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My Productive Day Wednesday, November 7, 2007

#1 User is offline   Chefelf Icon

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Posted 07 November 2007 - 09:14 PM

My Productive Day

Wow. Today was spectacularly productive. I woke up promptly at 7:45AM to tackle the host of chores I had to accomplish. I knew this morning that today could either be a slam dunk or a horrendous nightmare with no end. There were three major things I had to do today and all of them involved the seldom successful combination of modern technology and human reliability.

Task 1: Install the Forum Software Upgrade

The upgrade I've been waiting for for months has finally arrived and today was the day I chose to install it. Knowing I had the whole day ahead of me it was the perfect opportunity. The problem was that the five or six previous upgrades had all gone terribly wrong and left the forums completely inaccessible for at least 24 hours.

Luck was on my side this time. The software installed without a hitch and the boards were back up and fully functional in less than an hour, shattering all previously held records.

Task 2: Have Time Warner Cable Install My TiVo's CableCARD

This was the one I was dreading. Nearly a month ago I called Time Warner to set up an install for my new TiVo and, naturally, they couldn't do it in less than four weeks' time. So my brand new TiVo has sat, unusued, under my TV for the last four weeks. Every day of these four weeks has involved me being absolutely positive that the CableCARD install would not work and I'd have to wait another four weeks while they tried to figure out what was wrong.

Imagine my surprise when the gentleman who showed up to install the CableCARD was a tremendously jolly man who seemed to genuinely know what he was doing. He also seemed to have a similar opinion of the knuckleheads at Time Warner's phone tech support as I did. Over the next 90 minutes as he went through the ridiculous amounts of inconvenient setup involved with such a product (if you aren't familir with CableCARDs, read up on them and you'll understand) we formed a tight bond. I had already done all the necessary steps to prepare for his arrival such that all he had to do was to plug the cards in. He assured me that this is rarely the case with such installations. "You're my kind of guy," he told me. I let him use my computer to check his email as we waited for the absurdly long firmware upgrade necessary for each CableCARD.

He also filled me in to a lot of his cable guy wisdom as we struggled with the tech support boneheads on the other end of his phone/walkie-talkie. I said something about how once the card was installed I could utilize my TiVo in a certain way. He responded, "In theory, welome to the world of practice."

Later on as the conversation he mentioned that, "TiVo is workingon a theoretical construct . . ." I'm not sure how he backed that up but it sounded really profound at the time.

As he continued to be frustrated by the tech support guy on the other end I did what I could to pass the time. He had come to my place with four CableCARDs and had written down the serial number of one but forgotten with the second one. He tried to walk the tech support guy on the other end through the logic process involved with figuring out what the serial number was. He'd come with four, he had three of the serial numbers, and now he needed the fourth. The tech guy on the phone, apparently not a former algebra student, took a long time to warm up to the on-site technician's radical new concept which he called something crazy like, "The Process of Elimination" or some such nonsense.

After getting off the phone the on-site tech sighed and said, "Why am I not in IT? I must investigate this."

After all this time the channels were still not lining up properly. The tech told me to reboot the TiVo (a 30 minute process) and it should be fine. Normally I would be hesitant to let the tech go while this was happening (I'd read online not to let the tech go -- under any circumstances -- before the job was complete) but this guy was so on the ball that I figured it couldn't hurt. And after 30 minutes everything worked perfectly.

Task 3: New TV Delivery

While the cable guy was there I got a call by another delivery man who said he had my new TV and would like to deliver it today. This was shocking to me since yesterday my TV was in Columbus, OH and the guy on the phone seemed to think I was an idiot for not knowing all the peculiarities of his extremely oddly run delivery company. Having only ordered the TV on Monday I was delighted. I informed him that I would be thrilled to accept the delivery between 5:00PM and 7:00PM this evening. The only kicker was that I had arranged to have it delivered at the local UPS store, not knowing when it would be delivered or if I'd be home to accept said delivery. The delivery guy said he could attempt to change the address but it may be difficult. I told him that I understood but if there was any way they could deliver directly to my home I'd appreciate not having to lug a TV all the way back to my apartment somehow.

I called the guy back later and, of course, he was unable to change the delivery address. I could accept that given level of security. So I walked up to the UPS store and flagged down a cab on the corner, telling him to meet me at the store. There a UPS employee helped me lug the TV out to the cab. We couldn't fit the TV in the back seat so we had to wedge it into the trunk and hope that it didn't fall out. My cab driver seemed to be even more cautious about breaking the TV than I was. He drove about three miles per hour the entire way home with his hazard lights flashing the entire way. There he helped me remove the TV from the trunk and I dragged it into my building. I set it up in about two minutes.

On top of all of these tremendous accomplishments I even managed to do these other tasks today.

[list]
[*]Booked a venue for our wedding rehearsal dinner.
[*]Set up an appointment to meet with a wedding cake lady.
[*]Made applesauce.
[*]Did the laundry.
[*]Wrote this lousy entry.
[*]Made dinner (sweet potato gnocchi).

Was this the most productive day of my life? Quite possibly.
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#2 User is offline   Deepsycher Icon

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Posted 07 November 2007 - 09:35 PM

I will never forget the argument I had with technical support at Hauppauge.

They knew nothing about the software side but kept on blaming the software.

This post has been edited by Deepsycher: 07 November 2007 - 09:35 PM

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#3 User is offline   TruJade Icon

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Posted 08 November 2007 - 02:09 PM

Psssshhh tech guys dry.gif
sometimes its as if they all just pick straws to see
which incompetent fool will go out and answer a call.
So its not only wonderful that you had someone helpful Chef
but that they knew what they were doing
Thats like unheard of

As for the rest of your day
i think i do most of that work or
am that productive about in a month, possibly two
i can't imagine doing more than 3 of
those tasks on your lists in a week, honestly

a truly productive day like that
makes the rest of us
or at least me
look like a shmoe.

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There's a lightside, a darkside

and it holds everything together


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Posted 09 November 2007 - 09:27 AM

anyone know what the hell happened to chefelf.com??..i dont see the lovely manhattan skyline anymore,..all i see is this "invision power board" crap. where the hell is the forums?..the star wars threads? movies? debates? news? music? video games?...sheeesh....someone please tell me what the hell is going on???
the world is a game of players & pawns with everyone striving to be the king
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#5 User is offline   Chefelf Icon

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Posted 09 November 2007 - 03:45 PM

QUOTE (sesame_street_hustler @ Nov 9 2007, 09:27 AM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>
anyone know what the hell happened to chefelf.com??..i dont see the lovely manhattan skyline anymore,..all i see is this "invision power board" crap. where the hell is the forums?..the star wars threads? movies? debates? news? music? video games?...sheeesh....someone please tell me what the hell is going on???


See here for more information: http://www.chefelf.c...h...ic=6877&hl=

As for the TV stuff, my cables came in today so I'm all hooked up with HDMI from the TiVo and component cables from the DVD. All I have to do is work out the peculiarities of the new TiVo and I'll be all set!
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Posted 12 November 2007 - 04:05 AM

Ah, tech support is always fun. When I first got this laptop, the screen was unnaturally dark. I spent nigh on an hour talking to Dells tech support to basically plug the monitor cable back in.

They made me run BIOS tests and stuff!

Also, the DSA (driving license people) somehow thought my surname was West. That made my theory test fun...
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