Tag Archives: randomizer’s dumb luck

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Every three weeks…

I really farking hate my job.

I do software support for a local company. They produce software is also supposed to bring geezers that have been doing mainframe programming for the last 20 years into the happy shiny world of Microsoft .NET and Visual Studio. The software this company creates has a programming language attached to it. With just a week of training at our facility, they will know Visual Studio, .NET, Windows programming, and Web programming. What could possibly go wrong?

Every single farking thing, that’s what.

I went into this with the hope that since I would be dealing with other programmers, they would be somehow smarter than the unwashed masses that I have had to deal with in previous customer service jobs. I could not have been more wrong. (read this to find out why) More and more I wonder how some of these people keep their jobs as my sanity slowly leaks out of my head.

We take calls from customers day in and day out, but one unfortunate person gets the -snicker- honor of answering email requests for assistance. These are usually the worst, they usually fall into a few categories:

Customer emails an error message and nothing else.
Customer wants to know how to do something, but does not specify exact details or a version number.
Customer is having problems with their code, but does not send any code at all, just a vague description of the problem.
Customer has something that OMG REALLY NEEDS TO BE FIXED RIGHT NOW but they email it instead of picking up the phone and calling our toll-free 800 number that is usually answered quickly.
Customer has a question that anyone who took Programming 101 should be able to answer.
Customer actually has a genuine question or problem. Customer provides code, version numbers, operating system, and other things that may be relevant to their problem.

Needless to say, we get the last one very infrequently.

Every three weeks, it becomes my turn. I dread going to work that Monday morning, and of course there is a (virtual) stack of things waiting for me when I get in. I also still have to answer the phone while on ’email duty,’ and every so often I get chastised for not answering a question “the right way” or not giving “special treatment” to an important customer.

I am not a salesperson, nor do I have any desire to be. I treat all my customers more or less the same. I’m only human: some folks do get special treatment (particularly if they’re nice) and some folks get to wait a little longer if they’re being dickholes. Either way, their problems get fixed, their questions get answered, the company gets paid, and everyone is happy…well, except for me.

Frankly, I think a trip to a certain monstrous career-building hotjob website is in order. 😉

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I Hate IBC Bank

It doesn’t take much for a bank to get on my bad side. Bank of America is easily near the top of my internal list of Things That Suck for kicking up the interest rate on my credit card AFTER I called them asking them to lower it. Fortunately, I have moved the balance to a different bank where I won’t be paying a interest rate that would make Tony Soprano jealous. My current bank is IBC, which really cheesed me off back in November.

So I have this check from my good friend Carlos (who should be enjoying his new Wii as I type this) that I would like to deposit into my account. Plan A was to go during lunch, but that went out the window because I had to go to a ‘meet and greet’ at work. I got to make an ass of myself by telling ‘war stories’ to customers, one of whom worked for the company that I was talking about in one of my stories. Whoops.

So its time for Plan B, which is to go after work. One of the nice things about IBC Bank is that they are open until later in the evening…except for today. I drive up to the closest location to home at about 5:15 to find they are closed with no indication as to why. The sign that says they are open until 8:00 only serves to perplex me further. I figure its a fluke, and decide to try another location. That one is closed as well, but at least there I find a sign on the door that says they CLOSED AT 4:30 FOR TODAY ONLY.

I was seven layers of pissed-off. The ONE FARKING TIME I actually have to go to a branch and they close up early. If that isn’t a sign to find a new bank, I don’t know what is. As far as I’m concerned, IBC stands for International Bunch of Cocksmokers now.

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Wii Feel Guilty

I have a friend named Carlos (well, two, actually, but that’s neither here nor there) who has been searching for a Wii for a few months now. The purchase has been approved by the Office of Budget and Management (Mrs. Carlos) and the money is in the bank, so all that is left is for them to FIND one of the silly things.

As most folks know, that is “the hard part.” Needless to say, he took umbrage at my stumbling upon a Wii by accident. Not too much, though, since he’s a really good guy. Frankly, if I were in his shoes I would be cursing my name and spitting at the ground that I walked upon.

