Syridian’s World

Being in Customer Service I frequently get ranted to by customers that are not happy about the service they are getting, or something that has gone wrong. Having been in their position I understand the need to rant to vent ones frustration… However when customers rant they seem to be more interested in telling you that “it’s” not “working”, telling you that “it’s” all your fault (”well not your fault personally” and “Oh I’m not blaming you I know you are just doing your job”), than actually telling you any information that can help you to solve their problem.

Good customer service people can turn this around rather quickly, making customer see that their rant isn’t really all that effective, and that if they can just see their way to providing a little more information it would help solve their problem so much quicker. I’m still having trouble with this myself, however I really don’t class myself as a Good Customer Service person. I’m just as likely to be one of those annoyed customers on the end of the line being frustrated and frustrating, not understanding that I’m not being very helpful.

So what was the purpose of this Blog post? To remind me, and well, anyone else that might actually be reading this, that no matter how mad we are when we contact customer service, it’s always going to be much better if we take the time to provide the correct information and be patient with the person trying to help us (yes, they are actually trying to help, they aren’t just their trying for fob customers off), as this will get the problem solved quicker. Once the problem is solved, by all means, send off a scathing email, or phone up and ask to speak to a manager and then rip into them, you do have a right to vent your anger. ;) Just bear in mind that venting your anger to the support person is not very likely to get you anywhere and chances are you are a very very small minority of the customer base. If they believe you to not be worth the time and cost involved to maintain, they have the right to refuse you service.

It’s all very well threatening to expose them as a bad customer service company, however chances are that their logs of of the customer service they have provided far are more extensive, and prove that they have gone to great extent to provide the support you are complaining about. Am I supporting large companies in their attempts to exploit customers? Not at all, I’m just saying that shit happens, and it’s how it’s dealt with that matters. Large companies realise that shit happens, if they didn’t, they wouldn’t need Customer Service departments. They spend large amounts of money supporting their customers, and realistically the percentage of customers that actually use the Customer Service facilities is usually quite small compared to the number of customers actually being serviced.

Basically… Give us a break, we try… ;) And the majority of what we deal with every day are those people who are always the first to complain about the slightest indiscretion or problem. There is probably only about 30% of people who contact us who have genuine problems.

Sip functionality for HTC Phones

This morning whilst working on boring ticket after boring ticket I thought I would take one of my 15 minute breaks by doing something interesting.  I found this OK Cupid Quiz which in 42 questions tries to pigeon hole you into where you fit in American politics.

You are a Social Liberal (71% permissive) and an… Economic Liberal (21% permissive) You are best described as a: Strong Democrat

The results were interesting… But handy to know if I ever get asked about my political views (not that I’m at all political).

2 weeks ago I decided that I was going to listen to the wise words of a laurel that I had pestered for advice and been given.  She had informed me that I should purchase a book called: “Viking Clothing” by Thor Ewing. So, taking this advice I dutily (well…  after about 8 months of procrastination that is..), off I went to search for this book on Ebay and find it I did….  and I added it to my cart and as you do when you are searching for books on Amazon, I thought I would have a look at all of the other suggestions…  And there was this magnificent book I had seen before, and it was affordable…  and it was well…  Available…  So Lo, I did loose myself to the intelligent marketing of those Amazon geeks, and added that to the cart too.

The second book was on my doorstep when I got home from work this morning, just sitting there tempting me to waste the morning reading it and not actually getting anything else done.  Yes…  I know, you are all wanting to know what this wonderful book is.  This book that I was drooling over it when a dear friend showed it to me…  This book that I was expecting to pay a small fortune for…   This book is “Woven into the Earth: Textile finds in Norse Greenland” by Else Ostergaard,  and it’s full af an amazing amount of detail on Norse Textile finds.  Thanks to my Norse friend for suggesting this one, it was worth the money, just looking through it in the last 30 minutes I have dispelled a large number of Myth’s about Norse/Viking clothing that kept meaning I was reluctant to do certain thins with making my garb.  Now I have a book that has wonderful pictures showing me the finds and I can see how things should be done. :)  Now I’m looking forward to finding the time to experiment more.

So my nice 45Lb Longbow has been loosing some of it’s kick lately and it’s kinda leading to me not enjoying shooting it as much and opting for the Recurve.  It’s time that I either did something about it or retired the bow and saved up for a new one.  So on the weekend I took the plung and took to the bow with a woodworkers scraper, taking off all of the previous varnish and taking it back to just pure wood.

