[pause]

This reminds me of the first time I heard of the MS Exchange site.

Back in 2002, a co-worker of mine said “Wayne, you gotta go to this link! I’m learning SO MUCH!” and then AIM’ed me http://msexchange.com.  It pops up on my screen and look.  I look again.  Then I yelled back “look, Jack, there ain’t NO way I’m going to ‘em’ sexchange dot com!”

He hadn’t even thought of the URL that way.  We had a great laugh over that one.

MS Exchange means Microsoft Exchange – one of the most popular corporate email systems on the planet.  And I did learn that the site was a great resource to help with our Exchange infrastructure.

Remind me sometime to tell you my whitehouse dot com story…

I’m pretty happy right now.  You might think I got a new toy or something (and there are some toys out there that would qualify) but mainly I just got my old and busted toy fixed.

As some of you know, I depend on my Blackberry 8700c – it’s my phone, my PDA, my email, calendar, tasks, contacts, SMS, picture browser, web browser, etc.  I’ve had it for a while – another friend of mine was able to snag one for me FREE at the RIM Launching event in San Francisco – Thanx guys!

Not only do I depend on the absolutely cool unit, I love it as well.  I love having one device on my belt (well, other than my SwissTool), having everything together, and having access to everything all the time – not to mention updating info/contacts and having immediate access to corporate and personal email.

However, recently I’ve had horrible cell phone reception.  The blackberry data service (EDGE in uppercaps vs edge in lowercase) worked fine, and I could always send/receive phone calls, but while I’m talking to someone I had horrible volume problems and every 2nd or 3rd word was interrupted/dropped or otherwise lost, so I did a lot of “what?” in most of my conversations.  And I don’t mean the type of “what?” I would say when I hear someone saying “I’m going to crawl through the phone and pull your nose hairs until I get the info I want, Mr. Hall”  I mean instead of that sentence I would hear something like “I’m (burble) to cr(burble) through (burble) own and pull (burble) airs until I get (burble) all”

I attribute the bad cell stuff to the incessent dropping that the unit has suffered under my hands.  I’m guessing the internal antenna has become dislodged or something so that the signal strength isn’t so good.  Also, the “water damage” indicator underneat the battery cover (small square that’s either red or white) says RED, meaning, it’s seen it’s share of moisture and the phone is no longer covered by insurance.  I don’t know how much I believe that sticker, but still, the manufacturer has to protect their interests too, I guess.

So now for the happy-happy-joy-joy part — I GOT A REPLACEMENT PHONE!  YAY!

And ooooh, the new one is chrome instead of dark grey.  Kind of looks better methinks.  Plus, the CPU seems faster, but that might be because I haven’t loaded it down with all my data.  Also seems lighter, but maybe it’ll get heavier when I load more email on it.

Here’s how it happened – another coworker needed a blackberry, so we ordered a new 8700c.  However, the person does NOT need a phone plan with it – just the blackberry.  And since my blackberry works fine as a blackberry but not-so-fine as a phone, this awesome person agreed to swap devices with me so I could have a WORKING PHONE.

THANK YOU BLACKBERRY GODS!

(plus, this person has promised me her McDonald’s Monopoly codes.  How much better could this person get?)

I still haven’t had a single positive online support chat experience.  I’ve tried it with several companies, and I guess I still haven’t learned my lesson because I keep trying.  My brain continues in it’s annoying wondering way that maybe, just maybe, I’ve just been unlucky in the past and maybe it isn’t as bad as it seems.  Maybe some company out there has actually mastered the art of online chat support.

But I never learn.

Question for you: have you EVER had a positive chat experience with tech support or customer service?  Have you ever even tried online support?

So this week we had a Dell W4201HD plasma TV break.  We hit the power button, and the power button lights up, but the TV itself is dead.  No noises but two small clicks that all my favorite plasmas make, but pretty much, “it’s dead, Jim.”  I decide to go online and find out my warranty status (woohoo 650+ days left of “Complete Care”!). 

After I click for Technical Support, I see the option for “chat support” just taunting me, daring me to click it and try it out. 

At first, I declined it’s invitation.  I’ve been down this road before.  Like Charlie Brown and his highly-documented nemesis, Lucy Van Pelt and her football shenanigans, I’m not going to get fooled again.  It’s just a trick!  Dell offering me help in the form of canned clicks and slow responses is a ruse to waste my time and delay my call.  Because I know that if I take 20 minutes trying to chat with a non-existent person, chances are the problem will either A) go away or fix itself, B) get fixed by me in the meantime or C) become unimportant enough to take EVEN MORE TIME to get help on the phone, where I’ll end up talking to someone in India who knows no English other than “what is your case number?” and “have you tried resetting your box?”

