Baxil [bakh-HEEL'], n.

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Below are the 9 most recent journal entries recorded in the "Baxil" journal:

February 13th, 2008
05:23 pm [Link]	Or maybe it was interrupting zombies? baxil: Wow. I just got the weirdest tech support voicemail. baxil: "Hello, my name is M--- S-----, and I live in Lake Wildwood. I have a computer, and it's not -- I can't -- it's got a blue screen, and --" suddenly hangs up krinndnz: Computer ate them. :( baxil: "Open the drive a: doors, HAL." "I can't do that, Dave." ----- And speaking of Krinn, here's your tiger QOTD, from a great post (read the whole thing for context; totally sfw) about Tintin, national myths, and the landmines of history: Rule 34 only ruins icons of your childhood if you're afraid of sex. Current Location: ~spiral Current Mood: amused Current Music: Warcraft II OST, "Scenario Theme 8" Tags: tech support horror stories, wordplay, work (2 comments \| Leave a comment)
December 19th, 2007
07:05 pm [Link]	NUTPOD I've got an acronym to add to the tech support lexicon. I know we already have such gleaming gems as PICNIC, but I think this one (which came to me in a moment of high school cynicism) is a worthy contender: Never Underestimate The Power Of Dumb.* I've had a few calls this month that have put that piece of wisdom into sharp relief. But the grand prize winner would definitely have to be Kapital 9 Lady. K-9 Lady (who I should refer to by that term's proper definition, i.e., "bitch") blew through our office in 48 hours, coming and going like a winter storm and leaving just as much ice in her wake. By the time she called to cancel (and we practically threw her money back at her before she could change her mind), she had managed to personally alienate everyone in the office. Including me. This is a feat. As much as I've complained here about customers, I don't take it personally. Even if someone is a giant black hole of obliviousness, they don't mean to make my day worse, and I don't wish them any ill. (I just come here to blow off steam in ways that won't harm anyone, and maybe will give my friends a laugh or a good story for later.) But K9? With her, everything was our fault, and she let us know about this not only with passive-aggressive complaints, but also at great length -- generally longer than it would have taken to fix the problem in the first place. Then, of course, NUTPOD. At this point I'm just going to start copying from the support ticket, because if I get into the specific complaints beforehand I'll have to start repeating myself. ATTACHMENT: voicemail that is several seconds of silence and a hang-up click 12/04 Rob: K9 did not leave a message, but we knew what the problem was anyway [because we have l33t tech-ninja kung fu, and server logs. -b]. After Tad spent an hour on the phone with her, during which she spent some obscene number of minutes complaining about having to type in her password, she managed to type it in with the caps lock on! Ugh. Rather than go back through the ordeal of helping the user find the 'any' key, just changed their password in our system to match. 12/4 TR - Other painful moments from 51 minutes and 29 seconds [yes, I measured. -b] of epic fail: "Is that a capital 9, or a lowercase 9?" (... and then, when we were typing in her password a second time, she asks it AGAIN. Yes, AGAIN. The first time is a momentary lapse of reason that can happen to anyone. The second time is no longer funny.) [Needless to say, this is where the K-9 designation came from. -b] About three minutes worth of complaints about the untypableness of her password [which we create at random for security reasons. -b], followed by less than two minutes of actually typing it Click "continue" in Mac Mail's Add Account wizard and roll 2d4: 2: Complain about untypableness of password 3-4: Say that nothing has changed, even though it's gone to a new screen 5: Say that nothing has changed, because it hasn't gone to a new screen yet 6: Randomly jump to some piece of information the window requests her to type in, and state that the computer is now telling her that information 7-8: Randomly jump to some piece of information the window requests her to type in and ask whether she should put something transparently wrong there 9*: Read the title of the window out loud so that the t/s guy knows what the hell we're looking at now After clicking "Create" in the add account wizard to FINALLY save her new e-mail settings: "Okay, now it's asking me for my phone