Category Archives: WHISKEY-TANGO-FOXTROT

JUST SAYING, RANDOMIZER9.COM, TECH, TECH SUPPORT, WHATS GOING ON, WHISKEY-TANGO-FOXTROT

Tales from the Tech Side: “Bubbles in Cement”

My coworkers and I get to talk to a lot of people during the course of doing our technical support jobs.  While there is much humor to be found in interacting with people who probably shouldn’t even be in the same room with a computer, some of the anecdotes our customers tell us while we wait for files to download or installers to run are pretty funny in themselves:

Laurie works in a hospital as a psychologist alongside her good friend “Bubbles” who is a counselor.  Bubbles is a nickname she has earned because according to Laurie, she fits the ‘ditzy blonde’ stereotype.  In their jobs, Laurie makes the kids cry, and then Bubbles makes them happy with soothing words and lollipops, so they have something of a “good cop/bad cop” thing going on.

Laurie and Bubbles often walk to a nearby donut shop for coffee and conversation.  One fine day as they were walking back to work, Laurie noticed that there were some orange traffic cones on the sidewalk ahead of them.  Laurie walked around the cones, guessing that they were there to keep people from walking on the sidewalk for some reason.  Bubbles, on the other hand, kept on walking and took two steps into wet cement.  Bubbles was able to get out of the cement with some help from Laurie.  Laurie helped Bubbles clean off her feet with a nearby water hose.

Laurie continued walking, taking care to avoid the sidewalk once again, but Bubbles immediately took another step into the wet cement, much to Laurie’s chagrin.  Laurie has no intention of letting it go and asked us to post their story, so here we are.  While Laurie may let it go eventually, the concrete dust footprints Bubbles left on the hospital’s dark carpet will probably serve as a more permanent reminder of the event.

Bubbles, indeed!

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ANIME, CONS, FIRST STORM MANGA, JUST SAYING, NeRiMa, RANDOMIZER9.COM, SAN JAPAN, STEAMPUNK, THE LOLIHOLIX, WHATS GOING ON, WHISKEY-TANGO-FOXTROT

4TW!

San Japan 4TW was this past weekend and it was a BLAST.  Except for some technical issues at the concert and the general lunacy that went on in Con Alley before the rave, I had a great time.

Check out my Facebook photo album

Tell the San Japan guys how awesomesauce it was here!

Got lots to say? Post it in their feedback forum

The Loliholix are no more, we are now NeRiMa ねりま

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JUST SAYING, RANDOMIZER9.COM, WHATS GOING ON, WHISKEY-TANGO-FOXTROT

To the Guy I Accidently Cut Off Today…

I would like to start off by apologizing for going around you.  It was a mistake on my part; I was paying a little more attention to what was going on behind me than to what was going on in front.  I also understand why you honked your horn a few times.  I’ve been on the receiving end of bad driving too (heck, who hasn’t?) and I also like to let the offending driver know that they screwed up.

I will admit to being a little bit surprised when you started swearing and throwing the finger at me, though.  We were going pretty slow, so its not like either of us was in danger of being in a serious accident.  You also looked upset, I can’t say that I’ve gone as far as to swear like a sailor when I think I have been wronged on the road, but then again, I”m a pretty level-headed guy.  I honk my horn once and then life goes on.

I don’t know what it served to accomplish, though.  It didn’t get you to your destination faster, didn’t upset me, and only served to provide a spectacle to the other drivers around us.  I was on the verge of hollering back “Sorry!” but I figured that you wouldn’t be able to hear me over the sound of your own yelling.  If getting your ‘road rage’ on made you feel better, then I’m glad for that.  I got a laugh out of it, too, so I guess we can call it a win-win.

We should always learn from our mistakes.  I learned two things from this one: first of all, I should double check my front and back before passing someone, and second, people look like idiots when they holler and scream like little kids.  Thanks for the lesson.  Drive friendly, now!

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BUSINESS, JUST SAYING, RANDOMIZER9.COM, TECH, WHISKEY-TANGO-FOXTROT, WORK

Microsoft Outlook Sends Its Condolences

Should I send a "thank you" card to the server?

This came with some flowers that were sent to me by the company I work for.  I appreciate the gesture (Lord knows my apartment could use the greenery) but would it have been that hard to put just ONE person’s name on the card??

