Author: kathleen

I have had two very different tech support experiences this week.  Yesterday I was canceling an account for a client.  I had to contact the company via a phone number, and I could hear at least three different people talking to customers in the background.  I had to call three times – though I will give that one called me back – to get help.  I spent over 45 minutes on the phone but finally got the account cancelled – I hope, the client had to respond to an email.

Today, I contacted Microsoft Billing, they had charged me twice – my fault – for an app.  I was able to get to their support via online chat and they refunded the money in less than 5 minutes.

The second way is the way to do tech support.  Of course, the first company makes it very difficult to cancel your account.

I have sold several laptops, and was trying to decide what I wanted to stick with.  II;’ve decided to keep my Yoga but upgrade its memory.  I have tried a new laptop, not so much and was thinking about a new desktop, but can’t find what I want at a price I want to spend.

I have decided to sell my Surface RT, but cant decide which Surface I want.  I have a Surface Pro 128 gig I love, bought it yesterday but wasn’t sure how it would be out and about.  It works, though a tad heavier and thicker and can do so much more than the RT.

It is wicked fast and I am trying to figure if $400 is worth it for faster, longer battery life and a few more pixels.  Not thinking so.

First, if I initiate contact through your website – DON’T CALL ME BACK unless I tell you to do.  Schedule the appointment through email.

Confirm the appointment in the morning.  If we scheduled on the phone, do it on the phone, if we used email, do it on email.

Let me know early in the window if the tech is going to run late.  You can call during the window.

But most of all, if you schedule from 11:00 – 2:00, don’t decide that 2-6 is fine with me without contacting me.

I hate doing 8:00 – 11:00 appointments because I like doing the gym thing first.

Went to the Dallas ASP.net user group last night for the second time and had fun. Nerd fun.

@chrislove talked about his book and SPA, something I am interested in. He is a good speaker, and in the Dallas area for several events. Go if you have the chance.

They had dinner and an after party.

I was going to get a laptop.  I keep trying to stay away from the Surface 2 Pro.   Most of the time, my Surface RT 2 does what I need when I'm out and about and it fits in my "Mary Poppins" bag.

Now I'm leaning towards a desktop — why?  I can remote into any of my computers just fine with the Surface.

I know I want 8 gig, just don't know if I want Dell or Lenovo.  Won't have to worry about odd wireless cards that way.

Will probably have three computers set up before I’m done.

I went to http://www.pchell.com/support/useremotedesktoptoaccessmultiplecomputers.shtml

to figure out most of it.  But I couldn’t figure out the firewall settings until I went here:

http://windows8.iyogi.com/8-1-blue/change-firewall-settings.html

Why?  I go out and about with my Surface RT and it can’t run programs.  Every once in a while I want to do something that Surface can’t.  Thus, I remote in, sort of what Scott Hanselman talked about here:

http://www.hanselman.com/blog/UsingASurface2RTARMToGetActualWorkDoneRemoteDesktopVisualStudioAzure.aspx

I’ve done the Azure thing too, but right now it’s cheaper to use my own machines.

I’m getting used to it though.  My 19” monitor – several years old went out, and I bought a new one at Office Depot.  They had a 21” monitor for $119.99 but when I took the tag up to the cashier, he brought out a 23” monitor and said they were out of the 21”.

So I took it home (oh, and he charged me $119.99).

And I also discovered I didn’t quite have things back in my office – I actually knew I hadn’t bothered to put speakers on my 2nd PC upstairs – I know – some of you guys do a double or triple setup with one PC, but I prefer to work with Sygery and use multiple computers with my own clouds. 

Had a Windows Home Server for years, acquired a Buffalo server.  The WHS died, but I replaced it with a Iomega device, I keep expecting it to fail.  I recently got a Western Digital MyCloud which plays very nicely with my mobile devices.

Anyway, I got my speakers hooked up to the second PC again.

So tonight I was reading and following the Python Developers Guide and it said to install Sphinx.  I clicked on the link to Sphinx and it was down.

So then I went to #pyladies for help and someone told me to manually install it. 

Couldn’t get that to work so someone else came and said that all I had to do was to type in:

pip install Sphinx

It worked.

Seems there is a whole list of stuff at https://pypi.python.org/simple/ that you can install that way.  Better formatted at https://pypi.python.org/pypi

I brought home a really nice computer from BestBuy.  A Lenovo.   Only problem is that the wireless sucks.

I’m on wired and it is working very well.  Very fast computer.

I’m switching over to wireless, and we’ll see.

It’s a Lenovo U530, has 8gig of ram and 1T of hybrid drive.

And yes, that means the old computer went up on Ebay.