So, customer calls in saying she just upgraded from dialup to cable modem, and wants to know if she can have her dialup balance credited to her new cable modem megapackage. She had been on an annual prepaid account, something like $125 for a year of service. Technically, since it was a prepaid contractual amount, the answer should be “no”. The idea being, you get the awesome price break because you’re buying a year of dialup service, regardless of whether you use it or even want it after a few months.

However, in this case, I make a command decision and decide to grant her the credit. I note my reasoning in the account notes:

• 1- This is not a refund, this is money we already have in our possession. We lose nothing.
• 2- $125 was a year of dialup service, but only amounted to slightly over two months’ worth of cable. Less when you factor in that she now used us for phone and TV too. It would take no time at all for her services to exceed the credit we’d given her.
• 3- 2 months’ worth of credit was an extremely common amount to credit someone for an issue such as a missed technician appointment or extended repair. If we could do it for one of our own screwups, we could do it for a customer who woke up one morning and decided to give us more money.
• 4- This woman had switched from our most profitable dialup plan to our most profitable TV/Net/Phone plan. She was a customer very much worth keeping happy.

Despite my extensive notes and (I thought) impeccable reasoning, of course some QA peckerhead rescinded the credit and told me to call the customer back, saying it was “unjustified.” I promptly deleted the e-mail. I couldn’t stop them from canceling the credit, but I’ll be damned if I’m going to call back a good customer and say I was wrong for helping them out.

It looks like Malawi is one country we're going to have to cross of our "to visit" list...

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-12363852

Albany is calling itself "Tech Valley" for some reason

I suppose that the new AMD chipfab plant is part of that reason (If it ever opens).

Perhaps the 20,000 new jobs that GE created (in India) might be another reason

A quick check of the techvalley webpage says "Tech Valley offers rewarding career and business prospects, world-class educational and research facilities and a fantastic quality of life"

Hmm, that doesn't explain why either

Ah well, I guess it's irrelevant as to WHY it's techvalley, we'll just have to assume that some politician, at some point, declared it so

So we're in the middle of Tech Valley, and to prove it, TheBoss has beefed up his sales pitchmanship to say nifty things like "Solving Small Business Problems With Technology"

Which, ya gotta admit, sounds pretty cool without actually saying anything. Which, I guess, is the point of a good sales slogan

So he's giving yet another of his pep talk/practice sales pitches to us while I'm busy trying not to fall asleep, until he said something that, for some strange reason, caught my attention.

He said "I can now do anything I need to in this building with the touch of a single button. Anything, anything at all." To which I promptly responded with the proper amount of disbelief, as well as a few well timed *blinks*

"Anything ?" I asked

"Anything at all. Pick something for me to do" he said

My mind raced. Surely I could come up with something that would stump my least favorite member of MENSA...

I thought about it...

I thought some more...

There must be something that would force this man to toss his newest idea into the trash can so that I could get back to whatever it was I was doing before he so rudely interrupted me. And to be quite honest, I'd been listening to him babble for so long that I had forgotten what it was that I was doing in the first place

Wait !

That was it !

The trash can !

"Can you empty your trash can with the push of a single button ?" I asked proudly, secure in the knowledge that there was no button in the world that he could have installed without my knowledge that also had the hardware required to accomplish so complicated a task :)

I waited for the frown that I knew for sure was coming which meant that I had beaten him at yet another one of his own games, which he never actually told me the rules to

Instead, he smiled, and held up his index finger as if he were pointing to the sky

I looked up at the ceiling, afraid for a moment that he had somehow managed to install a button that allowed him to talk to a ghost

No ghost came. Instead, he flexed his index finger, then sort of waggled it in a fashion that was rather bothersome to me. Then his hand, finger first, went up into the air parabolicly, and descended faster and faster until it landed smack dab on his intercom button, causing it to quickly beep, and he said...

"Hey parts guy, come over here and empty my trash can"

[sigh]

Soooooooooo... The iPad I was forced to purchase late last year for our Sales Department, against my better judgment, has a copy of our company's slideshow presentation on it. Now, we ran into some compatibility issues since I created it in OpenOffice, but for the most part, it worked. The one thing they could not get it to do was play the slideshow in a continuous loop.

So one of my more Apple-literate users decided to take it home with him and convert it to a QuickTime movie, and he brought it in today. I go to copy it over to the iPad. Except, the iPad wouldn't let me, because...














Wait for it....














Waaaiiiiiit for it.......














It was not in a format recognized by the iPad.

Did I mention it was in QuickTime format??? It was in QuickTime. Fucking QuickTime. A VIDEO FORMAT INVENTED BY FUCKING APPLE. A FUCKING VIDEO FUCKING FORMAT FUCKING INVENTED BY FUCKING APPLE.

WHAT

THE

FUCKING

FUCK???????

Have I mentioned that I hate, loathe, and despise the iPad? I just want to be clear on the subject.

Dear Apple:
Go fuck yourselves.
Love,
Riff