November '2000 -- Really ought to learn not to open my mouth before reading what I've written. Below there is a statement saying that I thought there was to be no major (i.e. v3.0) version of Merchant released before the next-gen v4.0 release of the language. Duh. Later on I read back over the San Diego stuff and saw my own report of the cool new features we could expect from Merchant v3.0 in Q4 of this year. Double-duh. Quite obviously, they are right on schedule as they had announced last Summer. Now, where's that Q4 beta release of the compiler?

October-November '2000 -- Discovered that Empresa NT under stress can be very stressful. Gremlins which stay hidden under *nix suddenly rear their fanged heads when you turn up the volume under NT; and promptly bite you in the ass. Calling to the umpires in Atlantis is met with silence. Asking for a W2K compatible version is met with silence. Asking a hosting client if its OK to have their web server die thirty times a day is also met with a similar silence; but only a temporary one before you hear the door slamming behind them. Nothing like an unstable DLL to warm the hearts of those who consider trying to make a living from it! Guess the point is to learn from the masters: when a customer complains of a major, show-stopping fault in a script platform -- ignore them. Maybe they'll just go away.

October '2000 -- The Bestest Grand Wizard of the Miva Universe anoints the webmister with a formalization of nuisance factor. No one mentioned the major catch-22 which bascially mandates you to purchase your own sample/demo code. Oddly, Miva Partners are required to support Miva code -- but you are not permitted access to the code unless you buy it yourself or send a 4-digit check to San Diego. Guess that caveats like that are better kept hidden until after you pay your dues, eh? Nothing warms a developers heart like being required to support programs that you are not permitted access too unless you pay for someone's ticket to Munich.

Miva Merchant v3.0 (my code name "Sweet Dimples") is said to be in beta and soon to be released -- then in a few weeks it suddenly is not even in beta anymore. If its not out soon MM3 will surely miss the infamous holiday ecom window. Who's dumb enough to move to a new release in the middle of the busiest sales season of the year? Only a masochist would be so dumb. Which means the formal MMG position is to wait until December 7th to implement the new version. That ought to be sufficiently painful to carry to the new year, and it seems an apropos date to implement such a wide-sweeping new feature set. Plus it will provide the rationalization to delay the release of the new v4.0 series of the language. You can hear the echoes now: "The v4.0 series of the Miva Script has been delayed to accommodate the development schedule of Miva Merchant v3.0." We mistakenly thought the announcement at the conference was that Merchant would see no major revisions before the "next gen" release, which was to happen in "early 2001". Maybe 2001 will be a spaced odyssey after all.

Let's hope that Miva does not pull a Microsoft and just include features that other, third-party developers thought of first. Then again, at least Microsoft pays the developers who create new feature sets for them. Surely Miva Corp would not simply include features that were first borne from the sweat and toil of their registered developers; and claim them to be new "look what we thought of!" features. If the biggest bells-n-whistles of a new application version are actually purloined ideas from hard-working aftermarket developers, there's not a lot of motivation remaining for those developers, eh?

September '2000 -- Somewhere around this month they release the first "localized" version of Miva Merchant. Apparently the German explosion of ecommerce far transcend's that of Canada and all Spanish-speaking peoples of the world. The German version of Merchant adds another 1,000 or so lines of code to parse with each and every operation; no matter what the nationality of the server is. If this trend continues, a full international version of Merchant (the only one available for release, of course) will bloat with another 10,000 lines of foreign language code. Let's see, over 3,000 web hosts in the USA and maybe 100 in Germany. Yup, that's sure worth doubling the code size for! You can just imagine what the size will be when they add the Japaneese version (which seems a hell of a lot larger marketplace than Germany). Maybe Merchant will come with sub-titles.

Summer-Fall '2000 -- Very odd summer-fall. Ranting lunatics with VD roam the lists insulting any who venture in their path. The first ever Miva Developers Conference brings a gaggle of the finest Miva developers in the world to sunny San Diego (how about Vegas next time guys?) where they are forced to wear presentable clothes for the first time in months. Thieving lamer scumbags purloin published Merchant modules and try to sell them as their own; and think that no one noticed. Miva promises Partner licenses for the old timers than never materialize (no major surprise there). An unstable Miva employee goes postal on the MMG site webmister and accuses him of blasphemy, then goes on to try and form an anti-MMG partnership with a Miva developer. About as successful as Pat Bucannan in the presidential election with an equal share of credibility. And about as well liked by the general population.

