My mom says I know how to fix things. I tell her that it’s not so much that I know how to fix things - it’s more of a process I follow when something goes wrong. I kind of get into a troubleshooting mode and start working problems out when things break.
True, most things end up fixed but I don’t think being able to “fix things” is quite accurate. True again, I love this kind of work but I’d say I’m more of a problem solver, not a fixer. I’d say I’m fairly good at diagnosing things and that I have more check marks in the “got it right” column than the “got it wrong” column.
My computer started having a minor problem and I wanted it taken care of; nothing big, just an occasional error message. I would rate my overall knowledge of computers and the like at a little above average. I perceived the error to be minor and I had a vague idea about what might be causing the problem. Again, nothing big, it was just more of a nuisance than anything. But I did not understand why the error was occurring.
That being said, I don’t like to let these problems, small or large, go unresolved as they usually get bigger as time goes by. At Dirty Shirt we have to deal with everything that breaks and computers certainly need care and feeding. They break, like everything else.
So I decided to give my 1-800 number a call to discuss it with them again. About a month ago I discussed this exact problem with them - they offered a fix and over time it was revealed that the problem was not resolved. So I called them again.
We’ve all done this 800 number thing before and I’ve observed over time that all females that answer 800 numbers are named “Julie” and all males that answer the same phones are named “Kevin.” For every 800 support number there are a pack of Julies and Kevins waiting to assist me.
As a side note – all plumbers are named “Joe” and all insurance adjusters are named “Lonnie.” All plumbers and insurance adjusters have been doing their jobs for 25 years. All Julies and Kevins have been on the job for exactly one day.
So Julie answers the phone and we have a chat about the history of the problem and what I see happening today and that we need to take a different look at this issue. The script she’s reading from tells her to say she “will assist me with fixing my problem.” Cool – I like a can-do attitude.
It takes her about 90 seconds of mangling my email address as she takes down my personal information prior to working the problem. I state my email address over and over again until she finally gets it. I provide her with the exact error message on my computer twice.
I don’t think another minute had gone by when she declares that I will need to do a full restore of my system. No checking, no verification of where the error is coming from, no database search on her end, no “conferring with colleagues;” she just says that I need to do a full system restore to fix the error.
She lets it slip as she’s talking aloud to herself that she’s unfamiliar with the error but it is clear her company’s software is producing it. The name of her company is a part of the error message.
This is where I’m reminded yet again that bullshit is a universal language and is spoken and understood by almost everyone, certainly by Julie and understood by me.
I should note that I have a lot of respect for people who are in the business of diagnosing and fixing problems. It’s a tough job and sometimes the bear is a little bigger than you are. “I don’t know” or “I’m not sure” are really quite acceptable answers to me. I can handle the truth, just tell it to me. We’ll figure something out.
I won’t get into the details of a full system restore but it represents hours and hours of work. I’ve been involved with that slice of heaven before. That is no way to spend a weekend while Julie is out walking her local bazaar in the sunshine and kick’n it with her Jerusalem Cruisers.
At this point I start to choke a little on my own rage. The problem isn’t that she’s saying I need to do a restore but it’s what she didn’t do before she made her declaration. She’s checked nothing, she had no idea what was causing the problem or even if it was affecting performance or anything else. Nothing. She had no idea whether a full restore would even fix the problem.
It’s like me saying I have a tire that’s a little low on air pressure and she tells me that pulling the engine will fix the tire. Call back in two weeks if it doesn’t and speak to the new Julie, this Julie has some shopping to do.
So I let her have it. I mean I really let her have it; right in the ear. She won the prize for stupid tech support of the month and I pointed that out to her in agonizing detail. As an illustration I ask her to read the error back to me – I’ve provided it twice already. She can’t even squeak out the first word in the error message.
Actually, I don’t believe she’s stupid; I don’t think that at all. In fact, experience tells me she probably has a PhD degree. That’s just a guess though. What I do believe is that she had no idea how to isolate failures and diagnose problems. In my defense for letting her have it I’d like to point out that diagnosing problems is her job and that “I don’t know” has merit as an answer. So does “let’s get more help on the phone.”
It’s possible that the only requirement for securing her job was a PhD degree and a willingness to let westerners call her Julie. I dunno. Performing diagnostics was apparently not a part of the interview. I just know it didn’t happen. I then told her I wanted to speak to someone else.
Yo Kevin – Within 20 seconds I’m really feeling the love from him. He wants to connect to my computer and have a look around, he does so and performs a visual inspection, he offers up some possibilities and probabilities about what he thinks might be causing the problem (but he’s not sure), he makes some minor changes and suggests that we wait and see if the problem is fixed before doing anything rash. He’ll keep my ticket open for two weeks – he probably won’t but I don’t’ care, I have the ticket number.
