a little bit of a pissing contest elsewhere on the internet. Since I doubt any of you follow me slavishly around the net making sure that you're up to date on all of my doings, I thought I'd give you some idea what it's all about. On, second thought, I think I would like to know why you're not all SLAVISHLY FOLLOWING ME AROUND THE NET MAKING SURE YOU'RE UP TO DATE ON ALL OF MY DOINGS! What's up with that anyway. I demand that you pay closer attention. Consider yourselves chastised.

Anyway, a couple of weeks ago, The Anonymous Production Assistant responded to someone who emailed him the question Is PA Bootcamp Worth It? (Hey, that's another thing. Why doesn't anyone email questions to me and give me easy ideas for my blog? Nooooooo! I've gotta be thinking all the time to fill this space with all of the lame shit I come up with.) Since I'm generally a loudmouth, I commented right away. The fact that I had to go back two minutes later and correct a typo is ample evidence that I fired off my response in my usual thoughtful blurting manner.

----------Postus Interruptus ------Postus Interruptus-----

I started writing this this morning and right about the spot above this line, I got a call from my brother telling me we had a tee time booked, so I had to break off things, hop in the shower and then drive down to St. Augustine. I'm now back from a beautiful day on the golf course. The walking and the wildlife on the course (a bunch of blue herons and egrets), and the beautiful day were enough for me. And that's a good thing because my golf game really, really, really, really, really, really sucked. That last sentence could actually use another few "really-s". Really! How bad was I? The highpoint of my game was when my brother informed me he'd just gotten a phone call and we'd have to leave after the 15th hole because he had to go euthanize a dog. (He's a veterinarian, so that's nowhere near as horrifying as it sounds.)

I also spoke to GF this morning to see how her day was going. She's in the middle of filming an action sequence out in NY Harbor with a veritable flotilla. She mentioned that she'd noticed there were no portable toilets on one of the barges that was serving as an equipment platform. After some investigation, she discovered that the port-o-lets had in fact been delivered, but had blown off in the meantime. (New toilets were delivered and the ones that had walked the plank were fished out at low tide.)

So anyway, it's now 6:30 p.m. and I'm back at my hotel and I'll try to finish this post before I have to get dressed and leave to go to another brother's house for the first Seder.

--------Postus Re-engagemous ----------Postus Re-engagemous---------

So back to our story.

I don't think my comment made any definitive value judgment on PA Bootcamp, but expressed a lack of confidence based on the fact that there was only one person on their entire website who used both a first and last name...and that was one of their testimonials. The rest of their testimonials were by first name only. No names at all of any of their owners, management or staff. No names of any instructors...past present or future. (They have since changed the testimonials page to include full names of people endorsing them...I'll take that as a point in my favor and I'll accept their thanks for improving their marketing effort at my suggestion.)

On Monday, I started getting emails from them...which had a return email address of "pabootcampstaff", and, once again no attributing it to any particular person. There have now been 4 back and forth emails between them and me (the last of which is signed by a staffer, thank you very much). Tomorrow, I'm going to share the contents of those emails. The first three are fairly lame and the last one, (the signed one), actually seems to be trying to moderate the tone of the "discussion". Even the last one, however, still seems to be attributing to me comments that were made by other people.

In John Scalzi's tradition of Grading Hatemail, I just feel the need to point out how much utter FAIL there was in PA Bootcamp's attempt to set me straight and I'll do so in detail tomorrow. Once again, I don't really know enough about PA Bootcamp to recommend them or warn people away from them. All I know is what they've put out there about themselves, and I'll stick by my original statement that their mere anonymity (partially rectified now) didn't instill great confidence.

In the meantime, The Anonymous Production Assistant posted a followup yesterday and today's post is entertaining and relevant in a tangential fashion. Go read all of that and then you'll be up to speed enough for me to post a more detailed post-mortem tomorrow.

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P.S. Just so you know, the radio stations here suck. There are lots of Evangelical stations, a bunch of Country stations (many of them indistinguishable from the first category), a few Classic Rock stations and the usual assortment of Rap stations. I don't think I've listened to anything recorded after 1975 since I got here. Feh!

Have a happy Passover and I'll talk to you more tomorrow.

5 comments:

vince said...

And a Happy passover to you, too. I went and read all the stuff, and agree about the over reaction.

One thing about testimonials. Many people who give testimonials are uncomfortable with giving enough information that could allow others to track them down and feed the spam via phone, snail mail, email, whatever. If it is important to have the location as part of the testimonial (and there are times it is), I recommend to client that after they get the approval from the person, that they use the first name and last initial, followed by the location. Then note on the testimonial page that the full testimonials are on file.

neurondoc said...

Happy Passover. Did you drink all your wine? We used grape juice, heretical, I know...

Tom said...

Hey, wait! Your teaser post about the bare fact that you were in a kerfuffle (ker-fluffle?) draws 10 comments (well, 9, not counting your post about the next post being posted), but the actual kerfuffle post only gets 2 (well, 3, if you count this post bitching about the number of post the kerfuffle post got)? What's up with that?

We, the loyal UCF members, need to loyally provide loyal support to our Fearless Leader (oh, no, that is R&B, or actually B&N, sorry), uh, Floridic, uh, Fabulous Leader (yeah, that's the one)! When he points out people who are WRONG on the Internet, we UCFers need to mass around him and, with the full might of our combined blogs, make sure the WRONGees know just how wrong they are! This, after all, is our charter, our raison d'etre, our entire purpose in life. Have we used up our righteous indignation and disdain upon HWWNBN and his Mensa cronies, or do we still have enough to do battle with random perpetrators of WRONGNESS???

UCF Powers, ACTIVATE! (no, Shawn, not you)

Nathan said...

Well Tom, strictly speaking, we've only brushed the surface of the kerfuffle (as it applies to me). You haven't even gotten a chance to read inane, passive-aggressive emails yet.

Stay tuned!

Anonymous said...

This is sooo boring. Can't you go back to what were your more entertaining posts? Kerfuffle.. dead horse, got it... moving on!