The Misadventures of a Traveling Computer Repairman

General Discussion
81

Well you said you had a toolkit. “Something fell out of it.” Gotta go back and ask if they seen it anywhere. Now you have an excuse to be there. Then again you’d be taking advice from someone who hasn’t been in a relationship in four years, so decide after a whole bag of salt with what I said. It’s the only reason i can think of for a grown man to go to make up store mostly because it’s situational. Any longer than like a day or two and the excuse probably wouldn’t work. Can you tell I plan things way too much?

Also agree with Akuma. These smileys are fucking stupid. All the ones I’d normally use turn into some stupid shit that’s not what I want.

82

Just say that you’re off the clock when you’re done and then you get their numbers.

83

Because Trunks is a spoiled little shit bag duh, just like Gotens a lazy little snot eater.

84

Trunks is like Cable except he’s not a boss and trying to defeat someone who’s actually invincible and does it for a lifetime. So I guess he’s not quite… I guess he’s Bishop?

Also Wrong thread B!

85

O.o…how did that end up in here? I was in the DBZ thread…WTF?

Stupid SRK.

Wrong Trunks yo!

86

DRD can always get the ladies with computer lingo and a good tool kit!

87

Just admit that you cannot resist the Duckie.

88

I’ve never done travelling PC support as I don’t have a car nor any attention of buying one but I’ve heard some stories. I’ve done help desk, desktop support, and system administration while I currently do a combination of the three as an IT Support Engineer at Temple University Hospital in Philadelphia. Walking around the hospital can be a trip but I’m sure it’s nothing like having to go out for calls that that are god knows where with god knows whom. I’ve certainly never found a snake inside any of the computers.

89

Can’t decide if I should be pissed or not. I just showed up to service a work order that, upon my arrival, I found out was already taken care of because it was reassigned to someone else and they didn’t think to call or email me about this.

However, if I had not been dragged out there, I would have never seen a dude with no arms riding a bicycle, which was awesome.

90

This thread is golden. Some of those pics were so nasty. Funny though now I wanna open my grandpa’s PC and see what it looks like on the inside.

91

This morning I had to go install a card reader at an elementary school. It was also very cold this morning.

Think about that for a second… a guy with an eye patch and a beard wearing a black half trench coat walks into an elementary school in Texas carrying a strange box.

It’s a goddamn miracle that I didn’t end up on Fox News with cops surrounding the building.

92

B…Big Boss?

93

He even smokes Cigars!!!

94

Finally starting to get 5-7 work orders a week. That’s pretty damn fantastic. However I’m learning that one bad ticket can fuck up my whole day and cost me at least $80.

I had one of those tickets today. This one’s long, so brace yourselves…

Showed up to diagnose a printer that’s having one of the weirdest issues I’ve ever seen. When I heard about the issue, I had to ask the end user to show me herself, because it’s WEIRD. If she ordered copies of a job to be stapled, the first set would come out correctly. As an example, I’ll say that she create a job with three pages to be copied, collated, stapled, and printed.

Each one should look like this:
(Pages 1,2,3) <-- Stapled on top left, as requested.

However, it would only do this for the first batch. Any subsequent copies in batches would come out like this:

(Page 1) <-- Free page, unstapled.
(Page 2,3) <-- Stapled on top left.

I sat there like “WTF. SO WEIRD.”

This is such an unusual issue that I took a picture of it, which I’ve enclosed below:

Spoiler

http://i843.photobucket.com/albums/zz354/darabidduckie/1194666_zpsdb4254a3.jpg

See? Real fuckin’ weird.

I was stumped, so I had to call the home office TWICE, each time speaking to a different bonehead who couldn’t understand English, let alone what I was trying to tell them. They wasted my time for two hours trying to get me to jump through bullshit tests I’d already perform. The second support agent read the first one’s fucked up interpretation of what happened, so her impressions of the subject were farther off than a girl’s panties at a Tom Jones concert. I was getting pretty angry, and I nearly hung up on the second one (I did hang up on the first one), but was afraid of what I’d get the third time.

Anyway, one of them tells me to reset the factory settings on the printer.

This is something you should never do if the printer is maintained by an off-side admin. EVER. I protested, but was told to do it again. So, I did it. The printer was fucked up and wouldn’t do some basic things (like scanning). Turned out that there was a special configuration they had at their home office which we couldn’t get because the IT guy over the place was at the hospital with a wife in labor. I was still on the phone with the second dumbass support agent, and was so angry that I was almost shouting at her. I was absolutely livid, and the customer was pissed because they couldn’t get anything done. I was told to come back on a later day and upgrade the firmware. I decided to go above and beyond and upgrade the firmware on that same trip anyway (I was only there to diagnose and then call in parts/maintenance to be done later) because I feel like it’d be wrong to leave the customer with at least a semi-functioning printer.

However, while I was trying to do that, the network crashed. It took thirty minutes to come back up, but that’s only because I reset the router myself (a big no no, but what was I supposed to do?). When it came up, I was able to upgrade the firmware, which didn’t resolve shit. I’m probably going to have to replace the logic board, which is the most difficult printer repair to do because you have to take apart the whole printer to get to it. It’s a bitch.

