I think I just found my new favorite Rock Band song.
Jonathan Coulton kicks ass!
Learn-O-Stat
Awhile back, the apartment complex where I live sent out surveys to everyone. I filled mine out to complain about the garbage not being picked up in a timely fashion. I usually go home to have lunch, and lately, the garbage I left by the stairs at 730 AM is still there at noon. Eww.
One question on the survey that piqued my interest was “How can we help you save energy?” I’d like to say I thought about it out of altruism (you know, “save the planet” and all that) but the truth was, I was trying to spend less cash so that there would be more left for Fun Stuff. For what its worth, I do recycle my newspapers, plastic grocery store bags, and soda cans.
I thought to myself: “What uses up the most juice?” Since this is South Texas, the answer was quite simple: The Air Conditioner! Despite leaving it off when I was not home, and using fans to help keep the apartment cool, I was somewhat shocked to find my electric bill jumped to $82 in July. But what could I do about the A/C?
On a hunch, I figured that installing a digital thermostat would save electricity for two reasons: first, it would allow me to exactly determine how high I can raise it and still be comfortable, and second, it would actually work as advertised, since the existing one was probably as old as the building and perhaps didn’t work as well as it used to.
I smiled at my ingenuity, dropped the survey in the mail, and forgot all about it.
Then, one day, I returned home from work to find a new digital thermostat installed on the wall. I was pleasantly surprised, even more so when I discovered that the installer left no instructions on how to actually use the thing. Fortunately, my Google-fu is strong, and I was able to find the instructions out there on the tubes. For the most part, it worked just like the old one, but has all these neat buttons that I’m pretty sure do something. I never did bother to program it, though.
I figured I would be happy if my electric bill dropped five or ten bucks or so. After all, it didn’t cost me anything to have it installed, so any savings would be gravy. I continued to use the A/C as I had before, thinking that any change in habits would break the experiment.
I got about $24 worth of gravy in one month: that $82 electric bill for July (719 KWh) turned into a $58 electric bill (561 KWh) in August. Granted, it is a one-month comparison, and there were 2 fewer days in the August billing period, but I will gladly take the 21% decrease in electrical usage and the cash!
I don’t know if the trend will continue, but for now, I’m pretty happy. Thanks, apartment people!
My Familiar Face
I apparently look like a lot of people (or do they look like me?) because at least once a month, I get asked if I am somebody else. Its pretty disorienting, especially when I am enjoying a sandwich at a and someone in fatigues walks up to me and asks if I was in so-and-so unit at base so-and-so…
My response: “I’ve never even been in the military…SIR!”
Its just weird, but I can’t help but think that there’s gotta be a way to turn it to my advantage somehow.
Randomizer’s 5 Rules of Tech Support
This is just a start, I’m sure that more will come to me as time goes on:
Rule #1 (People Suck rule): Customers are filthy liars. They change things, screw up their system, and then call you and insist that “it just stopped working out of the blue.” Okay, yeah, sometimes Windows or Visual Studio will randomly goof something up. The only thing that truly happens “just out of the blue” though is hardware failure. Everything else is either the result of something a customer screwed up or an new update that was automatically installed (or wasn’t installed in some cases). Customers will almost NEVER fess up and say what they did to goof up their system, though. Instead, they will make something up or just answer “Yes” because they think you’re working from a script.
Rule #2 (Sherlock Holmes rule) If all possibilities are eliminated, the impossible has to be the answer. When dealing with Windows and Visual Studio, sometimes weird stuff does just happen (see above). Hell, we’ve had Microsoft tell us: “Yeah, we know about that bug, but we aren’t going to fix it.” No matter how much a customer insists your suggestion will not work, insist that they do it. Even if it sounds obvious or weird to you, give it a shot, IT JUST MIGHT WORK.
Rule #3 (Mr. Rogers rule): Customers are like little kids; they want the newest stuff, they whine when it doesn’t work, they threaten to tell your parents (supervisor) if you don’t do something for them, you have to hold their hands and walk them across the street, and you also need to pat them on their head and tell them they’re special every once in a while. Always keep this in mind, especially the head-pat bit.
Rule #4 (Time Warner/Comcast/your cable company rule): If you are unable to help the customer (or cannot), always give them the illusion that you are trying. Every support team has certain customers that “cry wolf” and specialize in making mountains out of molehills, or that want help with somebody else’s product (usually Windows). Fark ’em. Give ’em what I call the “cable company” answer: “We’re working on it.” Wait, and then give ’em the bad news. If they think you tried, they will be less likely to get angry when they get the bad news.
Rule #5 (Lion King rule): EVERYTHING IS YOUR FAULT. Its your fault that the customer spilled tea on the keyboard. Its your fault that the power supply on their database server blew up and they have no backups. Its your fault the head programmer left and the source code for the app was on his machine that has already been re-imaged. Learn to live with this. Water off a duck’s back, baby.
You Only Spam The Ones You Love
I HATE SPAM.
Yeah, yeah, I know, big whoop, who doesn’t…but I’m not talking about the spam that promises cheap meds, or that king in wherever-it-is who fled the country and needs help getting his money, or the stock WHOSE VALUE IS ABOUT EXPLODE IN JUST A FEW DAYS SO BUY IT NOW!!! Mmm…no.
I can deal with that stuff, spam filters have gotten pretty good these days.
