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So it's Friday ... not the day that I usually write this column ... and that somehow makes it feel strange to be sitting down with my cup of coffee and writing this but there is an upside to it too.

I suppose in a way the fact that I'm doing this today is a clear indication that peace and tranquillity ... or what passes for that around here ... have returned to my life. That's actually a very good thing because for the last few days this place ... and home ... have been a madhouse.

DNS changes that didn't happen ... ISP's caches that wouldn't update ... a countrywide outage by the three biggest Internet service providers ... appointments that got changed when they weren't supposed to ... a client that decided he'd really stir up a storm ... and so many other things I've lost track of them all.

But now if I'm here writing this with a cup of coffee in front of me then almost everything is right with the world.

Actually all those dramas taught me a few lessons ... lessons I hope that I'll never forget.

Cry me a river
The first is that if anyone comes crying to me in the future saying that they've been ripped off by some other nasty designers and they really need my help to get their sites online I should immediately call my partner who will pick them up by the scruff of their scrawny necks and throw them out of the office.

I am so over trying to help people who are so beg for help and then bite you when you offer them the aid they want. If they're silly enough to get ripped off by a deal that seemed too good to be true then I don't want to know them and I should definitely not feel sorry for them ... Darwin's theory is alive and well and in future I'm not going to do anything to interrupt its valuable work.

And there's a good lesson there for anyone in this business ... if someone you know gets ripped off and burns all their money ... don't try and help them recover from the setback. Few will appreciate the help and most will just want to suck you dry and then move on to the next sucker.

It's always your fault
If you're a content provider ... or a service provider ... and something goes wrong with the content or service you've provided just accept the fact that it's your fault that there's been a problem.

It doesn't matter if you provided the content or a script 12 months ago and it's been working for the buyer ever since then. It doesn't matter if you're a service provider and the problem was caused by someone further upstream ... or even downstream ... it's always your fault.

People don't renew their domain names and their domain expires and so it's my fault. Yesterday the biggest ISP in the country was caught up in a routing problem and all their customers lost their connection to the Net and a guy we built a website for several years ago rang to complain because he couldn't access the Web ... he was sure that it was my fault.

If you're a provider of any sort to other parts of the online industry you just have to accept the fact that many of you customers are always going to blame you when something goes wrong. It's a given ... it's an immutable law of nature ... so why fight it, just deal with it.

Yes dear
But how do you respond to people like that ... how do you stop from blowing a fuse and kicking the cat?

There have been moments in the past where I might have launched into a rant session when confronted by someone claiming that it was my fault something had happened. Usually Steve was on the receiving end and I often wondered why he remained so calm during those rants ... and why he didn't bite back ... and then I realised what he was doing.

At the first sign of a rant coming on Steve would find something to do that kept him occupied while I went on with my rant. At appropriate times he would indicate that he really was listening to what I was saying by simply saying "yes dear" and leaving me to carry on while he let the storm go right over his head.

It was always said in a neutral tone ... it wasn't inflammatory in any way ... it showed he was listening ... it just kept the heat off him.

And that's the way you deal with those who want to blame you for everything that goes wrong in their day. You don't quite ignore them but you certainly don't let them distract you from your work and you don't let them get under your skin.

Just deflect their rants and life will soon return to normal.