I think I've figured the secret to Coyote's posts, why they are funnier than anyone else's. It's because of the boobies.
No, not because of Coyote's boobies! ... or at least I hope is not because of his. 0_o No, it's because in all his posts, boobies always make an appearance at some time. And of course, we all laugh at boobies. ... which is rather freaky. But I digress.
So, from now on, I will be using his technique. Watch my posts; see if you spot the boobies!

For anyone with bad memory, this is a sequel of my previous posts; found here: http://www.techcomedy.com/single/new_stories.php?content_number=69385 and here: http://www.techcomedy.com/single/new_stories.php?content_number=69384

The voice was familiar from the beginning of the call. How couldn't it? We have spoken only once before, but it was an hours long call, and of the kind that can scar you for life.
As soon as I recognize the caller, I took my brain off and threw it out the window onto the street; where it would be stamped on, ran over, left to dry in the sun, and eventually devoured by hungry sewer rats. The expressions of deepest gratitude from my poor brain was reward enough.

Yes, it was my old friend Tinfoilhat Linuxer. He was still after his Ubuntu system, that would protect it from the spying methods of the evil US government. Apparently, he had been "carefully studying about Ubuntu requirements", and now he had specific things he wanted for his to-be-built PC.

- "Let's start with the processor. I will need a Four Seven Eight." - The numbers were spoken with capital authority, indicating they were the precise definition of the processor itself.
- "You mean, a socket 478 Intel processor?"
- "That's correct. Ubuntu will work best with it."
- "Well, actually, Ubuntu will work with any reasonable processor; not necessarily a socket 478. I've tried it with older Pentium III, as well as modern Dual Core and even AMD processors. That shouldn't be a concern with a fairly recent processor."
- "Yes, I understand what you say," - he said in a tone that clearly indicated he didn't. -"But the Ubuntu forums recommend I should use a Four Seven Eight."
- "Well, that could be a little difficult. Socket 478 are a previous generation of Intel processors, they are not ready available anymore. We might have to try a special order and it would be costly and lengthly."

That seemed to put him down a little. He sounded disappointed, and moved to the next item.

- "Let's leave the processor at the moment. Let's talk about the motherboard. I will need a motherboard that can have an Nvidia video card."
That much I couldn't argue. All Linux forums recommend Nvidia as your video choice; so I guessed he was right.
-" That's no problem sir. There are several Nvidia cards available for you."
- "But I need a motherboard that has only an Nvidia video card."
- "You mean, a motherboard with an Nvidia chipset?"
- "No, no! Let me explain." - he said with the tone you all know. As if I was the retarded one. - "Ubuntu will only work with an Nvidia card; so the motherboard can not have other card but an Nvidia."
Something in my head went "click". I thought at first that the gun I had to my temple had misfired, but then I realized I knew what he meant.
- "You want a motherboard that doesn't have integrated video, so we can put an Nvidia card then?"
- "Correct!" - he exclaimed like a teacher would to a slow student who finally got it. - "Ubuntu needs to have an Nvidia card. It's very important."
- "That's no problem sir. We can put an Nvidia in any motherboard we chose."
- "No, that's the problem. It's very difficult to configure another video card with Ubuntu. That's why the motherboard can only have an Nvidia."
At this point I was already in the process of committing Sepuku, but since stabbing yourself with sharp objects is not very effective on ghosts, I had to keep going.
- "But that's not a problem. When we put the add-on video card in the motherboard, the integrated one is disabled."
He left out a sight seeming to loose his patience at this. Go figure.
- "I have been reading very carefully the Ubuntu forums." - Yes, he was actually trying to explain it to me! - "There is no program to configure other video cards in Ubuntu; ONLY Nvidia. You CAN'T disable the integrated video cards with Ubuntu, so you must have only ONE Nvidia card!."
Fine. I give up. F*ck Ubuntu and its forums and the idiots that believe that Ubuntu is for them!
- "Ok sir. I'll see what I can do with the motherboard. What else do you need?"
- "Good, now about memory. I want DDR."
- "Well, we can use DDR2 as it's what all modern motherboards have."
- "No, it MUST be DDR. You see, Ubuntu..."

