Things people say

Going right along with the last web log I'm sure you know that I also speak to a lot of people in one day. You've probably also guessed, when you deal with people, hilarity almost always ensues. People say the stupidest things and that's what this entry is all about. Enjoy.

• "I know it's your service causing the problem" - No, you don't know or else you wouldn't be calling me. If you knew any thing you'd know how to fix it. Shut up and let me fix your issue.


• "I'm a subscriber" - Why in the world do I need to know you subscribe to my service? Isn't it very likely that I assume you are a subscriber if you call me? It's like walking into McDonald's and saying "Hi, I'm a McDonald's customer".


• "I have problems" - Yes this much is obvious, you do have problems but what is the issue you are having?


• "My computer is acting funny" - There are a few variations of this but this is my favorite. The comment always brings to mind a computer that has sprung to life, sprouted legs and a mouth, and is now telling jokes to all your guests.


• "Was that a capital 5?" - In case you are wondering if I made this up I'll tell you now that the answer is no, I'm not making it up at all.


• "It has to be plugged in?" - Let me ask my own question: Do electronic devices need to be plugged in? Yes, yes they do, that's why they are called ELECTRONIC devices.


• "How does your company expect to stay in business when they cut off a customer that doesn't pay their bill?" - As a matter of fact I wonder how our company would stay in business if we just let every body not pay their bill.


• "Why" - Because I said so, didn't you learn any thing from your parents?


• "What do you mean you can't?" - I mean I can't, are we not clear on something here? Pay attention to the wording.


• "::Baby Cries::" - AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!

Telephone Antics

One thing, or I should say many things I experience as a tech support rep agitate me. One example is the things people do while they are on the phone. For whatever reason there is always some activity in my callers' lives that they just can't stop doing while they are on the phone. I feel that this is just one example of how people like to make themselves feel busy when they really don't have shit to do. I now present you with a list of said activities.

• Answering the other phone when they are already talking to me - Example is a cell phone or another phone line in the house.


• Hanging out with or feeding the dog - They bark up a storm. For some reason all the people who call me have small yappy dogs. Personality trait any body?


• Eating, chewing, spitting, chomping, slirping, and gulping - Nobody on earth likes hearing these things and I thought that common sense was something most people had. Obviously I was wrong.


• Not knowing who you are calling - Part of my job involves taking a massive amount of notes. When people have phone issues we have to take down a few example telephone numbers of the people who are having issues being called or calling the subscriber. On some calls there exists a very special type of person who for some unknown reason has no idea what phone number has been calling them. You call yourself a friend? For shame.


• Driving while calling tech support - A large part of what I do also involves troubleshooting issues. As some of you may have guessed, you actually have to be home in order to do this. A lot of people aren't and sound like they came with their own personal wind tunnel complete with beeping car horns and screaming pedestrians.


• Not at home - This goes right along with the last one. They call from work, or school, or even while they are standing at the bus stop. How in the hell are you going to know if I fixed any thing if you aren't where the problem is occuring?


• Conferencing other tech support guys in - Not only is this a huge no no but it also makes the customer look like a dick. They basically try to get another tech support guy to explain his point of view so that we can't retort with any thing else aside from it being our fault. The only down side to their argument is that we won't even take the call.


• Talking too fast - What was that? I'm sorry, did I hear you right? I hope you like hearing these phrases if you talk like you are on speed.


• Not listening - Obviously you called me for a reason; is there any reason why you can't listen to what I'm saying instead of saying "huh" every few seconds?


• Says their name too fast - Wow, what the hell was that you just said? For all I know you are Babagadooshinababi. Just because you say your name every day doesn't mean that every body else hears it the way you do. Slow the fuck down so I can tell who you are.


• Not giving the area code - There are billions of people total on the earth, a lot of them live in different area codes. So why then do people insist on giving me 7 digits instead of 10? Well, frankly I think the answer is because they don't think at all. I also think it's because the people who call me like to think that nobody else in the world is more important than them so they think every asshole in the world lives in their area code.


