Thursday, December 29, 2005

I am soooooo stupid

You'd think someone who works with computers would know better.

Today for some strange reason, I decided to upgrade my nVidia graphic card drivers. I went to their website, saw there was a newer version and downloaded it. They also had this message in bold, "Please make sure to read the Driver Installation Hints Document before you install this driver." Normally I don't read instructions, but thought I would this time. It said before installing the new drivers to uninstall the old ones. Ok, no prob, that's what I did, restarted like it said and now had an icky 800x600 screen in 16 colors.

No problem, time to install the new drivers. About half way through the install my computer blue screened. ARGH!

My work laptop sits in a docking station with two monitors (just added a 3rd today and LOVE it!!). After rebooting my laptop from the blue screen, it wouldn't work with the docking station. I tried the laptop by itself and that worked fine, but when I would dock it, the other two monitors wouldn't work. I tried everything I could think of - uninstalling the drivers again, re-installing the original drivers, redownloading the new drivers, you name it, nothing was working - I'm more of a unix guy than a windows guy. I don't hate windows, I've just worked with unix more and understand it better.

Finally our windows sys admin came in and had some idea's to try. After playing around a bit, he was able to get things working again - and made me promise never to do that again. haha

I had a lot to do so got up at 3:30am (the time I usually get up when I go for my run) and got into work at 4:30am, but didn't get my computer working again until 8am - that's over 3 hours of wasted time!!!! I felt sooooo stupid and was ticked at myself all day. Sometimes us computer people think we know what we are doing and end up making a bigger mess of things than regular users.

D'OH!

Wednesday, December 28, 2005

Bad Customer Service

This last Sunday we were out shopping and decided to stop off at Old Chicago for an early dinner. We go there a lot, so we didn't expect to have such horrible customer service. This gal didn't pay much attention to us at all - actually not to any of her tables. We asked for a chocolate milk shake for Riley. She came back saying their ONE blender was broken so they couldn't do it. I doubt they have only one blender or even if they do that it was broken, but we ordered chocolate milk instead.

About 15 minutes went by with no chocolate milk and we only saw her a few times, she never came over to our table. Finally we asked someone else to check on Riley's chocolate milk and THEN she brought it. We also told her we'd both like a couple more beers and she said there's only one bartender so it's gonna be awhile. Ok. You're busy and short-staffed. You KNOW the bartender is taking awhile. Wouldn't you watch your tables for when their glasses were about half full and then ask if they want more instead of waiting until they are out? That way they would get another beer/drink shortly after they ran out (or maybe before) instead of waiting an extra long time.

We did notice that another waitress serving other tables was always checking on her tables, making sure they had enough, a party of nine sat down and ordered after us yet got their food before us, etc. Oh, and all of the tables around us where people got up and left were dirty. This other waitress was busy helping to clean the tables while our waitress was no where to be found. As we were getting ready to leave, she finally started cleaning and said to two other people working there, "Would one of you come get this stuff? It's time to earn your paycheck." We could NOT believe she said that in front of customers. She didn't sound mad, it just wasn't an appropriate thing to say.

I really hate it when you're having a good day, decide to go somewhere for a nice fun meal, and end up leaving ticked off because of horrible customer service. This gal wasn't out right rude, she just wasn't friendly, nice, didn't go out of her way to make our experience enjoyable.

I paid with a credit card and in the Tip section wrote "$00.01 - the service SUCKED!" Ya, I know that probably didn't do much to her, but it made me feel good. ;)

Monday, December 12, 2005

Same BDay as me

Watching Monday Night Football, they just said Aaron Brooks (QB for New Orleans) and Peyton Manning (QB for Indianapolis) both have the same birthday as me, March 24 - although they were born in 1976 and I was born 13 years earlier, 1963.

Friday, December 02, 2005

Making your Christmas Tree Last

Here's something Marci learned when she went to floral school. Add about a cup of 7-Up to a 2-liter bottle of water, then water the Christmas tree with that. It'll help make the tree last a LOT longer.

We get our tree right after Thanksgiving and it's still holding up great on New Years day.