This story came up on Not Always Right (a site for stories about stupid customers) and it reminded why I was so happy to get out of the hardware support business.

And why I am glad that most of the customers I deal with for software are on a bit higher level than the average end user. Though I did have to explain, in great and specific detail, how to use the arrow keys to move the cursor around in a text editor to one.

Please indicate your preference out of each pair of dates:

Sat. July 11 or Sun. July 12

Sat. July 25 or Sun. July 26

Thank you.

[No, I didn't bother to create a poll.]

May the year to come bring you more organization, completed projects and happiness!

As a note, I'm spending the day in an intensive training course that is being offered only for internals, so if you poke me on-line I may be slow to respond, if I do at all.

Next game is this Saturday. I already know that ahf, jasra, kitszoo and jarien can't make it. Those that can, please let me know!

And sky is growing light.

It's been a while since I've seen the dawn as the closing of the day.

I knew it would be a long day and I expected to be more tired than than I am when I got to this point.

I went to a pretty wonderful party and caught up with many, many people. Some to a greater detail than others but, as always, there was never enough time to talk to all the people I wanted to talk to for as long as I would have liked.

After that, I went with some dear friends (some of long acquaintance, others of much shorter acquaintance but all dear to me) to see a special showing of a movie and topped that off with conversation with one of them as I drove her home.

And now I need to decide if I want to try to get some sleep or if I just want to push through and start on the new day.

ETA: Today's Astronomy Picture of the Day is rather appropriate.

I'll actually have dinner.

Not tonight though.

I find myself in need of something different to read.

I just finished Nina Kiriki Hoffman's A Handful of Sky. It's a wonderful book, like all the others of her books I have read. I recommend it whole-heartedly to just about everyone. It's a small, intimate book about growing up, gaining one's heart's desire and how much that can hurt and free you at the same time.

The next book I had with me was S J Day's Eve of Darkness which is a very different book. It's not a bad book, it's actually pretty well written. But the protagonist has some (very justified) anger issues and those are resonating too well with me right now.

Work has me stressed and not just a bit angry, the stuff from my (ex-)sister (you can divorce your family, if only in your own mind) has stirred up stuff better left untouched and I really don't need something pushing on the "anger" button. Because the indicator is already getting pretty close to "rage".

So point me at a book to read on the train tomorrow, one where the main character(s) are not acting out of anger, rage, frustration or a desire for revenge. Preferably recent SF/Fantasy, because that's most likely to be in my library. A "cozy" book I'd say.

When I got home today, there were two packages in the mail. One I had been expecting, a book from the Science Fiction Book Club.

The other, obviously, I had not.

It was addressed to me, and only me, in a hand that I knew far too well, my most-estranged-sister's return address was unnecessary for me to determine it was from her.

I considered just tossing it in the trash unopened and had it been from my mother, I would have. But my curiosity got the better of me so I opened it.

Inside were three items, each of particular significance to me, a book of make believe stories, a Boston news paper from 1802 and my (rather small) G.I. Joe collection, in their footlocker with my name on it.

No note, no explanation, nothing else.

( Read this if you care to hear me whine about family history )

So I'm now I'm wondering what this is supposed to mean and what I'm supposed to do. The only thing I'm coming up with is that it's an apology some sort.

I dumped the box in the trash. Apology not accepted, sister "dear". You are still dead to me.

On this anniversary of the observation of your birth, may the year to come bring you more happiness, love and prosperity!

As we have only one "yes" and one "maybe".

The next game on the schedule is June 27 (yes, I know, during BaitCon). Please let me know if you can make that one.

Also, looking forward to July and further down the road, is there a preference to keep the dates on Saturdays or should I consider Sundays as well? And does anyone have any preferred dates in July? Please let me know on that as well.

[posted and emailed]

As a reminder, the next game is scheduled for this coming Saturday, June 13.

Please let me know if you think you'll be there so I can scale the adventure as necessary.

May year to come bring you more cute kid stories as well as happiness and joy.

The game dates for June are the 13^th and 27^th. I am aware that the first conflicts with Pride and the second with BaitCon but those were the best I could do.

And, as a reminder, there is a Google calendar for the game.

The direct URL is [http://www.google.com/calendar/embed?src=i1q0r0iomeg1g5okjldjecji1o%40group.calendar.google.com&ctz=America/New_York]. You can also get it in iCal format here: [http://www.google.com/calendar/ical/i1q0r0iomeg1g5okjldjecji1o%40group.calendar.google.com/public/basic.ics] or an RSS feed here: [http://www.google.com/calendar/feeds/i1q0r0iomeg1g5okjldjecji1o%40group.calendar.google.com/public/basic].

So today, while going through the "New Cases" queue and doing a bunch of initial replies, the number of emails that contained misused homophones ("their" for "there" or "they're" most often), severe grammatical errors (noun/verb count mismatches, wrong pronoun declension ["he" for "him"]) and in one case, total incomprehensibility due to a complete lack of either nouns or verbs to each "sentence" ("[string of nouns and adjectives]. [string of verbs and adverbs]. [several nouns]. [verb]. [more nouns and adjectives]. [verb]. [string of verbs].")