During all of this, I’m made late for a project call (that charges me $200 for a no-show penalty unless I arrive at the appointed time on the dot, and was about to be late for another service call at the store where all those hot girls work. I have to sweet talk my way of getting the project call pushed back (easily done, I’m the dispatcher’s favorite tech), avoiding the $200 penalty. Unfortunately it’s 3:30 at this point (meaning I’ve been there for four and a half hours for a job that should have taken forty-five minutes, I have a call with a 2-4 window, and I’m 45 minutes away and about to hit rush hour in Austin.

I don’t get to the final work order until 4:55, an hour past my window. Fortunately I’ve taken good documentation on that ticket from Hell, so I’m in the clear here. The issue took no time at all (diagnosing a bad keyboard, which I’ll replace Thursday). There’s a new girl at the store, and she’s got some sweet tattoos, yet retains a girlish and innocent appearance. Duckie like. Duckie has to go back Thursday. Duckie going to get digits. Yep.

For most of you guys, it would be a horrible work day. For me, it was Tuesday.

95

I might be in Dallas for QuakeCon in August why you so far Duckie!!! And wow dude that sounds like a crappy ticket to handle atleast its a easy fix down the road.

96

This thread is comedy-gold; keep this updated man. Good luck on dem digits!

97

Today was one of those days that would break most people. Fortunately, I have an amazing group of people around me, and that’s the only reason I got through it.

I went to service a printer today at a large bank downtown. Parking is harsh downtown, and everything is pay by the hour, half day, or day. I parked at a public parking lot I’d used a few times in the past (that part’s important), and went and took care of the printer. The printer needed a replacement tray, so I ordered that and went on my way. I was there about three hours, including time spent in the support queue, and running diagnostics on a previous issue. As I was walking back to the parking lot (a three block walk with my rolling tool case and two large boxes of printer parts), I called in about one of the other three work orders I had today and asked if I could come in earlier to make sure I had time for everything. It was about this time when I got to the parking lot.

I paused for a second when I got to where I’d parked. “Uh… where the fuck is my car?”

I was sure I’d parked there. I held up my keychain and hit the panic button to sound the alarm so I could find it. Nothing. I tried this two more times, heading deeper into the parking lot each time.

It was then that I saw the tiny parking attendant booth with a very small sign that said “1 day parking – $7.00”

This was not a free fucking parking lot.

Well, I was pissed. Every parking lot downtown is very clearly labeled whether or not it is a free one. Hint: NONE of them are free, so they ALL have very large signs in front of the entrances stating their rates… all of them but this one, whose only sign that it wasn’t free was a dinky-ass booth with a credit card slot and a small sign that can not be seen from the street that is about 50 yards into the parking lot. It’s pretty much indistinguishable from the food carts in the area. I’d have never noticed it had I not gone that deeply into the parking lot.

I found a phone number on the sign to the towing company. Surely enough, my car had been towed, and that it’d be $193 to get it out, as per city ordinance. I asked for the phone number to the owners of the parking lot and immediately called them. I was connected to a guy at some nationwide call center asking the city I was in (meaning this place isn’t even owned by someone in Austin) and told him my situation. He said there was nothing that could be done. I admitted that I’m just a naive guy from a small town in Mississippi that wasn’t used to the concept of paying for parking, yet even I could tell the difference between a parking meter, a paid parking lot, and the parking lot that I was in. I complained about the fact that there was NO signage at the entry to the lot except for one that said “Public Parking.”

I told the guy that anyone walking by would be confused by it, and I even said “Hang on a second,”

I turned to a lady walking on the sidewalk. “Do you know if this is a free parking lot, or if I have to pay to park here?”

“I… I actually don’t know. It doesn’t say anywhere that you have to pay, but I don’t know. Is it free?”

“See?!?” I proclaimed to the guy on the phone. “Even a random pedestrian can’t tell the difference!”

The dipshit still insisted that there was nothing he could do. I thanked the woman for her time, and then just straight hung up on the guy on the phone.

I called the tow center back, explained what I’d just learned to him (and told him about the lady on the street) and said that I felt that what had happened was wrong, and that I was unjustly towed. He said that my car was still in the lot, and that I had to pay for it.

At this point, I realized a few things:

  1. I have no money to get my car that I need to get to work.
  2. I have three more work orders that I’m about to no-show on because I have no car.
  3. No-shows are penalized with a $200 fee that I’m contractually obligated to pay.
  4. My phone has enough of a charge for one 3-4 minute phone call.
  5. My phone charger was in my car.

I’d be lying if I said that my resolve didn’t crack at this point, and that I was totally fine and not at all hysterical.

