Meta Tags make the internet go round...

[calriddia.livejournal.com]

I built a pretty spiffy website a few months back. Unfortunately, I cannot share the website address. The guy was okay, typical lu$er, but not a complete moron. I could work with him, explain things and he was okay with it. I received an email from him when I returned from vacation last week. He explained that his Meta Tags were repeating in his code and that there were a ton of bold tags in the text that needed to be removed. So I went through and removed the 6548265484113549 strong tags (there were seriously that many and they were doing nothing… and I didn’t do it) and then I went hunting for these repeated Meta Tags. He claims they were messing up his search engine rating (if anyone knows ANYTHING about Google, they know Meta Tags do nothing, but what do I know, I’m only a web designer *rolls eyes*). It takes me mere moments to find the Meta tags in the title area (correct) and a few minutes to find the repeated meta tags in the body (incorrect). It took so long because there was other code duplicated in the body. So I start up Firebug in FireFox (I <3 Firebug). And I pour over this site. … Pause

Quick explanation: We use our in house product to build websites. It’s a dummies version of Dreamweaver and CSS template based. The consumer only has access to some html, mainly text boxes, there is no access to the CSS, but once you learn the product you can do some pretty amazing things with it. The Meta Tags get inputted in the page properties so nothing gets messed up and the product put the code where it should be. The specific template he is working with (we have a ton of them) has a title and a subtitle text box at the top of it. Remember that….

Continue… I pour over this site using Firebug to find where this code is sitting. The meta tags are repeated and so are the navigation buttons. It takes me a while to decipher which is the repeat code and which is the actual navigation since they are so close together. I FINALLY figure it out. The customers SEO guy had taken the Meta tag HTML and copy and pasted it into the title text bog and the navigation html and copy and pasted it into he subtitle text box. I delete it. I finish redoing the hoe page in div layers, email the customer and tell him to publish. He calls me a little while later, TELLING ME HE PUBLISHED, but that everything still needed to be taken out. I go back, everything is the same as I left it. I explain this to him that everything is fine. The customer tells me that he believes me, but that his SEO guy demands all this stuff and he refuses to talk me about this and will only go through the customer, which is fine. So the customer thanks me for my patience and cleaning everything up. I get an email yesterday, requesting AGAIN that the Meta Tags and the Strong tags me taken out…

Just to make sure, I checked the html on the site… everything’s fine… Would it be mean of me to tell the customer to tell his SEO guy to clear his cache and cookies?

*HEAD DESK*

Actual ticket

[yanni85.livejournal.com]

$User's printer (the one that was replaced on Wednesday) is not printing at all. It was printing yesterday; however, this morning the WYSE box was changed to a different one, does this have anything to do with why her printer doesn't work?

(no subject)

[hangar.livejournal.com]

Okay, my father is the type of person that thinks he knows everything. Absolutely everything. Ever. Especially about technology.

He tried to insist that I needed a card reader for a digital photo frame. A digital photo frame with a USB cable. He refused to admit he was wrong, even when I managed to transfer pictures to the card by placing it into the frame, and hooking the frame up to the USB.

He swore his monitor had died when a power outage reset the screen's resolution to 640x480 and 2 colors.

He bitched about how slow his computer was, while running one of those annoying programs that has a little animation of a dog or a butler or a bird or whatever walk across your screen with a message saying you have a new email. When I told him that was probably not doing his computer any favors, he told me that I was wrong. He uninstalled it later, at the advice of his "tech guy at work."

When I was visiting him for the holidays, one of the gifts he got for my cousin happened to be more RAM than she had previously. He starts to wrap it, and I pause him. "I thought $cousin had a laptop?" "She does." "Does she have a desktop too?" "What's that?" "..A computer like yours, where it's big and bulky and not going to fit comfortably on a lap." "Oh, no, she just has a laptop." "..Then why are you giving her desktop RAM?" "This is just RAM, there's not a difference." I just blinked for a solid thirty seconds, shook my head, and walked away. Sure enough, when he tried to install it, he was shocked that IT DIDN'T FIT! He insisted that he'd have to have his "tech guy at work" do it. Uh.. Right.

I pity that guy.

GRR.

[wxgeek.livejournal.com]

Apparently "Please remember where we download this file to, because we'll need it in a moment" means "completely forget where we put it and prove yourself totally inept at navigating a file system.

At this point I'm about to start advocating a ham radio-style licensing structure for computer users. To get a license to use a computer, you have to pass a proficiency test. Maybe the "Novice" level includes basic file tree navigation, clicking (left and right), and opening and saving your own files in various directories. Backing up would be nice, too. These users are allowed to use basic office suite programs, and the internet, and nothing else.

Then you could have an intermediate license, a Technician's license, which would let you do things like boot into safe mode, and do things like repair network connections. This licensing level would require that you understand and be able to apply these concepts.

A General license could be next, and it'd let you do things like log into an Administrator's account, and reformat your hard drive. Load device drivers. Things like that.

The Extra license grants you the ability to install an OS other than the one that shipped with your computer.

I like this. It needs refinement, but I think that with enough lobbying support from the Abused L1 Technical Representative's Union, we could get it done.

I love L2, PT. II

[wxgeek.livejournal.com]

Request: customer #---, CPE ID --------/$MARKET, has an RSU that has begun the robot rebellion all by itself.
[1:06 PM] Me: customer reports being in vlan capture because our network didn't recognize her modem
[1:06 PM] $L2: AHAHAHAHAHAHA
[1:06 PM] Me: :D
[1:06 PM] $L2: Ahhh gotcha
[1:06 PM] $L2: OK
[1:07 PM] $L2: Set modem as lost/stolen
[1:07 PM] Me: can't.
[1:07 PM] Me: =)
[1:07 PM] $L2: Make sure to NOT charge customer
[1:07 PM] Me: there isn't a spot to do it.
[1:07 PM] Me: the link in $account_mgmt_tool is missing.
[1:07 PM] $L2: ORLY
[1:07 PM] Me: YARLY

I like my job.

(no subject)

[deusmetallum.livejournal.com]

This just hit our inbox:

(no subject)

[onyxrising.livejournal.com]

I came in this morning to find, among the tickets I needed to deal with, one which just said:

Customer doesn't want to troubleshoot so escalating to tier 3.

These people never seem to grasp that we have disciplinary procedures for invalid escalations, and apply such readily.