Yes, I realize that I published an update to an older article with the update dated December 1, 2010 (which is in the future, if you haven’t noticed). I released it early because I had time to write the article and released it right after I finished writing it, and I don’t feel like unreleasing it. If it makes you feel any better, you can pretend that it’s a special exclusive preview. Even though the final version will be exactly the same.

In other news, I talked with a Dell customer service representative earlier today about a problem I’ve been having with the connectivity between my motherboard and my laptop’s screen. I ended up getting a resolution to my problem, but the chat process was an interesting experience.

At first, I thought that she was the slowest typer I’ve ever seen – it took about half a minute for her to type “Alright.” Then, a few minutes later, she started sending me massive paragraphs of text within a few seconds of typing. I realized that she was probably using canned responses, but that didn’t explain why it took her so long to type “Alright,” because you would assume that they would add a common response like “Alright” to the list of canned responses.

Then I realized that she probably was using canned responses for “Alright,” but couldn’t find it in the list quickly enough and ended up spending more time looking for it than it would have taken her to just type it.

Sometimes I wonder how they even got their job as a support staff representative.

Picture of the Day

Keep Pizza Flat

Because we all know how frequent it is for people to transport their pizzas while holding them sideways.

(via Flickr @ http://flic.kr/p/8XDq3B)