Tech Support Girl

This blog was created because i needed a space to vent the reactions provoked by my job - technical support of certain software by e-mail. Sometimes people ask such questions that I really would like to say a couple of “very warm” words but I can’t! Yet it’s very difficult to keep it to myself.

Many of those things I also believe will be funny for technically literate people.

And I intend to include with the “sincere” reply the one that was actually sent. So perhaps this blog can also serve as a learning tool for myself and perhaps for someone else with the same problems! =))
Mon Dec 26

Funnily stupid sex spam

This spam can be sometimes funny. Not that I read it but when I manually sort the leftovers after mild spam filtering rules - otherwise I’d drown yet they sometimes grab clients’ e-mails we don’t want to miss - the eye does catch some of the phrases.

“My name is Giliann, im  really hot ukrainian girl” - first of all, nobody names girls Gillian in Ukraine, but actually that was my second thought. The immediate one was - if it was a message I could reply to (spam usually isn’t because its return e-mail is fake - a real one would be terminated at once), I’d say immediately: “Hey, I’m a Ukrainian girl too!” LOL

That’s actually something new, before this week they were mostly Russian hot girls - I guess it’s due to spam/spamfilters ongoing war, they always change something, that’s also the reason why stupid mistakes in words (on purpose, to not be caught). It must be working if they keep doing it which sadly means the percent of idiots in the world is still sufficiently high for it to be such a mess.

Sun Dec 25

That seagull gave quite a performance the other day at the sea port of Odessa. It made like 100 rounds right in front of the people standing at the end of the floating yacht pier. Nearby stood a small company of young lads who were making comments about her stunts which made it all the more funnier :) And she kept trying to wheel,  dove at the end of trajectory, sometimes touching water, fought to come back up and again at the start of this wind she apparently found at this place… at this staring at us as she passed by, which made it look really like she was consciously giving a performance to us :) Unfortunately, it wasn’t easy to catch her in focus and in the right angle, but those are the best shots I managed to take.

Fri Oct 21

Negative thinking kills

Amazing, how some people persistently set themselves to negative thinking before even trying to see what could be wrong, if they have a problem.

CUSTOMER: What is the problem? I bought the software but didn’t receive a code. What, is my money not good enough? etc…

ME: Look into your SPAM folder. Here’s also a link to your codes on our site.

CUSTOMER: Your codes are not working. If you can’t fix it, please refund!

Why in hell would you think at once we can’t fix it? This kind of problems is 100% fixable, you just need to follow our instructions, which I sent, of course, but from experience I may expect this guy will not be able to - lack of patience or overflow of anger, whatever you call it. But this is the first time when I see so clearly a person is set for conflict and defeat way beforehand.

Definitely, negative thinking kills any of your enterprises even before you start.

Powered by ScribeFire.

Wed Jun 1

I was at the concert of Muse in Kyiv on 24 May 2011. The concert was great although the organization sucked as always in this country. I only took a few pictures presented above and also a few videos:

Uprising fragment (Twitpic)
Take A Bow laser show (RuTube)

Tue Nov 2

Americans have gone completely nuts with this election - now they use SPAM to advertise candidates! LOL

Got this SPAM in today’s work e-mail:

ATTENTION  ALL    AMERICANS
 
This is a message YOU  MUST HEAR!!!!!!!!
 
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c9vZhE-EB3o

Honestly, I didn’t listen the message coz it doesn’t concern me but I had a lot of fun during the first 10 seconds. This guy is an awful actor, it’s all so artificial, plus it’s too obvious the speech is memorised and he improvises in emotional accents totally blindly. Oh dear, this is getting really ridiculous! :D

Wed Oct 27

Some people need an attitude check!

How do you like this thing. So there is a bug, and you can’t solve it immediately, which is kinda the story of these days. Not to mention I cannot solve it at all, only our developers can. All I can do is to reply to the user who is only a potential customer using a trial. And I do answer his every concern, try to explain everything for like 8-10 e-mails and what do I get in the end?

