The Good and the Bad

A lot of good things have happened this morning, but so have a lot of bad things, basically evening out the entire morning to so-so.

First off they killed my network connection at work this morning. I knew this was coming, so I've already had the venting out of my system when they did it, still its somewhat irritating to come into work and find some guy cutting me connection off. So my morning was spent trying to repair all the damage corporate had done to my fragile network infrastructure. This isn't as bad as it might seem though, considering the network here was an absolute mess to begin with. Because corporate killed the entire stores network, I was basically given carte blanche to fix it. As such we went from having 2 routers, and 3 switches, plus a ton of cables, to 2 switches, and 9 cables. Woot me! So while it was a big hassle fixing everything, and an even bigger hassle switching over to the store network, I kind of felt I'd accomplished something good.

Short lived of course, since right after finishing I got a call from a customer screeching at me, because one of my coworkers had reformatted her computer with out asking her permission, and she had valuable data on there. I told her that it is part of our standing operating procedure to call every customer before we do a restore of this nature, but I knew it hadn't been done. The machine had been brought in with a minor windows error. I'd checked for a virus, then made sure the HD was intact. By the time I'd finished my shift was up, and I told the guy coming in that it was a minor windows error and to fix it. I came in the next morning to find the machines partitions blown out, it was completely inoperative, and had a note on it saying we were waiting for recovery discs. I considered calling the customer at the point, but it was already to late. With the partitions on the drive gone the data was already destroyed, and since my coworker had blown the partition on a failed recovery attempt the drive was most likely formatted as well. So all I could do was stand there and whether a sheet of insults and screaming about her computer, until she finally agreed to call on Friday when the guy who worked on her computer would next be in.

That was ok though. I vented a bit about my coworkers, and finished up the last of the networking. Noticed my shoe had finally decided it was time to shuffle off its mortal coil, and shrugged. Not much I could do about that either, but the prospect of some warmachine tonight evens out the shoe, so I'm still having a pretty good day.

An Exercise in Narcissism

I found this on Melissa's sight awhile ago and figured I'd post mine here. I think all of you did them a couple of months ago, but I'm a late comer on the band wagon so there :P

http://kevan.org/johari?name=benkrygsheld

Also, damn you Todd, and damn Rock Lobster

Whats the hold-up?

Just wanted to apologize for the delay in posting stuff to this blog. While I never intended this thing to be delay, I did figure I'd post more then once a month. I really need to get off my ass and fix the internet connection at my home.

Anyways, not much has been going on here. We had another movie night with a few folks last night. We watched Basketball, then American Splendor. American Splendor was actually pretty good, and I recommend it. I know a bit about Crumb since my dad is a bit of a fan, but I'd never actually heard of Harvey Pekar. Harvey is apparently a real life person who writes about his daily experiences in a comic book called American Splendor which is drawn by various artists such as Crumb. I really liked the story, there's a bit of a happy ending at the end, but Harvey doesn't become rich or famous, the small bit of fame he does have doesn't really lead him anywhere. At the end of the film he's still a file clerk, who writes a comic book on the side. Sure there's change in his character by the end, but its real life change, not the 'I'm driving a porsche and living in a mansion' change you see in way to many Hollywood movies.

Anyways, one of Harvey's defining characteristics is that he's constantly losing his voice. About halfway through the movie, my friend Kirby was trying to make some crack and his voice cracks exactly like Harvey's. We died laughing (or at least I did) for close to 3 minutes. After we'd finished laughing though we brought up the subject of a 'Loft' comic again. We've brought up the subject several times before, even when we all used to hang out at Gameopolis, but we've always come back to the same sticking point, none of us are visual artists. That was pretty much the sticking point last night as well, but I have to admit the idea has always had a bit of appeal to me. Ever since I first started reading Penny-Arcade back when it was pretty much them, User Friendly, and PVP, the idea of doing an online comic has always intrigued me. Now adays though the web is full of talented people (and untalented hacks for that matter) doing all manner of internet comics. Don't get me wrong I still think the idea of a comic staring charactures of all of us would be funny as hell, its just that its likely to be a rather thankless task given the mass of other comics on the net. So unless one of us spontaneously gains the ability to draw through some freak industrial accident involving a microwave, two tons of toxic waste, and a burrito its likely to just remain a nice dream.

To ease the tension.

I took a couple of quizes off of peoples blogs. I'd post the results but for one reason or another they don't fit correctly. Basically as to which sci-fi crew I most belong, it was a three way tie between Babylon 5, Serenity, and the Matrix. As to which hero I am, I'm William Wallace.

Anyways, thats all.