number, user name and password, and there's the word connect in a circle." I finally determine that at some point it's leapt back to the Network preferences pane where it was asking her earlier to dial in. T: "Okay, close the window." "I don't see close." T: "Huh?" "I see Apply, Revert, Connect ..." T: "Well, just click on the red dot in the upper left." "There's no red dot." T: "Whuh --" "Oh, no wait, there it is." T: "Okay, click on it." "Nothing happened." T: "What do you mean nothing happened? You clicked on the red dot in the upper left?" "Yeah, the one right next to External Modem." T: headdesk* "Okay, that's not the right one. Look up in the upper left." "That IS the one in the upper left!" T: "Further up." (fruitless efforts to describe window title bar) "Look, I'm up in the upper left one, all the other red dots are below it." [I finally give up and break one of the unwritten tech support rules: no meta-descriptions. -b] T: "Look up about an inch. What do you see there?" "Show All and two arrows." T: "And directly above that, are there a few circles?" "Yes." T: "The one on the left should be red." "Yes." T: "Click on that one." This is scary but true: The actual conversation was worse, that's just all I can remember from it. Meanwhile, we have a customer in the office patiently waiting for my help, I'm trying to set aside some phone time to get ahold of Sonic for a DSL setup issue, and I'm not even scheduled to be in here on the first place. It takes a lot to get on my On Notice board. She's done it. 12/5 11a TR - She called back in this morning. K9 is now refusing to talk to me. (quiet happy dance) But that means she demanded to escalate the call and I had to hand it off to jp. I'm sorry, jp. He said afterward (~20 minutes) that it wasn't -too- bad, but I was listening in. I know different. The phrase "I'm trying to help you out, but you need to have some patience" was used, as well as him flat-out telling her (a Mac user) that computers are complex things. Plus the requisite inability to find the menu bar in the upper left. My call went something like this: "The Internet isn't working. I know you guys say it is, but I know it's not. I talked with someone yesterday, and -- was that you? Is there someone else I can talk to? Transfer me to your boss." JP chatted with her a little while, assured her I'm technically competent and that the Internet connection was in fact working, and played Good Cop. The actual problem was something inside Mac Mail. Which came up, incidentally, with a red '2' in a circle: our test messages have reached her. Apparently there was no actual connection problem; it was just asking for her password for her old e-mail account. Yes, even though this computer is only a few weeks old, she has ALREADY burned through one ISP before us. And she was about to leave us, too, except jp pointed out that if she switched again she'd just have to go through all of this setup -- again -- from scratch. After some basic explanations about how computers work she seems to be squared away. I bloody well hope so, at this point. 12/5 12a TR - I should have known it was too good to last. She calls in AGAIN. With the EXACT SAME issue she was just talking to jp about. JP is on the other line, and thus unavailable. But suddenly, miraculously, now that she has no recourse but to complain louder, K9 will gladly complain at me instead. She used to have Infostations ("Oops! I wasn't going to mention their name") for Internet service. She alternated between complaints that: 1) She can't get e-mail to her new address except for the stuff we've sent her. --- Could this be because she hasn't told anyone the new address yet? But she wants US to test it out by having US send e-mail to her new address from some return address that's not at our ISP. --- She tried sending herself a test message and never got it. OK, fair. This is a legitimate complaint and I'd be happy to troubleshoot it if she'd shut up long enough to let me check her outgoing mail settings. 