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AETHERFEST, ANIME, CONS, JUST SAYING, WHISKEY-TANGO-FOXTROT

Steam-Punks

UPDATE: Dress-up is not required, so come one and all!

When I first heard about the upcoming San Antonio Steampunk convention Ætherfest a few weeks ago, I was excited.  I noticed that Steampunk had been gaining a larger and larger presence at anime conventions, and it was good to see that they were going to try their own thing.  Having more geek conventions in San Antonio is also a Good Thing and I was looking forward to supporting these guys and learning more about what the whole Steampunk scene was about.  Thus, I went to the Ætherfest webpage to read up on it.  It featured the usual parade of guests, events, and dealers, and everything appeared to be business as usual until I got to the FAQ, which included this little tidbit of info at the bottom of the page:

 

I have to dress up, don't I?

Appropriately enough, this made me steamed

After reading that, I don’t feel like attending Ætherfest anymore.  The paragraph above does not make me feel welcome as a guest.  One of the points of a convention is to get folks that aren’t into your particular flavor of geekdom to see what it is all about in the hopes that they embrace it, or at least understand what its really about.  Telling people that they might not be welcome because they aren’t dressed up is sending the wrong kind of message to your potential attendees.  Yes, it does say: “we’ll try our best not to look peeved,” but that isn’t entirely reassuring.  Indeed, the thought of spending a day being looked down upon by a bunch of self-important nerds in costumes and opera glasses is not my idea of a fun time.

If this message was intended to be delivered “in character” then okay, fine, I get the joke.  That said, lots of other people will not, and when you’re starting a new convention, you don’t want to give people a reason not to attend.  Admittedly, I’m probably making a mountain out of a molehill here, but I hope somebody sees the point I’m trying to make.

If Ætherfest is supposed to only be for hardcore Steampunk fans (steam-core? steam-elite?), then okay fine, do what you like.  If, on the other hand, you are looking to get as many people to show up as possible and grow your fanbase, then this is not the way to do it.

Come on guys, we’re better than this!

UPDATE: Apparently some of the Aetherfest folks read the post.  They agreed that their wording does come off as a tad ‘elitist’ but their intention was to poke fun at other cons where dress up is required, which is what I had guessed.  They have posted the following disclaimer on their homepage and look forward to seeing everybody there for a jolly good time!

Well played, fellows!

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Broadband, BUSINESS, JUST SAYING, RANDOMIZER9.COM, TECH, Uncategorized, WHISKEY-TANGO-FOXTROT

Five Things I Learned From My DSL Debacle

So after the smoke cleared, I got my DSL turned on and AT&T got another customer…well for now, anyway.  It only took a trip to AT&T’s website, 2 customer service reps, one angry tweet, 3 techs, two social media team people, three executive escalation people, about a dozen voice mails, about twice that many phone calls, and seven days.

For my trouble, I’m getting my first month of service free, which I think is fair enough.  I’m just happy that the switch got flipped, and hopefully things will be hunky dory from here on out.  I also learned a few things:

  1. Just use the phone already! I should have just called back the next morning, despite the terrible experience I’d had with the first CSR.  Its just quicker, especially considering..
  2. “The Power of Social Media” is worthless if the people answering the tweets don’t have the power to DO anything. Awhile back, a friend of mine had a problem with Netflix that he tweeted about.  Someone from the company got in touch with him fairly quickly and got the issue resolved.  Thus, when I got a response from AT&T’s social media people, I got excited that someone was going to get something DONE about my problem.  Sadly, the only thing the social media mavens that answered my angry AT&T tweets did was tell me to wait for a phone call that would come at some indeterminate time.  Of course, once I got past the social media d00dz, I found out:
  3. Just because they’re “executive escalation” doesn’t mean they want to talk to you. I don’t think I’ve ever played as much phone tag as I did with the executive escalation gal. Part of it was because of my job, which entails answering phones, and part of it was because of the phone system at AT&T, which did not put me through to the person directly.  Whenever I had time to speak, I had to leave a message and hope that she called me back before I got busy again.  This is hardly efficient, especially considering that…
  4. Competence is not “expected behavior” This was not the first time I had ordered DSL service from AT&T.  I had expected the positive experience I’d had before to be repeated.  Sadly, this was not the case; the smart people I’d spoken to years ago have probably either been laid off or hopefully, moved on to bigger or better things.  As for me:
  5. I may just be too patient.  I probably should have thrown in the towel after the social media dweebs told me to wait 48 “business hours” for a phone call but I was desperate to get back on the intertubes and I wanted to see this whole thing through.

