I'm blessed - I'm paid to devote my life to Stardock and working to help it keep it turning out more products and skins that is humanly possible for the number of staff. Well, I'm paid for a working day - lets just call the rest love and blame timezones.
However, sometime skinning just annoys the hell out of me. I tend to restrict myself almost exclusively to working with DesktopX on the grounds that I don't have time for anything else. I've been lucky to be involved with the product since before it was even known as DesktopX so although I am far from a great scripter I am able to turn out a fair amount of reasonable quality stuff.
Now some people appreciate this. I wish I'd kept a list of all the kind emails and comments so that I could look at it on a bad day. I've had great fun working on collaborations, and again, I do get paid for most of this stuff.
HOWEVER, some people really do seem to thing you owe them everything. Now, I'm more than happy to deal with support emails relating to the objects I've made and spend time everyday doing so, but some comments and emails just piss me off. There are three types of thing that typically annoy me:
1) "Assistance" - Sometimes people just don't get stuff and need clarity on how to do something. This accounts for many emails ... "Hi, thanks for the object XXXXX, but I'm a little unsure how to ...". Cool, I can deal with this, but I get all to many that are just "How do I XXXXX?". No "Hi", no "please", no "thankyou" and typically no effort to actually achieve what is confusing them. Why the hell should I reply politely to these people? I don't know, but I do.
2) "Suggestions" - A lot of my work is better because of suggestions. I welcome them because I don't always think of everyting straight away, and sometimes other users need things I hadn't considered. Some people however seem to think "It should do this" or "It should do that" are "suggestions. These suggestions don't get implemented.
3) Complaints - Sometimes there are issues with objects and widgets. Sometimes it's my fault, sometimes not. A lot of mails and comments are helpful or descriptive in the way they are made and enable me to rectify problems. Others however tend to say "The font is wrong". Wrong how? Size, place, script etc etc. How the hell am I supposed to do anything to help these people? Sometimes it's a lack of awareness that I need more info, but sometimes you just know that they are just stupid!
... oh, and I just thought of number 4
4) Stupidity - Some people take the time and effort to comment or mail something along the lines of "this object sucks!". Well don't use it and don't waste my time you f*#kwit !!!
Sorry ... rant over."