I was tempted to start replying with the following:

"Dear sir/madam:

Thank you for your recent trouble ticket submission. I regret your grammar and sentance structure do not meet our required standards. Please see the attached edited version of your submission letter which we hope will help you with your next submission.

No love,

Customer Support Services".

and attaching a red-lined version of their email.

Yes, as I noted, I decided to try to schedule for two days this month. Not sure who, if anyone, can make it on Saturday but I'll be ready to show off the new battle tiles I have. They should make my hand-sketched maps actually useful for play!

Also, we have a new person in the group, not sure if he'll be able to make it on such short notice but if so, it'll be your chance to meet the new guy and influence his character decisions.

As usual, this will also be posted to the email list,

In a little less than four hours time, ahf will get up and begin her trip to upstate New York for a weekend at the track. She plans to meet up with some of the other drives in South Burlington, VT. At 8:00am tomorrow morning.

Me, I'm about to go to bed and get up at 8:00am tomorrow and spend the day working from home. Because with the week I've been having, it's just not worth putting up with the commute.

May the year to come bring you happiness and a bit of spare time!

This was inspired by buxom_bey's post. This customer clearly had some entitlement issues:

Me: "ATG support, Michael speaking. How can I help you?"

Customer: "I'm calling from [company name] and I have a question about something that you don't document."

Me: (Recognizing [company name] as a customer in good standing) "I'll do my best, sir, but please keep in mind that if this is something that is not publicly documented there are limitations on what I can tell you. And I definitely cannot provide you with any additional documentation beyond what is published on our web site."

Customer: "All I want to know is that the API for the [foo]¹ object is."

Me: "I regret that information is considered proprietary and I cannot help you with that."

Customer: "I don't need you to help me with it, I just want you to send me your internal documenation on it."

Me: "Sir, that documentation is not available to you."

Customer:"But I need to know what else is in that object. Can you just send me the documentation?"

Me: "Sir, that documentation is, and I repeat, *not* *available* to you."

Customer: "But can't you just send it to me?"

The conversation proceeded in this manner for over 20 minutes before I was able to get him off the phone. And even then it was only by asking him to write a detailed email explaining what information he wanted (the name of an external control structure that had been used to restrict what data to return) and why he thought this information was relevant at the result display stage (because it would just be a database ID in the form of a long string of letters and numbers and not exactly anything that anyone would be able to look at and know what it meant).

¹ An internal and extremely proprietary data object. The main reason I think it is proprietary is because in every version, the developers completely re-design it and change the data access methods. This causes a major re-write of all of our code that deals with these objects. Supposedly, if the developers ever become satisfied with it and stop wanting to completely revise it every six months or so, we'll publish the interface. Given that we're on 1) the third major version of the product since we introduced this feature and 2) the third different development team to work on this part of the product since we introduced it, I think the likelihood of this happening is about, oh, zero.

As you all probably know, Star Trek, J. J. Abrams' re-imaging of the original series and its characters, opens this weekend.

ahf and I are planning on seeing it Sunday. Is there anyone out there that would like to join us? We're reasonably flexible on where in the Greater Bostonia we see it.

Comment below if interested.

(From evilrooster via Flickr.)

Another state officially joins the Civilized World!

The 16th and 30th look good to me, how about the rest of you? Can we manage to get two games in this month? Let me know, either comment here or reply to the email that I sent out.

Thanks!

So the Traveller mailing list has been a bit "over-run" by a discussion of recent (last century or so) French history and politics. A halt was called to this by one of the list managers (affectionately known as "ListMoms").

And of course, any attempt to bring an off-topic discussion back on topic always results in new and further off-topic discussion, such as this one on the word "squick" (which was used in an ironic fashion in the request to end said French history/politics discussion). Please note the amusing (and pretty much unsuccessful) attempt to hook the subject back to Traveller:

It appears to have originated in the S&M community.

I would have thought it came from others referring to that community, as it seems unlikely they'd find much squicky . . . :)

Not that I'm part of that, but what popped into my mind was: "I was OK with the leather, whips and chains . . . but as I looked down, and noticed the pink fuzzy bunny slippers, it got a bit squicky"

ObTrav:
"Sadia" was a backwater world, colonized by a fringe group that wanted their freedom of expression, to a degree their more puritanical home world wouldn't allow. Once the colony was established, what was once worn in private became common clothing... but a new underground established itself.

The IISS established contact after the Long Night, and there was a brief moment of trouble when the planet-side delegation arrived in their formal leather chaps, chains, and boots with sleeveless leather vests, no shirt and the official "whip of office" at their side . . . only to find the IISS crew wearing what the local press described as "the kind of bedroom role-play wear used by those deviants who enjoy pretending to be spacemen from the time of the Vilani"

As for the attempt by the party to distance himself from the S&M community, it's quite likely because he really isn't part of it, as there are quite a few people on the list who are kinky and out about it. As well as a number that are poly and out.

It's a shame that the list has become so hide-bound lately and seems to have been mostly been taken over by a couple of (relative) new comers who have to have the last say on everything.