Archive for Technology

Cellphone Salesman Vs. Mathematics

{ January 13, 2009 @ 8:10 AM } · { Technology }
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So here’s an interesting one.  Yesterday the clerk at the grocery store gave me an extra $1.00 in change and refused to believe she had.

Now, today I have met a cellphone salesman who cannot do math….I wonder how his sales are because this is a huge HUGE selling point he’s missing.

Today we went to an unnamed cellular provider’s store. My daughter has a cellphone that her paternal grandmother set her up with and so far it has been lost in the lake while on….we retrieved it, took it apart and it worked much to all of our amazement.  Now, it has been dropped numerous times and is basically a P.O.S…so we thought we would stop by the cellular dealer and ask what the options are about getting another one.

In otherwords….”Hi. We know the warranty is void and there is not insurance on the phone, what are our options for a new phone?”

You would think this would be easy.  As far as I could tell before going into the store…common sense tells me that we have to buy one, wait for the contract to be up and get a new one for free, or buy one from someone else or online and bring it in to have it programmed or whatever….right?  That is what you would think..and you would think that a salesperson….who ah, makes a living (assuming) selling phones and phone plans would be a crackerjack at supplying us with the needed information.  Right?  Right? heh.

So, first we were ignored for about 3 minutes until I spoke up and gave him the rundown.  Then he said, “Let me look at the phone.”   This is how it went for a while…..

SalesGuy (SG): This phone has gotten wet.
Me (M): Yes, I told you that.  Like I said, we know the warranty is void, we want to know what our options are about replacing the phone.

SG: You can’t replace the phone. It got wet.
M: So you are telling me we can’t buy a replacement?

SG: Oh, you want to buy one? I dunno…let’s see your plan.
M: You mean to tell me we can’t buy another one unless we have a certain plan?
SG: No. See here, you have 127 days left on your plan, you can’t get a replacement.

M: So…she is stuck with a malfunctioning phone for 127 days? You won’t let her buy another one?
SG: Oh…you could buy another one.
**Silence**  (I had expected him to go into a sales pitch…but instead he looked at us blankly)

M: Okayyyy….can you sell us a phone? What are all of our options to buy a phone?
SG: Well, you’ll want to upgrade to a smart phone, they are $474.99.

M: Okay. You see we have a phone here that is like $130.00.  What does that tell you? Do we have to buy a new one or …what are our options?
SG: Well we don’t sell used ones.
M: Okay…can I buy a used one somewhere and bring it in and have you do whatever until we can upgrade and renew our plan in 77 days?

SG: Yeah.
M: Ok. Well what are our other options? Are there any?  So far we have buy a four hundred dollar phone or buy a $100.00 phone.  Are there any deals going on or what?
SG: Well if she gets that smart phone AND redoes her plan, that will be a savings of $40.00 each month with the same features plus  more and there are rebates on the phone.

**This is like pulling teeth.  I have never met a salesman who was so bent on not selling anything**

So he takes us over to the phone that is $474.99.  While he is talking about stuff I don’t care about I look at the little tag.  It says there is an instore instant rebate of $405.00 if you redo your plan and sign up for two years.  Then it says there is another $100.00 mail in rebate.   So… That is $69.99 the day of purchase and then a $100.00 rebate that comes in the mail.

NOW.  I am not an accountant or a financial wiz.  But I do know that $69.99 minus $100.00 is $30.01 in my pocket.

SO-o-o-o-o…I promptly said to my daughter that she needs to talk this over with her grandmother because we cannot just change a plan in her name…but I would recommend getting this phone because they basically pay you thirty bucks to get it plus the cell bill will be less.  This illicits another interesting conversation with the salesman.

SG: No no…you don’t understand the rebates.  One is a mail in rebate. You have to pay $69.99 right away, the other one you mail in.
M: Right, I said…and 405.00 plus 100.00 is 505.00….which means they pay us 30.01 for getting the phone.

SG: No… *smirks* you don’t understand.  I don’t get that money.
M: I didn’t say anything about you getting any money.  I said that we pay $69.99 and get 100.00 back in the mail…which means we get paid 30 bucks for getting the phone. How do you not see that?

SG: No, it doesn’t work that way.  You see…I don’t get the 405.00 and the 100.00 comes in the mail.
M: You have a problem with math, don’t you?  How can you not see on this ticket here that the rebates add up to more than the cost of the telephone???