Now I’m impressed. And ladies and gentlemen, that is how you approach a problem with a diagnostic mindset and set about troubleshooting an issue you’re not sure about.
Kevin, through experience, knew that you never rip out and replace all of the wiring in your house when a lamp stops coming on; you check the bulb first and go from there. But you’ve got to look at the thing with your eyes, as he did, or how would you know otherwise? Julie would have ripped out all of the wires – and I would be the one paying for it. And the lamp still wouldn’t have come on. Julie, she was full of bright ideas.
The Diagnose page on Dirty Shirt talks about this exact scenario and how Kevin’s approach nailed it and Julie’s approach left me, well, still frustrated with all of the Julies of the world. Check out the page and see if you can find your inner-Kevin…
Jeff - Dirty Shirt Contributor
www.dirtyshirt.info
Wednesday, April 28, 2010
Monday, March 29, 2010
Dallas Home Improvement Show
We came, we saw, we paid.
Where -
Dallas Convention Center, Sunday 03/28/10.
How Much -
$10 to park, $10 per head. We brought dollar off ticket coupons that we swiped off of the internet and we were invited to complete a demographics questionnaire before we entered the show. Completing the form got you an additional buck off each ticket. It was worth the dollar off but we’ll see about the future spam we receive. They promised they would never, ever do this. Sure they won’t.
Shopping -
Our first impression was that the show was just too expensive for the number of vendors that were participating. Were the vendor products interesting and where they selling products you would actually buy? Yes.
The problem was that there just wasn’t enough of them. We walked the entire show at a snail’s pace and talked to vendors we weren’t really interested in talking to. Completing the loop took about 30 minutes. For two people that equates to 83 cents per minute. Damn that’s expensive.
If you went to shop for windows for your house and wanted to do a side-by-side comparison of multiple vendors, the ticket price was cheap. It would have been easy to do that and line up your vendor(s) of choice to come do a free estimate. So, the usefulness of the show is a matter of perspective.
The vendors were primarily for-hire contractors that will gladly replace your roof, all of your windows or install a gigantic spa in your yard for you.
We’re do-it-yourselfers, that means we buy stuff and install it ourselves, mostly. From that perspective we were challenged to find the good stuff we like to look at.
Interesting Products -
Metal backed shingles – They look just like petroleum based shingles only the back is actually an aluminum of some sort. We saw this as being a very good idea and thought the metal backing would make them tough as nails. We’ll see where this idea goes.
Spray-in foam insulation – It’s been around for a long time but manufacturer’s have tweaked formulas and installation techniques. We watched an installation video of the foam to the exterior walls of a house and were impressed with the coverage they achieved with minimal visual violations to the brick. Nice. It’s difficult to imagine so much benefit without actually tearing the house down and installing insulation. But then, what’s the point of doing that?
Water heaters – Benjamin Franklin has developed a water heater that looks like a big R2D2 robot. Computerized and programmable, very sexy, very lengthy warranty and very expensive. It’s actually a heat pump. Doing the math in our heads we determined that it would take quite awhile to get back our return on investment. However, depending on your motivation we would include it in our analysis of hot-water consumption and really crunch the numbers if we were building new or making a big change to an existing house.
They also offer a water heater that’s about the size of an old hard-sided suitcase. It mounts to a wall. We were drawn to it like the pull of gravity. Before you get too close know this: The unit is gas-only and can only service one appliance at a time. No showers with the dishwasher running or laundry while the showers are running. We could envision this product being more for a secondary structure on a property. Cheap to run, low usage, and has basic output requirements. It’s an interesting idea for the right application.
Conclusions -
We hope the show continues to attract vendors and people in the future. For a show that appears to be just getting off the ground we’d recommend that they go cheaper on the ticket prices and generate some buzz and then zing ‘em with higher priced ticketing later on.
Jeff – Dirty Shirt Contributor
www.dirtyshirt.info
Where -
Dallas Convention Center, Sunday 03/28/10.
How Much -
$10 to park, $10 per head. We brought dollar off ticket coupons that we swiped off of the internet and we were invited to complete a demographics questionnaire before we entered the show. Completing the form got you an additional buck off each ticket. It was worth the dollar off but we’ll see about the future spam we receive. They promised they would never, ever do this. Sure they won’t.
Shopping -
Our first impression was that the show was just too expensive for the number of vendors that were participating. Were the vendor products interesting and where they selling products you would actually buy? Yes.