I would also be over six-feet tall, which would be pretty sweet.

The fact that he is such a nice guy (and also hosts a good Super Bowl party) made me feel bad for his inability to find a Wii. I then made it a habit to keep my eyes peeled for them as I’m out and about. The next day after purchasing mine, I even went back to that same store and they still had one! I then immediately called Carlos, but to no avail, as his phone was turned off. D’oh.

I certainly couldn’t blame myself for that, but nevertheless my “Wii guilt” ate at me until my insides burned like the fire of a hundred suns! Well, maybe not THAT bad, but it sounds good, doesn’t it?

As fate would have it, I happened to be at Costco last night looking for printer ink, and lo and behold, there sat a PALLET of Wii! (hmm, sounds like something out of Dr. Seuss) Once again, I called Carlos, and this time he was there (yay) BUT he doesn’t have a Costco card. We then made a gentleman’s agreement: I would purchase the system, he would pay me the cost and everybody would be happy. He would have the object of his desire, and I would be able to play Zelda:Twilight Princess guilt-free again.

There was a small problem in this otherwise brilliant plan: Like many other retailers Costco bundled the Wii, which bumps up the cost. Their bundle came with 2 games (Super Mario Galaxy and Wii Play) and a second nunchuck for $350. That’s actually not a bad deal; you’re getting the nunchuck for free. I wasn’t sure if I had the scratch to cover it in my checking account, though, and I only had my debit card on me. No biggie, I thought to myself, I’ll run home, grab a credit card with a grace period, pay it when the bill comes in with the money from Carlos, and once again, everybody’s happy.

I dash home in the Reliant feeling pretty good about myself, and hurry back to claim the prize only to find that THE LAZY BASTARDS AT COSTCO CLOSE AT 830. Dammit.

The Wii guilt weighed heavy on my heart as I dialed Carlos’ number…he told me not to sweat it…he’s just too darn nice, I tell you. Yet, I cannot let go of my Wii guilt quite that easily. Nay, I shall continue to search high and low until we are both merrily hurling Koopa shells at each other in Mario Kart. Only then will I can be absolved of my Wii guilt! Verily, I must!

Or I’ll get lucky and they’ll still have some at Costco today. 😉

UPDATE: Yup, I got lucky, woo-hoo!

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The Force is Strong in This One…

Even though I’m probably not supposed to, I like to IM the friends I made at the last company I was at, just to see how they are doing back in the ol’ salt mine. As is the case with a bunch of screw-balls like us, some funny exchanges often ensue, but my conversation with Chris (not RavynX, BTW) this afternoon took a weird twist.

It was ten minutes until quitting time and I get a message from Chris asking if I was leaving soon. I replied yes I was, assuming nobody called. He then sent: “You are going to get a call” or something to that effect, and just as I finished reading that sentence THE DAMN PHONE RANG. I was flabbergasted, to say nothing of cheesed-off at Chris for jinxing me. I cursed Chris’ name under my breath as I put on my headset and picked up the call.

Luckily for Chris, the call was for someone else, so I transferred the call and went home on time. I left a message on Chris’ voicemail telling him how much he sucked, which probably wasn’t a good idea, since apparently he is a Sith Lord in training.

Now if it happens tomorrow, I am officially freaking out.

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Taking Exception to Idiots

I want to start out by apologizing to all the non-programmers reading this. I try to avoid talking shop in a public place, but fark it…at least this gives me something else to say today besides “Valentine’s Day Sucks.”

A client has been busting my balls for the last week talking about “I have a random error” and he keeps sending me the same damn error message “Invalid data found in column XYZ” over and over again. At first I’m like, “Dude, you have invalid data!” which he denies, instead he blames it on the latest version of our software. He has no way to reliably recreate the error, but without that, I really have nothing to work with. “It’s random” he parrots to me.

Sorry, buster, but unless you’re having a hardware problem or failure: THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS A RANDOM ERROR!!

This eventually escalates to The Boss, who will no longer be my The Boss after tomorrow; he is transferring to another department. Mr. Random Error sends his code and some example data to The Boss who bounces it back to me because, hey, he’s moving out of our department, and he’s got other things to do. Okay, fine, I’m cool with that, but he didn’t have to be a dick about it, hopefully new The Boss will be cooler.

