Onsite, on a non-contract call

Me: What seems to be the issue?

Customer: The computer isn’t adding the printer and I can’t access the Internet.

Me: When did this start?

Customer: Well, I just got the printer, but the Internet has always worked until I plugged the printer in.

I examine the ports on the back of the system.

Me: Oh. Um. Your ethernet cord isn’t plugged in … because you put the printer’s USB plug into the computer’s ethernet port.

Customer: Yeah, it’s a network printer, right?

Inside the office, after I sent everyone else home on a slow day

Customer enters wearing boardshorts, stumbling slightly.

Me: Hi! What can I do for you?

Customer: Are you guys open?

Me: Um, yep, we don’t close for about twenty more minutes.

Customer: Oh. Oh sweet. I need something.

Me: Anything specific?

Customer: Um. Sound.

Me: Sound? Like, a PCI sound card?

Customer: No, no. Like, what sound comes out of. What are they called?

Me: Speakers?

Customer nods and pinches fingers together.

Customer: But smaller!

Me: Oh, um, earbuds?

Customer: YES!

Me: Oh, no, we don’t stock those unfortunately. There’s a RadioShack down the street?

Customer: They wouldn’t take my money.

Me: Oh, why is that?

Customer: Well, it’s Canadian.

Me: … oh. That’s unfortunate.

Customer giggles.

Customer: I’m stoned. I should probably go.

Me: Probably.

On a Saturday morning, when we are normally closed. I opened the office for a few hours so I could finish a project for a client. Customer enters slowly. Names have been changed.

Customer: Hi. Um, do you know Cody?

Me: I know a few Cody’s?

Customer: He’s about your height.

Me: Gonna need a little more information, what this about?

Customer: Well he just hasn’t been home in a long time, I just wondered if he’s okay.

Me: If he’s missing, this is probably more a matter for like, the police?

Customer: Oh, no, I know where he is. He left the house. My daughter did too, she went to the University of Hawaii. They teach communism down there, you know. Karl Marx and all that stuff.

Me: Oh… I see.

Customer: Yeah… it’s sickening, really. Socialism is destroying everything. Did you hear they’re trying to make the government pay for Medicare?

Me: … I should probably get back to work.

On-site at a new client after-hours, doing a network survey for an office having connectivity issues. I had the client take me to the wiring closet. Patch cables were stripped two inches past the RJ-45 jacks, some had broken retention clips.

Me: Oh, gosh. This is a mess.

Customer: What’s wrong?

Me: The way the patch cables are terminated, you’ll have so much interference going on. Connectivity drops and packet loss are common when cables so close together are completely unshielded. We’ll need to re-terminate most of these and completely rerun the lines that don’t have enough extra coiled up.

Customer: No, that can’t be it. My husband and son wired this. He’s built a plane before. He’s a doctor. Pretty sure he can handle some wires.

Me: With all due respect, ma’am, I wouldn’t let a rocket scientist wire my network. It has nothing to do with intelligence. Plenty of people are completely capable of learning how to change oil in an automobile, but you still take your car to a mechanic.

Customer: It’s not the wires.

Me: I don’t know what to tell you, ma’am. If you won’t let us rewire it, the issue probably won’t get resolved.

Customer: You guys are worthless, I want to terminate my contract.

Me: Gladly. You can even have a refund for the contract.

Customer: Really?

Me: Yep. Now, since this is no longer contracted work, and it’s after 8pm, the hour for the survey will be $250. We’ll bill you. Have a nice evening.

Check back next week for Ridiculous Moments in Tech, v2.

Earlier this year, a teacher of mine threw around the idea of playing a bit with the iPhone SDK; we would potentially spend some class time working on learning the language and eventually building Apps. It was something that interested me, but with everything I had going on at the time, I didn’t devote enough energy into seeing it through. As a result, obviously nothing came to fruition.

A semester later, Apple’s much anticipated tablet was released and with it came a new market for programming in the iPhone OS. Another technology teacher introduced us to a grant that would provide the funding necessary to get a set of iPads as well as a developer account and the tools we would need to bring them all together. Although my workload had not changed, my interest was peaked enough to give it some serious thought.

I definitely wanted to do it, but I was not convinced I would be able to devote the time necessary to such an undertaking. While I can put my projects on the backburner when time and I are not allies, it is another story entirely when playing on someone else’s dime and, consequently, expectations. While discussing my predicament with my boss, he put forward an idea that would add another level of initiative to the entire thing. Our technology firm has a standing web design department (primarily for local businesses), but he presented the possibility of adding a development layer to our small firm. While we would likely branch out to other areas eventually, we both agreed that SDK work would likely be a good place to begin and would work well with my participation in the grant.

To fast forward a little, I decided to participate in the grant (which will, for the most part, begin next year) as well as shift part of my focus at work from technician to developer. I am still in the very early stages of it all. While I have played with the SDK in the past and know the basic syntax, I still have a lot to learn in the way of the actual language. I am researching a few books that I would like to order to help in this quest of knowledge. Soon I will start going through a course offered online through iTunes U by Stanford Engineering Everywhere which is essentially presented as an introduction to iPhone programming. This will likely extend from the rest of the school year into much of the summer. I will be taking a break in June due to various commitments I already have made (a leadership conference, college visits, etc.) but ideally I would like to be ready to start semi-serious development before my senior year begins.

As for what I will be doing for the project during the next school year, it fully depends on how fast I progress. As I said, I would like to spend the majority of it refining my skills and doing semi-serious development. Educational tools for school and to keep up with my responsibilities to the grant will be my initial area of focus. For work, I plan on creating a mobile interface for the help desk ticketing system we use as a way to teach myself the basics. Plans may change, but I am excited for what I have planned thus far.

My process needs to be documented so I will apologize in advance in case this blog becomes monopolized by the project. Perhaps it will be an incentive for my lazy butt to write about other things as well. As for the quote:

“A programmer is a person who passes as an exacting expert on the basis of being able to turn out, after innumerable punching, an infinite series of incomprehensive answers calculated with micrometric precisions from vague assumptions based on debatable figures taken from inconclusive documents and carried out on instruments of problematical accuracy by persons of dubious reliability and questionable mentality for the avowed purpose of annoying and confounding a hopelessly defenseless department that was unfortunate enough to ask for the information in the first place.”

IEEE Grid