AAAAAARRRRRGGGGGJHHHH!!!!!111ONE!

This went on - again - for a couple of hours. He was convinced that Ubuntu can only work with very specific hardware, or else. He went as far as to request a specific mouse, because "Ubuntu doesn't work with any mouse". At least he didn't ask for a keyboard comprised entirely of the letter "U".
And in the end, somehow I ended up quoting him a pretty common unit; something I could assembly with what I had at hand. Don't ask me how that happened, I know for sure that I didn't convince him of anything, and yet he eventually agreed with a common system.

And the story is not finished. He did show up a few days later to actually purchase his Ubuntu Dream Machine. Hilarity was present at the event. So, this story is to be continued.

Oh, and I almost forgot: boobies.

Well, I had my rant last week and took the advice given of raising the discontent with my immediate boss (during a smoke break, best time to collar them) and received the following comments:

"Do you want to assign any of your calls to anyone else?" - hell yes, I want to give them back to the ba$tards that assigned them to me in the first place! Do your fscking job, you're on the same pay scale as me!

"Do you need to rearrange priorities for any of the outstanding projects you have?" - again, a vehement "hell yes!" was issued and the rule now is if you ain't screaming yet it's obviously not important. If you are screaming, I have an excuse to ignore you as another project automatically gets higher priority (basically, the one who asked nicely gets the results). Next!

"Your call figures aren't important, the results are" - I had to check my ears at this point, I thought they weren't working. I get ALL 2nd line calls on $webapp as official 2nd line have never touched it, don't know how it works and muggins here is the only one in regular contact with the dev team regarding $webapp - who are less than forthcoming with the information I need but that's also understood and I no longer get crap over it.

"I realise that when you don't meet an SLA there's always a good reason for it" - Fsck yes! Finally! The only reason I tend to get the call is because it's so screwed no one else has a clue (frequently nor do I but I'm prepared to tinker a wee bit to try and find out).

"I realise that you update the documentation when you find out about a problem and amend it when you can" - no more accusations of holding back information, it's now understood that I can't change the information the instant it happens. It may take a day or few, dependent on what else I have on the go.

The end result? I get to prioritise my own work, don't get any more grief about call averages or SLAs, no aggro about documentation and the list of callers/requesters (victims) on the sarcasm list is expanding daily.

Thanks to all for the suggestions made and any karma or hugs donated. I now just have to carry on this bit until the pay review!

All excess karma ready for delivery via orbital karma cannon, just give me the co-ordinates and I'll deliver!

OK, it may be that I come across as a cynical, sarcastic, ba$tard. Well, I am. I've practiced and earned the title.

However, being accosted by a 15lb ginger tom cat in search of fuss is definitely a way to lose all concerns. When fuss is demanded, he gets it or draws blood to make a point.

Suffice to say, I've been well and truly riled on occasionally and would even say that I may be a little excessive sometimes.

Just please don't let on that having my cat at work may be a way to avoid me abusing the customers/starfish. It'd ruin the image!

After being accosted by said feline I feel a hell of a lot calmer than normal!

I try to be tolorant, but this one realy taxed my patience today. Might be partly some nonwork related problems putting me in a mood, might partly be other things, not for me to say. Regardless, this call got irritating to me on numerious levels.

1) Admin asistant calling for their boss for a computer problem. Never liked it, dont think I ever will. I would rather deal directly with the person/computer that has the problem rather than going through proxy. Since they knew next to nothing about the problem they transfered me to their boss.

2) The person they transfered me to, their boss, the one who was having problems, was irritated to say the least. Problem was outlook wasnt working, kept getting errors. Ok, fine, just dont take your computer problems out on me.

3)Guy was just not following instructions, partly due to his flustration. Shouldnt take 10 min to do what should take 2-3. I meen, if your going to call for help, follow the instructions given, dont act like a ferret with ADHD hopped up on speed and crack.

