How wee is your phone, Jars? Mine'd either be uncomfortable or broken.

Dumber idea than spinning that guy (Jesse?) off of GG:

Now you knew this would happen the minute we learned Kaitlin had been shipped off to boarding school on "The O.C." In a classic soap opera move, a spin-off series next season will follow Kaitlin's adventures in boarding school.

Now you knew this would happen the minute we learned Kaitlin had been shipped off to boarding school on "The O.C." In a classic soap opera move, a spin-off series next season will follow Kaitlin's adventures in boarding school.

I have two words for that: What. EV.

China has alopecia, and that's very sad. But I wouldn't recognise Kaitlin in a lineup of ... of ... people who aren't tweens.

They're capricious beasts

I read this as capricious breasts, and rather like the idea.

How could there possibly be a show about Kaitlin? There is no Kaitlin.

Ah, see I keep mine in my trousers pocket more or less constantly.

I don't have a trousers pocket.

I don't mean to disparage your ilk, Kalshane. I do find that, once over that hurdle, most of the tech folk are quite helpful and willing to converse at my level. And I can understand that there needs to be a hurdle -- you can't talk tech the same way with a newbie and with someone who isn't a newbie.

I wasn't taking it personally. Mostly finding it odd that someone took forever to even acknowledge your problem.

And I agree, though honestly high-end technobable will lose me sometimes. I know how all the parts work and how to fix them but I don't necessarily know the technical term for everything.

But I understand your frustration from having to go to the manufacturer for support as most of them treat anyone who calls like a clueless newbie (Dell is particularly bad about this, IME) I was pleasantly surprised last week when I had to call HP and actually got a really cool tech. We had a PC come in where the power supply died a week after we recieved it. I told him exactly what I'd done to troubleshoot and he replied "Right, and then you swore at it and kicked it a bit and it still didn't work."

Me: "Actually, I didn't try that yet."

Tech: "Honestly, sir, I can't understand why you'd call us without at least screaming at the machine first."

Later in the call when he'd agreed to send me a new power supply and the old one could simply be trashed, our vendor who was also on the line suggested I should send the old one to our corporate office to get smashed with a sledgehammer like we do with old hard drives (required by the new HIPAA regulations) the tech said "It's my duty to discourage you from using anything but an authorized HP hammer on any of our equipment. Unfortunately they're on back-order. We can't even get one for our lab here."

I think that's what you people are getting from tech support -- it's not that they don't believe you, it's that they have a routine.

Well, it doesn't help if you have users like we have here who will lie about trying the standard trouble-shooting steps before calling us. It's frustrating for the tech to go down there and discover they only had to do something that the user could have done themselves and had been asked to do.

That said, we do have users that we know have enough tech savvy that we immediately take their word for it when they say they've tried the standard stuff and we'll try to do more advanced troubleshooting over the phone with them if it will resolve their issue faster than trying to find an available tech.

Of course, the real problem is that the trainers are trying to teach us to love a system we dislike, that does not meet our needs, and that interacts poorly with the 2 other systems we are trying to learn at the same time. I think corporate went hog-wild with the digital initiatives, and it's been kind of stressful lately.

Sounds like the new trouble ticket logging system they're trying to get us to use here. The old system has some minor bugs, but we're familiar with the work arounds and it's incredibly fast. The new system is sluggish and extremely counter-intuitive but the higher-ups keep pushing it.

I've heard phones that, instead of a ring, have a loud voice saying something like, "you have a call. you have a call." I honestly do not understand why one would have that setting; it is always obnoxious.

Mine warbles at me in a different tone than a regular ring if I have messages.

When it's ringing for the next call, or does it burp intermittently until it gets your attention?

Well, see, I turn it off at home, and turn it on whenever I go out. It warbles when I turn it on if there are messages. And I've had it on and it never rang, but I'd get a warble and there would be a message. I think my voice mail is capricious or something, because sometimes I get random voice messages way late.

I've heard phones that, instead of a ring, have a loud voice saying something like, "you have a call. you have a call." I honestly do not understand why one would have that setting; it is always obnoxious.

I was at the bar a couple weeks back and somebody's ringtone was a voice screaming "Pick up the phone!" Very startling the first time it went off. After that it was just obnoxious. Neither being the reaction I'd want caused by something I carried on my person regularly.

I honestly do not understand why one would have that setting; it is always obnoxious.

I should have one that loudly yells my name. With increasing irritation. And then, as I answered, it could go "Okay, good."

The caf sushi wasn't bad. Wasn't that good, but was better than the TJ sushi-in-a-box. Way too expensive for caf food, though.