So I’ve decided that I’m taking a vacation off of work, and it officially started yesterday morning.

I didn’t get much sleep, as is usual on my days off. After I got off of work on Saturday, I went straight to my sister’s house to spend time with my new puppy. (zomg he is so cute, look!)

That was taken this morning before I came home. Anyway, I went over to my sister’s house and played with my puppy. Then I came home and talked with people online. Around 7 or so my roommate woke up, and we had a 3 hour long discussion about the yard and what she wants to do with the house.

She accused me of having no design/landscaping instincts, and that wanting just one type of grass was ridiculous. (She likes our yard as-is, apparently, and it looks like crap… I think I’m going to just till the yard one day and then sew some real grass.)

I was getting extremely tired so I took a nap around 10 or 11; just before my alarm went off. I got up a few minutes before 12, (short nap,) and lounged in the living room for an hour, almost asleep the entire time. (I managed to get a few good sarcastic remarks in.)

Both Roommates were complaining about being hungry, but I wanted to go see my puppy, so around 13:30 I made them hop in my car. I bought’em lunch at Dairy Queen and spent about an hour or so playing with Julian. He passed out in Pat’s arms, (she’s the main roommate,) and his head lolled around in various cute ways that looked very awkward.

After that we stopped off for soda at the Gas Station, (Jones, of course!) and headed home.

We got home around 15:30 or so, and I hopped online to relax and tell people I’d been playing with my Puppy. I got a text from Steve, (best friend) that said, “Wanna go to the lake?”

It was hot outside, so I said sure. Headed out, bought some swim trunks, drinks, sunscreen and snacks, then headed up to the Lake with him and his Girlfriend. (It was an awkward trip; luckily, I drove myself.)

We stayed there for a few hours, went ‘lake diving’, which is really just seeing how low you can go under the water before the pressure gets to be too much for you. My pressure clocks in around 20 feet; it was hard to breath on the surface for a while after that!

The drive home was uneventful, and I was supposed to have dinner with them, but we all went our separate ways when we were told the restaurant that we wanted to go to was closed. I went over to my Sister’s house and played with my puppy s’more.

By this time I was pretty tired, but I didn’t take a nap. Instead, I played with Julian, (trying to bond as much as I can with him! He’s already attached!) and then we went to the store for drinks. (They didn’t want what I had.)

I picked up a bottle of rum, some soda, and then some chicken fingers from Burger King. Unfortunately, it seemed that around this point, (close to midnight) everyone was too tired to really do any drinking, (so the bottle went unopened) and they went to bed. I watched “My Bloody Valentine” because I’m not used to going to bed until around 04:00 most days. With how tired I was, I managed a nap around 02:00

I woke up to a few text messages sent, one from Twitter when Lothus went to bed, (02:45) and one from a girl named Brittany about 20 minutes later.

I passed back out without responding to either of them, as they were pointless text messages. Brittany would have required an actual conversation, which I didn’t have energy for. Besides, I didn’t want to argue about some trivial thing with her for a while, like she normally wants to do.

I was awoken again by a text message over an hour later. It was from a close friend of mine, who I’ve been wanting to actually talk with for a while.

We talked for almost an hour before my phone battery died. We would have talked for well over an hour if it hadn’t. Talking to them made me want to get in my car today and go see them. I’m on vacation, so I might just do that.

Now I’m home. It’s 08:30 almost, and I’m just now finishing up this log of my first day of Vacation. I hope the second day is just as full. If I don’t go see my friend, I might head off to the movies so I can see Angels and Demons, or maybe Terminator: Salvation.

An Aside that only a few people will understand:

A line drawn in the sand is permeable. Something I discovered last night, I think, is that the line is easily re-drawn no matter where you’re standing, when it was drawn, or why it was drawn. Things change constantly… And maybe you just don’t understand that a line wasn’t being drawn; it was a map.

Tomorrow all day I get to be a Level Two Tech at the facility I work at.

Which means I will be taking no calls for 10 hours that I work. I might skip lunch and just eat at my desk so I get overtime. Sweet bliss.

Today was an excellent day at work.

The system went down for a few hours so I didn’t have to jump through hoops to try and help people. I could jump right to the heart of the issue and fix their computers. Average handle time was less than ten minutes a pop.

Hopefully they take those out of my averages, or I’ll be a little miffed.

Went to lunch and returned to finish the night out without much of a fuss.

All in all a good day. No angry customers!

I get the best calls ever.

Me: Thank you for calling Tech Support. Can I get your name?

Him: My name is <omitted>

Me: Can I get your phone number so I can look up your account?

Him: Sure. <phone number>

Me: Excellent. Confirm E-Mail address please?

Him: <E-Mail Address>

Me: Serial Number?

Him: <serial number>

Me: Excellent. You’re in warranty until 2010. What can I help you with?