**The salesguy just keeps smirking and keeps saying, you just don’t understand.**

So..I told the kid we were leaving and said, “I believe you don’t understand.  Four hundred and one hundred is five hundred…the phone is less than five hundred dollars.  So they pay you to take the phone.  You should really learn how all this works because it’s a great selling point and now that I know that…when we talk to grandmother about buying a phone we are going down the street to the other dealer because you are really bad at this…I just sold myself a cell phone – I just did your job…that’s poor.”

Fix My Computer – That I Fixed

{ December 31, 2008 @ 4:45 PM } · { Technology }
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Caution: Genius At Work

A computer showed up:

The power supply had it’s original casing removed and was screwed with some sort of home made bracket to the top inside of the case….backwards…so the power plug attached inside the case and came out through an additional hole the man bored through the back of the case.

He had decided that taking the original casing off made it so there was no airflow, so he took an 80mm fan and hot glued it to the powersupply with the idea that it would suck air away from the power supply. And it would have, if he would have installed it the other way ’round.

His other major upgrade…was to add an additional harddrive. This engineering genius (I’m not kidding, he’s an electrical engineer) used duct tape…yes duct tape to tape an additional hard drive to the front inside of the case, which promptly blocked the air flow from the fans in the front of his case not to mention start immediately suffocating the hard drive. Now, he did not merely use one or two pieces of tape…oh no…he wound round it several times, covering the entire thing in four total layers of tape.  Hermetically sealed in silver stickiness.

Realizing what he had done to the front fans…he decided to make his computer into a wind tunnel by cutting holes at the top and bottom of the case and installing two more fans….however, he had a dilema.

How to get power to all these new fans. Did he use a molex converter? Oh no, far too simple of a solution. What he did do, though, is rip off the LPT port and fashioned some new power connectors on the motherboard.

Now….then here he was in front of me, showing off his upgrades. I made one comment, “This computer is not going to work.”   This prompts my customer to go off on a rant about him being an electrical engineer.  For several minutes I got to listen to his circuit board expertise. Then I made another comment, “These, alterations aren’t done right and this computer is never going to work this way, you will need a new motherboard, power supply and hard drive.  I can tell that without trying to boot it.”   Which made him turn red and demand I configure the hard drives right, as he was convinced that the only reason the computer was not booting up was because there is something “TOO TECHNICAL” about jumper settings.   Then he once again stated his demands and stormed out of the store.

The next day, when I told him he needed to buy a new computer, I got to listen to how I don’t know anything about computers and a whole slew of insults and that he’d get his 16 year old neighbor to fix his hard drives.

Go for it, buddy. For the record I did try. Everything was fried….except one hard drive and the good ole, sturdy floppy drive.

The Problem With Women in I.T

{ December 26, 2008 @ 10:41 PM } · { Technology }
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Yeah.  Lately I have been seeing a lot of blogs and discussions about women in the I.T world.  Usually the topics are about discrimination of women in I.T, sexualization/objectifying women in general, and mostly a lot of ranting and raving.

I know there is discrimination of all sorts in the Information Technology industry.  There is discrimination of all sorts in every field, every job, every-everything.  There just is.  It is done.  People don’t get jobs because they have boobs or maybe because they have a penis.  Some people don’t get jobs because of the color of their skin or because they blog more than the hiring manager thinks they should so they don’t get hired on the notion they will spend more time doing private blogging than actually working.

People are discriminated against because they have a lack of formal education, and the ten years or more of actual real experience gets thrown out the window.  They are discriminated against for having too much education or being over qualified.

If you can think of a reason, absurd or not, someone has been discriminated against because of it.  Do the employers or people that do this say this is what they are doing?  Not if they are smart.

 I actually got released from a job on a construction crew because I split up with my boyfriend.  The reasoning was that a single woman on a construction crew of married guys wasn’t something they thought was good (even though many of the wives also worked on the crew).  Apparently the boss figured that married people only cheat with single people.  How absurd is that?  Although I wasn’t about to be “hooking up” with people on that crew anyway.

The real problem with women in I.T is usually the women in I.T.  What I mean is that they make issues out of things that aren’t really issues.  Making the rest of us that just want to do a good job and get a paycheck look like a bunch of simpering, whiny idiots.  Women are objectified just as much as men in any industry.  Same as they are discriminated against just as much in any industry. 

If I really thought that because of a few advertisements of scantily clad women that is geared toward the technology field makes people believe that all women who are in I.T are buxom babes that run on the beach half naked while a man who is dressed in a suit does all the work, then maybe I would have an issue.  But I really don’t think most people that have a few brain cells are really that stupid.