I asked what would happen if I couldn’t get it out today. If I couldn’t get it out in a month, my car would be auctioned off. I could get the stuff out of my car, but can’t take the car off of the lot (that he mentioned was gated). My voice was shaking at this point. “Sir, I have no idea what I’m supposed to do right now. I just moved here, I just found consistent work that I haven’t been paid for yet, and I’m about to get hit with a $600 fine and contract terminated if I can’t get these calls taken care of, and I have no idea how to raise the money that I need. I don’t even have a dollar to my name to take the bus home.”

At this point, a kind lady on the street handed me a dollar. I was so surprised that I actually laughed. I think one tear slipped from my good eye. I was touched. She turned around and started feeding money into a parking meter as I continued.

“Well, okay, I have a dollar now, thanks to a very kind woman on the street.” This elicited a chuckle from the guy on the phone. I was very glad he found this funny. Yes, that was sarcasm.

Anyway, I finished the call, after managing to talk him down from $200 to $150 (which from what I’m told is nothing short of a miracle), when I notice the lady still standing there. We talked for a minute, and she mentioned being there with her kids to go to a local museum. She’d heard my story and felt compelled to give me some bus fare home. I told her how much I appreciated it, and I apologized for seeming so out of it, as I was seriously thrown for a loop. She looked down for a second and said “Well, here. Use this for something you need.” and gave me $10.

Not gonna lie – I almost cried.

I thanked her profusely, blessed her, and set off in search of a bus stop. Then I remembered I still had my one proverbial phone call left. I took a risk and called my roommate. I actually caught him at home, as he’d swapped with a co-worker for a day off. I told him what happened, and he picked me up, carried me to take care of my next ticket (where he ran errands until I was done), and then afterward took me to the impound lot and lent me the money to get my car out.

I couldn’t possibly ask for a better roommate.

Fortunately, while servicing the second printer I had access to WIFI, so I hacked out a few emails on my tablet and rescheduled the service call to the makeup store (remember that? Third visit!) to Saturday, then emailed my dispatcher about the fourth service call, which is rescheduled to Monday after shuffling two more work orders around to various spots on Monday and Tuesday. I already have three jobs Monday and three jobs Tuesday, so things are looking up.

By the way, that second printer took three times longer than it was supposed to (the client graciously offered me her cell phone so I could call Tier 2 support to order parts for her printer), but my roommate waited in the parking lot until I was done. What a great guy, right? I’m also very fortunate to have earned the favor of several project managers, as every one of them bent over backwards to make sure that I specifically got reassigned the jobs instead of giving them to someone else.

So anyway, I’ve learned three things today:

  1. I have an amazing support network around me, especially a roommate who I totally don’t deserve.
  2. Pack a spare phone charger in my tool kit.
  3. A sign that says “Public Parking” DOES NOT MEAN IT’S FREE.

So yeah. That was my day.

(PS: Regarding the towing fee, I’m planning on taking the company who owns the parking lot I got towed from to Small Claims Court to get back the $300 they cost me in lost work and towing fees because their signage is so ridiculously inadequate.)

98

I guess they made the sign the smallest possible in legal terms, good luck with it

99

So it’s very rare that I have to work on a Saturday (as in I’ve been servicing contracts for this client for a year now, and it just now happened), but yesterday was one of those days. Fortunately it was at that makeup store, so at least I got to hang out with pretty women.

The cute girl with the tattoos was not there, but that’s perfectly fine because all the weekend girls are ridiculously hot. It’s just a damn shame that I couldn’t talk to any of them because a) the store was insanely busy (with very attractive customers, to boot) and b) I had my head under the counter for the majority of my time there.

That, however, did not prevent one of the girls from talking to me. I was trying to fish a wire out from under the back of the counter, when one of the more attractive women there asked me what I was doing. I explained my frustrations over the disappearing wire, and she replied “Maybe it fell down a portal to Narnia or something.”

I replied “Lord I hope so, I could use some Turkish Delight right about now.”

She laughed, and then said “Or maybe it was a rip in time or something, and we’ll need Doctor Who to help out.”

I think I was visibly stunned at that one. I actually pulled my head out from under the counter and said (after a brief pause) “Okay, you get cool points for that one.” She looked at me and smiled, and then continued writing down appointments in her clipboard.

Now this part was weird. For all intents and purposes, I knew this girl was flirting with me. The deal was done. Her number was mine if I asked for it. Yet my brain pulled a really weird trick on me. For some reason, it convinced me that she actually didn’t know what she was talking about, but that she just watched Big Bang Theory and was just quoting stuff she’d heard. It then told me that I had to get back to work, which I did.

Maybe it was the fact that she worked at a makeup store, which meant that her business was in falsifying women’s appearances and making them prettier than they actually are. Maybe it was the fact that she was ridiculously attractive, and therefore ridiculously high-maintenance and/or expensive.

Maybe I was just being a bitch? I dunno at this point. It’s entirely possible that I could have just been down on myself because I’m broke, and I have a mental block against dating when I have no money.

Anywho, I never got the chance to find out, because for the rest of my time there she had customers. Still feeling like I was an idiot for not jumping on that chance, though.

100

Hate to say it Duck…but you where an Idiot at that point in time lol.