Heroes, Germans, Wombats! A Veritable Cornucopia of Stuff

Today's hero is Jancsó Ferenc, English speaking engineer at the Panasonic Service Centre (Kalotaseg u) here in Budapest...

Helpful - no make that very helpful - courteous, and above all, well... helpful! Give that man a raise!

I did have two dead camcorders - one, a Panasonic GS-120 remains dead owning to an influx of water from the great storm of last year ("Beyond Economic Repair", Internally Fubar'd, of just PFU!) despite his very best intent, but the other one, also a Panasonic now nearly 10 years old, has just been cured of its slight old age, slippy wheels and dodgy micro-switch and apparently now works just fine.

However, merely fulfilling one's job description isn't enough for real heroism: despite not-fixing the GS-120 I do now I have pictures of the water damage (Isn't it just fascinating? Shall I include one here? Yeah - then you too can share the thrill... later) and some information that might allow me to fix it myself one day... once I get it apart. In which case that repair will also eventually also be due to Mr Jancsó.

But, while we are on the topic of self-repair (c.f. Python, Monty "How to take your appendix out on the Piccadilly Line" The Brand New Monty Python Papperbok) just one piece of advice: beware of Japanese hoovers - they are not designed to be repaired and take phenomenal effort, great skill and tremendous courage (oh, let me see, what other heroic attributes does hoover repair require... honour, true grit, indefatigability, deep love of the Mother/Father land, etc. etc. etc.) even to open up - you do have to keep asking yourself

a) HTF did they put this *&^%$ together?
b) WTFTB if I pull any harder on this ^%"*&^ &%*(% !!!! cover? (WTFT break?)
c) WFI designed this (*$~# thing?

before you can even confront the problem itself. It took me two hours to get the last one open.

It is however an enlightening experience. Honestly. *

Hmmm.... hoovers.... reminds me of a rather unusual film I saw once... I think it was German (what a surprise!)

But, since we seem to have drifted from Japan to Germany, some handy hints...

BE CAREFUL! The German for hoover is "Staubsauger" - "dust sucker", definitely not to be confused with "Staus-säuger - which would be a "dust suckler". You will get very strange looks if you ask for the latter when you want the former (though if you do in fact want the latter I expect you're used to such things by now...)

Which brings me, and rather neatly I thought, to that handy piece of conversational German I acquired from Mr Bubley some years back, "Mein Beutelmaus hat verstopfung", or "My wombat is constipated".

Sadly, most Germans seem to have forgotten the word Beutelmaus, and know only "wombat", which is a shame; the etymology is quite nice...

If anyone knows of any equally pointless conversation gambits in other tongues, do let me know... (well, pointless for the audience - all the fun is in watching their faces as you announce in all seriousness the predicament of your marsupial companion animal...)

Ciao!

* If you would like to sign up for one of our occasional courses "Enlightenment Through The Repair of White & Brown Goods" please drop me a line. I also run workshops on

a) Capability Modelling with Alphabetti Spaghetti
b) Cosmology & Cheesecake: What THEY don't want you to know!
c) Impersonating a Giraffe (and other savannah animals)

and can whip up a course on almost anything given adequate incentive... money may mean nothing to me, but that doesn't mean I don't use it.

NB I think they must put something in my coffee today... this is unusually random stuff - even for me.

Steganos Safe 2007 & The Buddha Nature of Support Requests

Whilst it would be soooo easy just to rant (believe me when I say this is not yet a rant) I try hard not to. My thesaurus of abuse is extensive, but being abusive just pigeonholes you as an asswipe - and if you are going to be an asswipe then you can have much more fun with irony.

After notifying Steganos of what I thought was a bug, only to be told "that's impossible" I sent them more information (plenty), but the silence was, as usual deafening, so I decided to incentivise them, the incentive being that if they responded I would stop harassing them with irony.

And just because I liked it, here's what I said...

Dear Herr X

Day 1 of daily reminders.

You have enjoined me on more than one occasion to respond: "If you still experience any difficulties, please don´t hesitate to write back. Thank you."

Well, I am still experiencing difficulties, I have written back. But I am beginning to wonder why. What is the point if there isn't even an acknowledgement, let alone an answer?

When someone says in email "don't hesitate to write back" I rather assume they mean "write back" *by* email. Do these messages even reach your inbox? Will you eventually have to correct your template to say "Please return to the "Customer Support" (sic) portal should you have any further queries. This email address does not accept replies."? (In which case, why not send a "message undeliverable" notice?)

On further consideration I realise you didn't actually say you would read or respond to any replies, the fault is clearly mine for not attending to the precise wording. I expected a response before I realised this, now I wonder what you expected me to expect. "Don't hesitate to write back" perhaps meant "think long and hard about writing anything at all, think harder still before clicking the send button...".

Should I ask myself why I am bothering? Whether I now expect anything at all?

Aha! Is this perhaps the new philosophy of Zen support, in which the user achieves enlightenment concerning the paradoxical nature of the Steganos world of customer support and their own personal difficulties through the apparently endless repetition of pointless activities such as writing emails, until the great truth dawns that there is no world of customer support, that it is all an illusion, and that ultimately the answer to such questions as "Why doesn't this work? Why does that happen?" are discovered to be merely "Because."

I understand. It is not the answering that is important, it is the asking. Of course the failure of the UDF Safe I have demonstrated is impossible. It is the very essence of Possible and Impossible, Yes and No, True and False, Real and Unreal. Nothing is real, and the unreadable safe is merely an encryptic nod towards the unknowability of this world. There are no answers because there are no questions; there are no questions because they are not read. There is no Existence, merely Being... and being a Mere Customer is merely the first step on the path.

Before enlightenment: write email, wait. After enlightenment: write email, wait.

Why do I bother? Because.

Tomorrow: Pace Willard Quine: The Radical Untranslatability of Support Requests,