If a person holds the belief that women are simply decorations without a brain where men actually do all the work, then they hold that belief across all industries no matter what.  And no 30 second commercial is going to matter.  They thought that way before, they will think that way after simply because they are ignorant.

So… being beautiful AND a woman AND in I.T makes me what?  It would seem, according to some posts out there, it would seem to make me supposedly pissed off when I am not only recognized as a smart person, but also a woman and also beautiful.  Oh, yeah.  I’m so offended when someone calls me beautiful and smart…I deck everyone that says it.  Sooooo completely offended.  Cause for a throw-down on the spot.

THIS is not an issue, not a problem for women in I.T.  I have never met a woman who has told me that she got her UNIX System Admin job because she had huge tits and did a layout in Playboy.  Perhaps they are out there…but I highly doubt there are that many.  In fact, I would tend to say that a truly beautiful woman might actually have a harder time getting a position simply because she may be too distracting.  This is not an issue I face, however.  But I can imagine it happening.  Especially if she is single.  Because, you just know that a gorgeous, smart and single woman is just looking to have sex with anything that walks on two legs…right?

I also doubt there are as many issues for women who don’t get hired simply because they are a woman and the man who is hiring thinks women are inferior.  I am sure there are some of those pigs around, to be sure, I just don’t think it’s an epidemic.

What I think probably is more of an epidemic is a female who is married with small children.  I could see someone hiring for a 75% travel I.T position would balk at hiring an individual in this situation and be apt to hire her husband rather than her.  Simply because it is a common belief that if a child is sick, it is the mother that will take off work for the child.  As ignorant as that is, it is reinforced by exactly that happening …at a guess… 7 out of 10 women. And probably for single mom’s it would be worse.  I’m a single mother and proud of that, however my daughter is 17 and if she’s got the flu she can take care of herself.

Hey… I’m a woman with many years of technical experience…I am unemployed.  I have been unemployed for two years.  I have filled out over 287 applications.  I have had one job interview and was not told why I did not get that position either.  Do I think I am not getting hired because I am a woman?  No.  I am not getting hired because I haven’t finished my college degree…however, I have ten years experience in running my own successful I.T firm. 

So what’s the problem??  I haven’t actually figured that out yet…but I highly doubt it is because I am a woman.  I know it’s not because I don’t know what I am doing.  Those 287 applications did get me temporary project work with a few temp. tech. companies.  But just not enough so far to make it a full time job.  Apparently I am just extremely unlucky.  However, I prefer to think that the “dream job” simply hasn’t been available yet.  Of course, I can be wrong.  Maybe I am not getting interviews because I’m a woman…I just don’t really think that is the issue…I think it has more to do with the uncompleted degree and no one out there has the intestinal fortitude to actually take a chance on someone and have them prove themselves.  Perhaps they have and they have been burned…perhaps it is just company policy.  Perhaps I am too good to be true so they figure it’s all a ruse.  Don’t know, doesn’t matter.  When it’s the right time and the right company it will all work out.

Hey, I don’t have any answers.  Maybe there is more discrimination out there than I am aware of, but more and more I just think there are so many things that are blown out of proportion.  I did have that one interview last February.  Maybe I didn’t get hired because I am a woman, maybe because I was a foot taller than the man interviewing me, maybe because I am single, maybe because my Jeep had a rust spot on it, maybe because the woman interviewing me thought I was prettier than her and didn’t want competition, maybe because I was nervous and they interpreted it as “shifty”…or maybe…just maybe because they have a policy about people without degrees.  Maybe my business suit wasn’t the right brand.  Who frickin knows.  All I know is I want someone to hire ME for ME…for what they see in ME and what they see I have done.

If the fact that I have tits or am tall or look better or worse than someone else throws them off…I don’t want to work there anyway.

Computer Myths II

{ December 22, 2008 @ 8:24 PM } · { Technology }
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If I get the most expensive computer, it will be be capable of doing more and will last longer than an inexpensive one.

Let’s think about this for a minute.  If you buy the latest model of Corvette, will it be capable of doing more and last longer than a Tempo?

Why don’t we compare the two situations. 

Will it go faster?  Probably. 
A Corvette can go faster than a Tempo, sure.

Would you let your kids on it if you paid $2800.00 for it?  Some people are braver than others, but the likely answer is no…so technically it’s not family friendly if you are too afraid to have people you don’t trust to use it figuring that they will break it.

Most people would also no let their freshly licensed teen drive their Corvette either…and you can’t fit four people into a Corvette…well…they would have to be very small people.

