Geek

“I’m not doing that”, the irate voice said on the phone.

“I’m not doing that either”, she continued.

“Nope.”

It’s always a joy trying to walk a customer through a problem that they are having with their e-mail. Especially when said customer is using an old residential dial-up account to send out mass quantities of e-mail to distribution lists holding hundreds of e-mail addresses.

Here’s the thing. When your computer is screwed up and you call the Technical Assistance Center and then get herded up to “Level II”, I am your god. I know what I am doing and I am going to do everything I can to make sure that your life on the electronic fast lane is a pleasant one. I’ll even help you troubleshoot Outlook Express or Outlook, which isn’t even really my responsibility, but I’m a nice guy.

Most of the time.

Once in a great while we’ll have a customer call in ranting and raving and carrying on like someone set their ugly sweater on fire and then they’ll refuse to do anything that you ask them to do so that you can try to figure out what the hell is wrong with their computer.

“I need you to change…”, I start.

“Nope.”

When did it become socially acceptable to be an utter jackass on the phone? The woman that I was speaking with insisted she knew what the problem was. But she didn’t. She was way off base. She didn’t believe me when I told her that she had typos in her distribution list. She didn’t believe me when I told her Outlook was misconfigured. But she knew what the problem was. So I barked at her.

“Well then YOU fix it!”

Um, that’s probably not the right route to take. I put her on hold and did laps around the cubicles for three minutes. I was hoping she hung up. No, she’s too clever for that. So she listened to an endless loop of really bad marketing messages. I gave her another 60 seconds of advertising bliss before I took her off hold.

“I’ll escalate the trouble to another group and someone will be in touch with you.”

There is no other group. We’re it.

Welcome to the place you never want to go to when you’re in search of technical support.

She has been placed in “The Queue”.

Maybe I’ll call her back someday.

My mother just returned from visiting my sister, brother-in-law and nephew in Helsinki, Finland. The first thing she had to tell me was that in Helsinki they have Carrols.

While kids today eat McDonalds food with their Happy Meal et al as a treat, back in my day we went to Carrols, a New York State based fast food chain that converted all of their locations to Burger King in the late 1970s. I vividly remember Carrols, with their orange and white light globes over the counter and the generous use of the orange and white colour scheme.

I’m very glad to see that Carrols is still alive and well. Now we have yet another reason to go to Helsinki.

Here’s some information in case you want to geek out with me. Here is a personal lost blog entry from 2001.

One of my goals for 2009 is to be a little more patient with customers that are experiencing computer problems, especially when they think the broke the internet or the cat peed on their keyboard. (Both true support calls I have dealt with in the past six months, by the way).

My patience was tested today a little bit and my conversation with a customer caught my supervisor’s attention a few times when I used phrases such as “I don’t know what you mean by that” and “I’m sorry, but error messages usually give a little more detail than ‘the mail didn’t go'”. She called herself jeckel, she was apparently trying to download television shows over a dial-up connection and she wass wondering why her computer was so slow. After explaining to her that she couldn’t download video over her dial-up connection she decided that instead her e-mail was clogged. I assured her that there were no tubes involved with e-mail and Draino wasn’t going to help the situation. Everyone loves a funny tech! Turns out she was trying to send a video to her friend via e-mail and it wouldn’t send (because said file was huge and it would have taken her at least 24 hours to send it.) After walking her through various steps (“click start, yes that’s the green button down in the corner that says start”) I asked her to reconnect to the internet but only if she was on her cell phone as the call would get disconnected otherwise:

“Does that mean I need to go deep?”

“I don’t know what you mean by that…”

“… and I don’t think I want to know.”

“OH! I click th…. [and insert dead phone here]”

Thank God. She never called back. I hope she went deep.

Here’s a picture of Mean Daddy Tech:

Earl and I have spent most of the day busying ourselves about the house and enjoying a low-key New Year’s Day. Chores are done, things are in place to make the second day of 2009 just as enjoyable as the first, even though that includes a regular day of work for me. It’s a good thing I enjoy my job.

One activity that has consumed a bit of my day is playing around with Facebook. It’s more addictive than watching “I Love Lucy” or “Absolutely Fabulous” clips on YouTube! As I type various names of people from my past and present into the search function thingee there, I discover more people from my past and end up trying to make a friend link with them. How many friends will I have come morning? Only time will tell.

I could never get into MySpace because I always felt that I had descended into the two-digit IQ land of adult Fisher Price with that site, but Facebook, whilst basically the same concept, has a more refined feel to it.

Now, you can’t see what I just did, but I just stopped typing a blog entry for just a moment, did a search of another name on Facebook and found this person’s profile. It’s like waving at Tucson right from my keyboard!

I’m going to have to go to bed sooner or later. Right now, the search continues.

A certain bear I know just started blogging again.

I decided to goof around with Photo Booth during my lunch hour. I guess I was feeling feisty.

It is no secret that my favorite television show of all-time is the classic comedy “Bewitched”. I found this fan made clip on YouTube and thought I would share it. It contains several rare clips that Sony inexplicably won’t include on the DVD releases.

I just spent 10 minutes of my lunch hour watching every spin Lynda Carter did as Diana Prince/Wonder Woman from the second season of her show.

The sound geek in me realised there are MANY variations of the music. Some are recorded, some were played live. I also prefer the slightly translucent balls of light.

If you want to get dizzy with me, have a look.

Microsoft debuted “Phase 2” of their new ad campaign tonight.

I’ve never been a fan of Apple’s “I’m A Mac, I’m A PC” commercials, simply because as a person that used to write ad copy for a living I’ve always felt that a company does best when they accentuate their positives rather than focusing on their competition’s negatives. When I worked in radio, we just behaved as if we were the only station on the dial. Well, most of the time.

Mac fanboys (and girls) have such a reputation for being obnoxiously smug and overbearingly trendy. I don’t identify with the greasy “Mac” in Apple’s commercials so I’ve always felt kind of alienated. Don’t get me wrong, I like my Macs, a lot, but I’m not about to start sipping coffee I don’t like in a fake turtleneck shirt. Ironically, I felt much more comfortable with the folks in this latest ad from Microsoft¹.

Anyways, I have to applaud Microsoft on this latest ad. I think they might be on to something.

This ad is called “I’m A PC”.

¹ Hmmm, I do have that unused copy of Windows Vista Ultimate sitting on my desk.

I’m getting ready to hit the road again for a bit. I hope to ride 90 minutes before supper.

Proper clothing is always required for the serious cyclist.