I’m talking about the stupid chain-letters and the stupid collections of “inspiring” or funny images (except for lolcats, they’re alright) and the stupid cutesy messages that well-intentioned friends send. What pisses me off even more is when I get them on my cell phone. Jokes are fine but NO FARKING WAY am I forwarding a message to ten other people because it says “IF U LUV JEBUS SND 2 10 FRNDS K THX BYE” I’d like to think The Almighty has better things to do than count the number of texts I’ve been sending. Also, I barely have ten friends now and so I’d like to hang onto them, thank you very much. (not true, but just I couldn’t resist the setup)
What bothers me isn’t that the spam is coming from friends. What bothers me is that these supposed friends are sending me crap instead of an ACTUAL message of some sort. Even if it is just “HOW U DOIN” or “DNT WRY BE HAPY ” I’d much rather get a personal message that someone put some effort into (even if it was thirty seconds of effort) instead of the same shit that everyone else and their dog is getting. I knew one person that pulled this crap for several months and when I got a new cell phone number, I sure as fark didn’t give it to him.
As a general rule, if the list of recipients is longer than the message itself, its going directly to Binary Hell!
No passing Go, no collecting $200…straight to BINARY FUCKING HELL.
Arrgh!
Just sayin’
The decisions my boss makes affect me.
The decisions my bosses’ boss make also affect me.
What happens above that has jack and squat to do with me, so spare me the meeting with the CEO where he spouts generalities and encourages everyone else to work harder so he can get richer.
Killer Job
Got some eye-opening news from the doctor, today. My weight went up again (I admittedly have been slacking off) and my blood pressure is also on the rise. The doctor showed me a graph showing the gradual increase in weight, and it stared going up last July.
Last July is when I started my current job.
Methinks I’ll be asking for a transfer tomorrow.
Un-Reliant
Well, the Reliant now has over 36,000 miles on it. It went over the hump while I was driving down to my parents’ on Saturday. I guess this is where it starts to fall apart. Granted, I wouldn’t have gotten there so quickly (27 months) if it hadn’t been for my crappy job in New Braunfels, but that’s neither here nor there. Time to start thinking about that next vehicle. 🙂
So Much Fun It HURTS!
One aspect of video gaming that has never bothered me is repetition. After all, back in the early 80’s, that’s pretty much all we HAD. “Game Over” meant you ran out of ships or had to leave the arcade for some non-game related reason. I don’t mind doing the same thing over and over again as long as its fun, and if all I get at the end is a high score, I’m fine by that.
I think it’s also why I have never played any online RPGs for any extended period of time. I know that if I were to get hooked on a MMORPG I would probably never come out.
With arcades dead and gone, I feed my desire for arcade-style gaming goodness with Nintendo DS and Xbox Live Arcade games. Fortunately, they are relatively cheap and quite satisfying. Every now and then, though, I will come across a game that I just cannot stop playing until I am in some degree of pain. This is particularly true of the Nintendo DS; one hallmark of a good DS game (in my opinion) is that I can keep playing it and playing it until the stylus leaves a painful indentation in my thumb. Mental note: I need to take a picture of that the next time it happens.
The most extreme example of this was a game called Meteos. I’m a sucker for a good puzzle game, and Meteos was just the thing to burn away the hours while working the late shift at a call center a few years ago. If nobody was calling, I would be happily tapping away at my trusty red DS trying to beat my high scores. With a combination of a really good battery life, no supervisors present, and available plugs for my charger, I could easily spend most of my shift playing Meteos, followed by a sore thumb on my right hand.
This went on for a few weeks until I noticed some recurring pain in my left arm. It got to be quite a nuisance, so I went to see my doctor about it. He examined my arm, bent it this way and that, asked does this hurt, does that hurt, yadda yadda yadda. It turns out I had “tennis elbow” in my left arm. The same left arm I was using to hold up the DS (the ol’ fat DS, BTW) while playing Meteos all those hours. Heaven help me, I did not have the nerve to tell the doctor. A bottle of pain meds and a lot less Meteos later, and I was back to abnormal.
Elite Beat Agents also left its mark on me (literally!) and now I am in the grasp of Rock Band (playing the drums on Hard is a pretty decent workout) and 1942: Joint Strike whose button mashing madness has my right thumb in a world of hurt right now, but damn, its fun. My high score is already over a million, time to shoot for two!
-shakes hands around, blows on right thumb to cool it down-
Maybe later.
Rock Band – Opening Act
(continued from June 30)
So I had decided that I wanted Rock Band, but I also decided I didn’t want to fork out $170 for the whole kit and kaboodle. After all, I have a Guitar Hero 3 guitar that will work with the game, and I was 90% sure my Karaoke Revolution microphone would work. That just leaves (naturally) the most expensive part, being the drums…which are $80 on their own, and the game is $60, which at $140 is pretty darn close to the full price anyway! As popular as the game is, I figured a sale probably wasn’t going to happen anytime soon. I figured I’d have to save some change for a while.
As fate would have it, I had just received $15 in Best Buy Reward Zone certificates from a recent TV purchase, which knocks the price of the game down to $45! On a hunch, I browsed the some online stores for the drum kit, and lo and behold, Amazon had it on sale for $50 with FREE shipping, woo-hoo! Needless to say, paying $95 was MUCH better than $130
After nearly going insane waiting for the UPS guy a few days later, I had my drum kit, the mic worked perfectly, and simulated rock stardom was within my grasp!
All I needed now was a band.
Eduardo Soliz 