Him: My printer won’t work with my network.

Me: Oh, this is NB tech support. I don’t handle printers. I need to transfer you to our printer department.

Him: No. No you don’t. You will help me with this issue.

Me: Sir, I don’t really know anything about our printers; the guys in the printer department are the specialists.

Him: Look, I’ve talked with them. They want to charge me money. I bought this thing three years ago. I am not going to pay more money to get it repaired just because my warranty ended four months ago.

Me: Well, I can’t really help you out with that, sir.

Him: Yes, you can, and you will.

Me: Sir, A.) I don’t know anything about our printers. B.) I can only work on the notebook because it’s the only thing I’m allowed to because of my job. C.) It’s the only thing in warranty.

Him: I have it, it has an extended warranty, that overlaps onto all of my products.

Me: No, sir, it does not. That is only for the notebook. That’s how our warranties work.

Him: You have no idea what kind of warranty I have on my notebook.

Me: Sir, I’m looking at your warranty right now.

Him: That’s impossible, you have no idea how I paid.

Me: <reads warranty verbatim.>

Him: Yeah, that means I have an 8 year warranty.

Me: Uh, sir? No it doesn’t. As I said, your warranty ends in 2010.

Him: My credit card doubled that and you will honor that.

Me: Sir, if your credit card offered you an extended warranty beyond ours, you’d have to take that up with them.

Him: Look, just fix my printer! I bought it, you made it, you have to fix it for free!

Me: Sir, if it’s out of warranty, there’s not much that I can do for it.

Him: My notebook is in warranty, so make it work with my printer.

Me: Okay, sir. Plug the printer into your Notebook.

Him: I can’t.

Me: Why not?

Him: It’s a wireless printer.

Me: Okay, well, can you connect the Notebook to the wireless router?

Him: Yes.

Me: Can you connect the printer to it?

Him: No, that’s the problem! It keeps shouting that my WPA Key is wrong even though I know I’m typing it in right.

Me: Well, sir, your Notebook is working fine, it’s connecting to the wireless modem fine, and that’s as far as I can take this issue because your printer can’t connect to the router.

Him: This is bullshit.

Me: I’m sorry you feel that way, sir.

Him: Look, if you don’t fix this right now, I’m done with <company>.

Me: Sir, there’s absolutely nothing I can do for you right now, other than transfer you to our printer division, or direct you to our FREE Tech support at <website>.

Him: I expected more from <company>. You guys are the only company that charges for tech support. No other computer company charges for it. No other business charges for support. They all stand behind their products without ever charging the customer for them.

Me: I know for a fact that the other computer companies do charge for tech support. You know who else charges? Ford. GM. Mazda. Mitsubishi. Microsoft. They all charge for additional support after your warranty has expired.

Him: Look, I don’t care. Fix it.

Me: I can’t. You can try to get free Tech Support at <website> if you would like, but as of right now, there’s nothing else that I can do for you.

Him: Fine. This is the last time I ever deal with you guys. I thought your company was better than this. I thought you’d stand behind products that you built.

Me: We do, and we’ve offered you solutions to fix the issue.

Him: You haven’t done anything. I’m done with your service.

*click*

This isn’t an accurate transcript, but it does have all the key parts and it isn’t exaggerated.

I had a two hour long call the other night at work.

I do Tech support, by the way. For notebooks.

Anyway, I got this older gentleman on the phone and we started talking. He has an issue with his TV Tuner card: It won’t work the way it used to.

I pulled up the troubleshooter for tuner cards because I don’t know much about them, and quickly set to work trying to fix his issue.

The long and short of it is that we had to uninstall the drivers, re-install the drivers, and then use it in QuickPlay. Thing is he wanted to use it in Windows Media Center. That’s fine, we’ve got a thing for that, too. I actually tried to walk him through that before QuickPlay because that’s what he was wanting to use. However, he kept getting an error, something about needing an IR Control Cable.

The IR Control Cable connects to the back of the Cable box or satellite box and lets your laptop change channels for you. He didn’t have one of those, though.

This wouldn’t normally be a problem, I’d have told him, “Sir, you need that cable in order to use that with Windows Media Center.” and that would have normally solved that situation.

A little back information: He’d once sent his laptop in for service at one of our Repair Centers. When he got it back, he set the system up just like he had it before. Before he sent it into us, Windows Media Center worked just fine for watching his TV Shows without that IR Control Cable. Now, however, that he got it back, it no longer worked.

I have no clue why it won’t install/work properly in WMC without the IR Control Cable, but I do know that it’ll work in QuickPlay without worrying about it.

So I got it working for him. The guy was really nice, too. He used to work for Intel making the equipment that checked the chips. He did maintenance on them and such. Even though I had a headache by the end of the call, I was pretty happy with the overall conversation.