A good day of running around
Jun. 6th, 2003 02:22 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
pseydtonneThis Thursday was the perfect day to get out of the apartment and stay out until 10 pm. The weather didn't agree (lots of pissy, sporadic rain -- not something usually found in Boston in June) but my friends said "yeah, c'mon out to play."
I picked up Devon (my coworker) and his wife and son around 1 pm. Devon's car was ready from the shop way out in Lowell (aka. the Ghetto of Outer Space). Then I followed him to the cinema in Lawrence (aka. the twin Barrio of Outer Space, only with nicer crap).![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
chaggalagirl insisted that I not see Finding Nemo without her. Since she had to work today, Devon took his son to see Nemo and I went with Devon's wife to see the remake of The Italian Job. Fifteen minutes of trailers. They didn't use the metric system in the flick, even when they were in Italy. Otherwise, I dug the movie.
I hope I'm not giving anything away when I mention part of the movie involves Charlize Theron disguising herself as a cable tech. I didn't mind that. In fact, I liked realizing the "NetCom" truck was definitely a draped Calmcats truck. There you go.
What hit me, and only briefly, was that the bad guy calls the cable company to get a repair, and they instantly agree to send out a tech "between nine and three" two days out. No way. They'll send a tech, but the phone jock will talk the living shit out of the customer in troubleshooting to avoid a truck roll. You see, truck rolls are how the cable company loses money when they aren't upgrades or installs. So the tech would go through all sorts of annoying questions, like "just to confirm, the last four digits of your soash?" and "are you missing one channel or all of them?". I didn't expect to hear all of those questions in a flick, obviously. At least some hint of grief would've been nice.
Tracy (Devon's wife) said "hey, he didn't get all three" (meaning all three cable products -- only his cable modem and cable TV went out). I said "maybe we don't have the phone yet in his town. Also, a smart villain would have phone through a different company and DSL on that as a backup." He was smart enough to have all sorts of other redundant stuff.
What may have been more unlikely is having a female field tech. I have never seen a one in my time at the cable company here in overly progressive Massachusetts. Is it really such a burly job? I suspect a woman with a splicer in her hand would get the hired instantly, especially with the laws about discrimination. Also, guys would buy upgrades to digital packages from a woman in uniform very readily. Men are idiots (by which I mean men spend so long denying the emotional and irrational components of their mental faculties that they can easily be hijacked into actions simply by playing them against their fears of having emotional responses) and thus buy more crap. We sales critters thank them for it.
Why aren't there more women working in hardware jobs? Maybe there are but just not around here. I don't buy the idea that only men would put up with those conditions (the weather, the lifting, blah blah). We have women cops, right? Outside, goofy hours, playing up the surly card, blah blah. Where's the diff? Cop gets free donuts while a field tech gets free cable. I'd say there's a job with "divorced mother" written all over it. You're home by seven, you schmooze a little, and people don't tend to fuck with you. You have tools designed to give an impromptu briss to a man that gets out of line.
To review: I like women. I also like men. I like the color blue, too. I liked The Italian Job enough to say... ummm... the chase scene in the subway. There you go. Once again, Donald Sutherland does a movie in Venice and winds up dead. Thank you for calling Calmcats.
Then we went hunting for dinner. I met some of Devon's friends, all cool folk, but we didn't find a meal. So I found the munkee at work, brought her foods and then took her to a bookstore, which bored her tears cuz it was a computer bookstore. Ah well.
It was a good day. Thank you, Devon!
-scratching my tummy, Ps/d
I picked up Devon (my coworker) and his wife and son around 1 pm. Devon's car was ready from the shop way out in Lowell (aka. the Ghetto of Outer Space). Then I followed him to the cinema in Lawrence (aka. the twin Barrio of Outer Space, only with nicer crap).
chaggalagirl insisted that I not see Finding Nemo without her. Since she had to work today, Devon took his son to see Nemo and I went with Devon's wife to see the remake of The Italian Job. Fifteen minutes of trailers. They didn't use the metric system in the flick, even when they were in Italy. Otherwise, I dug the movie.I hope I'm not giving anything away when I mention part of the movie involves Charlize Theron disguising herself as a cable tech. I didn't mind that. In fact, I liked realizing the "NetCom" truck was definitely a draped Calmcats truck. There you go.
What hit me, and only briefly, was that the bad guy calls the cable company to get a repair, and they instantly agree to send out a tech "between nine and three" two days out. No way. They'll send a tech, but the phone jock will talk the living shit out of the customer in troubleshooting to avoid a truck roll. You see, truck rolls are how the cable company loses money when they aren't upgrades or installs. So the tech would go through all sorts of annoying questions, like "just to confirm, the last four digits of your soash?" and "are you missing one channel or all of them?". I didn't expect to hear all of those questions in a flick, obviously. At least some hint of grief would've been nice.
Tracy (Devon's wife) said "hey, he didn't get all three" (meaning all three cable products -- only his cable modem and cable TV went out). I said "maybe we don't have the phone yet in his town. Also, a smart villain would have phone through a different company and DSL on that as a backup." He was smart enough to have all sorts of other redundant stuff.
What may have been more unlikely is having a female field tech. I have never seen a one in my time at the cable company here in overly progressive Massachusetts. Is it really such a burly job? I suspect a woman with a splicer in her hand would get the hired instantly, especially with the laws about discrimination. Also, guys would buy upgrades to digital packages from a woman in uniform very readily. Men are idiots (by which I mean men spend so long denying the emotional and irrational components of their mental faculties that they can easily be hijacked into actions simply by playing them against their fears of having emotional responses) and thus buy more crap. We sales critters thank them for it.
Why aren't there more women working in hardware jobs? Maybe there are but just not around here. I don't buy the idea that only men would put up with those conditions (the weather, the lifting, blah blah). We have women cops, right? Outside, goofy hours, playing up the surly card, blah blah. Where's the diff? Cop gets free donuts while a field tech gets free cable. I'd say there's a job with "divorced mother" written all over it. You're home by seven, you schmooze a little, and people don't tend to fuck with you. You have tools designed to give an impromptu briss to a man that gets out of line.
To review: I like women. I also like men. I like the color blue, too. I liked The Italian Job enough to say... ummm... the chase scene in the subway. There you go. Once again, Donald Sutherland does a movie in Venice and winds up dead. Thank you for calling Calmcats.
Then we went hunting for dinner. I met some of Devon's friends, all cool folk, but we didn't find a meal. So I found the munkee at work, brought her foods and then took her to a bookstore, which bored her tears cuz it was a computer bookstore. Ah well.
It was a good day. Thank you, Devon!
-scratching my tummy, Ps/d
