May 26, 2014
MarkBernstein.org
 

How I Live Now

One customer, a notable writer, was vexed with us. The writer wanted a hypertext, and she wanted it now. It’s a CD; mail takes two days to get from Boston to New York.

I was going to share the email with you without disclosing the writer’s identity, but as I recall the copyright of letters — even a letter like this — remains with the sender. So I’ll just give you some of the noun phrases:

To: orders@eastgate.com
…goddamn book … goddamn thing … fucking thing … you certainly aren't doing ___ any goddamn favors … I need a motherfucking key,… $25 for a fucking book that I should've just torrented … the fucking mail?…what the hell you're doing …. Consider this the last promotion you get from me. Jesus H. Christ. Furious furious furious plus I hate you right now,

I wish I could say this was unprecedented.

I wish I could say that, after years and years of toolsmithing and publishing for the hypertext community, this doesn’t bother me any more.

Damn.

At least I’ve got a three day weekend coming up, so that means three days of mostly uninterrupted testing and debugging for Tinderbox Six.