February 3, 2006

Itsy Bitsy Spider

Okay, so I know I said I was gonna talk about the perv-y Sunday school teacher, but I got distracted by telling this story at work yesterday.

I have been afraid of fire for most of my life. One of the very few fears I have, it became a full-blown phobia over the course of my childhood for a myriad of reasons, all of them surrounding my dad's intense fascination with fire as a cure-all for most every home improvement project.

For example, when I was about 3 or 4, and we were either living in New Mexico or Oklahoma, we had a slight tarantula problem. As in they were all over the backyard. Big-ass, fist sized spiders, all furry and fangy and they utterly terrified my mother.

So, one evening, my father decides that he has the perfect solution to the problem.

He digs small holes in the backyard, pours gasoline in them, and as the tarantulas wander down into the little pits, he sets the whole mess on fire. It was early evening, dusk, stars beginning to shine in the sky (so it must have been New Mexico) and you can see the backyard beginning to move on its own. First one corner of the yard, then another ... slowly creeping around, more irregular than the wind whispering through the grass ... largely because we didn't have any grass, just a lot of dirt. Then a small echoing whoomp, and a blue glow quickly turning orange and yellow.

Welcome to the new house, kid ... and by the way, beware the flaming tarantulas of doom wandering around the backyard.

Posted by Red Monkey at 5:01 AM | Comments (8) | Never Underestimate the Power of Human Stupidity | TrackBack | Stumble

February 2, 2006

College Stories

As I was talking with someone the other night, I realized that while my college years were pretty atypical, I did get some interesting stories out of them ... just not the kinds of stories that a lot of other people got out of their college years.

First up, the perv stories.

When I first moved out of the house at 19, I took a job at a little sandwich shop in Texas known as Dino's Subs. We made 26 different sandwiches, and the first step to getting a job there was to memorize what meat/cheese combo came on the sandwich. If you couldn't get at least close to having the whole menu memorized in a day or two after getting the ingredients sheet, forget working there.

Evidently lots of pervs haunt sub shops.

The first dude was truly the creepiest one of all. "Jared" was about 300-350 pounds, sweaty -- no matter how high we had the airconditioning cranked -- and of course, he smelled as well. He usually said very little as he went through the line ... just ordered his Big D (the number 11), told us what he wanted on it, paid and that was the extent of it. Except, he usually waved Bill over to come talk to him before he left.

One day, before "Jared" had left the shop, Bill talks to him, then comes back to me with this worried look and pulls me into the back room.

"He'd like to help you get through school."

"What?"

"Don't do it. But he said he'll buy you a house and pay for everything." Bill turned a bit green.

"What's the catch? He's gotta know I'm not gonna sleep with him, right?"

Bill nodded. "He knows."

"So what's the catch?"

Bill practically whispered this: "Video cameras."

I can't even begin to describe how badly this creeped me out ... and partly because Bill who could be a bit of a perv himself, was utterly creeped out by it. Turns out "Jared" had been coming in for some months and every time he came in, he tried to get Bill to pitch this idea to me. For months, Bill had thought "Jared" was kidding with him, but evidently the last couple of trips, he'd managed to convince Bill that he was dead serious and in the process really freaked Bill out. I always got the feeling that Bill had only told me the bare bones of the story and there was probably more to it than he'd given me. But, just looking back out into the dining room and shaking my head at Jared was enough to get him to stop bugging Bill about me ... and he never did directly speak to me about his offer. Something about that made it even creepier.

I don't even wanna know what videos this guy surely made of "unsuspecting" young things.

The second perv was an American Airlines pilot who tried to impress me with all of the wonderful places he'd flown. He was more of a straighforward perv who promised to whisk me away to Paris for the weekend and still get me back to Arlington in time for my Monday morning class. Umm, no.

Oh, but Paris is so romantic ... it's beautiful ... I'll wine and dine you ... take you to the Eiffel Tower.

Umm, no.

Germany, then.

Umm, no.

