Jeber’s

How may I help you?

Hey, it’s better than “Would you like fries with that”. At least for my circumstances, anyway. So the week and a half of training is over, and tomorrow we “go live”. Wednesday will be our first day on the phones by ourselves, each of us squirrelled away in our own little cubicle (mine is #35, if you’re ever in the neighborhood stop by and say hi), with all our notes and cheat sheets of useful URLs. The facts of help desk operation are probably familiar to anyone who has ever had to call one. You call up and tell us your problem, we write up a trouble ticket and attempt to do our best to solve it. But did you ever realize that there’s a good reason why the advice you usually get is “format and reinstall”?

I remember a couple of years ago hearing people complain that all techs ever advised was to “format and reinstall”. It seemed like a cop-out. “I don’t really want to take the time to really solve your problem, so let’s just fdisk your hard drive and start all over.” But having heard many calls now, I realize that often that’s the best advice you will get. You’ve added and removed hardware to the point where there is no “original” system left for me to go by. You’ve done the same with software. I have no way to tell how, or how well, you removed all traces of that software. Then you failed to install, update, or even use anti-virus software. You don’t have a firewall, or have never configured it to do its job. So finally you call me…with your system full of spyware , adware, viruses, leftovers of extinct software and a few new pieces of hardware that may or may not have been installed properly. And since you’re paying by the minute, you expect to have a solution, and a pristine system, within ten minutes or so. In that amount of time, I can probably tell that the only way you are ever going to get a factory-fresh system again is to format and reinstall your OS. Anything less is going to leave you with a vulnerable system that may or may not be fully healed. And you should remember, you were the one who inflicted the damage, not the help desk tech trying to help you. Don’t get irritated with me because I can’t undo in ten minutes what you’ve had months, perhaps years, to do.

As we’ve often said in both Scot’s forum and in Lockergnome, the best habit you can develope when it comes to owning a personal computer is BACK UP YOUR DATA ON A REGULAR BASIS!! If it’s important to you, make sure you have a backup copy somewhere besides on your hard drive. Then when you’ve finally gunked up your system to the point where I have no better option to suggest than that you format your hard drive and reinstall your OS, you will have everything important already preserved, and perhaps we can get your problem solved in just a few minutes.

Emotional Rollercoaster

This week has certainly taxed my emotional stability. Yesterday Sam and I said our final farewell (after he’d won about 8 more admirers at the Vet’s office…I tell you, his eyes were magical) then today I received the phone call I’ve been waiting for over a year. An offer of a real, full-time job. It’s a help desk position for Gateway Computers, and it’s in the United States! 8-D The pay is half what I made at my last job, but I can live with that for the time being. I’ve never had a job where I stayed at my starting wage more than 3 months. Yes, I’m self-confident and aggressive in going after better positions. But I’m also more comfortable leading than following, and most of my former employers noticed that after a while. Considering the last two computers I’ve torn down to the motherboard and rebuilt have been Gateway’s, I’m pretty familiar with their hardware. Now I’ve got to get back to boning up on my knowledge of Windows. I’ve been trying to learn Linux so much that I’ve somewhat neglected my Windows partition. No more. I’ve got 3 days to review my basic A+ stuff, then start on the really hard parts.

This is good for two reasons. I really did need a job, and a job in a field I’m already passionate about. More importantly, I needed a distraction from the empty porch…the missing bark of welcome…those eyes.

Sam’s last week

Sam, my faithful Malamute mix, has passed his 14th, and last birthday. I adopted him as a two year old from an animal shelter in Idaho. I was helping out at the shelter in my free time. (I’d already learned how to avoid the temptation to adopt every unwanted cat that came through the place, going so far as to help with the process of euthanasia to cure my notion that every animal could be saved. Reality is often ugly, and I refuse to avoid the ugly parts. Without experiencing them, I can’t fully appreciate the beautiful parts.) For more than two weeks this Mal-mix had sat in the shelter after being found running loose. When it became obvious no one would be coming to claim him, he was scheduled to be put down. But when I went into his enclosure to bring him out for the injection, I made the mistake of looking in his large brown eyes. Their was intelligence there, and a plea I couldn’t ignore. That day he became Sam and joined my family.

As it always is with death, it can only be postponed, never avoided. For the last twelve years Sam has avoided his fate while being a wonderful and fun companion. Though most dogs his size are fortunate to live ten to twelve years, Sam has managed to hang on for a couple of extra. But now he’s past the point of enjoying his existance. His rear legs can barely support him, his fur is starting to come out in clumps and he hardly moves. In short, his time is at an end. On the 18th, next Wednesday, we’ll take one last road trip to the vets and he will cease having to endure the pain and disabilities that plague him now. Once more I’ll be saying goodbye to a decade long friend. One of the saddest things about growing older is losing those close to you. Then one day, you are the one to leave your friends behind. It is an inescapeable fact of life. It begins, and it ends. I hope I leave with the grace and dignity Sam has shown. And as I’ve said many times, humans would be showing their true humanity if we allowed ourselves to bring a peaceful and quiet death to one another like we permit ourselves to do with our animal companions.

Sam and I will enjoy our last week together. Then he’ll leave, yet live on in my memories and in my heart.

The rise of Technocracy

Chris Pirillo is going to kick off a new channel dealing with Technocracy soon, and he’s going to allow me, Mike (my good buddy from Lockergnome), Georganna and David (fellow members of WebSanDiego) to be the initial contributors. So what the heck is a Technocracy channel? It’s going to be a webblog and newsletter covering every aspect of the affect that the web has on our daily lives. We’ll talk about how the Internet has impacted religion, government, business, education, the workplace, the schoolroom, even interpersonal relationships. If it’s technology and it touches our lives, we’ll dig up the stories and give you the links.

I’m excited about this because I’ve come to be quite interested in the future of technology in our lives. From the interactive home to the ability to communicate across physical borders, the Internet is going to have dramatic effects on our lives…so much more than it has already. Now that we have a vehicle that makes it possible for every person on the planet to have a voice, nothing will ever again be quite the same. Even the humble blog is becoming more than a way for anyone to share their thoughts and opinions with us all. It’s becomming the “news source” of a wired generation. Stories will be blogged well before the major news outlets can get their stories written, polished and in the hands of their talking heads for the 6 o’clock broadcast. Blogs have become the new “Stars and Stripes” for our men and women in combat zones. We can now hear voices previously silenced by repressive governments.

Technocracy is the future. The Internet is the future. I think that’s very kewl.