March '2000 -- Decided that Miva is going to get fun again. Whoring on the mailing lists is getting to be an art form. Adrenalin-filled security issues lurk in the shadows, self-important list nazis are pillaging the countryside, innocent Persian cats are being sacrificed inside computer cases as some sort of bizarre Miva Script debugging tool. If you only just lurk the lists, now's the time to post to the list. March is send-a-rant-to-the list month! 

February '2000 -- Miva updated their web site. If you haven't snooped the source of those pages you are missing some incredibly tasty code. Sad to find no code credits for such talented work. 

January '2000 -- Merchant update version 2.01 is released in December; but Miva Corp forgot to tell anyone until January.  Strange, but apropos.

November '99 -- New Merchant version is released. Evals begin...

August 25 '99 -- Very disturbing signs on the Miva support front.  Change logs are actually posted on their web site. Books are being written (produced by a most excellent publisher, if you do not own Poor Richard's Web Site you are a deprived soul). Scripts that haven't worked in 2 years have suddenly come out of long-dormant loops to spew forth global variables set eons ago. The dawn is rising, birds are chirping, dogs are noisily making love in public places, kids are returning to school, and a Canadian gentleman lost during a Molson party some 10,000 years ago has risen to the top of a glacier. And he's real thirsty, eh?

If Miva Corp keeps this up, it's going to grow harder to find stuff to rant about. Shucks. Maybe I'll have to move to insulting their heritage, past loves, and lack of any sense of humor.

August 23 '99 -- My first (and only, so far) reaction from a Miva employee about this site. They say:

"Interesting site. Looks like you have been very busy."

Which is usually the most polite thing to say when you come across one of those "worst of the month" sites. Or when you hit a newbie's site filled with blinking text and flashing animation. Or you're pro-choice and hit a pro-lifer's site (or visa versa). Or maybe what Bill Clinton would say about Kenneth Star's site; minus the Monica.

August 21 '99 -- Now there's a new Miva support policy. whoopee (fart). Now we'll have to listen to even more complaints on the mailing lists from folks saying they are not properly supported -- even though they never paid a goddamn dime to Miva Corp. in the first place.  On the upside, Miva seems to have suddenly realized that Miva Script developers have some value in life. What a revelation! Methinks this is a precursor to their dumping the really bad newbie requests to a select list of masochists. 

Here's the new "pay-per-view" Miva Tech Support (MTS) workflow:

1. AOL newbie calls Miva support to ask how to turn on their computer.
2. MTS tells newbie that is will cost $25.00 to answer their question.
3. Newbie gives them a CC number which is immediately charged (with online approval, of course) for an MTS call.
4. Once MTS has the $$ in hand, they explain to the newbie that Miva is very simple to learn and that lots of support is available.
5. Newbie asks again how to turn on their computer.
6. MTS explains that this problem outside of their boundaries, but they have a list of most excellent developers on the Miva web site (link unknown, of course) who will be able to help.
7. Newbie thinks they have crossed the Rubicon and says 'Gee thanks!' and hangs up.
8. About an hour later newbie realizes they can't get the developer's list because their computer is still not turned on, so they MvGO to #1.

On top of this, we will probably have a new cadre of Official Miva Develerpers (kinda like 'Venders') who will inundate the mailing lists with repetitive "We offer a module that can do that" messages. And to qualify for entry onto this prestigious developers' list you must first know how to turn on your computer. Oh, you'll also probably have to know some secret link on their web site (like Jeff's Merchant Support pages) which will auto-reg you as a developer on the first page load. Oh yeah, the other qualifier will be that you will have to pay them $125.00 annual dues; but you will get one free 5-minute tech support call each year! Billed from time of connection, average hold time only 6-hours for pre-paid accounts, and a mere 72-hours hold time without pre-pay.

August '99 -- Once again the great MC 'disses me most dramatically (public sniveling exhibit subject Re: [meu] File upload and global time out on the mm-coders list). Well FYT. 

To the tune of the chorus of "Sound of Music"

The hills are alive with the sound of Cold Fusion
With none of the pain from Miva Corp . . .

<MvEXPLETIVES DELETED>

<MvCOMMET>
         A lawsuit prohibits inclusion of the actual text of the original parody. Apparently you are not allowed to mention Cold Fusion without your site being served by a $52,295 Proliant SQL server running on a Tiger cluster behind a Checkpoint firewall, hosted by AT&T's SpaceLab platform (which orbiting Uranus at the moment). 
</MvCOMMET>

August '99 -- Realized that even though these pages have been complete for some time now, they had never been published. Wow. Maybe that explains the low hit rate. But my Miva Counter script had said I've been getting 32,387,475,298.099930 hits a day for seven years now! Golly geez, there must be something wrong with this internet thing, 'cause we all know that there are no timing problems in the Empresa engine, right?