But Linda's ears perked up then, her being from Dusseldorf and all ... I gladly passed off that perv to her. She, on the other hand, had a blast chatting him up about Germany and flying and beer.

Tame by college standards, I know. I have no tales of wild parties or crazy affairs ... just the oddballs that seemed to follow me no matter where I went.

Tomorrow ... the creepy Sunday school teacher ....

Until then ... what odd people did you meet in college ... or what odd propositions did you hear?

Posted by Red Monkey at 4:56 AM | Comments (3) | Never Underestimate the Power of Human Stupidity | TrackBack | Stumble

January 26, 2006

Schoolyard Bullies

NOTE: Please make sure to read the update at the bottom of this post!!

Despite being an early adopter of the internet – I got a VAX account in college and played on MUDdog, learned PINE for email – I was rather late getting into blogging. I've seen a lot of fads come and go … or more accurately, I've seen a lot of trends rise and fall in popularity. At first, I didn't pay a whole lot of attention to the blogosphere. In May, though, I began Red Monkey and added my voice to the many others already out here. I also began helping a friend move out of Blogger and into his own domain … so I got an education in blogging pretty fast.

And one of the first things I did was to surf other blogs, looking for a way to get the word out about Red Monkey and generate more traffic. After a little futzing around, I settled on BlogExplosion. The interface was easy to use, and the benefits were great. I loved it … I got a a fair amount of traffic pretty quickly and managed to get some regular readers. I began exploring more and more of the site, and became more a part of a community instead of mindlessly surfing others' blogs and hoping that they were doing more than mindlessly surfing mine. I joined the "shoutbox" a kind of not-quite chat room where different members could come and talk to each other … about blogging, their lives, or just be silly for a while.

Besides the shoutbox, I had one other feature at BlogExplosion that I really, really enjoyed. Battle of the Blogs. Here you could pit your blog against another blog … bet credits and let 15 other people read the two blogs and decide which one they liked better. Particularly when you're just starting out in blogging and perhaps not getting a lot of comments, this was a really cool way to get some validation that you were doing something people enjoyed. When I was surfing blogs at B.E., I noticed that other traffic exchanges were posting blogs and getting them traffic through B.E. I tried out BlogAdvance, but found it really hard to navigate and hard to get used to. I had a referral button to them on my site for a while, but I really didn't go there and utilize their service very much. Then I saw another one … BlogMad. This one claimed they were "coming" but that they weren't ready yet. They were offering extra credits to those folks who signed up early, and it sounded like they had some incredible stuff planned.

Life went on. My blog grew … my readership seemed to be growing, although I'm rather lackadaisical about checking that out. I have NO idea how many people read my feeds and I use statcounter.com more to monitor my entire site than to just review my blog.

But, life seems to encourage drama at every turn and in every aspect of our lives. BlogExplosion and blogging was no exception. One night in the shoutbox, someone comes in and begins attacking B.E. … for, as far as I could tell, no reason at all. Myself and some of the others in the shoutbox immediately began defending B.E. Two moderators made appearances rather quickly and eventually kicked the highly obnoxious parties out of the shoutbox. That was that. I figured this was simply the case of another blog traffic site being jealous of B.E.'s success.

Then I began hearing stories … people who were banned from BlogExplosion because they had a BlogAdvance button on their site. People who merely disagreed with a moderator being banned.

I still figured this was just a lot of hooey. People with gripes trying to blame others. I'd talked to many of the moderators on several occasions and thought they were pretty cool. Jeff, called "blog," and OHB (orange-haired boy) seemed pretty cool. Jeff was a bit stand-offish, but I would expect that from someone running a large web service like B.E. Can't have a lot of time to chatter with the peeps if you're running a good service (unless you have 8 million employees and no responsibilities yourself). The third moderator, Rachel, seemed a bit caustic and blunt, but that's not a bad thing. Her blog is pretty hysterical.

