template fugit

Just a little tweaking in the template for a change.

Tech support Wizard?

Tech support?
A good friend of ours said that their 20-something daughter in Florida needed help because she didn't know how to get her new printer to work with her laptop. I figured I could walk her through it on the phone (to Florida) since I have set up hundreds of printers and drivers. I was not prepared for this, though. It took about 30 minutes for 5 minute's worth of actual work.

The daughter, I will call her "Jane", is a teacher, and I figured would be somewhat savvy. NOT! I asked what the problem was, and she explained the printer was still in the sealed box, she was afraid to open it, but she thought that the "wire thing" (USB Cable) that her mother sent was the right one probably. Now at this point, I should have told her I would call back after she had it set up and connected, but I was on their phone, and wasn't going anywhere, so I gritted my teeth and grinned, and said, "First, take it out of the box and take all the packing and tape off of it." This took her many minutes with me coaching.
Jane, "What is this little cube box thing that says Ink Cartridge on it?"
Me: "It is an ink cartridge. Take the tab off it and put it in the printer."
"Where in the printer?", said Jane.
I said I had never seen the printer, so she would have to figure it out. This went on and on. . .

About 98 % of my frustrating step by step process was through, and all there was was to send a test print to see if we had succeeded, she denied me of this pleasure as well. All of a sudden she unfolds a big quick start instruction sheet and says, "Hey, this has all of this stuff on here that we have been doing!" And she starts READING IT TO ME! 1. take tape off 2. unwrap black cartridge, pull tab, etc. etc.... EEEEKKK! I had to laugh, because I had to stop her from going over this back to me, but she didn't get it. Finally, I got her to print a test page, which would have been automatic if she had read the instructions.

Then I get ten minutes of praise and nonsense from her and her mother about how smart I am for doing this , as if it were a wizard and they were mere muggles. "Oh, it was nothing", I heard myself saying, If they only knew how true that was.

Two telephone related rants

Two phone related rants: a.) Can't dial and listen. b.)Phone times out too soon.

a.) Most phones now, cell and standard have the dialpad in the body of the phone, not like the old days when you could look at the dial and listen too. This would be fine, except the phone company and corporate automated phone systems (eg. . . hit 1 for sales, 2 for customer service, etc.) still think you can do both.
So I hit 2 for customer service, for example, and not being a magician, I take the phone from my ear to do this. By the time I get it back to my ear, the message has already started on instructions for the next level, so I have to wait for the next cycle to repeat.
Or you have to enter your 10 digit id, and a digit doesn't register, but of course you don't know this until you have put the whole thing in there. Then when you finish the whole thing, you realize that if you could have listened, you would have known sooner.

b.) But the most sinister thing that has changed on the phone systems, and I swear I am right on this, is that they don't give you as much time - or enough time between digits. I first realized this when Martha's mother started slowing down a few years ago, and she couldn't dial any number out of town because it started beeping if she delayed more than a couple of micro-seconds between digits.

Even today I get so mad when I am looking up a number, and key in the area code, glance down to my listing and find the rest of the number, and before I get my attention back, it has timed out. Bah Bah bah bah The phone nazi has said "No dialing for you! Too slow!" Not an earth shaking problem, but makes phones harder to use and I know they were not this way years ago. And who is responsible for this? Ma Bell? ATT? it is a nationwide thing, it looks like, so there is nobody to complain to, nobody who would care.