Saturday, January 19, 2013

Phone Troubles and Stellar Support

In my job I am frequently required to travel internationally. The other engineers in my group are also required to travel internationally. Usually there is some type of misunderstanding about what is being observed at the customer and we go and treat the start visit like a fact finding mission before trying to come up with a solution.

Frequently a call to the home office is required. This is all well and good, except that sometimes our IT department does not realize the perils of international travel or the consequences of being without a phone that works for more than an alarm clock.

Our IT department is very bad about upgrading phones. We go through Verizion Wireless and I guess we are allowed to get an upgrade every 2 years, like normal consumers. Who knew?

Before a recent trip to Brazil, Rodney received a new phone because his old phone refused to charge the battery. He went for about a week swapping batteries with another coworker before he could get a new phone, but that strategy would not work in Brazil where he only had one phone.

Luckily we have good local support in Brazil, and they actually have phones that work in Brazil and can call the United States...

Rodney arrives in Brazil and his phone does not work. He uses our local representative's phone and calls me for help. I send an email to IT requesting assistance for Rodney who is currently in Brazil on a customer visit. Here is the email conversation:
Me: Rodney is in Brazil and his phone does not work. Can you help with this issue?
IT: He needs to call the Verizion Global Support line at 908-559-4899
I wanted to retort with: "How is he supposed to call Verizion Global Support if his phone does not work?" but I did not. I would like my computer and phone to continue to function.

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Tuesday, January 1, 2013

Merry Christmas Piles

The Chief and I went away for Christmas as we do on most years. We went to visit our families that live about 5 hours away in northern Indiana. We left after work on Friday December 21 and returned on Wednesday December 26. It appears that while we were gone, our three cats had some type of drunken party. I found no less than 8 yak piles. The largest measuring about 24 inches in length, and ironically outside the bathroom door. It looked like a cat tried to make it to the bathroom to hurl and came so close... At least on the bright side, it was on the tile floor and not carpet... most of the others were on the carpet. That is always fun. It looks like a campground in the living room with little paper towels over the cleaned up spots.

On a related note, a few days ago I was vacuuming the TV room and decided to move the couches to vacuum under them. That is something that we don't do very often. It had evidently been quite a long time since the couches had been moved, or maybe it was not very long... it is difficult to tell.

Let's see what is under couch number 1...


OK, let's itemize this hoard...
     6 milk jug rings
     2 striped catnip filled toys
     1 plastic fork missing part of a tine
     2 tubes of chapstick
     1 cat toy ball with a bell inside
     2 Chic-fil-a mints
     1 full sized snickers bar
     1 bendy straw
     1 hair tie
     1 twist tie
     1 aluminum foil ball
     1 stick


OK, on to couch number 2...
     2 milk jug rings
     2 striped catnip filled toys
     5 cat toy balls with bells inside
     1 piece aluminum foil
     1 cord/cable tie
     1 blue sharpie
     1 black ink pen
     1 catnip bird
     1 metal bottle cap
     1 plastic bottle cap
     2 pieces scrap paper
     1 wrapping paper cutter - we were missing this...
     1 screw to a computer case

To summarize...
     8 milk jug rings
     7 cat toys
     4 striped catnip filled toys
     2 writing implements
     a lot of miscellaneous junk
     1 full sized snickers bar
     1 stick

And I was wondering where all the cat toys went...

Have a Merry Christmas!!

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