Then, for no reason that I ever figured out, things began changing. I heard more stories of B.E. members getting upset with the moderators. More tales of bannings and just plain bad customer service. It was now starting to get a little disturbing. Then a few people I had made friends with in the shoutbox seemed to be getting attacked by another friend.

We'd been very quickly reduced to kids in the playground sandbox. Was depressing … but such is life. Whatever.

And then, more drama. One of the moderators, acting on her own rather than as a representative of B.E. began talking rather publicly about some of the members. She insisted left and right that it was her right to bitch about members as a private person, and this is true. However, she was naïve in the extreme to insist that this shouldn't reflect on B.E. After all, this is the issue of blogging about work in a microcosm. If you complain publicly about a client, you really shouldn't be surprised when word gets back to that client and you lose that account. It doesn't really matter if you complain publicly in a bar or a restaurant or a blog or a public park. If you say something about a client publicly and it's overheard, be prepared for consequences to your business.

Within a matter of a few weeks there seemed to be a schoolyard "us and them" mentality springing up. People acted as if you were part of either the "in group" with the developers and moderators, or part of the "shoutbox group" … or, of course, people who had simply been surfing and not using the shoutbox and forums might simply be considered unaligned. The weird thing was that what group you were "a part of" seemed to change depending on who you were talking to.

Everything seemed to come to a head, at least as far as I was involved, when BlogExplosion began a new chatbox and got rid of the old shoutbox. The new chat is an awesome Flash application which added audio and video feeds to the chat experience. Way cool! As with any change, of course, some people didn't like it. Some didn't like the new bells and whistles. Some couldn't use it from work. Some guys in the Middle East couldn't use it because their connections were too spotty or slow. New people used chat as older voices wandered away. Such is change.

Then, a few members of B.E. installed shoutboxes on their blogs or websites and all hell apparently broke loose. There was talk of cliques and voting blocs voting against different groups in Battle of the Blogs. Blog entries were written, blogrolls decimated as very polarized camps began deleting each other. In the midst of the relatively petty bickering, though, I saw something particularly disturbing.

Two of the moderators began answering support tickets in a manner that was often rude and completely uncalled for. The language deteriorated into accusing various members of somehow taking advantage of BlogExplosion's services.

Members began leaving in droves.

And, then, the talk of a voting bloc began to heat up. I entered a battle and it was over in less than two minutes from the first hit recorded at statcounter.com until the last vote recorded. Oddly enough, statcounter.com also only recorded 9 hits instead of 15 … and 5 of those votes were from the same IP address … supposedly something that couldn't happen with their voting scripts. If I wasn't getting 15 hits to my blog, and the battle was over before people could really read my posts, then there was little sense in battling at the moment.

I shrugged it off. People had hurt feelings, people were pissy … and as much as I love Battle of the Blogs, this just didn't seem to be worth fussing about. People are people, no big deal. After a few days, I decided to try again to battle. That was Friday, the 20th. That battle was started at 7:15 in the morning … around noon, people began asking me what was wrong with my battle. I didn't know … I'd been stuck at 6 votes for a while, but didn't see that as too terribly unusual. At least this battle was taking a relatively normal amount of time instead of two minutes.

No one could vote on the battle.

I laughed it off. Probably some weird glitch in the script. The battle stayed stuck. Well, maybe some of the programming types had figured out a way to hang my battle. Kind of unlikely unless people were a LOT pissier than I had thought … or truly that bored. Who knows. Support tickets were filed by at least two people wondering why the battle was stuck. No response. The person battling against me filed a support ticket.

No response.

Members began talking about it. A moderator in the chat room said it would be fixed "some time today." That was Monday.

Yesterday, another battle got "stuck."

I relaxed. Ahh, see, they are just having issues with the battling script. Surely now they would have to do something about the stuck battles.

They fixed the other battle.

Mine is still there.

No one has yet to hear back on the support tickets.

You see, they don't need to be nice to their BlogExplosion members anymore. They've now opened up BlogCharm … a blog-hosting service where you can get a fabulous template and get paid to blog. You see, they're offering a great deal – ads on your blog … but they split the ad revenue with you.