• Has a baby right next to the phone - Why in the hell must I hear your 2 month old scream as loud as they can into my ear? Why can't you just put the little bastard down for two seconds? PLEASE!
  

10 Things I hate about Castlevania: Symphony of the Night

10.) The way special items are picked up – In this game you gain money, hearts, and special items by whipping objects that are in the room. This can be any thing from a clock to a lamp or even a chair. Since every thing falls from these objects you have no choice but to whip every single one of them. The problem I have is with the secondary weapons and how they follow the same guidelines as items. To pick up a secondary weapon in this game you walk over it. The problem I have with this is that sometimes you have a secondary weapon you want to keep. This automatically throws the secondary weapon you have and picks up the new one. The one you previously had sticks around for a few seconds on the ground and will eventually disappear. Another agitation is that sometimes the throwing of the old weapon will throw it off the screen entirely, leaving you with out the option of picking it back up. It could have easily been resolved by requiring you to crouch down on the new weapon to pick it up.

9.) The map screen – There are an awful lot of areas in this game so it goes with out saying that there is a map in it. The map is very similar to the one found in Super Metroid with one exception: there aren’t labels for the rooms or areas. You never know which room is which or where you are going. It just kind of feels like this huge memory game. For example, you remember that you want to go back to the Library, but you have no idea which blue chunk is the library.

8.) No real direction – This almost goes along with my last complaint. You have no way of knowing where to go next. Resident Evil forced you to go to certain places by locking off rooms with particular keys, Double Dragon had a hand that pointed to the right of the screen, and Metal Gear Solid gave you mission objectives. Symphony of the Night doesn’t do any of these things; instead it is free form and leaves it up to you to figure out what is going on. This leaves you wandering the halls of the castle aimlessly wondering what you are doing to begin with.

7.) Medusa heads – Not only are they in places where they are completely out of place but usually they are in combination with another monster that is far worse. The medusa heads in this game almost always show up in places where there are mechanical gears that you have to ride to the top or the bottom of the room. The gold ones don’t do damage, instead they turn you to stone. The blue ones do a minimal amount of damage but knock you half way across the screen as if you were hit by a line backer. If this doesn’t frustrate you enough then just wait until you figure out that there are also other monsters in the room that fly. This combination=death a lot.

6.) Water – I know it sounds stupid but in most Vampire mythology they have a weakness to Holy Water. Not in Konami’s line of games. Instead Vampires are weak against any kind of water. Whether it’s the dirtiest stank water from the sewers of New York or the pristine water from an untapped river. All water knocks the crap out of your health bar and there’s lots of it in the game.

5.) Useless rooms – I once read an article about video game design and the use of items in rooms. The article focused on first person shooters (FPS) and the use of rooms to provide ammo, equipment, etc. It stated that every room in the game should provide some sort of use to keep things busy. One thing Castlevania has is a plethora of is rooms that don’t do any thing at all. In fact there are rooms that don’t have even one thing in them. Some of them at least have the balls to have a chair you can sit in but some of them have completely nothing. So what’s the point? Well I think I have an explanation to this: the designers programmed armor that works based on the percentage of rooms that are found. There’s also a stat in the game that keeps track of the percentage of the map that you’ve explored. Why they needed to do any of this, I have no clue.

4.) Annoying sound effects – Not only are some of the sound effects out of place but they are also downright ear numbing. Don’t get me wrong, this is actually one of the places this game excels in some parts but killing a flying hand should not sound like some little girl whining. Little girl whining=annoying.

3.) Any room with zombies in it – It’s okay to have zombies in a game, but seriously do they have to infinitely spawn from beneath a marble floor? Yes folks, that’s right, almost any room that has a zombie in it in this game will infinitely spawn them. This means that no matter how many of the undead you kill they will always come back. It’s not that they are very hard but the fact that while I’m running through a room I have to tap right or left instead of holding it down, just to make sure I’m not hit by a zombie. This means I have to watch Alucard repeatedly do that little slide animation over and over as if he’s having some sort of seizure.

