...how I usually spend my holidays.

Ever since got from the pit of despair that is retail (which meant shit hours and lots of them over the Christmas season), I've gotten the "pleasure" of working holiday hours.  On the plus, it's double time and the call volume is usually lighter (as people aren't on the Internet as much).  Christmas in particular involves lots of setting up computers.  And people confusing the word "at" with the @ symbol

If you missed my mention of it before, I spent 7 hours of my Christmas and 4 hours of New Year's Day sitting at my desk doing the fun that is Internet technical support.  Now I'm sure many of you have been on the (clueless idiot) caller end of a tech support call.  Sometimes, you've even had to endure the fun of talking with someone on another continent reading from a script (fucking Dell?) for a handful of rice an hour or something.  Some of you have had the luck of speaking with someone somewhere on this continent with the ability to whip out a sentence without a nearly unintelligible accent while fixing your shit (sometimes).
 
If you'd like, I found a vid that shows what we go through in dealing with people that are literally illiterate.  Really.  I've had calls where they have to spell all the words.  An example:

Me:  Click on start, control panel....
Illiterate Idiot trying to operate something that requires literacy: Where's the start button?
Me: Bottom left, it says start.
II :S-T-A-R-T?
Me: *pregnant pause*  Yeeeeessss?
II:  Ok, now where?
Me:  Control Panel.
II:  Which one is that?
Me: Should be in the right column, about in the middle.
II: Uh....
Me: ----
II:  How do you spell that?

Me: (wishing I could say)  D-U-M-B M-O-T-H-E-R-F-U-C-K-E-R.
Etc.



This is proof people are idiots. Especially when they call tech support. And it's not the computer illiteracy part. That's why I have a damned job. It's the inability to follow simple directions (they start with "click on..."), answer simple questions (What kind of router is it? Does it have a name on it? Can you read that name? Can you spell it?), read, or know your fucking NAME that makes it a shit job sometimes.

But I figger there have always been the technically challenged:



But overall, it's the kind of job i excel at:  Trying to make shit work and translating tech into tardspeak.  Plus, when it's quiet, I get to blog.  Or watch Youtube clips.  Or today's fun, which was following links from Youtube to read on copyright infringement and fair use.

Which, of course means that I've been investigating the possibility of getting some videos turned out to generate some traffic for me on SPD.  Of course, my first videos will be here, where it's about me and not politics.  Because I have to get my camera presence honed first.  And I have to learn how to edit videos, because I'm not just going to turn on the camera and yammer for 10 minutes.  No, I have to have production value and clickable links to the sites.  But first, I have to get to bed, get the kids to school tomorrow (Yay, finally), and tackle my paper trail from hell. 

Because if it's paper, I can't find a damned thing....