Dave Hinz wrote:

Actually, I never "got it" until I got into the job I now have. We work
in different parts of the building, state, and country, but work together.

Yeah, it's kinda like database stuff I guess. I could learn it if I had to,
but I have no personal use for it, so fooey on it.

They used to make good hardware. Their newer hardware is pretty crappy.

Ah well, at least they're meeting expectations then.



having our ... dog groomed. And she's gonna feed me beer while I'm
working, so it's a win-win as far as I'm concerned.

The last time I did one of these for a different "client" I went to the
fridge after and took home *all* the beer. They got off cheap.

stuff was supposed to be (that I asked her to please write down someplace
safe the last time I had to do this.)

Yeah, I love that.

Yeah, like I can remember everybody's password for everything. Nine
computers, eight routers, six cable/DSL/dialup modems. I don't even have a
big "network" but it's big enough I need a crib sheet. I wrote down her
particulars some place where *I* can keep up with it this time, so I can
deal with future problems over the phone.

It's hard to find good tech support people, though, because either of
us would quit if forced to do the job.

Probably. That's the other side of the problem, isn't it? Most of the
people you deal with are too stupid to find their ass with both hands if
you super glue both hands to their ass.

by the way.". How often does that really happen, though?

Probably about as often as the techs get someone like you on the phone, I
imagine.

It happened to me once. About 3:00 AM. I called and got the doorman,
answered the token questions to prove I wasn't an idiot, and I was lucky
enough to get a drone with enough sense to realize I was talking about
something, but he had no idea what it was. He passed me up to a real tech
who had all kinds of actual working knowledge. It took two minutes to
solve the problem, and the problem was UP-stream, thank you very much.

Ah. Somewhere in IE config is "show friendly error messages", you can
turn that off and get actual meaningful things. (was that a 401 or a
403?)

Neither. It just volunteered a cached page for me without asking. How
friendly. Except it was a page from a router that was no longer connected,
instead of a page from a DSL modem at the same address. How very helpful.
I find Windows is frequently helpful that way.

Ah, so he was a good one, because he _recognized_ that you knew where
to go. It's the ones who tell you blatantly wrong things that **** me
off. "Reboot and clear your cache." "Um, why exactly?" "Because I
can't go on to the next line in my script until you do that."

Yeah, me too. "OK, I'm rebooting. Beep. There, I'm rebooted. Next
question. Yes, this machine boots very fast. Next question please. It's
a, um, Octegenarian 4000. They're new. Next question please."

hire someone who knows anything about this stuff to help people. They
just want a drone to read a stack of FAQs.

You've just summed up tech support hell right there.

I discovered a new kind of tech support hell on this one. They had some
kind of voice recognition thing on the voice mail, so I had to talk to the
HAL 9000 and tell it where I wanted to go. But I kept confusing it because
I found the idea of talking to a voice mail thing so humorous that I kept
giggling and making it lose its place in the tree. I kept imagining Scotty
picking up that mouse. "Computah, Ah want information on transparent
aluminum."

--
Michael McIntyre ---- Silvan
Linux fanatic, and certified Geek; registered Linux user #243621
http://www.geocities.com/Paris/Rue/5407/
http://rosegarden.sourceforge.net/tutorial/