October 4, 2006

           Well, I’m happy. Good money, easy work, short hours. Starting at 10:30 in the morning. Let’s see, yes, I do have some photos. I was in at the wig shop for six hours and lots got done. I kind of knew the new gal would not last, for you see, Ruth now has an excellent idea of what kind of productivity to expect from a computer user.

           This bears a little examination. At first, she was leery of paying me three times as much as the last person, but now she is well past the stage of realizing you get close to six times as much work out of me. Where at first she balked at paying, she now waits until I get there to be sure of a project getting done on schedule. Today I contacted the agent of “Jay Lo” who turns out to be Jennifer Lopez. I guess, I dunno. I thought it was a talk show host, but that is Jay Leno. What is with these people with the same names? Make that one photo. Lopez is running a fashion show on the 11th and Ruth wants to feature the doggie wigs. So I snapped a photo of a photo to send in the promo pack, and I just realized I left my knapsack at the shop. I have this one picture of Ruth on the Letterman show until I go back for it.
           Remember I told you Ruth would become computerized very rapidly around me? I mentioned that she was quick to spot what was important about any tool. She had just never seen anyone use a computer like I do. The day was extra fun because Ruth is now at the stage where she suddenly needs computer things she did not know existed a short while ago.
Example, like a lot of people, she thought you had to take a digital camera to the pharmacy to get the pictures developed and then put on disk. Makes sense, because camera manufacturers assume you know that the camera does not use film. Wrong. A lot of people think the disk contains the digital pictures made from regular film negatives. Well, once I showed her it was minutes from camera to email, she was buzzing all over the place getting hairpieces and samples together.

           I also installed some computer speakers and got a lot of the general overseas communication work out of the way. Anna is scheduled to bring Bijou in for a shoot tomorrow at noon, and this time pick up a check for $100. Hey, how much did your dog make this year? Ruth whips out the checkbook without a qualm these days. She told me what made her day was when Heon Sik [a Korean businessman] sent her some metric measurements for a display box.

           Immediately, I took out a pair of scissors and cut a small model box to the sizes he specified. When folded and taped, it showed that the dimensions were slightly too small for the wig and raised the problem of having to stock two sizes of box. Ruth said when she saw me do that that I was “worth every penny”. Nice to hear.
           Then, I sped over to Anna’s to find a virus attack had altered her system registry, and walked her through a quick re-install of her anti-virus software. Next, I checked the printer link from the Kid’s computer. It is the wireless link, not the printer link, so I showed her how to do a repair. A couple came to the door and want me to do some computer work for them in Davie.

           Oh, before I forget, this is Florida and there is always a turkey to make something go wrong every day. Ruth got a call from Bell South and I took it, expecting the call they told me would happen before the modem shipped. The guy on the other end started asking me questions because he needed to know who to contact, and I should have gotten suspicious right there. Anyway, we got into this roundabout situation where the bastard was trying to trick me into saying I had ordered “high-speed” DSL.
           I picked up on this instantly and told him to quit trying to upsell me. He denied that he was doing any such thing, then went right back into his funnily-worded questions designed to trick the unwary listener. He was pretending that somebody had ordered the “low-speed” modem that would not work on the “high-speed” service I “deserved”. I told him to cut the guff and read to me what my original order asked for.

          [Author's note 2021: this was still early in my Florida career and I did not yet know that Bell South contracted out telemarket work, supplying them with your phone number and enough details for them to fake you out in this manner. Nowadays, I have choice words for these people. Pretending to be from the phone company is technically illegal. They should be treated as criminals.]

           It turns out, he did not even have the order. The slimeball works for the BellSouth “Call Center” which means a friggin’ telemarketing operation. He also kept trying to throw me off the trail by saying he was calling because we had been “placed on a preferred customer list”. I told him to take us off that and any list he had access to immediately. We had not asked to be placed on any of his lists.
           At any rate, he tried roughly twenty times over ten minutes to trick me into saying I had ordered this “high-speed” item, which turns out to be over twice the cost of what I actually ordered. His wording was practiced to emphasize that he was only trying to confirm, but in reality he was lying through his teeth. Bell South’s philosophy seems to be that a certain percentage of older customers won’t know the difference, won’t complain later when their phone bill is astronomical, and are too polite to go up against their squadrons of liars who pulled the trick on them. Way to go, Bell South.

           You know what I can’t figure out? Artificial rum flavoring. I found yet another bottle of it in my cupboard. I’ll say it again – get a pint of real rum and use that sparingly. Why? Real rum is cheaper, tastes better and contains less alcohol.