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Randomness XVIII: Ex-Vee-Triple-Eye


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Normally I don't like to name the specific customers I'm dealing with, but this one made me chuckle enough I had to. 

Yesterday I had a training session with a site, and some questions came up that I couldn't answer.  This morning I'm going through my notes, and I'm writing up the email to engineering to address these questions, and I got to write this line:

"Yesterday, during my training session with Bigfoot, these questions came up:" 

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18 hours ago, Inarah said:

 

I hope it's not looking at the flooflets as a midnight snack. 

 

You guys have had more than your share of trouble.   Maybe some of the forum members can do a collective dark working to align forces more in your favor.....

 

Um, the things I hold trunk with are not things you call on when you want good things to happen... :devil:

16 hours ago, PaganMegan said:

So, Grump talked me into letting BD have her pirate Halloween costume for her birthday.

 

Today she wanted to wear it to kindergarten.

 

The least surprising thing in the history of completely unsurprising things. :lol:

 

Do you two play "Your kid" when she displays unique personality traits? Such as, when she does something like this, do you just turn to one another and say "She got this from you, she's your kid"? :lol:

15 hours ago, redambrosia said:

Basically democracy. At least if it actually worked right.

When people talk about crowns and democracy, I always suggest that they look up Huey Long. You know, America's most famous home-grown Fascist?

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1 hour ago, CaptainPete said:

Do you two play "Your kid" when she displays unique personality traits? Such as, when she does something like this, do you just turn to one another and say "She got this from you, she's your kid"? :lol:

I thought this was a parental requirement....

(should that be in purple?)

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On 9/21/2021 at 2:19 AM, OneBoot said:

Work has been hitting me like a truckload of bricks, and I'm starting to question what reality is. Or isn't. I suspect there's a fair amount of wibbly-wobbly timey-wimey stuff involved, though.

 

Meant to ask earlier, how is the new home coming along (or have I missed somewhere the most recent update in the joy of home ownership)? If wibbly-wobbly timey-wimey is involved, is the interior decor resembling a TARDIS? *fingers crossed*

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Today is the anniversary of Bilbo's arrival by barrel at Esgaroth upon the Long Lake. It is also Bilbo and Frodo's birthday and the Autumnal Equinox. Happy Fall to everyone in the Northern Hemisphere and Happy Spring to all those south of the Equator. 

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Customer:    We haven't received any credit card deposits since the beginning of the month. 
Me:               I can't get connected to the site. Is your site internet working? What's your site IP address?
Customer:    Yes. How do find that?
Me: <gives instructions on how to find site ip address.> These instructions include different phrasings of "You must be connected to the same site network as your car wash equipment" several times. 

Customer:    Here is the IP address. 

Me:              I still can't get in. We're going to have to check the settings in <device name>. 

Customer:   OK, then, I'm going to have to go down to the car wash to check that.  <meaning he was at home or his office> 
 

<This was the first facepalm>

 

I get back from lunch, and there is a Voice Mail from this customer:

Customer   So I got down to the car wash, and found the ethernet cables to your equipment unplugged. 

<second facepalm>

 

The worst part - I was writing up the notes for my service ticket on this, and found not one, but two previous tickets for the exact same thing - ethernet cables at the site being unplugged. 

 

<third facepalm> 

 

I really wish our service ticket system had a way to put pop up notes for some customers where we could add notes like "Ask them if their network cables are unplugged!" 

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We are at the moment of the Autumnal Equinox and the forces of nature are in their bi-annual state of balance.

May you all have a happy and peaceful Autumnal Season.

GEM

13 minutes ago, kristof65 said:

Customer:    We haven't received any credit card deposits since the beginning of the month. 
Me:               I can't get connected to the site. Is your site internet working? What's your site IP address?
Customer:    Yes. How do find that?
Me: <gives instructions on how to find site ip address.> These instructions include different phrasings of "You must be connected to the same site network as your car wash equipment" several times. 

Customer:    Here is the IP address. 

Me:              I still can't get in. We're going to have to check the settings in <device name>. 

Customer:   OK, then, I'm going to have to go down to the car wash to check that.  <meaning he was at home or his office> 
 

<This was the first facepalm>

 

I get back from lunch, and there is a Voice Mail from this customer:

Customer   So I got down to the car wash, and found the ethernet cables to your equipment unplugged. 

<second facepalm>

 

The worst part - I was writing up the notes for my service ticket on this, and found not one, but two previous tickets for the exact same thing - ethernet cables at the site being unplugged. 

 

<third facepalm> 

 

I really wish our service ticket system had a way to put pop up notes for some customers where we could add notes like "Ask them if their network cables are unplugged!" 

Have you recommended this change to management?  Or your IT people?

GEM

Edited by Green Eyed Monsty
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Just to show that not all my calls are cringeworthy

I just got a panicked call from the main office asking if I could help out a Distributor Tech who did an upgrade, and something had apparently gone catastrophically wrong, and no one else was available to help him.  My heart drops, because usually these things are far worse than I'm initially told.  I take a deep breath, and call the tech:

Tech: I'm getting error code X. Not sure what I did wrong. 
Me:  Do they have <device name> installed?
Tech: No
Me:  No big deal then!

 

The device is a minor convenience feature that many sites don't have (want to pay for, really), but is turned on in the software by default.   This particular tech had never seen the error before because just by chance, every other site he had ever done had this device. 

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8 minutes ago, Green Eyed Monsty said:

Have you recommended this change to management?  Or your IT people?

There is a document full of suggested changes/improvements to the software that will likely never get made, pretty sure this is on there. 

The software was initially written by an in house software engineer who retired several years ago.  Getting any changes made to the software either means coaxing him out of retirement, or pulling one of the other software engineers off of income producing projects, neither of which happen very often - usually only if there is a big problem or new bug, which we haven't had in years. 

There are workarounds and places this info is stored - you just have to think to go look. 

In this guy's case, I just finished taking the "extreme" measure of adding him as a contact in the company VOIP phone system, and making this his profile picture:
image.png.163333bafa56057214093ecc3a8c873f.png

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