Short update

I have now been threatened with dismisal. I was told that my sales were the worst in the district, and that if this did not change I would begin to see a serious reduction in hours, followed by dismissal. I was also yelled at for telling customers how to do minor repairs on their own, and about free alternatives to software which we charge 60 - 100 dollars for. I was told if any of this kind of behaviour continued, I would be fired.

So now in addition to losing my car, I'm going to lose my job.

Attack of the Blahs

Its been a fairly blah week for me. I won't say its been the worst week of my life, I've got many more that could top it, and it hasn't been without its ups, its just been very blah. Mostly it revolves around work. To put it simply, I'm tired.

I'm tired of showing up here day after day and getting little to no respect. I'm tired of being treated like I'm a third rate person. I'm tired of being looked down on. I'm tired of feeling like any mistake that happens here is my fault, and I'm tired of being screamed at by customers who don't understand how to work the 1,200 dollar piece of equipment they just bought. We're talking about the greatest invention of the 20th century, and one of the most advanced pieces of machinery existing in the world. There are hundreds of thousands of things that could go wrong with any given PC and people simply expect them to run non-stop with zero problems, without them having to know one shred of information about them. When something does inevitably go wrong its obviously your fault, because god forbid someone learn anything about a piece of equipment they spent thousands of dollars on. -=sigh=-

I'm also tired of being yelled at for things that are beyond my control. Today we got yelled at about not doing enough 'volume' in PC services, and home PC installs. By not enough volume, they mean not doing the insane $550+ dollars in installs a day they'd like to see, and over a thousand on weekends. For those of you keeping track, thats roughly 18,000 dollars a month, subtract the 8,000 they pay for salaries in a month, and you get $10,000 in pure profit. We don't come anywhere near that here at the moment. However, we do ensure that they make money off of us, which in my mind is enough.

My car is still dead, and it looks like I'm just completly out of luck as far as it is concerned. No one is giving any deals what so ever on a new or used vehicle thanks to those 'Employee discount' sales they were running a year ago. I really don't know whats going to happen. I need a car, but I'm going to end up paying 3 times as much for one as I would have last year, even used.

The cars dead.

The cars dead. Nothing else really to say.

Karma is a bitch.

If you believe in karma, reincarnation and that sort of business, I must have been Adolph Hitler in a previous life. I don't know what life has against me, but no matter how hard I try no matter how hard I struggle it always screws me. I saved and struggled for 2 years to scrape enough together to buy something I've always wanted. I balanced all the books, and everything was a'ok. Sure it was expensive, but as long as nothing completely crazy happened I'd be fine. So after spending all morning lifting furniture, readjusting things, and throwing piles of garbage away, I left for work feeling very pleased with myself. Not only had I completely paid t, until my cars transmission went 1/2 a mile away from work. There I sat at a red light, pressing the gas, my car simply revving and not going anywhere, and I realized I'd been kicked squarely in the nuts again.

I pushed the car a block and a half, by myself, laying my shoulder into the drivers side window, and flailing my arms at the wheel in a vein attempt to steer. Since I'm a guy, the only help I got were friendly horns blared as vehicles drove past, lots of interesting curse words, and a few fingers. Its as if people thought, 'Hey, there's a guy pushing a car uphill towards a parking lot half a block away. His life can't be miserable enough, lets blare our horns at him to show that his pushing a car down the shoulder is a tiny inconvenience to me, as I may perhaps, possibly wish to use that shoulder at some point.' I finally got it into the parking lot at Krispy Kream, and then had to push it uphill into an out of the way parking space to avoid having someone call to have the thing towed. All I can do now is hope maybe its something little, easily fixed, and that I won't have to use the last of my money to purchase a really shitty replacement vehicle.

I just feel like shit right now. I'm sore. My chest hurts, my shoulder hurts, my calves hurt. I'm exhausted not only from pushing the car, but from all the cleaning and rearranging I've been doing. I'm stuck here at work, my least favorite place on the planet, and on top of that, my dad is going to be absolutely furious with me. He yelled at me up and down about what a waste of money this couch was, and now my cars dead. It just feels like I can't ever have anything nice because every time I try *wham!*.

I just don't know what I'm going to do. The tow alone is going to run $100 bucks. All I can think of is that had this happened a day sooner I wouldn't be in this position. Why the hell did it have to happen now?

The Stupidity of Man

I really hate having to deal with customers some times. Tonight was a perfect example. One of the associates wandered over, a phone pressed to his ear. As he walked over I could hear him trying to talk with the customer, and I knew I was in for a tech support call from hell. The associate kept stuttering out things like 'Let me let you talk to a tech', or 'Could you please hold for a minute', but after six or seven tries of to get a complete sentence in, he simply thrust the phone into my hand like a hot potato and ran. Thus my nightmare began.