There's just one hitch: the same people who do not understand that they are offering a customer service based service to people are running BlogCharm and BlogExplosion. Think about it. They've gotten all these interested bloggers to their site. Surely some of them are ready to leave Blogger and Blogzy and some of the other free platforms. They've built up a nice base of clients that they can now make a lot of money off of.

If they can keep their bloggers around, that is.

You see, one of the things they forgot about is that they have now pissed off writers. Writers who have some readerships. The word is rapidly getting out that if you use BlogExplosion, be careful. You can get banned for simply having your blog hosted on the wrong server. Or disagreeing with a moderator. The sense of community and fun that was there is now shifting and collapsing.

Maybe it's all just the way of the internet. People who are only somewhat connected through 1s and 0s are drifting away. But if that's true, why do we blog? Aren't many of us doing this for the sense of community and that moment of connection between writer and reader? Isn't that the point between having the capacity to leave comments and begin discussions?

Is the internet really just an excuse to be rude and hateful because you can't see the other person or because you can more easily ignore them than those you are physically around on a day to day basis?

I don't know why my battle at BlogExplosion has been stuck for a full week without a word from the moderators. I don't know why they refuse to answer the support tickets that have been filed.

I don't know why they fixed the issue with one frozen battle and not with the one that had been there longer. I don't know why the moderators seemed to suddenly turn on some members and became rude … and in some cases downright hateful.

And you know what, I really don't care. I was using a service that I enjoyed. The customer service of recent has been abysmal. So why continue to use the service? There are other services out there. Still, it saddens me to see what was an incredible service go down the drain.

I hope that the customer service at BlogExplosion turns around soon and the petty crap has run its course. I won't hold my breath, though.

I am curious to see just how much longer they'll be silent about the stuck battle. How much longer they will ignore it and the support tickets.

How much longer they can afford to ignore their customer base. And how long before their new customer base at BlogCharm twigs to the lack of customer service and care practiced by most of the BlogExplosion staff.

UPDATE
After filing a support ticket today, I received an almost instantaneous response from the main adminstrator of BlogExplosion. He seemed very hurt and upset by the insinuation (or, really, outright statement) that customer service seems to have been forgotten or has gone by the wayside. Apparently they "have been looking at this issue at length over the last couple of days ... We are trying to source the issue."

The puzzling bit, however, is that he insists that they have been answering "all support tickets within 24 hours for months now. I don't have an answer for BOTB yet but we are trying to desperately find out why." And, for me to settle down (which is a well-deserved rebuke ... I don't get mad often, but when I finally do!).

However, I know that at least 3 tickets have gone completely unanswered for several days.

The question remains, then ... what happened to those unanswered support tickets ... and why was one battle fixed within a day, but another broken for a week?

UPDATE 2:
Well, this morning, the battle was "released" some time this morning and voting commenced!

I've no idea what locked the battle up, but hopefully we'll hear something from B.E. soon.

I do want to say that the lead administrator over there responded VERY quickly to my ticket. I don't know why the other tickets went unanswered ... but once I did officially notify B.E. the situation was cleared up very promptly. Kudos for that.

Posted by Red Monkey at 6:06 PM | Comments (13) | Never Underestimate the Power of Human Stupidity | TrackBack | Stumble

December 24, 2005

Hello?

We all know that some people are selfish ... and it seems that the season of goodwill at the end of the year tends to bring it out as well. But you'd think that by the age of 24, people would move beyond the "I don't want you to have it" childish behaviour.

But evidently a woman in Blue Springs, Missouri, just couldn't allow her boyfriend to have his own cell phone back. I don't know if she wasn't finished making phone calls or if she didn't want him to answer the phone or perhaps she decided that he shouldn't call someone that he wanted to call. But her delightfully mature response really took the cake.

She attempted to swallow the phone to keep him from using it.

Check this out, if you don't believe me.