2) It's not connecting to Infostations to get her old e-mail. --- this is because, oh, she CANCELLED WITH THEM BEFORE COMING HERE. I am not the first person to explain why this makes her old e-mail not work. I will not be the last. UNCLEAR ON THE CONCEPT UNCLEAR ON THE CONCEPT UNCLEAR ON THE CONCEPT UNCLEAR ON THE CONCEPT UNCLEAR ON THE CONCEPT UNCLEAR ON THE CONCEPT UNCLEAR ON THE CONCEPT UNCLEAR ON THE CONCEPT There IS a legit tech support issue here, which I finally, painfully pried out of her: she gets an error message connecting to our mail server's port 465. This probably means that SSL is turned on for her SMTP connection. And maybe also that the password got mistyped. But she absolutely refused to sit down and fix her settings -- she's 45 minutes overdue for something important, etc. Well, I asked, it sounds like this isn't a good time for you to talk. Would you prefer that we took care of this when you're not under such deadline pressure? Then, because she's so late for something so important, she spent the next minute and a half complaining to me about her broken e-mail. Lessons learned: 1) She doesn't actually want tech support, she wants to complain. 2) She is of the impression that if she whines loudly and long enough, no matter what the problem is nor how many times it's been patiently explained that the settings on her computer need to be changed, no matter how crazy her Heisenclicking gets, that we have some magical ability to hack not only the Internet but also all of her applications, and make everything Do What She Means. 3) I bet she lives in Lake Wildwood. [This is the rich-snob gated community down the hill. Surprisingly, my guess was incorrect. -b] 12/6 jp - K9 called at 11:30am on Thu Dec 6 and said "I don't want your service any longer. Cancel it." We have refunded the full amount on her credit card, and the account has been closed. She has been nothing but trouble. Lots of blaming. Anyway, K9 is gone now, off to the greener pastures of other ISPs that haven't banned her for life yet. Perhaps she's also found happiness in switching in her shiny new Macintosh for a computer that is more user-friendly. If not, I recommend GlaDOS. -- * Problem In Chair, Not In Computer. Yes, this is an impossible result. Current Location: ~spiral Current Music: Al Green, "Here I Am (Come And Take Me)" Tags:** my brain now hurts, tech support horror stories, work (11 comments \| Leave a comment)
October 26th, 2007
12:53 am [Link]	Please stand by We are experiencing ( technical difficulties ). Dealing with today's DSL switchover here at the International House of Ninja is turning out to be a much bigger hassle than expected. Your Baxil will return shortly. At least I've now got some detailed notes on ... Steps for switching a Speedstream 5100 to our company's Internet service Log in to http://192.168.0.1. Click to edit configuration. Enter the "Modem Access Code" printed on the bottom of the device. ... Which is set in the firmware and shouldn't be changeable. Enter the "Modem Access Code" again because it's not accepting it. Assume firmware corruption. Find "Factory Reset" link. Reset the modem. Repeatedly. ... With a large hammer. Finish cursing. Locate hardware reset switch on underside of device. ( The fun continues ) Current Location: ~/Brainstorm Current Mood: exhausted Current Music: "Green," Afro Celt Sound System Tags: geekery, misc life updates, my brain now hurts, tech support horror stories, technology, work (2 comments \| Leave a comment)
October 19th, 2007
05:33 pm [Link]	Hate for Yahoo growing From the tech support files [BACKGROUND: Our small ISP recently changed its name, and as a consequence a redirect got installed on the home page many of our users are used to to send them to the new site. This call occured on my first workday after the redirect goes live.] CUSTOMER: I can't get to nccn.net to do my webmail any more! baxil: What happens when you try? C: Other stuff comes up. B: Like what? C: Things like www.nccn.net/wellwithin, www.nccn.net/vaccines ... B: (panics, double-checks that www.nccn.net isn't resolving to a site index listing, calms down slightly) Does what you're seeing look like a web page, or does it look like a list of things? C: A list of things. B: (tries to fish more information out, finally settles on:) And what did you do to get there? C: I put in www.nccn.net, and #1 comes up "vaccination information," then "wellwithin earth mysteries at nccn.net/wwithin" ... B: Aaaaaah .... I see. (Goes to Google, types in 'www.nccn.net' and finds similar page of results) And do you see the listing at the top that says "Spiral.com"? C: No, I don't. B: Um, you must not be using Google then. What site does the search results that you're looking at? C: Yahoo. B: (sure enough, Yahoo doesn't have Spiral anywhere; its method of dealing with pages that return 301's is apparently to delete them entirely from its database) ... okay, well, there's not going to be a good way to get to our site from there. What I'm going to do is have you