2.) The inverted castle – As if creativity wasn’t in enough demand we get what can only be described as a half-ass attempt at making the game longer. I can imagine how the meeting went. Some ass probably said they need to make the game longer than 4 hours long, and ass number 2 said “I know, we’ll throw in an inverted version of the castle with different enemies”. It feels as though we were slighted out of what could have been a whole other castle. How awesome would it have been to discover a whole new area? Way awesome.

1.) The continue screen – I bet I know what you’re thinking (at least if you’ve played the game anyway) you’re thinking “But there wasn’t a continue screen was there?” Of course there wasn’t and that’s why this is the thing I hated most about Castlevania: Symphony of the Night. Most developers realize that 95% of the time you are going to be annoyed that you died. That’s why they put in a continue screen so that you don’t have to go through an arduous process every time you die. Konami obviously did not realize this. Every time you die, you get to see a game over screen followed by an awful audio clip that I guess is Dracula saying “Game over” except the way he says it sounds so ghetto that’s it’s more like “Game Ova”. You can’t skip this screen. All you can do is press select so that you don’t have to hear the awful audio clip. After you’re done listening or skipping the audio clip you are returned to the title screen where it says “press start”. After you press start you select what you want to do. Either loading or starting a new game. Most times you’re going to want to continue so you have to do this every time you want to continue. Every single time you die you have to repeat this process. Number 1 thing I hated about Castlevania: Symphony of the night? No continue screen.

Please pay attention to the wording I’ve used here. This is a list of things I hate about this game, not a list of reasons why I hate the game. I don’t hate it; in fact I love the game. I played it for hours on end but there are a ton of things that could have been done way better.

I see....I mean hear about DEAD PEOPLE!

What the fuck is it about being a tech support rep that makes people want to tell you their family members died? Every day I work I hear about at least one dead person. Or maybe it's just that people think you aren't depressed enough having to work a shitty job with all right pay. Come on now people what makes you think I need the extra weight on my shoulders?

I mean seriously, I wouldn't walk into McDonald's and start talking about how my cat died while I was waiting for my food. Those people have it rough enough with out me talking about something like that. They are most likely thinking "Get em in, get em out" and I'd have to agree. I want to help you but seriously enough with dead family members because there's honestly not a damn thing I can do about that.

Where is it? What do I click? Where? What? How?

Jesus CHRIST! Now that I've gotten that out of the way let's talk about people who can not think for themselves. Surely you've had the displeasure of encountering one of these fuckin' people. What in the shit is wrong with them? I mean seriously, why go through life having someone hold your hand through every encounter? Don't you ever just want to do something on your own?

Today, I spoke to someone who couldn't create an account on a website on his own. WHY!? This is so goddamn easy to do and follows such a routine that almost every website has. I could go to any website right now and create an account and never speak to a single person. WHY IS THIS SO HARD TO UNDERSTAND? You click create an account (seems simple so far huh?) then you enter any number of account information (name, address, and phone number) and you click on the button that says CREATE ACCOUNT.

That seemed really, really hard didn't it? NO! It didn't, because it's not hard to do that at all. The only thing that will satisfy my blood thirst for the evening is to see this man strapped into a chair, eye lids fastened open A Clockwork Orange style and have him watch films about how to create an account online over and over again. Then maybe his simple brain will get that this is something you can do on your own if you'd just take your head out of your ass and use it.

Look. It takes care of itself. NOT!

My father once told me that my car isn't going to take care of itself. It was at that point that I realized that all things require maintenance. It's true, think about it. Sometimes it happens naturally but others have to be intentional. For instance when you get up, you might have to take a shit, you walk down stairs and see there's toilet paper still there. You look because you have to have toilet paper there to wipe your ass. That's a natural maintenance.

An example of intentional maintenance is you taking the time to look even though you wouldn't normally, such as the air in your tires. The air in your car tires isn't just going to check itself, and it certainly won't happen unless you choose to do it. There are some things that require it and some that don't. One of the things I think requires that kind of care is a computer.

