As I mentioned in my last blog post, I travel a lot. Yesterday Jaden called me while I was out of town because the Playstation 3 was having problems connecting to the network. He was perturbed because he likes playing online with his friends with his favoritest game of all time:
Ok, so he has four (4) favoritest games, and they’re all Transformers.
- Transformers, the Game (from the 1st movie)
- Transformers Revenge of the Fallen (from the 2nd movie)
- Transformers War for Cybertron (no movie)
- Transformers Dark of the Moon (from the 3rd movie)
Coincidentally, shortly before he called I noticed a Facebook update from a friend complaining about the Playstation Network.
For those who are unfamiliar with the Playstation Network (PSN), let me bring you up to speed. The PSN can sometimes be a flaming pile of guano left baking in the Texas sun. When it’s down (which seems often), most games don’t play at all. It’s not just that you can’t play online with others, but for some games, you can’t even launch the game because the game developers and/or Sony decided that it’d be neat to require the online portion to be working.
Armed with the tip-off from Facebook, I could convey to my son that it probably wasn’t our Internet connection but most likely the Playstation Network that was down. So I asked him if the other computers, laptops, gadgets were working. He he asked me to hold on while he checked.
It took him a while. I stayed on hold for a good 4-5 minutes, which actually is a long time knowing that there are plenty of Internet-enabled devices to check. He eventually returned with confirmation that other devices in the house were indeed working fine. I felt good in the knowledge that I was coaching him on the tenets of proper troubleshooting.
We comiserated on his inability to play his game with his online friends, then I asked him about his day and how his Backyard Monsters were doing. After our chat, we hung up, I went about my work out of town and returned that night.
Today I found this on my home office desk.
I rest easy knowing that in addition to solid Troubleshooting skills, I’ve also imparted two equally important abilities, and that is Documentation and Communication. Now I know why it took so long for him to return to the phone.
So, did he write that on a Casio Label It? LOL! I think good communication is also important for troubleshooting. Way to go!
close – it’s a Brother P-touch. I’m impressed a little because the LCD screen only shows 8 or 9 characters and there’s NO spellcheck! Pretty good if you ask me
I have the Casio at work. It is really good, though! I don’t see any spelling errors.
Jaden and Gilda would totally get along. I like his diligence.
One of these days, I’ve resolved to introduce Jaden to Avi, Shiny’s little dude. Since I’m in DC so much, we figured Jaden would just ride along one trip. If I remembered where you were, I could dream of similar actions!
Haha! I see that you have a great skill as a dad and you have a great son to prove it.
Good to see a Transformers Game Franchise fan here too! They are indeed awesome so I can’t blame dad for having those as his favorites.. You indeed have “some” skills apparently so!