put the address into a different location that will take you straight to our home page. (walks her through putting it in Address Bar) See it now? C: Yep, there's the new spiral page. B: While you're there, click on the "Web Mail" link to get to the squirrel page and let's save you a little effort in the future. C: Okay. B: Alright, now go up to the Favorites menu ... C: I see Bookmarks, no Favorites. B: Okay, bookmarks. (... Even though MSIE's called it "Favorites" for three versions now?) C: I clicked on it and now I'm at a Yahoo login page. B: (wtf?) ... Wait, that wasn't it. Click on Back. C: Okay, back to the squirrel. B: (leads her through the painful process of describing the MSIE window, so we can confirm the "Bookmarks" she clicked on really was in the menu bar ... it was.) Okay, so, just click on the word "Bookmarks" and don't move the mouse yet. What comes up? C: "Add Bookmarks," etc. (gives a menu listing) B: Alright, click on "Add Bookmark." C: I'm back at the Yahoo login page. B: headdesk ... Alright, well, that's no use then. Yahoo has done something really craptastic with your browser, and I have no idea how to fix it. Sorry about that. C: OK, thanks! Current Location: ~spiral Current Mood: okay Current Music: Kow Otani, "Resurrection," Shadow Of The Colossus OST Tags: geekery, my brain now hurts, tech support horror stories, work (9 comments \| Leave a comment)
July 26th, 2007
08:27 pm [Link]	Support Ticket #11578: The Adventure of the Muddled Mail Copied unedited from our tech support queue. I love my job. -B It was a singularly warm day in the foothills; July sunshine had chased the weekend's unseasonal clouds away, and neither fan nor air conditioner could reduce the dry heat that always put me in a mind of Afghanistan. Perspiring under my summer cottons, I trudged into the upstairs office at 416B Baker Street, to be greeted by an all-too-familiar tuneless scraping upon a violin. "Holmes," I cried with some exasperation, "Will that infernal racket never cease to entertain you in your idle moments?" "Idle? Come, Watson," Sureclaw Holmes replied reproachfully, clicking "pause" on the YouTube video of the unfortunately talentless music student. "You cannot tell me that you are so unobservant as to have not deduced the pattern behind my musical habits by now." "But of course," I replied, dabbing the sweat from my brow and glancing at my pocket-watch. "It indicates that you are deep in thought over some baffling case of grave import. I would wager pf on nccn3 is continuing its vexatious ways." "Ah, Watson," he replied with a twinkle in his eye. "You would do well to rely upon the evidence of your senses over such trifling hunches! For upon my screen you observe no InterMapper console, nor any terminal windows but one! How then could one of our servers be having issues? No, the case that has my mind so engaged -- like all of the best adventures we've shared -- is one of trifling importance, one I perhaps should not even be dealing with on tech support time, and yet one that drove one of our customers so to madness that he should seek out professional assistance." ( About 2,000 words of this. Blame the muse. ) Current Location: ~yuba Current Music: "I Saved The World Today," Eurythmics Tags: best of baxil, geekery, tech support horror stories, work, writing (5 comments \| Leave a comment)
June 26th, 2007
10:53 am [Link]	Tech support horror stories As noted in my previous post, jhitchin's "Tech Support" song is dear to my heart. Part of the reason is that, as a tech support worker myself, I have had those moments to which the song refers. That confusion as the caller describes a situation you're pretty certain violates several laws of physics. ("I'm telling you, my modem works beautifully during the day and then refuses to dial out at all after sunset." "Yeah, our logs show that too. Umm ... have you tried garlic? Or a cross?") That shock as the mists of innocent miscommunication casually burn away and the full depth of a problem is revealed in all its glory. ("I haven't been able to dial up to 555-0616 in a while." "That's not one of our numbers. Aha ... you know, I bet that's the dial-in phone number from the company that we took over from. Wait. How long exactly has it been since you were able to connect?" "Uh, a little over a year.") That pants-wetting fear as a Machine That Should Not Be (e.g., anything containing both Windows 98 and a network card) shambles into view like a digital zombie. Or, for that matter, as a User that Should Not