Randomizer’s dumb luck means I get passed the buck 90 minutes before my scheduled time to leave, and I have tomorrow off, too. Fark.

Those minutes quickly melt away setting up the test environment and getting the crappy code to freaking compile because the Brainiacs who wrote it are using a bunch of old crap that I don’t have referenced because I don’t use old crap. By the time I get all that sorted out, its way past time for me to go and I’m barely getting to the “let’s find out what happened” part, but I decide to stay despite a sweet, sweet, 3-day weekend staring me in the face.

I stay partially because its my job, partially because soon-to-be-former The Boss insisted this be done ASAP, partially out of curiosity as to what is causing the problem, and partially to prove to that jerk Mr. Random Error that he’s full of crap.

It doesn’t take long.

The program starts up as he said it would, data is loaded and everything looks okay…but I notice there are four exceptions in the Output window, and the program is still running?? For the 99% of you that aren’t code monkeys it means the program should have crashed…HARD

I fart around for a bit and get the “Invalid data found” error that started it all. Before the program dies, though, exceptions keep stacking up in the Output window like pancakes at Denny’s on a Sunday morning. It’s not quite Miller Time yet, though, something screwy is going on here. I look for Try-Catch statements in the code (these are used to catch errors) and find the following:

Try
blah
blah
suck
blah
Catch ex Exception

End Try

There is NOTHING in the Catch block!? Those of you who are programmers are probably laughing by now, for those that aren’t, that means when something Really Really Bad happens, the program just goes along its merry way as if nothing had happened. Normally, you would DO something about the error and keep the program from crashing.

In this case, something bad DID happen, but nothing is done about it. The errors just keep stacking up and stacking up until the whole thing blows up, which explains why it is (exaggerated finger quotes in mid-air) “RAN-DOM.” I breathe a sigh of relief because this is something we can work with, and I can tell Mr. Random Error that his code sucks and he needs to add some error handling to it. I enjoyed typing every single letter of that fucking email.

I was done at 830; I didn’t send out the email to Mr. Random Error, though, I sent it to The Boss and The Boss’s The Boss to let them know what was going on and to verify my theory is correct. Considering my state of mind when I typed it, some proofreading is probably a good idea, too.

So now I can begin my 3-day weekend, and I think I’ll start it by going out for some buffalo wings…mmm, wing-y!

By the way; Valentine’s Day sucks!

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At The Car Wash

Identifying people by something they do (or don’t do) is just one of those things that people tend to do, and I’m no different. Instead of their names, I could identify close friends as Wrestling Fan, Mini Driver, World of Warcraft Player, Quiet Guy, and Dude That Enjoys Killing People In Videogames Just A Little Too Much. You know who you are.

One unfortunate habit that I have acquired is that I do not wash my car on a regular basis. When your friends constantly see the layers of dust covering your vehicle, you soon become known as “Guy Who Never Washes His Car.” This has been my moniker for years back home, however I didn’t realize that it had followed me up to my new home until last Saturday.

A friend of mine was coming over to visit for the first time, and I provided directions. The last instruction being: “Look for my red Dodge Neon.” I figured this was simple enough, at least in the first month of living there, I had never seen another red Dodge Neon. The apartment was stuffy, so I decided to open the balcony door to let some air in while I did some vacuuming.

As I am doing this, I look outside and see my friend parking his truck just outside of the building. Great, I think, he’ll be knocking on the door pretty soon. I continue cleaning but hear no knock on the door. “Why hasn’t he knocked yet?” I wonder. I check outside and see the truck is no longer there. As I am pondering this turn of events, my cell phone rings, its my friend: “Hey, did you wash your car?” he asks, to which I reply yes.

I then asked if he had parked a few minutes earlier. He said yes, but he had decided that apparently the Neon was SO clean he assumed it was not mine and kept on looking for a red “covered in dirt” Neon which he did not find. Jerk.

It is now official, I am now “Guy Who Never Washes His Car.” Again.

