I think, looking over it, that indeed the Livingston tech's response
was appropriate. I am not really an idiot, though I sometimes play
one on mailing lists. I'm actually rather good at troubleshooting.
So why did the "appropriate response" result in such anger? I
suppose, after the hour or so I put into the problem (dealing with the
customer two or three times, poking around in our logs to make sure
there was nothing obvious, forwarding it to Livingston support with a
fairly detailed explanation), the response I got back looked like I
was given perhaps 15 seconds of consideration.
We're "scientists" and "engineers", and we're supposed to leave our
human psychology behind and communicate directly through pure
information transfer or something. But it doesn't always work that
way. As the ratio of good stuff to bad stuff in the ISP industry, and
more generally in the computer industry, goes down, some of us are
getting really stressed out. And we're not getting our regular dose
of Newreleasulin.
I only wish I were a Yahoo; I'd be relaxing on a beach somewhere.
Er.. no, that's not me. I'd be catching up on my reading somewhere.
Anyway, I said plenty of things that were unnecessarily mean, and I'm
sorry to have insulted Mr. Haug. He is certainly not to blame for any
of the things that are currently bothering me about Livingston, and it
was entirely wrong to have put it on him. Steve, if you're ever on
Long Island, stop by.. I owe you a beer. Hell, that goes for anyone
at Livingston.
-- Christopher Masto Director of Operations NetMonger Communications chris@netmonger.net info@netmonger.net http://www.netmonger.net[Bill Gates] definitely scares me. He embodies the very cultural and economic forces that have transformed American mass media from the freest and most diverse in the world to among the most cautious, greedy, and useless. - JON KATZ, Hotwired - To unsubscribe, email 'majordomo@livingston.com' with 'unsubscribe portmaster-users' in the body of the message. Searchable list archive: <URL:http://www.livingston.com/Tech/archive/>