Well, The thing is, He has a point business is business, But i rather not go into details on the forums, if you want details pm me,

I PMed you.

I have an unlucky week .

Things can only go up now :)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QnQ3HWe9cmc

Feeling a bit melancholic right now.

My customer service gripe:

Had an old colleague call last Thursday, asking if I could help out a new / old customer in my area. I'd worked with this customer with my old job and have sent them literature a few times since I went independent but had never heard anything from them in the last 6 years. So the colleague says that the company was left in the lurch from a service visit that was scheduled but never happened. He asked me to call them and see if they could use my help. So I did, and they said they might need it.

What happened with the original visit? Well, my old employer, the machine OEM, had been called by the customer for a visit, and a tech, a contractor, was scheduled to come in Thursday and Friday last week. Never showed up. Customer called the tech Thursday noon-ish and asked what was going on. The tech said he had jury duty and didn't anyone from the company call to let them know? No, nobody called to tell them he wasn't coming, or to work out a new schedule. Customer then called the company directly and left a message, asking if they were planning to reschedule. As of Tuesday, they hadn't heard back.

So the customer called me back Monday. Friday they had told me they were going to make the most important repairs themselves just to get running and that they might have me in later to align things and whatnot. No problem. Monday when they called they said they got it going but were having a significant problem. Okay, I'll be there tomorrow morning. Drove that night, checked into a hotel at 12:30am, woke up at 6, at the customer by 6:45am.

Found what I think is the problem, they got the cables locally, and we replaced them that day. Yay, me. I rock, etc, etc. Once we got it going, I talked with the production manager; I guess the contractor was coming from California. I live about 2 1/2 hours away. I suppose this means that the OEM is never going to call me for contract work, if they pass up using me on a job in my own backyard. I guess they're content charging the customer a lot more for airfare, rental car, etc. - and then he doesn't even show up! No biggie - I got this customer now. Thanks for dicking up your customer service again! All it took was a phone call when they found out about the tech's unavoidable obligation. Couldn't even manage that. Nice going, guys.

Another customer of mine is having a used machine installed this week. The tech they hired is a guy I sort of know, he's a lot closer to them, and he was also part of the sale of this used machine. Installation was scheduled to start this past Monday, the 2nd, and then work through the holiday to make sure it was done by this coming Monday, the 9th. He called Monday morning to say he was running late. Called again about 3:30 and said he wasn't going to make it at all that day.

He gets there Tuesday and the customer already did the major mechanical work (he's also a former tech but his position in the company does not normally have him doing this type of work any longer). Just needs wiring, do the repairs for which I supplied almost all of the parts, and make the adjustments. Customer calls me Wednesday, on the holiday, to ask if I can come in to finish it up. Apparently it's taking 12-15 hours to do 4-6 hours of wiring, and forever to get going on the other stuff. Customer says he's going to fire the other tech Thursday and have me take over. Not a problem - once I finish up at my first customer, I'll just drive to your place and work through the weekend to meet your deadline. I packed more clothes, threw some more parts in the car, and off I went this morning.

Between the sale and the service work, this deal had to be worth, at the bare minimum, $5,000 to the original tech. More like 8 or 10 thou, depending on his rates and the commission from the sale. Seriously, when we're talking thousands of dollars for a big visit, the visit has been scheduled well in advance, down-time has been arranged and parts are ordered and on-hand, is it really that damn difficult to A) show up, or B) inform the customer that you can't show up as planned and then work out a new schedule? I mean, I like picking up the work, but I'm irritated that it gives a bad name to us independent techs. That, and it's hard to drop everything to pick up the pieces from the mess of someone else at a moment's notice. Certainly not complaining about the extra work, especially since I've been waylaid with a bad back for the last few months. But it does frustrate to see people I know screw these simple things up so badly.

tl;dr:

1) show up when you tell the customer when you're going to be there, or call.

2) do the work you promise to do, in the time you promised.

3) "If we don't take care of our customers, someone else will."

For you but not for me .

Stop wearing your red, full-size Beats Audio headphones to the gym, random man. You look like a jackass.

Movies that i watched in the afternoons / evenings in June / July :

Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark
Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade
The Mummy
The Mummy Returns
Sherlock Holmes
Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows
Pitch Black
The Chronicles of Riddick

One of my best friends is leaving for the Naval Academy at the end of the month. Another best friend is joining the marines, and will ship out around August. I want to become an officer in the Air Force, but that won't happen for five years (1 high school + 4 college). Will our paths ever cross again? Only time will tell.
And on a less serious note, I am so jealous of everyone who got to go to Bronycon.

I hate my printer right now.

I like its wirelessness because it sits about five feet away from my desktop. It has also given me surprisingly few problems; it won't scan directly to PC but that's no problem because I can just stick a USB stick to it and transfer the scanned images that way. I can live with that.

Except that it wouldn't connect now. No idea why, and I'm no expert in wireless networks. After trying various different settings and WPS (which didn't work, presumably because of my WLAN card, but it's anyone's guess) I eventually settled on putting the printable file on a USB stick and printing directly from there. Guess what? "File format not supported." Turns out you can only print pictures or slightly dirty-sounding .PRN files straight off USB. The .PRN thing worked, but it would only print in colour and therefore took ages to produce a document that I would have liked in black-and-white. Weirdly, the printer was perfectly co-operative earlier in the day.

If anyone has experience on how to make a wireless printer (a Samsung CLX-3185W to be specific) to function realiably, please share your thoughts. In as plain English as possible, all things wireless are like witchcraft to me.

First sunny week (and weekend) in weeks and I get a fucking nasty cold. How do you get a cold in the summer time?! Fuck!

Well, a huge spider just climbed into my room trough the window and he's on very awkward position on a very white wall.

Can't kill the fucker or he'd splash all over my wall. Can't spray him, because he'd then fall right into a crack behind a very immovable couch and probably stay alive to breed. He's too big for me to man up and get him with my hands. And, my vacuum broke last week.

Well, shit.

Stick a jar on top of him, sidle a piece of cardboard underneath and move the sucker somewhere to dry over several months.

Smack it with a hot towel and then clean the wall with it.