Be Allowed Anywhere Near Computers (e.g., anyone who thinks making a Windows 98 box their primary Internet machine is a good idea; or someone who misunderstands the meaning of "tech support" ) moans and latches onto your head to eat your brain. And the reason I transcribed the song today is because I recently had an encounter that can only truly be described by quoting Hitchin. The background here is that the outgoing mail server at the Internet Service Provider I work for is restricted to people on our dial-up network as a spam prevention measure; mail-only and webhosting customers have to use their own ISP's outgoing mail server. (This restriction is the case at most ISPs, but since virtually all Internet service comes with free e-mail, it's really never an issue.) One of our e-mail only customers calls up with complaints that he can't send messages, so I explain the policy. Then I discover that his Internet service is satellite. It has been my experience as a tech that, without exception, satellite ISPs' tech support is hideous. Hughesnet is perhaps the worst offender -- last time I checked, the tech support number prominently plastered all over their website had been disconnected, and the number recycled to an online florist (who was probably sick of getting tech support calls). But all of them suffer from utterly impenetrable Web sites, unusable documentation, and a burning desire to never have to speak to one of their customers. So when I heard that Customer had satellite service, I winced and decided to give him a hand in setting up his outgoing e-mail server properly. After wading through WildBlue's hedge maze of a support site, I learn that they specifically don't provide mail server information. Their only public support option is an application to download that will accelerate your connection, and also oh by the way fix Outlook Express' settings so that it will access your mail account.* ** This is, of course, unacceptable. It's a slow day, so I jump into an online-chat tech support queue on behalf of Mutual Customer; I figure I'll know the right questions to ask (and, maybe, have enough credibility) to get all the necessary setup information from one of their techs. I'm going to skip the story of how connecting to their online chat queue at various times (and apparently at random) cited me a 45-minute wait, booted me out entirely, and immediately threw me to the head of the line. Because that's neither here nor there. No, the real story starts when I connect to "Senior* Technical Agent 3." I introduce myself and identify our mutual customer. Then I start asking for details of mail client configuration. Server name, check. ("But hey, you got one! One out of ten ain't bad.") Then I ask him the port to connect to their outgoing mail server on. This is something that end users often don't know anything about; it's a technical detail that's transparent after initial setup. But it's a basic component of the support job. Asking an ISP technician about the connection port is like asking an auto mechanic to check the level of your transmission fluid. And Senior Technical Agent 3 -- Senior Technical Agent 3 -- says: > "Port 25? Or 587?" "we would not know that" * * Rob, working at the next desk over, is interrupted in his work by a heavy, rhythmic thumping. Seconds later, he has leapt from his seat and is attempting to persuade me to stop whacking my head against the table.* When I recover, unfortunately, I still have a job to do. I'm not quite masochistic enough to press the issue (I figure I can just try both and see what sticks), but I do have to ask some assorted questions about authentication and connection encryption. At least with those, Senior Technical Agent 3 gives me things that sound like real answers. I probably don't have to explain that, once Customer called back and we tried to get his connection working, absolutely nothing the tech told me worked. Except for the server name. But hey, even a stopped time measurement device is right once per solar cycle. -- * True and not embellished, not even for dramatic effect. ** Oh, dear god, I only wish I was embellishing the depth of the stupidity here. ******* Everybody say it along with me: "OH MY GOD, THEY GAVE YOU ROOT?!?" Current Location: ~/brainstorm Current Music: "Teleport," Man With No Name Tags: geekery, my brain now hurts, tech support horror stories, work (18 comments \| Leave a comment)
June 25th, 2007