CUSTOMER:

I’m not interested in your link [for wathcing news updates when it will be fixed] which by the way doesn’t work [unfortunately, I did make a typo but hey, it’s hardly a crime!] just like your software. So your software is bad and your technical support is even worse. Please do not reply to this e-mail as I have blocked your address anyway.

WHAT FOR??? FOR ALL MY TIME SPENT ON YOU TRYING THE BEST I CAN FROM WHAT I CAN ACTUALLY DO AND FOR FREE, MOTHER-FUCKER??? As if I need in heaven or hell to ever e-mail you. May life treat you the same way you treat me! Which actually is the only way the Universe works anyway. >:)

But those Americans get really crazy nuts in their attitude to support people. And the ones to blame is their system and their bloody rule “Customer is always right” taken to the absurd as in crawling on the floor in front of various ill-mannered, ill-tempered and deeply ignorant people.  FYI: Nobody, NOONE of the European customers behaves like this, except the Arabs anywhere in the world.

By the way, it’s not the only thing taken to the absurd in the USA. A little fun on the subject to unwind my anger burst, found just yesterday: SCHOOL -1957 vs. 2007

Tue Oct 12

It was such a beautiful day today! When winter seemed already closing in early, the Sun came to bid us a warm farewell. God, I love the Sun so much! I wish that afternoon walk could be repeated every day, but everything comes in cycles… and this only makes such days even more precious.

You’ve got problems!

I really really hate when users list like 10 problems/suggestions, short, one per line, and I have to create 10 separate issues in the bug tracker out of this… Each issue has to have the contact info, so basically I paste the same letter 10 time and have to remove all above and below a single line. Takes an insane amount of time!

Not to mention, when there are real bugs, I have to ask for additional info like device model or software version and then I have to add this info to all those 10 issues. Especially nice when there is correspondence about say 3 of them, like try some adjustments or clarifying settings, and then it needs to be broken down for the 3 issues as well each time. Grrr!.. The only good thing, yes, is that there are usually no more than 2-3 questions with follow-up.

But when the user has the arrogance to claim absence of features as bugs, it only adds to my anger. “Fix it ASAP”. The software is provided AS IS, read the license before accepting it upon installation, moron!

Wed Oct 6

If you refuse to sell, how can you expect people to not steal something they want?

The copyright holding companies are complaining all the time about pirates and illegal downloads that steal their profit. This is the stupidest thing I ever heard!

First, ‘pirates’ are not even a proper word because on Internet they’re rather Robin Hoods, pirates should be called only those that steal and sell illegally without sharing progit, not those who give away for free.

Second, hey, I would gladly buy some shows in HD from iTunes but it won’t let me, because I live in a wrong country. So basically form my consumer standpoint it’s like: “Hey I wanna pay you, buy your stuff” - “Sorry you can’t!” And next thing complain about people stealing? People want that stuff and as long as there is a way, they’re going to get it. If they can’t do it legally, they will do it illegally.

Illegal downloads wouldn’t be so massive if people truly believed that is a crime. You can say something is a crime but there always is an internal credibility sensor inside us, what really is and what isn’t, that sense of “right and wrong” which is present in most of us, in difference from what is believed, somewhere under all those things we were told that confuse us. Stealing is depriving. But copying is not equal to taking away, and any person with IQ above 50 understands that.

So I suggest that instead of focusing their efforts uselessly on fighting Internet ‘pirates’, those companies should focus their efforts on changing the distribution laws. If you are allowed to sell worldwide, then you can recover those ‘lost’ profits because the rest of the world steals because there isn’t any other way to get it.

Although of course there are shows and movies people wouldn’t pay a dime for, they use those downloads just to keep tabs on stuff, and there would be your true per item profitability and success and not just the dumb persistence to make us damn buy some crap you put money into, create conditions for stealing by not even selling it to the majority of the potential audience and then try to hold the Internet flood with bare hands.

Sometimes I just can’t believe they are that dumb to not understand they can’t make the time stop to make their outdated distribution rules viable again and expect the reality to bend their way! ;)

Thu Sep 9

My birthday photos, yesterday, I turned 36.