Evidently after attempting to swallow the phone, her boyfriend had to call 911 ... why? Evidently she was "having difficulty breathing." Gee, ya think? Ya think not quite being able to swallow the cell might mean a little difficulty in breathing?

And how did he call? "Honey, breathe real hard for a minute." Or was it more like "Now lemme just thunk your throat three times to call the ambulance" ???

Her identity and condition have not been released ... and I would assume that if this woman has any shred of dignity left, she doesn't want to her identity to be known!

"Can you hear me now?"

I do hope santa brings her a lump of coal ... shaped like a cell phone, of course.

Posted by Red Monkey at 3:55 PM | Comments (6) | Never Underestimate the Power of Human Stupidity | TrackBack | Stumble

December 3, 2005

Another Child in Pain

I was startled to realize that I hadn't posted in a couple of days ... sorry about that. As I said in my last post, I've been more than a little bit introspective lately. A part of it is that I miss teaching so very much ... another part of it is that I got to thinking about Mikey and all of the other kids like Mikey that I've known.

I met a kid named Chris once and after getting to know him for a while, he told me about his family ... I don't really know why so many people feel they can open up to me and tell me about their horrible childhoods, but they do. And since so many of them so obviously need to tell someone about the things that happened to them, I simply listen.

*** Again, this story is probably not for the weak of stomach ***
Chris had a clear memory back to the age of 2 or 3. With a father in the military, his family moved quite frequently, so he could judge an age by describing the house or apartment they were living in ... then his mother would tell him that he couldn't possibly remember that house as he was only 2 or 3 at the time. (Makes me wonder how many other people just assume that some of their early childhood memories are from an older age because they have no "place" context in which to judge the time period.)

So, Chris recalls waking up one particular morning with a tummyache. He was a bit startled to see his mom already up, happy and bustling about the kitchen. Generally speaking, he was far more likely to get up before she did. So, he told her that his tummy hurt (and being that verbal and male, he and both agree that he was probably three, not two). She told him that he'd feel better if he just ate some breakfast. He fussed and said his tummy hurt and he really didn't want to eat breakfast.

However, his mom had made him oatmeal and by golly, he was gonna eat it. So, she scooped up the toddler, fastened him into his booster chair and said, "Eat, you'll feel better."

A dutiful child, Chris tried a couple of spoonfuls of oatmeal. His tummy instantly felt worse. He squirmed a little in his booster seat, trying to decide if he should get out or not.

Too late ... breakfast was going to make a re-appearance. Not wanting to make a mess everywhere, he threw up into his oatmeal bowl. And, like most little kids upon puking, he began to cry.

Now his mother was behind him in the kitchen, presumably cleaning up the dishes from cooking. She came around the corner at his crying and asked why he hadn't touched his oatmeal and why was he crying.

Not the most verbal at that age ... and since crying and trying not to puke again really don't help a person in being very communicative, he just couldn't seem to get his point across to her.

"Eat your oatmeal."

"No, I threw up, I sick, no eat."

"Eat your oatmeal, you'll feel better. That'll settle your tummy and you won't throw up."

"No, threw up, tummyache."

Completely not hearing the boy, she made him eat his oatmeal in front of her. Naturally, having to eat the already eaten oatmeal didn't go over well, but at least this time she was there to visually witness the abused tummy's reaction.

You know, in and of itself, this could simply have been a terrible misunderstanding on the part of any parent. Kids at that age don't really communicate well, and often parents are still learning the idiosyncracies of that child. Mistakes, as big as they might seem to the kid, happen.

Unfortunately for Chris, this was simply one time among many that his mother refused to listen to the words he said. Without ever having reason to believe this child was a liar, she repeatedly ignored what he had to say all throughout his life.

At four .... "my ear hurts"
"Well do you need to go to the doctor?"
"I don't know. It hurts."
They went shopping instead. His eardrum burst in the mall ... he didn't even seem to notice even though this is supposed to be a very painful experience. Instead, his mom looked over at him after a while and asked what that green junk was on his face. Turns out it was the infection that burst through the eardrum.
They didn't go to the doctor even then. Went instead a few days later for the regular checkup.

