Happy Halloween! And Amazing Fire

This: Debris fire defies firefighters is right up the road from our house. We could smell the smoke and hear sirens all day yesterday. When we went to Ralph and Denise’s about noon’ish, there was no fire. On the way back there was a massive fire. You could see the flames and smoke a long way away. It is STILL going on despite massive rainful all night and all morning so far, and made the kids’ bus very late today. (Over a half-hour late.) The bus driver had to be completely re-routed.

From the Columbian’s front page:

Vancouver Fire Department Firefighter Dave James, left, in the black helmet, and Captain-Paramedic Dean Potter carry a hose through a debris pile at McFarlane’s Bark & Garden Center at 8806 N.E. 117th Ave. (Janet L. Mathews/The Columbian)

Have a Happy and Safe Halloween!

BiZi Farm Trip

Here’s pictures of our BiZi farm trip on Sunday. We had a lot of fun!

Nothing else new to report. It’s been a very busy week work-wise for me with lot of overtime again.

My eye is a lot better. You can’t even see anything in the pictures I posted and there’s even a few closeups of me. It’s not 100% gone but a lot better.

Another Busy Weekend

We were swamped again at work today. Jack’s on call and got called in 4 times. So, it hasn’t felt much like a weekend yet.

Tomorrow we’re helping Jack’s younger brother (Sam) move in to their new house. So we’ll be busy all day tomorrow too. It’s neat that they are moving up here from California. Maybe we’ll get to see more of them!

How to Please Your I.T. Department…

I’ve seen this before but I love it:

• When you call us to have your computer moved, be sure to leave it buried under half a ton of postcards, baby pictures, stuffed animals, dried flowers, bowling trophies and children’s art. We don’t have a life, and we find it deeply moving to catch a fleeting glimpse of yours.

• Don’t write anything down. Ever. We can play back the error messages from here.

• When an I.T. person says he’s coming right over, go for coffee. That way you won’t be there when we need your password. It’s nothing for us to remember 700 screen saver passwords.

• When you call the help desk, state what you want, not what’s keeping you from getting it. We don’t need to know that you can’t get into your mail because your computer won’t power on at all.

• When I.T. support sends you an E-Mail with high importance, delete it at once. We’re just testing.

• When an I.T. person is eating lunch at his desk, walk right in and spill your guts right out. We exist only to serve.

• Send urgent email all in uppercase. The mail server picks it up and flags it as a rush delivery.

• When the photocopier doesn’t work, call computer support. There’s electronics in it.

• When something’s wrong with your home PC, dump it on an I.T. person’s chair with no name, no phone number and no description of the problem. We love a puzzle.

• When an I.T. person tells you that computer screens don’t have cartridges in them, argue. We love a good argument.

• When an I.T. person tells you that he’ll be there shortly, reply in a scathing tone of voice: “And just how many weeks do you mean by shortly?” That motivates us.

• When the printer won’t print, re-send the job at least 20 times. Print jobs frequently get sucked into black holes.

• When the printer still won’t print after 20 tries, send the job to all 68 printers in the company. One of them is bound to work.

• Don’t learn the proper term for anything technical. We know exactly what you mean by “My thingy blew up”.

• Don’t use on-line help. On-line help is for wimps.

I object to that last one!!!!

Please do the needful.

At my job, my title is: Customer Services Supervisor, Technical Support. In other words, if a customer writes in and demands to be given to a manager, I’m that person. I answer general stuff too, especially when we are busy, but I get a lot of the upset, frustrated, and sometimes even the not-so-smart customers. It’s all good. I can usually calm them down, especially if it’s something they did wrong and not us. And if it’s something we did wrong, I can usually offer them an incentive to calm down and work out the issue. (95% of the time, it’s not our issue. It’s a mistake the customer made, but trying to convince a confused customer of that can be challenging at times).

Days like today get to me. I swear everyone who wrote in woke up with only half their brain. I know these people cannot be THAT dumb, how else would they be able to write a semi-coherent email?? I can’t give specific examples, but.. I tell ya, days like today can sometimes take it out of me.

What’s really fun is the ones that don’t speak English and try to use a translator. One of the last support tickets I responded to tonight was clearly written using a translator. I was able to figure out most of what they wanted. I just had to read the words out of order. Something I’m getting good at. At the end of this customer’s request it said:

“Please do the needful”

Huh? Please do the what? I busted up. Granted, I needed the comic relief by the end of the day.

This isn’t an uncommon phrase, though. That’s why it’s so funny. Every time I see “Please do the needful” I get the giggles.

“Please do the needful” is used a LOT. In fact, we often get perfectly coherent support requests, only to have it end with, “Please do the needful”. Like they think they are using a common English phrase.

All your base are belong to us.

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