From there I cut and layered on 2 layers of a nice heavy linen backing with outdoor aquadhere, this was then stretched along each of the upper and lower limbs and left for 4 days to harden.  on the 4th day I cut off the excess, strung the bow and ensure that it was still the same, then I left it until Yesterday before attempting to shoot it.

It’s well…  Smoother…  Seems to have taken out alot of the kick, but unfortunately it also seems to not really increased it’s poundage at all, which was the hope.  Further testing shall continue, as will actually testing the draw weight, but so far it doesn’t really seem to have made a huge improvement.  Might be time to make my own bow like Lorccan and Mercurio have.

It’s hard to believe that I have been blogging for over three years now, me…  someone who actually thought that blogging was well…  a waste of time.  I mean who ever would have thought that spilling dribble about an every day life could actually provide people with entertainment…  Not me.  Three years ago last month after being told of all the thereputic qualities of Blogging by a friend, I finally gave in and well…  realsed some tention.  I have included a link to the Official Welcome post for what started it all, including a few insane months of plotting to take over the world (yes, and of course telling an insane public about every detail), and some pretty weird rants about silly things that annoyed me at the time.

Welcome, to Bleep Dots and Nonsense

Of course there’s also poetry, stupidity, and lots of other time wasting drivel as well as some pretty OK Posts on learning about Pewter casting and some theories on the Medieval way of doing it.Anyway, just thought I would ponder the good old days, and celebrate my new blog theme, which may evolve over the next few weeks as it’s always fun tinkering.

Oh my! I have just found a wonderful new site and will be pestering our Kingdom Deputy Archery Marshal and a few other people for us to take advantage of it. The site is a Known World wide Archer score database, something which I was attempting to convince a friend to help me get going on a small basis for Politarchopolis. Whilst this site isn’t as extravagant as what we were planning, it will certainly do what I want it to do which is provide a number of leader board type score tables for a populace.

As such I have already contacted the powers that be, to convince them of the benefits of this site and offered my help in getting it running. We’ll see how this goes, as my last web project for Archery in Lochac failed dismally when the dodgy forum software that was the only software I could find that would allow integration with a mailing list failed, slowly corrupting the database over a few days, which then would not restore from generic backups as it required to be backed up utilising a special script provided. Stupidly I hadn’t gotten to that part of the software yet. When the site was rebuilt, it seemed that there was a lack of interest in getting it going again, so it fell into disuse.

Hopefully I can convince them to go ahead with this one based on the fact that someone else is cuurenly doing the job as scorekeeper and probably wants to keep that job. :)

Ok, so I have now watched all of Battlestar Galactica as well as the Pilot of the new prequel series Caprica.  I’m guessing that there is something missing in my memory of the first series of Battlestar…  Going to talk about it all in more detail below, so if you haven’t seen it and don’t want to know what’s going on, please don’t click more.

Ok, so where my memory starts to fade out is where the connection is between the Cylons that are Built on Caprica and then come back to destroy it 40 years later, and the Human and Centurian Cylons are… Continue Reading…

Syridian.com has existed for quite some time and will continue to do so, but in celebration of Australia and the fact that Syridian.com is actually an Aussie site, syridian.com will now redirect to syridian.id.au.  Whilst I’m going to try and remember to start giving people the .id.au address from now on, I know I’ll forget to unless I redirect the website to always remind me.

Yay, a friend of mine has decided that he will come along to the feast on the weekend.  This will be great as it will give me a chance to introduce him to a few friends who I have been meaning to introduce him to for ages.

Oh!  And I’m looking forward to getting off these damn evening shifts, as a mate of mine has finally moved down to Canberra and I can’t visit him cause I’m working when he’s not and visa versa.  Thats just damn annoying.  Though I do look forward to more normal shifts in the coming weeks.  I may even start a page off this blog that lets people know when I’m working.

There’s a forge?

Yes, there is a forge.  At the moment it exists in my backyard and it’s actually borrowed…  and well…  not mine.  But there are plans for a bigger and better one.  One that will be medieval in both look and technology, one that will enhance a medieval gathering and provide space to teach and experiment.    Hopefully if I build it, they will come.

AussieHQ Pty Ltd announced today that they have purchased brisbane based Hosting Shop and plan to merge the new customer base into the AussieHQ Hosting Brand.  This purchase increases AussieHQs Market Share and give them a boost to takling on the big four Hosting companies in Australia.