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Miss-Organized

One of my (many) quirks is that I try to leave things in the same location so that I can easily find them. My keys are always in the same place on top of the small bookshelf in my room, the remote controls are always on top of the coffee table, and the diet soda is always on the bottom shelf of the refrigerator.

Ninety-nine times out of a hundred this works very well. However, there is that one time every so often where I put something in a DIFFERENT place and it completely blows my mind. I once misplaced my cell phone and spent a good half-hour searching for it before I noticed it sitting on top of the television…in the living room…its also a larger phone so I definitely should have noticed it earlier.

I decide to bake some oatmeal-raisin cookies out of the misguided notion that they are somehow not AS bad for me as store-bought (but hey, who knows, maybe they are, right? RIGHT??). After washing the dishes and cleaning the kitchen, I check my ingredients; flour, sugar, oatmeal, yadda, yadda, yadda. I appear to have enough of everything but a quick peek in the refrigerator reveals there is no butter! Crap. So off to the store I go for a box of butter.

Much to my disappointment, the HEB is completely OUT of unsalted butter. I am left scratching my head searching for some logical reason everyone should be baking today. I suppose everyone else who had today off in observance of Martin Luther King Day got the urge to do some baking. I’ve never used salted butter before, and for fear of tampering with my recipe, I decide to punt and use margarine. I guess its not really ‘punting’ though; Blue Bonnet did the job just as well before I started making fat cash and started using the Good Stuff.

I pick up a few other things I need and go home to fire up the oven and get to work. All goes well until I notice that burnt-cookie smell. It turns out the oven was set too high: 400 degrees instead of 350. Well, nuts. Fortunately, the cookies aren’t set-the-smoke-alarm-off burnt, the raisins on the bottom just got a little crispy. They are certainly edible, but as I do not wish to sully my reputation as a baker, those will not be leaving the apartment.

I turn down the oven and the second batch comes out perfect. I clean up the kitchen and go to the refrigerator to grab a soda. I had placed the now half-empty box of margarine on the bottom shelf and think to myself: “That should really be on the top shelf.” I move the margarine to its proper place and find a FULL box of margarine sitting on the top shelf.

Cookie, anyone?

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All I Want For Christmas Is An MP3 / Movin’ Man

I woke up early today because I had to exchange two gifts; a DVD player I had purchased for my mother had to be upgraded (or downgraded depending on your point of view) to a DVD/VCR, and the MP3 player I purchased for one of my brothers didn’t work, so that had to be exchanged.

I first thought to myself “OH NOES! The stores are going to be packed, so I better get out early.” and thus hit the road at about 830. Come to my surprise, there were no lines at any of the service desks and I walked out of Wally-mart with a DVD/VCR combo for Mom. The Best Buy was out of stock of the player I had bought for my brother so I went ahead and returned it, thinking I could easily find a similar one elsewhere.

WRONG. Three Wal-Marts, two Radio Shacks, a Target, and a Circuit City later, I had jack and squat. You know you’re desperate when you’re going to Radio Shack. It wasn’t just that I couldn’t find the same model I had bought for my brother, there were hardly ANY mp3 players to be found for under one hundred dollars! I suppose now that mp3 players with 1GB of storage can be readily had for under $100, EVERYBODY and their cat wants one. Granted, there were some iPods, but I’m on a budget. I sheepishly told my brother that I would find one up here or order it online and get it delivered to him.

That (almost) taken care of, I said my goodbyes and hit the road back to good ol’ San Antone, as today is the day I get the keys to my new apartment and start moving out of the dump I’m living in right now. When I do this, I essentially play a little game I call: “How much crap can Randomizer cram into his car?” I currently drive a 2005 Dodge Neon and I’m discovering that it can hold quite a bit. After two carloads I have the bathroom ready to go; I just need a new shower curtain. The kitchen is almost ready, I just need to move over the food from the refrigerator/freezer, and I have some temporary bedding in place until the boys and I get the big stuff moved this Saturday.