At eleven ... "I think my arm might be broken"
"Are you sure? What'd you do to it?"
"I was hanging from the soccer goal and a kid pushed me off."
Three days later, they go to get it x-rayed ... he'd already tried to ignore it for a few days before then. His mother took one look at the x-ray before they walked into the doctor's office and proclaimed the arm not broken.
The doctor took one look and said, "Yep, snapped the bone right here."

At thirteen ... "Dad used to beat the crap out of me when I was smaller."
"No!"
She asked the father that night and then came back to the boy. "I asked your dad and he said he never did any of those things you described." (He'd given her three different, specific incidents.)
He decided he couldn't tell her the rest of what his father had done to him.

At fifteen ... "Mom, can I go to an Alateen meeting?" (His ride was already on the way.)
"Oh my God. Are you an alcoholic." She was completely stricken.
He looked at her in disgust ... "No, Dad is."
She was even more stricken, and shocked, despite the fact that he'd been drinking out of control for the entire 20 years of their marriage.

By then, he quit telling her anything at all. What was the point? She never did listen to him.

I still want to know ... how can people do that to their children? I could understand an incident here or there ... like I said, everyone makes mistakes. But his mother had a pattern of literally never believing this child who by all other accounts, was a great and trustworthy kid. How could she just ignore his health like that? Ignore him like that?

For some reason, these thoughts just keep coming back to me at this time of year. I think a lot about the various stories I've heard from those whose parents ... well, to be honest, I think they should have been shot for what they did to their kids. I've only sketched out the smallest bit of Chris's story, just to lay out the pattern of being ignored that he felt.

How many other kids like Chris are out there right now? How can we both find them and help them?

I don't know. And it really bothers me.

Posted by Red Monkey at 2:46 PM | Comments (5) | Never Underestimate the Power of Human Stupidity | TrackBack | Stumble

November 24, 2005

Computer Support Humour

This circulated the internet back in about '94 or so and I haven't seen it since that first time, so I thought perhaps this is one of the few internet funnies that has not been done to death ... I give you now, "A Week in the Life of the LotusNotes Support Person from Hell."

Monday
8:05am
User called to say they forgot password. Told them to use password retrieval utility called FDISK. Blissfully ignorant, they thank me and hang up. God, we let the people vote and drive, too?

8:12am
Accounting called to say they couldn't access expense reports database. Gave them Standard Sys Admin Answer #112, "Well, it works for me." Let them rant and rave while I unplugged my coffeemaker from the UPS and plugged their server back in. Suggested they try it again. One more happy customer...

8:14 am
User from 8:05 call said they received error message "Error accessing Drive 0."
Told them it was an OS problem. Transferred them to microsupport.

11:00 am
Relatively quiet for last few hours. Decide to plug support phone back in so I can call my girlfriend. Says parents are coming into town this weekend. Put her on hold and transferred her to janitorial closet down in basement. What is she thinking? The "Myst" and "Doom" nationals are this weekend!

11:34 am
Another user calls (do they ever learn?). Says they want ACL changed on HR performance review database so that nobody but HR can access database. Tell them no problem. Hang up. Change ACL. Add @MailSend so performance reviews are sent to */US.

12:00 pm
Lunch

3:30 pm
Return from lunch.

3:55 pm
Wake up from nap. Bad dream makes me cranky. Bounce servers for no reason.
Return to napping.

4:23 pm
Yet another user calls. Wants to know how to change fonts on form. Ask them what chip set they're using. Tell them to call back when they find out.

4:55 pm
Decide to run "Create Save/Replication Conflicts" macro so next shift has something to do.

Tuesday
8:30 am
Finish reading support log from last night. Sounded busy. Terrible time with Save/Replication conflicts.