It's true, it's damn true. I challenge you to go to a house where nobody ever does a spyware or virus sweep on their computer. See how well it runs, and how many popups and errors you get. Afterwards, visit somebody who does these sweeps and has had their computer an equally long time. I would bet money that you see a huge difference. Knowledge plays a huge part in maintenance. You won't know what to check if you have no clue what the fuck you are supposed to check.

On a car, if you didn't know any thing about cars at all, you'd have no clue how to check the oil. And just the same on a computer, if you have no idea where the modem is you have no fucking clue how to power cycle it. This works its way into software too. I talk to people who have no clue what virus protection they have, how to disable said virus protection, or if they have a router. These are just a few examples.

The point is that if you are going to have a computer, you should know what the fuck you are buying for it. The same goes for if you have a wireless router, you should fuckin' know what a WEP key is, you should know what your network name is. Yet, there are still people who will call me and tell me they don't know what their network is named. Hell, they'll call up and tell me they have no fucking clue how to even look to see if their network is connected.

I pretty much equate this to not knowing how to open the trunk of your car. It's standard, it's something your docile brain should know how to use. Tell me how well I'd do if I were a plumber and had no fucking clue how to use a snake. Survey says very poor. My point is that your computer won't take care of itself and if you are going to have something so complicated your dumbass better know how to operate it. Otherwise don't complain to me when your shit breaks down.

I am Jack's total misunderstanding of the English language

Truthfully, do you want to know how bad I want every one in America to speak English? I mean if my wants and wishes for this to come true filled up a 500 ft balloon that shit would have popped by now. So I bet you're saying "Hey Jack! Why are you so damn angry at people who can't speak English?" Well that's a very good question that has a very good answer.

People who can't speak English shouldn't be allowed in our country. When is this country going to take the time to educate these fuckin' people and get them to stop trying to call me? That's right, people who know very minimal English will call me and try and troubleshoot. See if you can figure out how that equates into every thing. That'd be like me trying to ask a fuckin' blind man how many lights are lit on his modem.

Just to clarify I have no problem if you speak another language here, as long as you can speak the language that the majority of people fluently speak in America. I spent 20 minutes last night with some Japanese lady trying to get a number that should take at minimal 2 minutes or less to find. I couldn't get the bitch to understand which box she should look at. And to begin with she didn't understand when I asked her what problem she was having.

I greet people like so "Thanks for calling ********** my name is Jack, how can I help you today/tonight?" To which she replies "A blah flau flau" And I might add I do not remember what she said but it was gibberish anyway. Did I also mention that the words she did speak she pronounced poorly? How about the fact that almost every answer was met with something that made no sense?


Here's how it went down in not too many words.

Me: Okay there's going to be a label with what's called a mac address on it, I need you to find that label and read off the mac address.

Stupid: There's a what?

Me: It's called a mac address and will start with 2 zeros.

Stupid: No I don't see any thing like that, there is a serial numba.

Me: No that's not what we're looking for, it's going to start with 2 zeros

Stupid: 203458923156

Me: No that's way too many digits and it would start with 2 zeros. Does what you have, have a phone cord attached to the back? There should be a phone cord, do you see one?

Stupid: No it doesn't, I don't see any thing really except a thick white chord an a powa cable.

Me: No that's not it, is what you have there big enough to hold with two hands?

Stupid: Yes.

Me: Okay that's not what we want, what we want is going to fit in the palm of your hand, it's that small.


Anyways I'm all ready about to throw up thinking about how painful it got after that. Suffice it to say there had to be a communication barrier. Even the stupidest people I talk to at least know the difference between the devices connected to their TV and the devices connected to their computer and phone. I really can't wait until pressing 2 for Spanish isn't even a thought any more, and that shit is obliterated from my phone lines. Some phone trees won't even respond until you listen to the whole message and that includes that Spanish shit.