I am enjoying moving my stuff over, just the essentials right now, and by New Year’s I expect to have everything major done and be livin’ la vida loca. No more crappy commute or trashy neighbors, just a nice quiet place where I can rock until I drop, then rock some more!

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Scrooge and Marley and Randomizer9

I have to work on Christmas Eve. That sucks. Yeah, yeah, I know, so do a lot of other people, but I work in a ‘professional’ setting. The other professionals I know have Christmas Eve off, clients are telling me they have Christmas Eve off, my brother’s kids have Christmas Eve off, but I have to work. It wouldn’t be a big deal if my family was in the neighborhood, but having to make an extra trip just to work (hopefully) a half day on Christmas Eve is a big ball of SUCK. I’ve spent every Christmas with my family and I have no intention of spending a Christmas without them now.

Things have gotten slower and slower leading up to the holiday, and except for a few freaks who contact us on a regular basis because they don’t have anything better to do, its pretty dead here at the office. I can only imagine what Monday is going to be like. I’m trying not to let it spoil my holiday. I currently find myself sulking around in my cube with a big chip on my shoulder that I usually keep in storage except for Valentine’s Day. Once I get out of here my mood will improve, but until then I’ll be quite “Grinchy” until then.

But the Grinch got over his holiday hangups, and so will I…once four-thirty hits. 🙂

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Coin-Scarred

I usually keep a spare change container of some kind at home, the receptacle of choice right now is an old-style glass milk bottle like the ones you see in the old Tom and Jerry cartoons. For no good reason, I took a picture of it and made it into a desktop, you can see it here.

The downside to this is taking those coins to the bank. If you’re lucky, your bank has a coin counting machine. The teller takes your change, runs it through the machine, gives you cash (or deposits it if you’re smart) and everyone’s happy. If you’re unlucky, your bank will only take rolled-up coins, and if you’re REALLY unlucky they ask you to write your account number or some other such nonsense on the rolls. There’s a Coinstar machine at the grocery store, but they charge 8.9 percent, and I want it ALL, baby!

I place the change into a plastic container and drive to my bank (IBC Bank) to see if I can get lucky. Well, how about that! They have a machine, and I don’t even need my account number! I hand my bounty to the teller, she goes into The Secret Room With The Magic Coin Machine and I wait…and wait…and wait. After about 15 minutes, they tell me the machine’s busted and they’re going to return my change. The teller goes back into The Secret Room With The Magic Coin Machine, and soon pops her head out and exclaims the machine is fixed! Woo-hoo! Or not. woo. After another five minutes I leave change-full and cash-less. I give them a silver star for trying, though.

But hey, no biggie, there’s another branch just down the road…I get there to find it closed. Fark. Okay, there’s another one not TOO far away, I’ll have to drive through some crappy traffic, but it’s a nice day.

“We don’t have a coin-counting machine…” After hearing that, I’m left wondering “What kind of craphole bank doesn’t have a coin-counting machine?” It was in a nicer part of town, though, so maybe its beneath them or something. Jerks.

As Fate would have it, I had planned to go to another part of town to do some apartment-hunting. There’s a bank branch in the area so I figure its worth a shot, and I can browse around the nearby mall for a bit afterwards and spend my loot. I can’t find the damn bank, though (there should be a special place in hell reserved for the moron who designed the layout of the roads in that area) and the parking lot at the mall is PACKED SOLID. Mental note: stay the hell away from La Cantera until after Christmas.

I figure I’ll try one last time, surely my luck can’t be so bad I strike out for the 5th time. Unfortunately, my Spidey-sense starts tingling as I drive up, so I don’t even bother to take the change with me inside the bank. Come to discover my luck IS that bad; they only take rolled coins. For bonus points, the cashier is an blithering idiot who starts babbling about coin wrappers. I make a smartass comment about ‘no wonder Coinstar is in business’ to the mouth-breather and walk out.

I tell you, this kind of crap only happens to me…IBC has 31 locations in San Antonio, I visit 4 of them and can’t get satisfaction. Now, I can either pay the Coinstar tax, or get a bigger bottle and play this game again in a few months. Then again, I wonder if EB Games would take $58.22 in change, its not like its all pennies!

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