4) Dont hand the troubleshooting to someone else in the middle of troubleshooting, especialy someone that doesnt understand english. I dont have a problem with people wanting to learn english, but know the difference between 'Do you see any little lights?' and 'Do you see anything white?'

****HEADSLAM****

As a comedian says 'Theres yer problem'

And I dont meen the router.

Who knew a two-and-a-half-year forever could sneak up on me so quickly?

Unfortunately I don;t have the collection of well-wishes back from when we first lost Fujin - yes, I kept ALL of them because I was intending to tank every single one of you personally... and never got the chance.

So... to every one of you that sent a note, a white board, a message of support, or compassion, or encouragement, or "Sweet Geebus! What do you say?!", or even a kind something-or-other regarding a post comment.....

To every last one of you who've helped me get through the last two-and-a-half years....

....thank you.

data transfer from Win3.1 and legacy Windows 1 system to another computer.Install OS2 software onto computer provided

When we last left our protagonist,

(Paranthetical Aside: I refrain from using the word "hero," since my cape is currently at the dry cleaners. Moving on...)

he had been left hanging, literally, by Embarq communications, who had resurrected a dead connection due to a severed line by running a drop from his NID across the yard and driveway to his neighbor's NID.

(Paranthetical Aside: This same neighbor, as some of you might remember, is the same bozo who damn near got beaten to a pulp by our protagonist over his dogs barking all night. So one can only imagine that he is even less pleased by this development than yours truly. Moving on again...)

This marvel of modern engineering was accomplished after 4 days without service, and two rather hostile phone calls to Embarq Customer Service.

Fast forward to last night, almost two weeks after said "repair," when our protagonist and his lovely sidekick were relaxing on their couch with their laptops, as they are frequently wont to do. Suddenly, a shot rang out, and a pirate ship appeared on the horizon!

(Paranthetical Aside: I do apologize for that non sequitor, but sometimes my mind wanders off on a creative tangent. Moving on...)

Suddenly, out of nowehre, websites begin pulling up at a crawl reserved for turtles, snails, and dial-up connections. A not-so-quick bandwidth test reveals a connection speed of 24 kbps. This just won't do. Our protagonist, still a bit off-temper due to the phone cord running across his driveway, rolls up his sleeves and procedes to spend 30 minutes troubleshooting his own network, culminating in a third and final speed test from a computer hooked directly into the modem, bypassing the router, and all other devices in the house unplugged from the phone lines. 14 kbps.

Our rather perturbed protagonist places a call to Embarq HSI Technical Support, only to receive a recording that the wait time was 33 minutes. Grumbling with discontent, he spends 10 minutes pulling up Embarq's online chat support utility, and waits another 12 minutes in that queue. Finally, a tech support specialist makes his appearance.

The first response from the tech is, "Are you using the phone cable that we sent you with the modem?"

(Paranthetical Aside: We all know how irritating it is to receive a call from someone who claims to no what he or she is doing, and that no changes have been made to their system, and our protagonist really tries to be a good, polite end user when he talks to tech support. But dammit, sometimes lines have to be drawn. Moving on...)

Our protagonist makes it clear that he has no idea if he's using the original phone cable that came with the modem, but it's a standard 2-pair cable that has been working without fail since installation, and that once again, no changes were made to the network. The speed suddenly just dropped. Next question from the tech: "How long is the cable?"

Now, had our protagonist called in and said, "Hi there. I just put in a new phone cable from my modem to the wall jack, and now I can't connect to the Internet," perhaps continuing to focus on that phone cable would be a legitimate line of troubleshooting. Add to this the fact that at 14 kbps, the chat utility lags terribly, leading to further frustration. Perhaps it was fate that our weary protagonist lost his connection to the tech.

Having exhausted his supply of patience and anti-homicidal-mania medication, our protagonist and his sidekick decide to simply go to bed and pursue alternate forms of entertainment.

This morning, the connection speed had somehow automagically returned to normal, confirming our protagonist's hypothesis that the problem most likely did not lie with his own network.

Bastards.

Tune in for our next episode, when our protagonist calls Embarq Customer Service to inquire as to the effects of heavy snowfall on the temporary cable still draped across his driveway.