A slow night

[attackgypsy.livejournal.com]

Tonight was kinda slow here, as normal Sunday nights are. Took about 30 calls. Only one really stood out.

( It HAS to be something small, you idiot!! )

The Trainman's Lament

[mouser.livejournal.com]

It's not my job to run the train;
the whistle I can't blow.
It's not my job to say how far
the trains allowed to go.
It's not my job to pick the stops,
nor call out each new town
It's not my job to speed it up,
nor yet to slow it down.
It's not my place to shoot off steam
nor even clang the bell.
But let the damn thing jump the track
and see who catches hell!
*author unknown*

Are you trained by your company?

[255-255-255-0.livejournal.com]

Are you trained by your company?

I was just wondering because I called my local ISP last night due to a dropped connection.

I had a bit of a chat to the bloke who was answering their support calls.
He suggested, (among other things) I could have a damaged NIC.
I pinged the NIC and got a response, pinged my router and got a response.
I told him this.

Him : “So how do you ping your NIC?”
Me: Using the ping command (Duh) < I didn’t actually say Duh ;-)
Him : “What’s the address, do I just type in PING NIC ?

I don't care if you are a(n):

[ebtb.livejournal.com]

• programmer
• network admin
• developer
• certified in __________
• analyst
• consultant
• engineer
• technician
• et cetera

YOU ARE STILL CALLING ME FOR TECH SUPPORT. It doesn't matter. Telling me that you a fish farmer is just as pertinent. So just STFU and let me help you. Help me help you.

Argh....

[kizayaen.livejournal.com]

I just got emailed three pages of debug errors along with a note from my boss:

"Kiz - can you phone over to the call center and walk this enroller through recreating this application?"

I IM my boss:

Kiz: "I've never seen this enrollment software before. How would you like me to go about that?"
Boss: "Oh, well it should be easy. Just VNC into his machine and watch along while he recreates it, it's probably just a bad date."

Uh.

If it's just a bad date:

a) Train the damn enrollers. Don't put in urgent after-hours help requests.
b) Put some damn error handling into the program so it says "Invalid date" instead of three pages of debug errors.