Yes, their original comment was from the name “Eat Me”, and was just a one-liner stating that I was a device used to introduce a stream of water into the human body, and introducing me to a rugby song. However, I felt extremely confident renaming it, since the comment was not only posted by the same email address they use for their business as posted on their eBay page (usedcarparts@comcast.net), but they have their very own IP block leased from AT&T WorldNet that this particular message came from. So I have two pieces of evidence that this message was, indeed, from them, not to mention it follows the writing style they use when they’re annoyed at someone.

So if you’re watching my blog now, Melissa O’Brien, George O’Brien, or Amanda Dehn (the three people listed on the billsmithautoparts eBay profile), know that your little stunt on my blog has gone noticed, and I’m bringing it back to people’s attention. Smart businesspeople know that anything said or done on the internet can and will come back to bite you. Your salvage yard may have been in operation since 1929 (as your website proclaims), but your internet sales image needs a little improvement.

First, I guess you need to know what equipment is needed. Of course if you don’t have your LG Fusic this entire set of steps is going to be fairly unnecessary in the first place. You’ll also need the data cables. If you have Windows Vista, your computer can automatically install the LG/Sprint drivers; otherwise, you will probably need to install the driver. Keep in mind the driver only works on Windows, so MacOS/*nix users are kinda out of luck. Since I don’t know whether I can link directly to the software on Sprint’s website, I’ll serve it if you need it.

1. Direct yourself to BitPim and download the latest copy. As of today, that is version 1.0.5, and does NOT fully support the LG LX550. However, it will detect the phone and allow us to use the functions we need, which is the important part.
2. If you have not already, this is the time to install the Sprint/LG drivers on your computer. If you have Windows Vista (and possibly XP, haven’t tested that one), just plug in your phone using the cable. It will automatically pull the needed drivers from Windows Update.
3. Once you start up BitPim after Windows recognizes your Fusic, it will detect “Other CDMA Phone”. Go to View -> Filesystem.
4. This is about the only function you can use. In the filesystem view, delete “/t9udp/t9udb_eng.dat” Once you have deleted this file, right-click on the directory view and hit “restart phone”. Your phone will now reboot with a cleaned T9 Dictionary

I hope this helps someone, somewhere, who has made the same mistakes I have with my phone’s dictionary. Note that this procedure will result in the loss of ALL of your custom directory entries.

The effect this should have is to GREATLY reduce the comment spams that are caught by Spam Karma, reduce (or completely eliminate) the bad URLs accessed and noted on my stats. Legitimate users will hopefully not feel the sting of bad 403 errors, but if you send me a message telling me who you are, what you were trying to do, and (roughly) what time it was, I can generally unblock you. I realize those who are being blocked will not be able to read this text from my website, but you will be able to read it on the many mirrors of my blog that update via RSS.

Note that this only represents a portion of my traffic. If the spammers keep harassing me, even with the new measures in place, I will continue to block entire countries. As it is I’m tempted to block most of the countries on two entire continents, those being Asia and Africa. They’re lucky I haven’t blocked them all out yet.

Out of the 20+ teams in our call center (which happens to be the best in the company), my team is #5 overall. Out of the 30+ agents on my team, I was #3 overall, and for two weeks I was #1 for the week.

My bonus for being awesome is 12.6% of my gross on the next two paychecks.

As Quagmire would say, “All right!”

Also, for those wondering, my QA average for the 1st quarter of 2008 is 94.16%. The average handle time of my QA’d calls is 10:16. Compare this to 2007 (I started in October of 2007), when I had an average of 92.73% and an average time (on these calls) of 14:51.

F* you, HyperQuality.

So now I have to explain myself. Well, on Friday I’m sitting there taking calls, and unbeknownst to me, I get QA listening to my call. It’s an authorization call, and a repeat call at that. Well, step 2 of troubleshooting is “Send a hit”, which is supposed to send any receivers on the account commands to reauthorize themselves. It takes about two seconds to send a hit using Dish Promo, one of the pieces of our account management software. However, the previous agent failed to send a hit, preferring to be lazy instead. They noticed the software on the receiver was outdated, so they had the customer update their software.

So, I’m working with the call, and the first thing I asked was the software version. Then I asked for DNASP information, the version of the firmware on their smart card. That’s about when I noticed, looking at previous notes, that no hit had been sent. So I sent the hit, and verified the receiver and smart card numbers, because at that point I didn’t trust the previous agent knew what they were doing, even though the receiver and smart card numbers were in their notes, I wanted to kill some time while the hit was sent.

Well, I did a hard reset, and it came back on like I knew it would. I made sure she could change channels, I knew it was resolved, and I also knew a 87-year-old woman didn’t know or care how it was fixed as long as it was fixed, which it was, so I didn’t bother to “summarize actions taken for resolution“.

Now I’ve got this 92% score which I KNOW I don’t deserve - I was quick, efficient, and arrived at the correct resolution following the steps laid out by engineering, unlike the previous agent. I solved this lady’s problem in 6:17 - with 1 minute being probing/verification, and a minute and a half waiting for her receiver to reset after unplugging it from the wall. I would call that efficient customer service, even though we made her repeat two pieces of information twice - Receiver CAID and Smart Card ID. Also, what really burns me is if I hadn’t have asked, they would have knocked me for not following the steps outlined in the CSCWeb, and probably for “not picking up the line of questioning appropriately”. HyperQuality is not supposed to be a Catch-22, it’s supposed to be a “you did this wrong” or “keep doing this shit, this is great” tool.

Funny thing? They tell us “well, they’ve done your job, so they know what they’re talking about”.

BS.

Now there’s a game I was good at.

However, please let me warn you first - some features are not yet set up. For instance, two of the sensors in my system - the rain gauge and the anemometer - have not yet been mounted outside. Therefore, the only data being broadcast to the internet is outdoor temperature and humidity.

The pages being generated by Virtual Weather Station are being kept here. I am also broadcasting my data live (via Rapid Fire feature) to Weather Underground, station KCOLITTL32. An important point to remember: the sensor was not located directly outside for some time - it was in an open window - so some of the stats may be skewed a little. Any data from 2030 onward should be OK though.

They’ve changed the goals for agents once again. Now, they’re adding all sorts of metrics into our stack ranking - AHT, Adherence, NPFs, Quality of Dispatch, QA scores among others. While this is good news for me - I do my job well - it is not good news for some of our agents who have been platinum by simply taking enough calls per hour, and have not been providing resolutions.

However, the real interesting bit about this station, and the reason I bought this one (other than the price) is because it has the ability to make a connection via built-in serial port to any PC. Using this unit in conjunction with Virtual Weather Station from Ambient Weather, I can automatically download data from the unit to my computer, perform graphing and trend spotting, and easily upload real-time data to the Internet - to my own site, as well as several others, the most popular of which is Weather Underground.

The moral of this story: stay tuned. I will soon be launching a new weather website into the mattfast1 network of sites, that shows real-time data from my weather system. Before that happens, though, I have to find a good way to mount the system - I decided not to purchase any mounting hardware with the station (since I already spent so much on the station, software, and cables), so I need to either get a mounting bracket, or some other way to mount it all. At least this way I’m gonna save a lot of money on shipping - for the tripod, shipping was over $17 - after spending another $110 on the entire tripod.