"ha ha, wasn't that amusing and harmless and mostly in good taste and not all psychologically damaging under various and sundry aspects of contemporary tort law, please don't sue us"

*beep*

"Thank you for calling CableISP, for what reason are you disrupting my lunch?

"I can't access my newsgroups."

Wow. It's very rare I get a usenet call. A glimmer of hope grows. Perhaps I have someone on the phone who has a clue? I start troubleshooting, checking his connectivity for e-mail and the web. All good there. It's definately only affecting usenet. We check his reader's settings, all are fine there. So, process of elimination makes me suspect it is a firewall issue. "Sir, please temporarily disable your firewall and try again to connect."

"I will NOT disable my firewall. That would expose my computer to any number of viruses."

Hmmm... +3 points for knowing enough to secure your system properly, -10 for arguing with the tech. You still lose. No matter, I have another trick up my sleeve. "Okay, then, please reboot your computer.

"Why?

Oooohhhh... wrong response. This is the last 'nice' answer you get. Because that is the next step in the troubleshooting process.

"That is a standard response."

"That is correct, sir, now please let me know when Windows had reloaded."

"What will rebooting my computer accomplish?"

"At this time, the most likely source of your problem is a misconfigured firewall. The easiest way to troubleshoot that is for you to shut down your firewall and then attempt the connection again. As you refused to do that, another less ideal option is to reboot the computer and return it to a known state. This can reset minor software glitches."

"WELL! I have been working with computers for TWELVE years, and I know that 'reboot your computer'... is a STANDARD RESPONSE."

"Yes, sir, and for good reason. Please let me know when Windows has reloaded."

"I am not going to reboot my computer. I simply do not have time for that. The problem is not my firewall, it's on your end, and I want you to file a report. You are just giving me a standard response."

"Sir, if I sumbit a ticket to the system administrator, I will need to list the troubleshooting steps taken and the results of said steps. As you have refused to follow any of my suggestions, this ticket would be closed without further action."

"Well, I'll umm...reboot later." The customer then hung up. Oddly enough, no further issues were listed on the account for quite some time. It would seem his problem did indeed disappear... possibly after he rebooted?

Yesterday (4/1/06) my wife gets a call from my mom.

Mom: Where are you guys?
Wife: Why?
Mom: We're at the airport waiting to be picked up!
Wife: ???? (oh crap!)

As of this weekend, I, Halfstarfish, am no longer an AOL member and als have cable internet access. I am VERY happy. :D

My recent epistle regarding how to lose your data in several easy steps reminded me of an incident that occurred whilst I was onsite with that customer – a booking and entertainment agency. The story is totally non-tech, therefore all tech-stories-only purists may move on to the next tale, safe in the knowledge that there’s nothing to see here.

Right, now that they’ve gone…

I was working away on one of their systems, with their boss looking anxiously over my shoulder, when we became aware of one of their telephone booking clerks starting to raise her voice slightly during what was obviously a tricky phone conversation with a prospective customer. Seeing the boss looking at her, she muted the call and explained that the customer was interested in tickets for the final of the forthcoming snooker championship. The competition wasn’t even due to commence for about 3 months but was expected to be hotly contested, therefore tickets to the final were much sought-after and correspondingly bloody expensive. The customer (who shall henceforth be referred to as Dickhead) was trying everything he could to drive the price down.

“This sounds like fun,” quoth the boss, “put him on speaker and carry on.” We all settled down to have a good laugh while the clerk struggled with Dickhead…..

DH: “I’m the social secretary of a very large club – you should give me a discount as I’m a regular purchaser of tickets!”
Clerk: (having already checked the records) “I’m sorry sir, we have no record of you booking with us before.”
DH: “I’m buying a block booking, you should give me a quantity discount!”
Clerk: “How many in the block sir?”
DH: (long pause) “Two.”
Clerk: (mute, splutter, giggle, unmute) “I’m sorry sir, our block booking rates start at ten seats.”
DH: “I’m a personal friend of your Managing Director, if you don’t give me a discount I’ll see to it that you’re in deep trouble!”
Clerk: (seeing the headshake and suppressed laughter from the boss) “The Managing Director is right here sir, and he says he’s never heard of you.”
DH: “Well, maybe I’m not interested in buying your overpriced snooker final tickets anymore."…(wait for it)…"Who’s going to be in it, anyway?”

That was it. The boss lost it, I lost it, the rest of the office (all of which had by now stopped to listen) lost it. And lo, there burst forth from the assembled multitude a communal guffaw of such might that the windows did shake and the firmament (whatever that is) did tremble, and much hilarity and tumult did ensue.

The clerk’s hand shot out for the Mute button with the speed of a striking cobra, and she looked appealingly round at the boss, who was by this time wiping tears from his eyes with a tissue. With a shaking hand he reached over her shoulder, punched the Release button and headed for his office, still crying with laughter.

Sadly, Dickhead never rang back…..

Today's story starts off a normal Monday at Dead Database Towers, i.e. half the servers are down and most of the users have forgotten their passwords. Coffee time...

So off goes CD to make herself coffee, over to the hot water dispenser which has two settings: "Hot enough to make tea" and "will burn your fucking hand off". Naturally she chooses the first option, not being a moron...

So, imagine the positive glee when the water shoots out at rather higher pressure than usual AND on the "will burn your fucking hand off" setting. Right over part of her hand, resulting in a nice 10 minutes running the hand under the cold tap. Ouch.

Maintaining a professional attitude, CD heads off to do the first call of the day - training several managers on laptop data management. To wit I think she deserves a round of applause for maintaining a professional attitude, doing the training course, answering questions.....

ALL WITH HER HAND STUCK IN A GLASS OF COLD WATER.

Ow.....

So to pay it forward, is there anybody in the Cleveland area of the programmerish persuasion looking for work? The posting will be going up today, I'll send the link to anyone who wants to take a look.

Whiteboard me if interested.

Even MS hates this bloody thing! (No, I didn't doctor the image.)
http://img486.imageshack.us/img486/8991/noclippy8lz.gif