Check out the full story at http://www.hostingshop.com.au

So Festival is done and dusted (well without the dust for a second time), and the best time to make plans for next Festival is right after when the things you noticed that coul be better are still fresh in your mind. There were a few things this Festival that gave me ideas to improve things for next year.

Wulfcynn have asked me to camp with them next Festival however as they tend to turn up late on the Thursday and leave as soon as the Fighter Auction Tourney has finished I would really like to be more autonomouse. I’m thinking that not being in a food fund next year and feeding myself would be a much better solution. I’m also thinking that creating more of a viking camp envioronment around my tent such as making a small Viking campfire, researching Viking torches and other Viking cooking equipment.

So, the plan starts to take shape for next Festival (or at least work towards)…

• Finish the Viking A-Frame Tent
• Create a Viking Travelling Campfire
• Create a Viking Cauldron
• Research Viking cooking methods
• Put the whole lot together along with other bits and pieces to create a small Viking encampment.
• Oh…  And make more Garb.

Ahhh  Plans… they are easy when you don’t stick to them.

Syridian.com has recently expanded into the world of Webhosting. For the small sum of $120 We will offer you 2 years of hosting as well as the Domain name of your choice* (if available).

Your package includes:

• Support to get your website hosted and setup on our servers.
• Semi-regular backups.
• Semi-regular status checks for zero-maintenance sites
• Unlimited Email Addresses
• PHP5 and MySQL5 Sites Supported
• cPanel access to your own hosting.
• 3 Parked Domains
• 3 Add-on Domains
• Fantastico Easy web software installs.
• Set and forget for 2 years.

If you are interested in this package deal then contact Syridian.

* There are some restrictions on some domain names which you will need to meet in order to register the domain name of your choice.

A View from Mt Painter towards Civic

Last night I went for a walk that I have been promising myself for ages, and realistically I really need to be doing every second day at least.  I have been putting it off for ages, saying to my housemate that I’ll get around to it…  and never really getting around to it until I finally did it last night.

Stupidly I thought that the quickest way up a mountain was straight up the side…  I learnt the hard way that they put longer windy paths to the top of these things for a reason.  I believe this walk took me about an hour longer than it needed to as extremely unfit little me had to stop many times on the way up the mountain to catch my breath and weeze for a bit…  The view from the top was worthwhile though.

I may have to concider doing more of these walks, as since I left my last job I have put on further weight, and have rarely done the walks that I was enjoying in Sydney and after hours at the other job.

Lately life has been getting in the way of all the fun things I have been wanting to do and having been promissing other that I would do.  Such things as Trinkets for valuable allies or tokens for trade, not to mention my desire to write rubbish in here every now and then.  Ahhh  Such is life, and as such this post like others before it will be just a general one.

Pewtery goodness is still happening, and lately whilst I have not had as much time as I would like I have created a nice Double Sided token for a friend and used s0ome techniques I have used before but not really described to increase the detail whilst also decreasing the time they took to clean up.  These tokens had a small ring on top of them to allow a string or small chain through, as the raw version of this was rather rough I used a pair of pliers to press the rough shape into a round shape and allow the teeth of the pliers to bite in leaving a nice knurled finish.  (Stay tuned for Photo’s next week.)

Last weekend I went for a drive which turned out a little longer than I thought because of my bad planning and lack of fore-thought.  I headed down to Ballarat to join the members of Stormhold, Arrowsreach and Cairnfel in their annual Survey expedition.  Walking into the event I was amazed but nut surprized at the authentic feel and beauty of the site.  With a small pine forrest seperating alot of the mundanities from the campsite, there was both lots of natural shade and a feel that we were away from everything.  The food was good and the company great, I meet some old friends and made some new ones, all in all a fantastic weekend.  I really enjoyed the event and wish to thank the hosts and organisers Ava, Hrothgar, Eleanor, Hanbal and all the others that helped.  Well done indeed.

And now I must get back to my latest project, one which I much keep quiet until after Canterbury Fair (which I won’t be attending, but which I have been working hard to get stuff ready for.  Til next time, take a huge bite out of life, before life gets a chance to take a huge bite out of you. ;)

P.S. Oh, BTW, the recent change in theme is because I updated the Wordpress software on my site and decided it was also time for a change of look…   Hope you all like it, allong with my fun little plugin hack…  I may even attempt more of those plugin hacks to intergrate this site more with Facebook.