The problem was that there just wasn’t enough of them. We walked the entire show at a snail’s pace and talked to vendors we weren’t really interested in talking to. Completing the loop took about 30 minutes. For two people that equates to 83 cents per minute. Damn that’s expensive.
If you went to shop for windows for your house and wanted to do a side-by-side comparison of multiple vendors, the ticket price was cheap. It would have been easy to do that and line up your vendor(s) of choice to come do a free estimate. So, the usefulness of the show is a matter of perspective.
The vendors were primarily for-hire contractors that will gladly replace your roof, all of your windows or install a gigantic spa in your yard for you.
We’re do-it-yourselfers, that means we buy stuff and install it ourselves, mostly. From that perspective we were challenged to find the good stuff we like to look at.
Interesting Products -
Metal backed shingles – They look just like petroleum based shingles only the back is actually an aluminum of some sort. We saw this as being a very good idea and thought the metal backing would make them tough as nails. We’ll see where this idea goes.
Spray-in foam insulation – It’s been around for a long time but manufacturer’s have tweaked formulas and installation techniques. We watched an installation video of the foam to the exterior walls of a house and were impressed with the coverage they achieved with minimal visual violations to the brick. Nice. It’s difficult to imagine so much benefit without actually tearing the house down and installing insulation. But then, what’s the point of doing that?
Water heaters – Benjamin Franklin has developed a water heater that looks like a big R2D2 robot. Computerized and programmable, very sexy, very lengthy warranty and very expensive. It’s actually a heat pump. Doing the math in our heads we determined that it would take quite awhile to get back our return on investment. However, depending on your motivation we would include it in our analysis of hot-water consumption and really crunch the numbers if we were building new or making a big change to an existing house.
They also offer a water heater that’s about the size of an old hard-sided suitcase. It mounts to a wall. We were drawn to it like the pull of gravity. Before you get too close know this: The unit is gas-only and can only service one appliance at a time. No showers with the dishwasher running or laundry while the showers are running. We could envision this product being more for a secondary structure on a property. Cheap to run, low usage, and has basic output requirements. It’s an interesting idea for the right application.
Conclusions -
We hope the show continues to attract vendors and people in the future. For a show that appears to be just getting off the ground we’d recommend that they go cheaper on the ticket prices and generate some buzz and then zing ‘em with higher priced ticketing later on.
Jeff – Dirty Shirt Contributor
www.dirtyshirt.info
Friday, March 26, 2010
We're working on it....
This is a new blog that is driven from www.dirtyshirt.info as its source. Dirty Shirt is dedicated to everyone out there who's stuff breaks and needs repair.
A typical Dirty Shirt contributor owns or rents a house, has a yard, one or more cars/autos, possibly a boat, motorcycle, or other recreational vehicle and all of the other modern conveniences of 21st century life. The problem with owning a lot of stuff is that at some point it will fail and leave us in a lurch!
The question that needs to be answered is: Now that it has quit working what do we do about it? Buy new? Not if you're a Dirty Shirt. You get your plan together, dig out your dirty work shirt and get busy.
What if one or more of the things in your stuff-pile aren't necessarily broken but you want to change it up anyway? We do that too and show you how we approach these problems with the resources that are available to us.
If it isn't obvious there are a ton of financial considerations that enter the picture when our stuff breaks. Heck, that's usually the single most important thing we have to worry about. Money, or saving it, is a huge motivator that gets us moving from our couches to our workshops.
We've got a ton or projects planned and the dirtyshirt.info site is changing daily as we put it all together.
Thanks for visiting and we hope you'll keep an eye out for us in the future.
Jeff - Dirty Shirt Contributor
A typical Dirty Shirt contributor owns or rents a house, has a yard, one or more cars/autos, possibly a boat, motorcycle, or other recreational vehicle and all of the other modern conveniences of 21st century life. The problem with owning a lot of stuff is that at some point it will fail and leave us in a lurch!
The question that needs to be answered is: Now that it has quit working what do we do about it? Buy new? Not if you're a Dirty Shirt. You get your plan together, dig out your dirty work shirt and get busy.
What if one or more of the things in your stuff-pile aren't necessarily broken but you want to change it up anyway? We do that too and show you how we approach these problems with the resources that are available to us.
If it isn't obvious there are a ton of financial considerations that enter the picture when our stuff breaks. Heck, that's usually the single most important thing we have to worry about. Money, or saving it, is a huge motivator that gets us moving from our couches to our workshops.
We've got a ton or projects planned and the dirtyshirt.info site is changing daily as we put it all together.
Thanks for visiting and we hope you'll keep an eye out for us in the future.
Jeff - Dirty Shirt Contributor
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