Monday, March 14, 2005
Unresponsive Software Company of the Day: Torrid Technologies
This is a little-known fact, since this is a little-known blog, but when Blank of the Day was in its nascent stages, it was just called "Of the Day." My calculation was that a blog title that began with a preposition would BREAK THE "BLOGOSPHERE" WIDE OPEN. Those gramatically rebellious dreams would not come to pass, however, thanks to Torrid Technologies, makers of the potentially virus-laden software pictured at left.
Prior to my hope being crushed, I pointed Safari to "http://oftheday.com/" to check things out. If you click on this link, you'll see what I saw: zippo. Surprisingly, the domain looked ripe for the taking, and a couple WHOIS lookups later, I was getting in touch with Tim Turner of Torrid Technologies (those names aren't made up).
Tim, my soon-to-be-nemesis, was listed as the administrative contact for oftheday.com, but his e-mail address began with "sales," so I figured he was just a huckster moonlighting as a webmaster. (I'd spell out his address, but not even malcontents like Tim deserve spam.) Maybe Tim picked up the domain on a lark and never got around to doing anything with it, or perhaps Torrid Tech had once planned an "Of the Day" software package. Whatever. They'd owned the domain for two years, it was about to expire, and it would be mine.
I typed up a friendly "Hi there!" e-mail explaining my intent to revolutionize the Internet media landscape, and I included a nominal offer of $50 for the transfer of the domain to my name. After sleeping on it, I sweetened the offer to $125 -- a 150 percent increase -- and clicked "send."
To give you an idea of how much $125 is, a nicely equipped Honda Civic costs about $16,000. But Tim left that 1/128 of a reliable Japanese passenger car twisting in the wind. He never replied to my e-mail.
Before I proceed, let me just mention that everything I write three paragraphs down is quite false.
Two days later, still awaiting the eager acceptance of my offer, I checked the WHOIS again and was hit by Tim's quiet but effective "Fuck You." Upon receiving my note, Tim had renewed oftheday.com. He now owned it until March 2006.
You can find out more about Torrid Technologies' products by Googling their name. But with any luck, someday the following paragraph will pop up in that Google search for "Torrid Technologies" as well. And thanks to Google's terse page summaries, my little disclaimer above won't make the cut for the results page.
See, folks, I tried Torrid Technologies' software, and I lost my shirt. BEWARE! I entered my financial data into Torrid Technologies Retirement Savings Planner 2005, and a bug in the software put my bank account information and Social Security Number on the Internet where anybody (HACKERS) could see it. Those goddamn HACKERS, thanks to Torrid Technologies Retirement Savings Planner 2005, cleaned out my savings, my stocks, AND my IRA. Now those HACKERS are living it up in Venezuela, and I'm penniless, and my family shuns me, even at Christmas. My life was ruined by Torrid Technologies Retirement Savings Planner 2005!
Congratulations to Torrid Technologies. You are the Unresponsive Software Company of the Day.
P.S. Truth be told, things did work out pretty well domain-wise. I didn't expect to get blankoftheday.com either -- especially since I'm not the first person to have this idea.
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