So I now have sweet, sweet, internet and life is good.

Aww, crap…

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Broadband, BUSINESS, JUST SAYING, RANDOMIZER9.COM, TECH, WHISKEY-TANGO-FOXTROT

GAME OVER. Press Start To Begin!

Evening of Monday March 8, 2011.

I left a message with the Executive service person in the morning letting her know that I’d had enough and was going to cancel my order.  We still had plenty of folks out sick, so work soon began in earnest.  Oddly enough, I got a call from a AT&T tech during my morning break.  After asking me if I had my own modem plugged into the phone jack (being repeatedly asked that question was another annoyance) he was going to get everything set up outside.  I reluctantly agreed.  After all, I had nothing to lose, and I wasn’t exactly clamoring to deal with Time Warner Cable.

I had to make a trip to the bank during lunch, but before I took off, I left another message with the Executive gal letting her know that I was going to give it one last shot before packing it in.  The morning had been busy and I was feeling a little frazzled, so I drove the few miles to the bank with the windows open and the radio on.  Arriving at the bank, I discovered that Executive gal had called while I was on the road.  I didn’t feel like leaving another message so I left the phone in the car while I went to take care of my business and have some lunch.  Of course, during that time, she had called again.

We played phone tag for the remainder of the afternoon.  I don’t know if it was the long day I was having or the constant stream of apologies that got thrown my way, but I did not want to talk with her.  I had planned on leaving early to see if my connection was working, I had just enough time to get home, check the modem and leave a final message with Executive gal.  That plan got shot to heck as I ended up getting stuck on two consecutive long calls with two irritating customers. It was past my usual time to go home and I was pretty beat.  The trip home was longer than usual, thanks to an accident that had occurred less than a block away from my apartment which totally hosed things up.

Being stuck in traffic is one thing, but being stuck in traffic just a few blocks away from home is maddening.

I was all but ready to collapse into bed for a quick nap.  Before doing so, I half-heartedly checked the modem again.  This time, I was greeted with four solid green lights and a fifth one that was blinking green.  They finally freaking did it.

HALLELUJAH!

I hastily plugged in my laptop, opened up Firefox and saw an AT&T error page.  Aww.

The error page provided me with a number to call.  I hesitated for a pretty good while before picking up my cell phone, steeling myself for another craptacular experience like the one I’d had just a week earlier.  The prize was finally within reach, I hoped that I didn’t get the same idiots that I had spoken with the week prior.  I didn’t.  Instead, I got a gentleman from India, who called himself “Ed.”  Go figure that one out.

As an aside, I’ve always wondered:  do those folks pick names out of a hat before signing in to their phones?  I just picture a bunch of people in India sitting at their desks practicing their new names before work begins.  “Ed” got lucky, I remember speaking with a less-than-convincing “Gladys” some time ago.

Moving on, I let “other Ed” walk me through the process, and except for one  hiccup that was my fault he got me on the tubes and I was now a happy geek:

Not bad at all!

I plan on calling Executive Girl in the morning to let her know that everything got done and that I would be hanging around with AT&T for awhile.  For all the aggrivation, I will be getting a free month out of the deal and look forward to being “always on” again.  I’ll probably do one last wrap-up post after this, but for now I will bask in the glow of the sweet sweet internets.  Thanks for pulling it off in the end, AT&T!!

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BUSINESS, JUST SAYING, RANDOMIZER9.COM, TECH, WHISKEY-TANGO-FOXTROT

Save Me, Telephone Superman!

Evening of Thursday, March 3, 2011

I think I’m over being “mad as hell” with AT&T.  Instead, I’ve decided to ride the crazy train and see where it takes me.   Besides, I’m no worse off now I was before.  Should all else fail, I can always go to the competition.  On a certain level, it’s even fun watching AT&T stumble around like a drunken brontosaurus.

At this point, I’m supposed to be waiting for Telephone Superman to get in touch with me so that he can get my apartment hooked up to the tubes.  Realistically, though, I think what’s going to happen is that he’s going to ask me a few questions and then either schedule someone to go out to my place (which brings us back to square one) or apologize profusely and THEN schedule someone to go out to my place.  Either way, I’m boned.