I answered the phone like I usually do, and was greeted by a five to seven minute rant (despite numerous attempts to just find out what the problem is on my end) about how the man had been transferred from tech support, to tech support, and how he was tired of the 'goddamn' merry-go-round, sprinkled in with various racist remarks about Indian workers. Now, if you've worked tech support more then a day and a half, you're pretty familiar with this process. Most tech support numbers work by a menu system. None of the workers are actually familiar with the software, they simply read off a menu. If you reach the end of the menu with no solution, they suggest you call someone else. I'm more then a little sympathetic for any customer caught in this loop, so when he finally finished yelling at me, I asked what the exact problem was. This lead to another three minute rant, about the piece of shit we sold him before he finally told me he couldn't send or receive mail via outlook express.

Ahhh outlook express, the worlds number one source for viral infections. Its actually a pretty basic piece of software, and while I'm completely unfamiliar with it, I do know a few areas he could be hanging up on.

'Have you verified that all the server information is correct sir?', I asked.
'I've already told you three times.', he spits back at me.

Wait, what now? No where in the last 10 minutes has he told me whether or not he's gone into the outlook express setting and verified that the server information is in fact correct. He's sworn at me, he's screamed about Indian workers, he's called me incompetent once already, he has told me that he can send mail directly from yahoo somewhere in that long confusing rant, but nothing about physically checking the outlook information. At this point, any sympathy I may have had for this guy instantly melts away.

'No, you haven't.', I say correcting him. 'You never told me that you had checked the settings. You've only told me that you can send mail from yahoo and that is all. E-mail from Yahoo has nothing what so ever to do with e-mail from Outlook. Now, have you gone into Outlook and physically verified that the information is correct?'
'I've done it three times!', he screams back at me.

that's pretty much it for me, I can tell why he's been given the run around. He's breaking the two major rules of over the phone tech support. Follow instructions, and don't scream at the technician whose trying to help you. At this point, I'm in the same mode as every technician he's talked before, dump mode. There's still one more thing left for me to try with him, but its time to explain that Microsoft is the only entity who can tech support his issue.

'Well sir, I'm afraid, I can't really support Outlook express, but lets try one more thing. Do you have a firewall up and running?'
'What do you mean you can't support the damn thing!', he screams back into the phone. 'I bought it there.'
'Sir, there is roughly over a thousand pieces of software on the shelves at this minute. I can not be expected to support every single one of them. Now do you have a firewall up?', I asked, trying to keep from screaming back at this guy.
'What are you incompetent? How can you possibly sell something you can't support?'
'Sir', I say, starting to lose my cool, ' there are over ten-thousand pieces of software released a year. I've been doing this for over six years now.....'
'Well you obviously haven't been doing it nearly long enough.', he yells, interupting me.
'I've been doing this for over six years now. Thats over 60,000 pieces of software, it is not physically possible for any person to support every last piece of software. Thats what the manufacture is for.', I press on, my back teeth clenching to stop me from saying something I shouldn't.

From this point on, the conversation went downhill quickly. He continued to insult me, calling me worthless, incompetent, good for nothing, and stupid. While I continued to explain that I could no longer tech support his problem, and that he needed to call the manufacturer. After five minutes of being sworn at and insulted, I finally told him that I was finished talking with him, that he had to contact Microsoft, and that was the end of it, and hung up.

My head hurts. *sigh*

Things in this life and movies too

Not to much going on, but I do have some things I'd like to make everyone aware of.

First off, the loft has a new addition. A brand new, expensive, leather couch. It will be arriving early Thursday morning and I'll be helping the movers put it up there. Its a Flexsteel, so assuming I care for it properly the thing will last forever. I've never actually owned so much as a leather coat, so any advice or tricks anyone knows for how to care for a leather couch would be appreciated. The leather's a little stiffer then I'd care for, so any tips on how to soften it a touch would also be appreciated.

Please try to be careful around the couch. This is something I've wanted to own since High School, and I've been putting money aside almost as long. Its also the second most expensive thing I've ever purchased in my life. I'm not going to come up with a list of silly rules or something, I trust you guys are smart enough to figure out stuff like sitting on leather in a wet swim suit is a bad idea, but just be careful.

In other, furniture esque related news, my dad found a large 'dental cabinet'. Basically its a big stand up cabinet to hold dental equipment. While not what one would normally expect to be news or anything, I think this thing has finally solved my question about what to do with all the crap under the big gamming table. Assuming that I can fit everything in there, I think I may begin dismantling the table for something a little smaller considering how we hardly use the thing, and it does take up a good 1/4 of the lofts total space.

Finally we're (at least Matt and I) going to have a movie day on Sunday the 5th to break in the couch. Anyone, and everyone is welcome as always. Bring at least two movies that you think everyone should watch. We'll see about food on Sunday, probably pizza or maybe we'll grill depending on weather.