Light blogging warning

Posted By on December 11, 2003 at 3:58 pm

With a vacation trip to California in the offing, I expect blogging to be light until Christmas week.
On the negative side, I won’t actually be with the family for Christmas Day itself – I’m only taking a week off.
On the plus side (for me, that is), I expect to have a really good time. I burned up all my frequent flyer miles and am travelling First Class all the way.
I’m planning on seeing Bill Whittle’s live performance on the 16th.
I get to bestow numerous gifts [for varying values of “numerous”] on my family.
And I expect to come back with plenty of photos of the Beloved Nieces and Nephew.
It should be a good time.

Small World

Posted By on December 10, 2003 at 11:28 am

This week I’ve done something I haven’t done regularly in the past few years: I’ve spoken with a customer on the phone to try to fix a networking problem.
These days, my technical assistance is delivered in the form of “how-to” documents, web-based troubleshooting tools, and Microsoft-like (*spit*) “knowledge base” items. I rarely talk to a real live customer.
The technical issue the customer needed help with was not overly complicated, but in the course of the conversation, the customer mentioned that he and a certain employee in our company had gone to school together, and did I happen to know Bob?
Wow, a “small world” moment. Bob had been my teammate from my earlliest days in Technical Assistance, back when I was talking to customers on the phone every day. I have spoken with, quite literally, thousands of customers.
I asked my customer how he had known Bob.
They had gone to elementary school together.
The same school I attended.
In fact, though we were several years apart, we were there at the same time. Of course, as a Fifth-grader, any mere Kindergartener would have been beneath my notice.
The world shrinks yet again, in unexpected ways.