I have an hourly job right now.  I don’t have any vacation days at that job right now, so taking days off means not getting paid for that day.  I literally cannot afford to take time off during the week, and on Saturdays, I am busy attending or helping out with various nerd gatherings and events, and on Sundays I have band practice.  My busy schedule is why I wanted to do the self-install.  Besides, the installer has no reason to enter my apartment unless things are really borked up.

Now if the tech came by, flipped the switch, saw that something was borked up and had to do something inside, somebody should have TOLD me that by now: the installer could have written something on the note he left, the nimrod CSR I spoke to should have seen it on his screen, and I’ll even go as far as to say that the guys responding on Twitter should have seen that SOMETHING was screwy after seeing me unleash some “nerd rage” on the tubes.  That’s water under the bridge, though.  I figured I’d give them a few days to call and once my patience runs out, I’ll just nuke it all and give Time Warner a ring.  Luckily (or unluckily, perhaps) I am a very patient person.

Now if Phone Dude didn’t flip the switch at all because I wasn’t at home, he screwed up.

At about 930 in the morning yesterday, I got a phone call.  It was a person from AT&T’s Executive Service something-or-other.  She apologized for the inconvenience and told me that someone would be calling me back to get things taken care of…within 48 hours.  Grr.

Luckily it didn’t take that long, I got a call in the afternoon (that I missed) from another person somewhere within AT&T’s secret underground lair.  It was another gal who should be THE person to get things squared away, but I couldn’t just call her, I had to leave a message and once I did so she would call me back within a hour.  Yeah, that’s convenient!  The problem here is that my job is answering a tech support line:  if my cell rings while I’m helping a customer I can’t pick up.  I left a message at five hoping that she would ring me before a customer did.

“Eduardo’s Dumb Luck” kicked in, so of course, my cell rang when I was on the line with a customer.  Luckily, the customer was on hold, so I quickly answered.  The Executive Customer person asked me if I had some time to discuss the problem (gee, its a shame it isn’t written down somewhere, like say, a blog!) which I obviously didn’t, so I asked her to call me back during my lunch break today.

Of course it wasn’t until after I ended the call  that I realized I was expecting another important call at that same time.

Crap.

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BUSINESS, JUST SAYING, RANDOMIZER9.COM, TECH, WHISKEY-TANGO-FOXTROT

The Social Not-Work

Morning of Wednesday, March 2, 2011

I was genuinely optimistic when I got ATTNickT’s tweet.  I thought that having a “man on the inside” would speed things along and I would be happily surfing the ‘Net in a few days.  I sent my information to AT&T’s  Customer Care Social Media team in the morning before work and waited to see what would happen.  At about 2PM I got this:

Okay, so it's 2 days...wait, "business hours?" Wut?

“Power of social media” my butt.

If you are wondering why I am complaining about “2 days” I invite you to notice the two words after the number 48:  “Business hours.”  In nearly all the professional positions I’ve had, a “business day” is the eight to ten hours during the weekdays when people are working.

So, if a “business day” is 8 hours, it might be six days before I hear from somebody who might be able to fix my problem.  Heck, let’s be really generous and assume a “business day” is 12 hours: that knocks two days off the wait down to only four days.  Hold on, though!  The weekend is coming, so let’s add two days to both those guesstimates.

So I had to wait six hours to be told I’m going to have to wait 6-10 days MORE?  Those hold times spent listening to elevator music suddenly don’t seem so bad.  Admittedly, I could be completely wrong and “48 business hours” is really two days, which does makes a weird kind of sense: AT&T is a phone company, so they’ve got to be watching their various grids 24/7. I asked for clarification on what “business hours” are, but I have an feeling that I’m not going to like the answer.

I never thought I'd have to ask this

All I have learned from my experience thus far is that AT&T’s Customer Care Social Media department is only good for ‘transferring’ me to someone else who might be able to help me out.  I could have more quickly done that over the phone even with the simpleton I spoke with yesterday.

Maybe I’m just too patient, but I’m going to maintain my optimism, stick with it and see what happens.  I’m getting REALLY close to pulling the plug and calling Time Warner Cable, though.

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