Still alive!

Hey all... or anyone who may still happen across this place. I'll keep this nice and short for you!

I've been recruited into working on another site, and hope you all will check out all that we have to offer over there.

Always Go Right is a site that celebrates all things geeky. So take a peek, show your friends, and keep on reading there! We'd love to have you as our reader!

Oh my

Back from my extended stay at home for the holiday, and still about five days of not having to work ahead of me.
Joy!

I picked me up some new Virtual Console games on my Wii on christmas, Super Mario Brothers (it's a classic, I just had to) and R-Type. I now remember how very very bad I am at playing R-Type. But still fun as ever. One of those games where you mess up and get very angry at yourself and the game, but can't stop playing anyway.

Got a little bit of Wii Sports action in with the family around, but everyone had to take off around noon on Monday (having arrived Saturday night for christmas at grandma's), so not a whole lot. Seems like Jess got hooked... and I still beat her in tennis! I only wish I had a picture of her trying to serve the ball with her free-of-a-Wiimote left hand.

I'm really impressed with Nintendo for creating a system that non-gamers have so much fun with. Kudos.

Oh, and Jess.. by the time I get up there for a visit I'm sure you'll have your own Wii!

Anyway, to the end of this somewhat "normal" post. If any other family members discover me here... don't expect too many posts that make any sense!

Wow!

It's kind of weird, but I just found out the other day that my buddy Karnatos actually found AggroMe from my Three Wizards blog! Or at least.. so he says. That's pretty neat, considering I started these things because of Aggro...

Anyway, news like this: I decided to go ahead and get a second account. The idea was to be able to play two at the same time. Well I don't exactly have another computer at the moment that can play EQ2. Oh well, it's all beside the point. The crew at Aggro Forums decided to start up with EQ2 again (after our latest kick with CoV died out and we kind of just stopped playing stuff) with the release of Echoes of Faydwer. We made characters on Crushbone (where the majority of them already play anyway) and I have been having a blast. I think it has something to do with... actually having something to do, and fun people around to just chew the fat with. We even got Aggro himself to start up a new character with us. Apparently he got away from the girls just long enough to say hi in-game!

Well enough of that. It's good to actually be somewhat excited about the game again, rather than log in, see no one I really know/people who talk to me are on.. then log out.

In Real Life® news........ nothing! The holiday break is coming up (end of this week) and I get some 1.5 weeks off with pay. Not bad, I guess. When I come back I'll finally be working the hours I was hired for: 12-8:30 or 10-8:30 (if I decide to do four 10 hour days, which is probably going to happen).
Looking forward to going back to the parents' place with my Wii when more people are around. They had so much fun with Wii Sports last time, but now we'll have the rest of the family there as well!

Goodbye Best Buy, Hello AIB

Well, here it is. My last week working for the Best Buy Geek Squad. It's been a great time with a great boss, great co-workers, and tons of great stories from rude/obnoxious/crying/angry/etc., etc. customers. I got a job offer from the college I attended (and also worked at as a student worker), and decided to take it. The hours are a little messed up though, noon to 8pm, so as much as I wanted to stay part-time at the Geek Squad, I simply cannot. I'm going to miss my discount... oh.. and the people too, yeah.. the people.
Oh well, obviously a step in the right direction other than just a service bench. Not that it wasn't fun, it's just not really in line with um... anything I really worked for. For whatever reason, a degree in computer network administration didn't really do much good back at Best Buy. Sure, I was the self-proclaimed master of networking there, but anything I was going to explain to any customer would have been way over their head. Geeze, they just want to connect their laptop to the internet where ever they are. It says it's wireless, why doesn't it work in the parking lot?! (seriously we had someone buy a laptop and bring it back within 20 minutes because they couldn't get online on the road). That is one thing I will miss, for sure - all the stories! I'll miss watching my boss talk to customers because he tells them how it is and doesn't take any shit from them.

ANYWAY. Back to the IT department, back to a place where I can actually put my networking knowledge to use... ect.
And I start Monday morning!

Agent Anski, M.D.

So, my girlfriend bought season one of House on DVD. We've been watching it a lot lately.


And then I came to realize something...


Working in a Geek Squad precinct is like being on that show... only we work with computers and not humans.

Now, I understand some people may be questioning this. How can you compare two seemingly completely different things together?
Well, it's like this: House is a show about a doctor in a hospital. A hospital that gets tons of patients all the time with the mundane things, treated, released... except those few that come in that has everyone scratching their heads.
Now, back to my job... we get a multitube of sick computers in every day. The majority are the easy, mundane things. But every once in a while... I think you get my point.

Just yesterday (Sunday) I spent nearly my entire shift (between dealing with all the stupid people that came in, but that is another story) working on one computer that was one of those special cases. The customer needed it by Monday, and no one really had any idea what was causing the issues (bluescreening, ect... I won't get into details because it doesn't really matter). The customer had also approved over $350 of work on this one computer. The agents that worked on it before me came to the conclusion that it was a software problem, we did a restore on it. Yess.. it work good. Wait.. nope! It's dying again! Bad harddrive, even though it tested fine? Swap it out with a test drive and reload it! Working fine, working fine... dead again. Okay.. old harddrive back in. But, I finally know what is causing it (by killing it a few times I obviously deduced what was causing it). It all traced back to faulty WLAN hardware. Since the customer needs it tomorrow, I call her up, tell her what it is, and how to not make it happen (I left the drivers off so that nothing would try to access the hardware). Recommend she brings it back in when she has time so it can go to our service center (unfortunately we aren't equiped to do internal laptop repair in-store).

Anyway, you can sort of get a taste of the similarities... the misdiagnose, the treatment, the situation getting worse - but with new clues... and finally.. proper treatment.

At least I thought it was interesting.

Sometimes I get bored at work

So, sometimes I do.
Okay, a lot of the time I do.

Woah

Alright. I know I haven't written much lately, but that is going to change, especially since now I have stuff to write about.