Useless Conversation

[ghost]

It has to be beer or it's no good.

[Lantyssa]

Bacon Beer.

[RhyssaFireheart]

 

[ghost]

Bacon Beer.

You know it exists....   

[RhyssaFireheart]

Why yes, Mr. PM.  You need to have the vendor sign the fucking SOW before we can submit it for PO processing. 

How is this even a question?!?!   

[Merusk]

Because the vast majority of people are stupid, stupid beings.

[RhyssaFireheart]

Yeah, I know that but you'd think some things are common sense.  Not to mention the fact we've gone over the whole signatures on SOWs thing. 

This vendor has worked with us for several years now but for some reason, they keep leaving off the signature block area for our divisional manager to sign and instead just have their sig block and one for corporate purchasing.  Which technically is all that's needed, but almost all the various divisions include a divisional sig block, to confirm that said division is okay with the SOW.  So Purchasing doesn't sign any SOWs until it gets to them for final processing and vendor hadn't signed yet either, yet PM was asking if we needed vendor signature before putting the PO into the system for processing.   

[Yegolev]

PMs are sales people with no personality.  They don't give a shit as long as checkboxes are checked.

[ghost]

So I'm trying to purchase a couple of games from the PSN for my kid to play on the airplane and I'm getting all sorts of errors.  PSN won't let me make the purchase but they are pinging my credit card for their $1 authorization check.  I called the support people and their answer was "yeah, I've heard a lot of people are having that problem."   

It's not shocking that Sony hasn't exactly been tearing it up financially as of late.   

[Sky]

I called the support people and their answer was "yeah, I've heard a lot of people are having that problem."

That's pretty much every support call I've ever made to anyone ever. At least if you can get someone who isn't reading the troubleshooting 101 script to you so you can try all the things you tried before you had to call tech support.

My big project at work: tech support results in no solved issues and five feature request tickets (also two workarounds I wrote). Another project at work is at "Try reinstalling the client". My cable box at home "Replace the DVR."

I wish I could get away with that kind of shit at work, I have to actually fix things and help people. I should probably have another digit on my salary, given what I've seen for 'support'.

[Morat20]

Tech support is ludicrously hit or miss. I have ATT Uverse. My internet kept going out -- like once a week. Total failure. Everything else worked fine. Fixing it was a thirty minute hassle to get ahold of an operator, get transferred to the proper specialist department (my Uverse setup is not standard, so the regular guys don't know what's going on) and then get the system reset. If I'm lucky, thirty minutes. If not? An hour or more.

Went out while I was out of town. I handled the call (since I'd done this dance several times) and the tech finally told me "You know you can do this yourself. From home. The UPS box we installed, near your router? It's got a reset button on it.". No, I did NOT know. I didn't know what the hell a "system reset" meant (I figured it was the giant ass box outside. I didn't even really know that box was a UPS, just sorta suspected).

Telling me that initially would have saved me and ATT several hours. Now I just hit that damn button and wait four minutes. A small price to pay for quadrupling my bandwidth.

In Other News, my son (15) called me begging not to go out of town because he wouldn't have cell/internet and thus be unable to talk to his girlfriend, who he "needs to be in contact with" because -- well, he didn't give a reason and I can't remember his initial wording but it was something like "SHe's going through some stuff and I need to stay in contact so we can deal with it." His girlfriend is in AUSTIN this weekend with family. (She -- and we -- live in Houston). After verifying that my son was not the girl's Mom, Dad, husband, accountant, lawyer, or doctor -- and thus HAD no actual authority, responsibilty, or power to "deal with" jack and shit.

So I pulled out the actual "stuff" which turned out to be -- SHOCKING TWIST -- a melodramatic girlfriend threatening to maybe start cutting. (We actually like her and she's generally quite chipper and sane, so we're watching this. We have no qualms about contacting parents or school counselers. At ALL. Wife's a teacher.).

Flat out told him it was either worrying him enough to immediately contact her parents...or it wasn't. (Left unsaid was that she'd be back at school on Tuesday and he'd be back in contact Monday mid-day, and frankly a beginner cutter stuck with a ton of family is really not in terrible danger for 24 hours even if she is actually serious)

So we said no and sent him off to internet-less hellhole. Because there's nothing he can do, if he stays there he might stew but he can't actually get into a lovely winding spiral of crazy-entanglement. Because it'll either blow over by the time he gets back -- in which case he'll learn that sometimes you gotta let drama happen and not take it too seriously -- or she'll be back in town where, you know, something can be done besides talking to (possible) cutting depressed attention-seeking girl with problems.

My wife plans to tell him what we BOTH realized, way back in high school -- we're not psychologists. It's not our job to determine crazy, much less disarm it. Best left to professionals -- or at least family. Trying to help like he was? Pointless at best.

Poor kid, though. It's his first exposure to relationship drama on the high-school level. He has NO IDEA what's lurking in his future. All the crazy exes and fucked up drama that's going to linger at least until his late twenties. Poor kid.

[Abagadro]

Why am I now just finding out about the cheese that is the Eurovision song contest?

[Zetor]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KTXb1VmzIx4
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gAh9NRGNhUU
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eb3_e4ZZWuQ (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8h_hN0xQYv4&feature=related if you want the entire song I GUESS)

There, you're up to speed wrt Eurovision. No need to thank me.  

yes, I know that Zlad is fake... but it catches the spirit perfectly!

[Chimpy]

Why am I now just finding out about the cheese that is the Eurovision song contest?

Long live space race, long live Molvania!