So there’s this smart guy…  and he has a brilliant idea for marketing The Great Barrier Reef to the world.  So this guy sets up this really cool website that looks great, works well, and has this huge appeal, as it’s basically a job that pays $300K per year for a 6 month contract for an island care taker…  Oh…  btw, you know these Island things?  They pretty much take care of them selves…  in fact they have been doing that for millions of years.

One of the conditions of the job I believe is that you have to do quality control of the islands facilities…  So there you are, in your nice home, with spectacular views and all of the islands facilities at your disposal and an open mandate to use it all…  Does this really sound like work?  Doesn’t this “Job” just sound ideal?  Isn’t it just too good to be true?  Well of course it is.  It’s the brainchild of an advertising guy and is really just a competition designed to increase exposure of the Great Barrier Reef to the rest of the world.

From rumours I have heard, it’s working too.  The website it self was inundated with so many people trying to get a peek that for the first 3 days since it’s release the site was frequently not displaying.  The webhosting company responsible had to scramble into a frenzy of deploying more and more hardware just to keep up with the demand.  What started off as one server sharing multiple sites, expanded rapidly into multiple servers hosting one site.  It seems they have managed to finally catch up, as the site is finally stable and displaying well.

So, Do you want a great job?  it’s only 6 months, but just take a look, it’s the experience of a lifetime.

http://islandreefjob.com

I’m always a fan of people having fun, specially when they do it well and entertain us in the process.  Chad, Matt and Rob are a group of 3 guys that like to entertain with pranks and video hi-jinx.  This video is their most highly shown video with over 1.6 million views on You Tube, however some of their other stuff is good too.  Check out their other videos such as Chad takes the boys to the Zoo to film some animals.

My feedback here is just one man’s opinion, so please don’t take it to heart, or take it as me having a go, it’s just a point of view.  I haven’t fought a War since last Spring War and I doubt I’ll be fighting this one.  That’s not to say that I’m not interested in it at all any more…  Just that there are a number of factors that have dulled my interest in it to the point that it’s not as much fun any more, some of these are purely personal reasons.

• The Rules changes meant that having only just geared up for CA minimum requirements, I was then in need of changing and adding to my gear again.  This isn’t really a big issue, as I enjoy armouring but finding the time is something I have difficulty with and the whole having just finished and then needing to upgrade it all was well…  Annoying.
• I’m inherently lazy…  And the enjoyment factor compared to the amount of work when it comes to collecting arrows, checking them, maintaining them, maintaining armour, upgrading armour to the new standards…  Just made the work/fun ratio tip the balance for me.  I’m now gearing up to authorise as a Heavy in an attempt to see if this is more fun.
• Last years Spring War there was an incident that really made me not want to play anymore.  On the afternoon of the Saturday, the heavys had a few heavy’s only senarios while the archers collected and inspected arrows.  When the archers were finished they watched a couple more heavys only senarios, waiting patiently for their turn to play, then they started shouting to the marshals that they were ready to play…  but still more and more heavy’s senarios were plays without concideration for the archers.  Now, admittantly the archers should have all just trudged down and joined in, so yes, it was partly our fault, but the whole incident just proved to me that there are a significant number of fighters in Lochac that don’t actually want the archers on the field.  I haven’t fought CA since…  And I haven’t really felt enthusiastic enough to want to since then either.

These reasons are my own, and I certainly don’t speak from any great authority on the matter.  I’m just someone who fought for a year, and hasn’t bothered since.  And a year is all it was…  Spring War 2006 was when I was Authorised, and Spring War 2007 was when I last fought.  I’m not say I will never fight as an Archer again, or that I even feel that strongly about it.  All I’m saying is that these factors have influenced my decision to take a break.  When I get interested enough again I might actually make an effort to ignore these reasons, but as it stands these are the reasons I cite as being why I just couldn’t be bothered fighting anymore.

I don’t usually do this kind of stuff… Cross-posting random stuff from the internet… But a friend IM’d me this this morning and well, apart from the creepy almost but not quite eerie music, it’s actually quite intriguing. Another step on the way to living forever.

Rat Brain Robot Removed due to crappy MySpace Autoplay, follow the link if you want to see it.

Won’t be long before the military are putting dead solders brains into robotic bodies, and getting them to police the neighbourhood. ;)