My 360 broke down about 2 and a half months ago. It’s one of the first ones that came out, and they all have a known problem - something about a cheap solder used on the heat sink, or whatever. I called up their support and they were going to send me a box to ship mine to them and replace my xbox with a nice new one. So, that’s good. But, two months and a half later, I still have a broken xbox. I’ve been calling over that period.  They have an automatic phone system that checks their records, and it’s been insisting my xbox … box … will be arriving in the next 3-5 days. Finally, I called up again and got a really interesting support guy. So, this is about people like him.

So, I talked to Scott about my problem. Immediately, he sees in my account that it’s been 2.5 months since I’ve called and they still haven’t sent the package. So, instead of just re-issuing the order, now we get to spend 30 minutes going through the problem again. I say that I’m experiencing the “red ring of death”, which is the common description of the Xbox failing. It’s called that due to a bunch of LEDs that light up, in a ring. But, Scott feels compelled to tell me that it’s actually not a ring. “It’s actually some LEDs, and they’re built that way because they can represent a large number of hardware problems by which of them go on. 4 solid LEDs in a circle represent a serious hardware failure“. Great. So, we’re on the same page, I guess. Here’s the thing - why do these people feel the need to “educate” everyone? What I’m calling for is to get my machine fixed. I don’t mind some small talk - I’m not in a rush to get off the phone, but I don’t need a 10 minute dissertation on the awesomeness of xbox HW error codes.

At this point, Scott starts to get confused about what’s going on. He’s trying to fill out my address, but the application won’t take my street address. He goes and talks to someone else, and has to reboot his machine. He goes on a rant about updates to their machines which haven’t gone well. So, I figure I’ll participate in the discussion. I tell him how dealing with some customers, I know how sometimes you’ll go through all these steps that usually solve a problem and all these other things will go wrong - and it can all be very insane sometimes. You know - just trying to relate. “Actually, I’m quite good at quickly finding out exactly what’s wrong with the customer’s systems and finding that exact problem that they have, and getting them off the phones quickly.” Right.

Scott seems like he’s having a bit of a rough night, so I ask him where I’m calling. You know, a little chit-chat. “Actually, for security purposes, I’m not allowed to answer that question.” Okay. Are you in the States? “No. Actually I’m in the East Coast.” …. great. I guess now I’ll have to cancel that missle strike. Alright, so I guess small talk is limited to ridiculous lectures. And as if to prove this, he starts to tell me that using a UPS or surge protector with the 360 actually voids the warranty due to the 3 surge protectors that are in the whole power supply thing, and that they require a 30 amp service which can only provided by a wall socket, and the surge protectors don’t give that much, which slowly starves the system of power ….. well, I have to tell you all this - I’ve been told not to keep this kind stuff bottled up.

At long last, we make it to the point in the call where Scott is going to give me the summary. Then he says “Well, this is weird. The last person has it on here that you get a free game. But that’s not normal, so I’m going to go ahead and remove that.” Great. Thanks, Scott. “Instead, I’m going to give you a month of xbox live.” Great, Scott. Then he starts talking about how great xbox live is, so I interrupt to tell him I’ve been on it for a year. And so, he explains to me that he isn’t on it, although he would like to be on it, but his landlord doesn’t want to split the cost for the land line and he and his wife don’t want to pay for the whole thing, and so he’s not sure if he’ll be able ….. yeah, that went on for awhile.

At this point, I think I can write a pretty convincing novel about dear Scott. What motivates him, his likes and dislikes, how he’s moving to a day shift this week because he’s tired of not being able to go to the bars at night, and a host of other fantastic details. But, alas, it’s time for Scott and I to stop talking. He suggests that I call back during the week to talk to a supervisor because he thinks that the 2.5 months is crazy and I should be able to get a free game or something. You know, like I already had before he took it off my records. So, he volunteers to add a note about all this to my account, and I agreed.

And that’s when I found out that Scott still types with one finger. “….cus..to..mer ……has….. re..que..st…ed…… x…box……. live…..” - and so forth. If it’s not too blunt, I think people that still type with one finger should be shot. Especially those who dictate the whole thing as they type. And then Scott started to speak again: “So, what I just wrote down was …” - reading back to me what he had just typed, so that I knew what was in the record. I guess that’s in case I couldn’t understand the ridiculously slow way he talked while typing. It was particularly awesome how he corrected about 5 typos that he had made. I’m not sure how you can make typos when you type with one finger, but whatever.

And so, that ends the stupidest support call ever. What’s awesome is that I should be getting this new box (to ship my broken one back to them in) on Thursday or Friday. I’ll actually be in Whitehorse, so I’m sure this will all continue in wonderful hilarity.

A few weeks ago, I blasted through Terry Pratchett’s “Death” novels. These are 5 books, which go in this order: Mort, Reaper Man, Soul Music, Hogfather, and Thief of Time.

As with his other books, these are fantastically witty and fun to read. I liked this series better than the Rincewind series, mostly because the characters were so different from book to book - with the exception being Death, of course. The writing style is great because as Pratchett is telling his stories, he uses sarcasm and puns to great effect - making light of just about anything his stories touch on. For example, you have an evil genius who’s going to destroy the world? That means you need a hunch-backed assistant named Igor, of course. And you just know that lightning will be involved.

In this series, Pratchett really starts to use some interesting characters. For example, the Tooth Fairy, Time, Father Christmas and Death - these are really interesting characters to have. Oh, and the 5 horsemen of the apocalypse. Yeah, I know there’s only supposed to be 4.

The stories start out with Death getting a little bored about shuffling people off into the afterlife for all time. He hires an apprentice and forgets about his world for awhile. It seems all these books involve the impending doom of the world, or the universe, or existence as a whole. This starts out in fine fashion as the apprentice refuses to kill someone because he thinks she’s pretty and thus messes up … well, everything. Needless to say, hilarity ensues.

In Reaper Man, Death gets fired. And so he takes up a job as a farm-hand to work away his life. This book introduces Susan, who is Death’s grand-daughter, who’s the heroine of the book. You also get to read about Death taking on a combine in a harvesting competition. Soul music is a great book about Rock and Roll, and how music moves us in general.

The Hogfather is really a great parody of Father Christmas, and is really about an assassin being hired to kill off the Jolly Red Dude. The last book of the series is probably my favorite. This one involves time - and you get to read about some monks who specialize in manipulating time and space. Personally, I loved it. Time ninjas rock. It also deals with chocolate, and how weird our bodies are ’cause they really mostly act on their own. Oh yeah, and the kickass Yeti’s which are the only animals who have managed to evolve with an ability to manipulate time - so that they can effectively save points in their lives that they want to make sure they get back to - and if they die after that, then they just show up again where they last saved.

Anyway - the point here isn’t so much the details of the plot-lines. If you want to read about them, go right ahead on wikipedia. But what I wanted to share is that these books are a lot of fun and really worth the time to read. They’re fun, well written, interesting, and very different.

I’d love to see someone take these books and make them into a serious movie. Not like they’ve done with the Bourne movies, more like what they did with LOTR. I mean, if it was well done, I think these books would make excellent movies. The problem with them is that there is quite a bit of internal monologues that would need to be explained. But hey, I would have said something as complicated as Tolkien’s stuff couldn’t have been done either. Plus, did I mention there were time ninja’s? I mean - come on - what more do you need?!