9:00 am
Support manager arrives. Wants to discuss my attitude. Click on PhoneNotes SmartIcon. "Love to, but kinda busy. Put something in the calendar database!" I yell as I grab for the support lines, which have (mysteriously) lit up. Walks away grumbling.

9:35 pm
Team leader from R&D needs ID for new employee. Tell them they need form J-19R=9C9\\DARR\K1. Say they never heard of such a form. Tell them it's in the SPECIAL FORMS database. Say they never heard of such a database. Transfer them to janitorial closet in basement.

10:00 am
Perky sounding intern from R&D calls and says she needs new ID. Tell her I need employee number, department name, manager name, and marital status. Run @DbLookup against state parole board database, Centers for Disease Control database, and my Oprah Winfrey database. No hits. Tell her ID will be ready tonight. Drawing from the lessons learned in last week's "Reengineering for Customer Partnership," I offer to personally deliver ID to her apartment.

10:07 am
Janitor stops by to say he keeps getting strange calls in basement. Offer to train him on Notes. Begin now. Let him watch console while I grab a smoke.

1:00 pm
Return from smoking break.
Janitor says phones kept ringing, so he transferred them to cafeteria lady. I like this guy.

1:05 pm
Big commotion!
Support manager falls in hole left where I pulled floor tiles outside his office door. Stress to him importance of not running in computer room, even if I do yell "Omigod -- Fire!"

1:15 pm
Development Standards Committee calls and complains about umlauts in form names. Apologizing for the inconvenience, I tell them I will fix it. Hang up and run global search/replace using gaks.

1:20 pm
Mary Hairnet from cafeteria calls. Says she keeps getting calls for "Notice Loads" or "NoLoad Goats," she's not sure, couldn't hear over industrial-grade blender. Tell her it was probably "Lettuce Nodes." Maybe the food distributor with a new product? She thinks about it and hangs up.

2:00 pm
Legal secretary calls and says she lost password. Ask her to check in her purse, floor of car, and on bathroom counter. Tell her it probably fell out of back of machine. Suggest she put duct tape over all the airvents she can find on the PC. Grudgingly offer to create new ID for her while she does that.

2:49 pm
Janitor comes back. Wants more lessons.
I take off rest of day.

Wednesday
8:30 am
Irate user calls to say chipset has nothing to do with fonts on form. Tell them Of course, they should have been checking "Bitset," not "chipset."
Sheepish user apologizes and hangs up.

9:10am
Support manager, with foot in cast, returns to office. Schedules 10:00am meeting with me.
User calls and wants to talk to support manager about terrible help at support desk. Tell them manager about to go into meeting. Sometimes life hands you material...

10:00 am
Call Louie in janitorial services to cover for me. Go to support manager's office. He says he can't dismiss me but can suggest several lateral career moves. Most involve farm implements in third-world countries with moderate to heavy political turmoil. By and by, I ask if he's aware of new bug which takes full-text indexed random e-mail databases and puts all references to furry handcuffs and Bambi Boomer in Marketing on the corporate Web page. Meeting is adjourned as he reaches for keyboard, Web browser, and Tums.

10:30 am
Tell Louie he's doing great job. Offer to show him mainframe corporate PBX system sometime.

11:00 am
Lunch.

4:55 pm
Return from lunch.

5:00 pm
Shift change; Going home.

Thursday
8:00 am
New guy ("Marvin") started today. "Nice plaids" I offer. Show him server room, wiring closet, and technical library. Set him up with IBM PC-XT. Tell him to quit whining, Notes runs the same in both monochrome and color.

8:45 am
New guy's PC finishes booting up. Tell him I'll create new ID for him. Set minimum password length to 64. Go grab smoke.

9:30 am
Introduce Louie the custodian to Marvin. "Nice plaids" Louie comments. Is this guy great or what?!

11:00 am
Beat Louie in dominos game. Louie leaves. Fish spare dominos out of sleeves ("Always have backups").
User calls, says Accounting server is down. Untie Ethernet cable from radio antenna (better reception) and plug back into hub. Tell user to try again. Another happy customer!