Bah stupid phone, meant to quote the next poster but his first link is the bomb.

[Morat20]

Why am I now just finding out about the cheese that is the Eurovision song contest?

Is it that ...cheesy? Extreme? Bad?

[Chimpy]

So I am covering for the guy that usually works on Sunday because he is out of town for the holiday weekend and lo and behold today is the day that

A: our exchange backup job fails because it ran out of disk space.

B: the cooling unit in our server room decides to start throwing up alarms and not cool.

Now I am going deaf from the fans being used to circulate the air from the entire floor into the server room ( which is behind my desk).

Oh well, I am the one who switched careers to IT. I should be used to things like this happening on holidays. When I worked at the ISP it was always when I was working on holidays that shit broke big time.

[Minvaren]

Let me tell you about the Labor Day weekend I lost to Dell and their wondermous RAID controllers...   

[Hammond]

Sorry Chimpy,

When I was working at a ISP I am fairly certain that I got called on one of the major holidays at least once.  Also including getting woke up the morning after my 30th birthday in vegas.  I was still drunk on that call...  Another time when I was on vacation and I was on the beach.  Yea I really do not miss that job much.

[Ironwood]

Let me tell you about the Labor Day weekend I lost to Dell and their wondermous RAID controllers...   

Dells Percs are fucking woeful.  I feel your pain, having lost more than time and data to those fucking things.

That said, let me tell you about my weekend, lost to a sudden bout of Chickenpox.

Dammit.

[Paelos]

Your pox or your daughter's pox?

[Ironwood]

Daughter.

If I start talking about my pox, it's unlikely to be chicken.

[Morat20]

Daughter.

If I start talking about my pox, it's unlikely to be chicken.

If you'd have gotten chickenpox, it wouldn't have only lasted only a weekend. I knew someone who got that as an adult. It's not as fun as the kiddie version. (I've always found that weird. Why are some diseases mild in kids, but not in adults? I mean I get elderly with weak immune systems, and kids are all energy and growth, but why is chickenpox dangerous to a 22 year old? A thirty year old? We're talking healthy people with strong immune systems).

[bhodi]

If you'd have gotten chickenpox, it wouldn't have only lasted only a weekend. I knew someone who got that as an adult. It's not as fun as the kiddie version. (I've always found that weird. Why are some diseases mild in kids, but not in adults? I mean I get elderly with weak immune systems, and kids are all energy and growth, but why is chickenpox dangerous to a 22 year old? A thirty year old? We're talking healthy people with strong immune systems).

Because there are diseases which use your own immune system against the body. A mature, healthy immune system is more dangerous when turned against you. It's bullshit, like your wizard getting mind-controlled.

[Morat20]

If you'd have gotten chickenpox, it wouldn't have only lasted only a weekend. I knew someone who got that as an adult. It's not as fun as the kiddie version. (I've always found that weird. Why are some diseases mild in kids, but not in adults? I mean I get elderly with weak immune systems, and kids are all energy and growth, but why is chickenpox dangerous to a 22 year old? A thirty year old? We're talking healthy people with strong immune systems).

Because there are diseases which use your own immune system against the body. A mature, healthy immune system is more dangerous when turned against you. It's bullshit, like your wizard getting mind-controlled.

You know what? Having your wizard get mind controlled IS bullshit. And he's always the first target, too.

[Ironwood]

It's worse seeing your five year old daughter being chain-feared.

[Cyrrex]

Or your wife perma-rooted to the couch.

[Lucas]

Fuck it. You may have heard about an earthquake striking in northern Italy: the center was about 20km from where I live (I live in Modena city, earthquake happened in the nearby towns). 5.9 Richter on the 20th of May, and another one (5.8) this morning at 9am CET (2h 30m ago), same magnitude: this one seemed even longer and stronger. I think it lasted between 15 and 20 seconds. I experienced other earthquakes in my life, but nothing compared to this. I just can't imagine how it must be in Japan, California and other similar seismic areas.

8 death so far caused by this morning's earthquake, plus the seven victims caused by the one that happened a week ago :(

[Cyrrex]

Yeah, they are pretty freaky.  I think the biggest I ever went through was a 5.4 or something.  It wasn't particularly destructive, but quite an experience nonetheless.  Can't imagine what a 7 or above is like.

Anyway, hope all is well with you and yours.

[Lucas]

Another big one hit about 30 minutes ago, about 5.5, everything was trembling like fuck.

I went outside the house with my mother: in front of hour neighborhood there is a small park, which is now full of people (now I'm back in my home)

[JWIV]

Another big one hit about 30 minutes ago, about 5.5, everything was trembling like fuck.

I went outside the house with my mother: in front of hour neighborhood there is a small park, which is now full of people (now I'm back in my home)

Yah, you're going to be seeing those for awhile.  Once a quake hits, you can have a few (plus the aftershocks).    Glad to hear you're okay though.

[Lantyssa]

Let me tell you about the Labor Day weekend I lost to Dell and their wondermous RAID controllers...   

Let me tell you about my holiday, lost to an OCD IT Director without the organizational skills to match.

12 hours.  Noon to Midnight.  Four hours of sleep.  No one bothered to tell me the majority of the staff won't be here until 11.  (Good that they gave us time.  Not so good in that I could have slept in.)

PS - I miss you, Minvaren.

PPS - Still need to get the data cables nice and orderly, but the racks do look pretty nice.  From the front.

[Sky]

 

[Lantyssa]

Damnit, I did it again. 

[Sky]

You're really good at this.

[murdoc]

Damnit, I did it again. 

I admit, I laughed.