Do higher end computers use less electricity?
No. Even with power saving features tweaked, simply due to the fact their are more components that are individually powered.

You aren’t going to save any money on gas in a Corvette either.  Chances are you will use more simply because the temptation to drive fast is very great.  When you drive faster, you use more gas.  Also usually Corvettes have larger engines than Tempo’s..so they use more gas by default.

Does a high end computer last longer?
People have this idea that if you pay more for something it is built better.  And for some things that may be correct and it certainly was correct years ago but not so much anymore.  SOME high end computers may have components that are more resistant to some things that others.  There are harddrives that are more expensive that have little shock absorbers and the like.  But MOST high end computers use the same brand of components as the lower end models.  They (the components) may have different capabilities but they are usually from the same companies that the budget models are purchased from.

Actually, in reality, high end computers can come with more hardware issues than budget models.  Simply because the higher end components are more sensitive.  They are more sensitive to power, heat and static. 

So, while buying a high end computer may give you components that are faster or have increased capabilities, they do not tend to last any longer than any other model.

Will a Corvette last longer than a Tempo?
If we assume you are driving each vehicle all year long, I personally do not think so.  However, there are some considerations involved like weather.  It also depends on how you take care of it.  Essentially cars are metal and plastic.  Metal and plastic can take so much wear and tear…even fiberglass right.  So it’s not so much how long the vehicle will last but how long what it is made out of will last and what happens along the way.  While it is possible to keep any make or model running for 20 + years…there is nothing that says one will last longer than the other mechanically.

So again, while they are made from differently capable components, nothing says one will last longer than the other.

One thing is for sure though.  It will take more cash to replace dead components on a high end computer and it will take more cash to replace dead parts on a Corvette.

To me…possibly I am too practically minded…but if all I need to do is go to work and visit people, I don’t need a Corvette.  I simply need a car that runs.  Similarly, if all I need a computer for is simple photo tasks, internet and to have a few financial programs I don’t need a $2500.00 mega-uber-special-fast-bleeding edge technology wonderall thingamajig computer.

Computer Myths I

{ December 18, 2008 @ 9:07 PM } · { Lifestyle, Technology }
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Today I have been thinking about my green home. Okay, the house and life I am working on at getting more green, more energy efficient. I will be writing more about my own experiences and ideas with that as time goes on. But I thought, as an I.T Professional of many years, that I would tackle some commonly held myths.

Today I want to talk about this myth of computer energy consumption. Seems to me there are a lot of people that have the idea that leaving a computer on 24/7 uses less energy than shutting it off. I am not sure how this started but let me tell you this straight up:

Computers use less energy when off. That’s the end of it. If you use your computer a lot during the day and feel the need to have it ready to go when you are, not wanting to wait while it boots, set it to go into standby or hibernate. These two modes use less energy than having it in regular mode and on.

You don’t have to take my word for it, you can read about it more here.

Another myth to shatter: Your computer is not going to have bad things happen to it by shutting it down and turning it on. It’s not going to “wear it out”. I don’t know how this one started either.

Here are some tips:
Buy a computer that has an Energy Star rating
Replace old CRT monitors with Energy Star rated LCD’s
Don’t obsess.

Computer energy consumption does not hold a candle to the energy wasted by other home appliances, such as refrigerators, washers, dryers, water heaters, etc.

You actually would probably not even notice a change in your electric bill if you kept your computer on all the time. But if you want to do every little thing you can to keep your home as green as possible and reduce your energy consumption (if not for the bill, but the philosophical and social aspects of it) then set your computer to stanby or shut it off. And don’t let anyone tell you you are going to wear it out by turning it off and on.

Don’t use your computer as a safe or personal keepsake box….

{ December 16, 2008 @ 11:10 PM } · { Technology }
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I thought today I would share a little tech tale…. I am changing the names to protect the innocent as well as the guilty lol…. trust me… it’s all true…

So “Bob” wanted his computer fixed up…. he was adding another cdrom drive and couldn’t seem to get it working right with everything else so he brought it in to have one of our techs see what the problem was.

Tech 1 was working on the problem and found out it was not even showing up in the device list on the computer…he would have to open it up and see if it was hooked up right.

After opening the case, he saw something rather odd…. a plastic bag stuck in between the hard drive and the cdrom…. interesting.

Knowing that a plastic bag should not be stored in a computer, Tech one took it out. You will never guess what was inside this bag.

Give it a try… take a guess……It was a sexual toy….. a used sexual toy.

Doesn’t that just beat all?