11:55 am
Brief Marvin on Corporate Policy 98.022.01:

"Whereas all new employee beginning on days ending in 'Y' shall enjoy all proper aspects with said corporation, said employee is obligated to provide sustenance and relief to senior technical analyst on shift."

Marvin doubts. I point to "Corporate Policy" database (a fine piece of work, if I say so myself!). "Remember, that's DOUBLE pepperoni and NO peppers!" I yell to Marvin as he steps over open floor tile to get to exit door.

1:00 pm
Oooooh! Pizza makes me so sleepy...

4:30 pm
Wake from refreshing nap. Catch Marvin scanning want ads.

5:00 pm
Shift change. Flick HR's server off and on several times (just testing the On/Off button...). See ya tomorrow.

Friday
8:00 am
Night shift still trying to replace power supply in HR server. Told them it worked fine before I left.

9:00 am
Marvin still not here. Decide I might start answering these calls myself. Unforward phones from Mailroom.

9:02 am
Yep. A user call. Users in Des Moines can't replicate. Me and the Oiuji board determine it's sunspots. Tell them to call Telecommunications.

9:30 am
Good God, another user! They're like ants. Says he's in San Diego and can't replicate with Des Moines.
Tell him it's sunspots, but with a two-hour difference. Suggest he reset the time on the server back two hours.

10:17 am
Pensacola calls. Says they can't route mail to San Diego. Tell them to set server ahead three hours.

11:00 am
E-mail from corporate says for everybody to quit resetting the time on their servers. I change the date stamp and forward it to Milwaukee.

11:20 am
Finish @CoffeeMake macro. Put phone back on hook.

11:23 am
Milwaukee calls, asks what day it is.

11:25 am
Support manager stops by to say Marvin called in to quit. "So hard to get good help..." I respond. Support manager says he has appointment with orthopedic doctor this afternoon, and asks if I mind sitting in on the weekly department head meeting for him.
"No problem!"

11:30 am
Call Louie and tell him opportunity knocks and he's invited to a meeting this afternoon. "Yeah, sure. You can bring your snuff" I tell him.

12:00 am
Lunch.

1:00 pm
Start full backups on UNIX server. Route them to device NULL to make them fast.

1:03 pm
Full weekly backups done. Man, I love modern technology!

2:30 pm
Look in support manager's contact management database. Cancel 2:45 pm appointment for him. He really should be at home resting, you know.

2:39 pm
New user calls. Says want to learn how to create a connection document. Tell them to run connection document utility CTRL-ALT-DEL. Says PC rebooted. Tell them to call microsupport.

2:50 pm
Support manager calls to say mixup at doctor's office means appointment cancelled. Says he's just going to go on home. Ask him if he's seen corporate Web page lately.

3:00 pm
Another (novice) user calls. Says periodic macro not working. Suggest they place @DeleteDocument at end of formula. Promise to send them document addendum which says so.

4:00 pm
Finish changing foreground color in all documents to white. Also set point size to "2" in help databases.

4:30 pm
User calls to say they can't see anything in documents. Tell them to go to view, do a "Edit -- Select All", hit delete key, and then refresh. Promise to send them document addendum which says so.

4:45 pm
Another user calls. Says they can't read help documents. Tell them I'll fix it. Hang up. Change font to Wingdings.

4:58 pm
Plug coffee maker into Ethernet hub to see what happens. Not (too) much.

5:00 pm
Night shift shows up. Tell that the hub is acting funny and to have a good weekend.

I was told that the originator of this madness was:
Simon Travaglia
http://bofh.ntk.net/

But, his Bastard support series seems to be a bit different from this piece, so I'm leaving the original attribution up as well.
I assume the following might have been the originator of this madness:
John A. Gunterman
An analog man trapped in a digital world. @ http://www.cnh.mv.net/ipusers/gunterman/

Posted by Red Monkey at 6:40 PM | Comments (0) | Never Underestimate the Power of Human Stupidity | TrackBack | Stumble