Originally posted on nitemayr.vox.com
#WritingFromIsolationWard
Before:
Kevin was born on the mossy hills of Scotland and lived for a while in West Lothian before the mores of pre-Thatcher and REALLY pre-Oasis Great Britain sent his family across the ocean to North America. They moved here and there and Kevin did the same when he was old enough. Now he lives in London with his family and a Dog.
Kevin Wardrop is an amateur writer, amateur photographer and professional pain in the ass. He has worked in the PC support business for most of his adult life and has been accustomed to simply answering technical questions as a matter of fiat, it was his career choice after all. Now he herds cats and puppies for a living as well as babysitting the web enterprises at the heart of western industry.
I must be getting “homesick” for working at Symantec and living in Eugene, because I had two fully-formed dreams about the States last night. Fully formed, in this case refers to the fact that I was able to fall back into the dreams even after interruptions.
Dream One: The Work Dream
I walk back into Symantec, which is suspiciously in the same field that where my elementary school is. In fact, “work” is now a series of desks, like those at an elementary school. I take my desk and advise everyone that I am back at Symantec until I find a new job, in order to continue pulling a paycheque. People then start asking questions about why I am back and what I’m doing, so I start snapping at them and laughing “For someone so old, shouldn’t you be worried about how much time you have left?” and stupid crap like that. I tell them that I don’t care about future employment with Symantec and the “boss” asks me to leave. The “boss” was a former co-worker, and not a former supervisor.
I get up and write my name on the board and leave, taking my gym shoes with me.
Dream Two: The Store
After finding a new home (a big house with neat rooms that hide when you press a button) I venture out to find a new job. I wander into the local Geek/Surplus/Comic store and proceed to convince the owner (Stu) that I need to buy the store from him for “all the money I have” which turns out to be 49 cents.
Stu sells me the store and I close up to take stock. I find an exciting number of expensive curios and books, as well as a collection of comics that don’t exist.
I kept falling back into this dream and exploring the store, which I never left.
Hmm…
Starting immediately, we will be upping the activation count to a 5 by 5 plan. We will be raising the maximum amount of computers a user can have BioShock installed on simultaneously from 2 to 5, and allowing a user to reinstall BioShock on each of those computers from 3 times to 5 times
Oh, something is wrong with your install? Reinstall. Hmm, still not working, reinstall.
Have these people even seen the inside of a software support center?
Reinstall is step 2 in the four-step customer blow-off plan for bad techs.
For those at home, the four-step plan is this:
1. Did you reboot? Will that take a long time? Go ahead and call back if that doesn’t help!
2. Did you reinstall? That will take a long time! Go ahead and call back if that doesn’t help!
3. Did you install Patch X+1, [where x is the version the customer has and +1 is a cosmetic update]? The download will take a long time. Go ahead and call back if that doesn’t help!
4. I’m sorry, I don’t support that operating system, let me direct you to the correct agents, thanks for calling!
At least twice in any long-term support issue, a customer is going to be forced to reinstall. If they have done so on their own they are already buttressing against these imaginary limits.
Let customers who have physical media or downloaded “unlocked” media reinstall as they want, if you are trying to lock stuff down to prevent piracy, REWARD paying customers with content that is only available through online activation of keys, make the enhanced content online only and activated only through an SSL encrypted keying system.
Ta Daaaa!
Revenue stream saved
We drove from Nebraska to Illinois today.
I wish I had more to say about the drive but I left my brain and stomach somewhere in Iowa! There were about a million hills between Lincoln and Ottawa, Illinois. This made the drive seem to go on forever, it wasn’t until I put on an audiobook that the drive became less of a chore. (World War Z)
We should hit ontario sometime tomorrow! Please continue to wish us luck!
Yep. Beyond a trucker that decided to match our snails pace along 80 east, we had a good drive. The sky kept on threatening to rain, but nothing came of it.
Rather than stress about the lighter we’ll go on without it, keep a short driving goal in mind.
Today we passed the middle of the way for the trip and are now closer to home than Eugene.
We have about 1000 miles to go, but we should be able to stop in illinois then make it to Canada by monday afternoon!
Wish us luck on the last two legs of our trip!
Left Ogden behind, the breakfast place had a roach issue so we got comped, I didn’t get to eat.
The drive was great, but the last bit and impersonal hotel left me rattled.
Saw so many hills that I am no longer impressed by Oregon’s hills; excepting the fact that the first 100 or so miles of the drive out of eugene were so smooth and awesome .
Let me also say that if I never have to drive downhill on another graded road I’ll be very very happy. I’ll do it again though, happiness isn’t everything.
On a travel note, we have come 1100+ miles, we have 1500 to go. we’ll be at the 1500 mile mark sometime tomorrow evening. Stamina holding, we’ll be in lincoln nebraska tomorrow night by 8 pm. Otherwise we’ll be there by 10 pm at the latest.
Very Expensive! 156 for the room, 20 bucks for breakfast. Damn! Now for gas!
NOTE FROM THE FUTURE: After I posted this a cockroach the size of a small cat crawled up the curtain behind Jen and we had to abandon the table (a table full of food too) and left the restraunt. The waitress had said under her breath that this was not a new problem.
The drive went well today, until mile 420 or so, with 70 miles to go.
We were driving downhill on slick graded roads when the back end started sliding out. Crap!
No matter what we did, wobble wobble, I thought that we might have a flat, so I pulled over and while cars and trucks whipped by at 70 mph+ I cranked a flashlight and prayed for the best.
All seemed well, but as we got going again it was wobble time again; I was so rattled at this point that driving was a chore.
damn, and more than an hour to go.
then we got hosed at the hotel.
tomorrow looks better, as I’ve booked the hotel and have limited the trip to 8 hours, rather than 12.
Fingers crossed we make it before 10.
This planning change extends the trip by one day.
We should be home by tuesday.