But it KEPT BECKONING ME.  They’ve even gone to lengths to customize the portal for me:

I really wanted to click on the “Call Dell Technical Support” icon so I could get the phone number and start my lengthy phone call, but my traitorous mouse changed course and suddenly clicked on the “Chat with an expert” icon!  Oh no!  I didn’t know what to do. 

Quickly I tried to move my mouse to the little [x] in the upper right-hand corner to stop, but no, my computer joined in the mutiny and actually answered the question of “do you want to initiate a chat session for support?” question that almost made me puke.  I couldn’t believe my peripherals were against me.  I eventually had to go to my blackberry to type this blog entry because every time I started typing these facts about them, they’d visit non-work-friendly web sites and download unsavory videos and then blame *me*. 

Someone must have been watching out for me up above, however, because even though Dell offered the chat, and my mouse accepted the offer, and the computer clicked that I was sure that I wanted to enter into chat, I ended up with a “nothing” experience anyway:

PRAISE THE INTERNET GODS.

Minor note: when I called the number, it informed me that I’ll be holding for more than 10 minutes.  And every minute or so, it reminds me that I should “go online and chat with a support agent and have my problem resolved more quickly.”  This is so wrong.  For one, they shouldn’t OFFER CHAT if chat is unavailable!  On the phone or on the portal!

Oh, and when the agent answered (after 34 minutes of hold time), *I* informed *him* that “our call may be recorded for quality assurance.”  He stammered and paused, I’m sure wondering why I said that.  It feels very good to be able to record my calls – I just hit a button on my Avaya IP Phone, and the conversation is saved into my voicemail box.

And in case you’re wondering, it still took another 20 minutes to get to where I knew we’d be all along – they’re shipping a new TV to us overnight.  I mean, I should have some sort of geek credential dripping through the phone that says to the support agent “The person calling you is smarter than you.  He’s smarter than your Tier III support.  He already has done the 50 things on your checklist and 20 things NOT on your checklist.  Treat him with respect; you might learn something.”

Well, yesterday was a fun day, starting off in the morning.  I frequently stop by Whataburger on the way to work to pick up my favoritest breakfast of all time – the Potato Taquito with EXTRA cheese.  By the time I *get* to work, I’m usually done with the meal.  So I have an empty whataburger bag with wrappers and the empty drink cup as I’m driving up to work, and we have a convenient dumpster right outside the back door.  One is for recycling and one is for normal garbage.

Interestingly enough, and related to the story unfortunately, I keep my proximity badge in my wallet.  That way I can conveniently unlock the door by just passing my wallet over the badge reader.

Because I’m just walking from the car to the dumpster to the door, I keep my wallet handy.  I typically get to the dumpster, throw the trash into the recycling dumpster and then get to the door with my wallet ready to unlock the badge reader.

(process that a little bit)

Yup, I threw my wallet in the dumpster, with the trash.

So now I can’t get in the office unless I get into the dumpster.  A coworker saves me a little and lets me in, so I get a chair, climb up into the dumpster (fortunately it’s just cardboard and paper), grab the wallet and jump out.  Nothing like a little physical exercise to get your blood pumping.

Then I remember – we have digital video cameras all around the office.  16 of them – 14 inside, 2 outside.  I set them up 6 years ago.  It automatically records everything and just keeps the last 3 months or so, such that the disks are always full and it auto-replaces the oldest video.  I can get myself a little video of me getting my wallet in the dumpster, having to jump in and retrieve it, and then I could post the video on my blog and laugh at myself.  HA HA HA.  Wouldn’t that be hilarious?

Yes, it *would* be.  Except when I go check out the video server, it’s not recording.  It has all the video from about september last year up until january this year, and is showing live video from the 16 video feeds, but nothing’s been recorded since.  CRAP.  I guess my story will have to be enough for you all, and you do NOT get to see video of me hopping in a dumpster.

So a lot of today was spent trying to find out what’s going on with the video server.  It is old (6 years), and it has 5 75GB hard drives that it keeps the video on, and it seems one of them died.  ARGH.

I’ll leave you with one of the pictures we snapped of Harry Potter’s Owl.  I’m sure he’s been missing it since the most recent movie.   (Note: the cameras record when it detects motion – it’s so cool that it snapped an owl picture!)