12:06 pm [Link]	Lyrics: "Tech Support," Jeffrey Hitchin If you've never heard the song "Tech Support" by Jeffrey Hitchin, you really ought to go download it and give it a listen. I've only ever been able to find a single recording of it -- a digitized recording of a 1993 live performance, hosted at the Virtual Filksing -- but it deserves much broader exposure. I'm putting the lyrics here not only for my own reference, but for that of the internet at large. As far as I can determine, nobody's ever transcribed the song, and the sound quality on the mp3 is just grainy enough that some folks have a hard time distinguishing the words. "Tech Support" - Jeffrey Hitchin What did I do to deserve this All I needed was the work Now I pick up the phone and talk to stupid jerks Thank you, sir, now could you stop swearing My fragile ego's been stomped All because you don't know your ass from a C:\ prompt ( The rest of it, including an actual support call, below the cut ) (As an aside, if anyone wants to help me puzzle out the three or four sections labeled "inaudible" or with question marks (?), I'd be grateful. In particular, figuring out what game he was interrupted from is going to drive me nuts. It's got to be something recognizable, probably a UNIX command-line or a solitaire-type game ... I just can't think of anything like that that sounds like "poing".) Edited to add: Well, hey! The artist is on LJ as jhitchin and dropped by in comments to fix my inaudibles. `:-)` Current Location: ~yuba Current Music: guess. Tags: geekery, lyrics, tech support horror stories, work (10 comments \| Leave a comment)
February 19th, 2007
09:53 pm [Link]	When work gives you lemonade, make performance art Trouble ticket #10316 from the voice-mail queue: Friends, I believe we have just become witness to "1:24" -- the premiere performance of the long-lost second sequel to John Cage's "4:33." And I must admit, it is a masterful performance. (mp3 file, 366kb) In the first movement, the conductor gives continuous emphasis to the winds of transmission (provided in a guest appearance by the AT&T orchestra). Subtle volume modulation resolves to a slight crescendo, sweeping the section to an urgent, unsettled conclusion that can't fail to reward the hyperattentive listener. The second movement builds dramatic tension via the sustained/restrained attack of the brass section, while introducing percussion in a far-off, ghostly vibrato that evokes the processor-intensive Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence -- proving the composer has indeed kept up with the changing times. But it is in the third movement, at approximately 1:13, that the true daring of this piece is revealed. For in this piece the composer has finally introduced the most brilliant innovation of American artistry -- lyrics. In a lush, occult soprano, the leading diva (provided in a guest appearance by one of our customers) advances the daring, edgy refrain transcribed below: "no, nothing in there maybe I have to have the telephone hung up for that to work" Then the piece explodes into a frenzied climax, finishing with the click of a phone disconnection - a poignant reminder of all music's transitory nature and a philosophical meditation on the greater purpose of life. I hope we get no repeat performances - it would be a shame to hog this brilliant piece all to ourselves. Current Mood: amused Current Music: Tech Support - 1'24" Tags: multimedia, reviews, tech support horror stories, work (2 comments \| Leave a comment)
January 16th, 2007
09:04 pm [Link]	the occasional joys of tech support This is an automated message sent at your request from Yubanet Media. A new issue was just created in the system. ------------------------------------------------------ ID: 9948 Summary: help I am stuck in this office Reported By: tad Priority: Med - in 2 days ------------------------------------------------------ 1/16 8:55p TR - The door continues to elude me. Taunt me with its closeness. As if to say "you could walk out at any time. If only you'd stop updating the 22 new tickets that came in this afternoon." Morale running low, as are supplies of leftover Chinese food. Internet radio set to a 70s station is keeping the rats away, but they appear to be developing a tolerance for polyester. Will escalate if I start hearing answers to the incessant mumbling-to-self. -- I normally finish my shift at 7. Current Location: ~yuba Current Mood: drained Current Music: Abba, "Mamma Mia" Tags: tech support horror stories, work (4 comments \| Leave a comment)

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