Category: Observations Page 21 of 88

Books are hard

On June 8, 2016

Writing a book is hard. Putting words together and having another set of professional eyes fix them is painful.

My book is a collection of essays and it was covered in red once I got it back from the editor. And I’m thankful it was. I know I don’t write perfectly. I have no clue what to do with semi colons. Commas confound me. I spell well but my grammar is a mess.

My little book had gone from Markdown file to Word Document to Scrivener file. Now it’s a book. I can see it on my Kindle. I can send it to friends to get their reaction.

It’s Real.

I learned how to make a book. How to write it. How to get it edited. Made those edits. How to format it. Now it’s real.

Now I’m learning how to sell it. How to price it. How to tell people about it. How to let is loose into the world. It’s all a great experiment.

A terrifying experiment. It’s the first time in years I’ve made a thing that I’ve put out into the world. It’s not a blog post. The living beast that slowly gets bigger and longer with the passing of time.

A book is a thing. Even if it gets updated or expanded upon. It’s still a snapshot of time. When those words existed in that order in a finite way.

And it’s almost done. Beyond the Reboot will be out soon once I made the last changes based on feedback I got from my wonderful friends who were gracious enough to look at it and tell me what I had long gone blind to.

Beyond the Reboot is about being a better technician. It won’t tell you what tools to use or how to fix problems. Those are skills that are easy to learn and have already been covered to death elsewhere.

Beyond the Reboot is a book about the human side of technical support. It remembers the Customer in Customer Service. It’s a reminder that we’re all here to serve the people behind the machines. The machines are coming for our jobs. We don’t need to give them any help. We need to help people.

And I think this little book will. And I hope you do too.

It’s available today.

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Hindi Song

By Carl

On June 2, 2016

In Observations

I wasn’t planning to post a follow-up to India Calling. And yes, they’re still calling. I’ve lost count of how many thousands of times they’ve called us in the past week. But it averages 4,200 calls from 6pm to 7am. And probably about the same during out working hours.

Most of the calls are still silence, or people conversing in the background. More of them are button presses or a recording that we’ve been placed on hold.

But every now and again, there is a truly amazing call. And this call is one such call.

To set the stage, I answered the call and started singing My Hero by the Foo Fighters. Because when you receive hundreds of calls per hour, the only thing you can do is have some fun with them.

And I got the singing Hindi song in response. Here is below in its full glory. I can’t explain why he sang it to me, or why he sang at all. But here it is.

India Calling

By Carl

On May 27, 2016

In Observations

For the past three days, callers from India have called our help desk almost non-stop. When I arrived this morning, my co-worker’s telephone read 1324 missed calls since 6pm yesterday. For the first two hours of work this morning, we had racked up another 250 calls.

They finally slowed down around 3:30pm. After 1631 missed calls and another couple dozen calls we answered and hung up or had fun with them. My phone only logs the last 100 calls received and that only goes back 2 hours. It has been a long few days of constantly ringing phones.

Their goal is to get into our voicemail system. Though I’m not sure to what end. Most of the calls are silence, or the caller presses buttons, presumably to access the system. I keep telling them I’m a human and don’t understand Morse Code but they never respond. Rarely, we’ll get a person on the line who will speak to us. I got as far as being offered $1,015 for “the access code.”

So I decided to give him a long string of numbers. Since I’m not sure what access code he wanted, I tried my best to deliver an access code. So if this was your access code, I’m sorry. It’s now in the hands of the Indian Scammers™.

I recorded some snippets of our conversations and musical concertos recorded with my friends from across the sea. I hope you enjoy them and have a peaceful weekend.

Minimalism Film

By Carl

On May 4, 2016

In Observations

I am very excited to the the Minimalism Film tonight with my wife. I’m glad I saw the news early (thanks for the ever-marvelous and Sir Appearing in this Film Patrick Rhone. I don’t know if I had any questions to ask, but I’ve always benefited from listening to the other’s questions.

Before our documentary hits theaters on May 24, 2016, Joshua and Ryan will visit a bunch of cities to premiere the film in front of a live audience. At each event they will give a brief talk, and then show the documentary in its entirety. After the film they will record a live version of “Ask The Minimalists” for their podcast.

Kids today…

By Carl

On April 22, 2016

In Observations

…make some great art!

After dinner earlier this week, my wife saw some art work in display from local schools in the mall where we ate. We had a few minutes before closing so we went to check out what the kids were up to.

8-bit art

There was some really cool artwork. There are some insanely talented young artists in the area. And it’s good to see their work being displayed in public. I can only imagine how exciting it is to go to the mall with your parents and see your painting or project hanging there.

We saw a ton of work from local Elementary and Middle schools. Each school or class had work based on a theme. For the younger kids, it was a book or certain style. I remember seeing a whole wall of giraffes after a book the kids read. They were a lot of fun.

Low Poly art

The older kids had some breath-taking paintings and some low-poly art, a personal favorite of mine. There was one artist in particular whose portrait of Marilyn Manson was astounding. This girl has a future ahead of her.

We used our 15 minutes before mall security ushered us towards the door. There was so much more to see since there are so many schools in our county. This is always weird to me, since I grew up in a county with two elementary schools, one middle school and one high school.

Narwhal

Seeing more than a dozen displays from elementary aged was exciting for the depth and variety of artwork on display. The same goes for the middle-schoolers. There were so many things I never knew existed when I was their age. So many art styles made possible by computers and techniques I didn’t learn about until years later.

I’m happy to see such a rich art education in the local schools. There are some great art teachers in the area and they’re doing good work.