Just some random thoughts and musing - smh
Disclaimer: Everything expressed on this page is just my thoughts and interpretation of OMG / SMH moments. Any similarity to you is purely coincidental and unintentional.
Not sure anyone remember the Holiday Inn commercial about a guy trying to perform a surgery because he stayed at the Holiday Inn? Here’s a link to a youtube video –> I stayed at the Holiday Inn
I stayed at Holiday Inn Moment #1 - I am qualified moment!
Many, many , many years ago, I was customizing an accounting system making edits to the code for my business partner who wanted customization. As most of you know, it is never an easy task no matter how “simple” a request may seems to the requestor. Well after a some time, the partner approached me and said
“Why don’t you give me the code and I will do it myself! I took a programming class in college!”
My thought then: ” I must be dumb, it took me 4 years to get my computer science degree and this accounting major partner just needed a programming class to be able to do what I was trying to do!”
I stayed at the Holiday Inn Moment # 2 - I know what I am doing
Back in the days when Dell was just starting to be a household name, I ran a computer shop building personal computer for home users and also setting networking systems for small businesses. One day a customer called and said that the power supply on his computer was bad and since it was under warranty, I told him to bring it to the shop and I would replace it. He brought in and a new power supply was put in. The PC was power up in front of him and verified that it booted up. Handed it back to him and about 20 minutes later he called and was very upset that I gave him a bad power supply again. I asked what does he mean by that? He mentioned that he brought the computer back to his office, plugged it in and there’s no power!! I was puzzled as it worked in the shop and he saw it too. So I told him to plug it into another outlet. He said there isn’t another outlet closed by. He insisted that it was the power supply and he knows because he has a engineering degree. So I told him I will bring a brand new working power supply to his office to replace it right away. When I reached his office, I asked if he had an extension cord that I could borrow. Told him I wanted to make sure it wasn’t a bad wall outlet that he has. Lo and behold, as it turned out connecting to another outlet via the extension cord, his computer was able to boot up! Needless to say, I was glad it wasn’t a bad power supply and he was happy!
Note1: I had many occasions during my time running the computer shop where I have had people tell me they know what they are doing because:
- I am a computer science major, so I know
- I am an engineer, I know what I am doing
- I am a programmer, I know I am right.
Fool me once shame on you, Fool twice shame on me
Note2: And boy have I been scammed many times over, just because they think computer those days are expensive and everyone assume the owners are rich and deserved to be scammed. I am partly to be blamed because of my naivety and can’t say no nature. Just a point of reference, regular leaded gas cost $1 a gallon and most of the time I barely have enough change to put in a gallon of gas to get me home. Please note that all these happened back in the days where internet was still in its infancy. So here are the top “I’ve been scammed” list:
- A guy drove up in a security squad car and wrote me a bad check – On me!
- A couple came to the shop and asked if they can pay in installment. They mentioned that they have bad credit. Well, I told them, everyone deserved a second chance and I agree on the installment. Guess what? I got the 1st and 2nd payments and have not heard from them.
- Another guy drove up in a Ferrari and claim to own a own a trucking line. Ordered a $6K system plus 4 smaller workstations. Refused to pay and still tried to scammed for more parts. Best part of this was, he was refer by his friend who is an attorney client of the shop!! – This is on me 2
- Guy ordered $1300 in parts over the phone for and came by to pick up. Paid with 3 Money Order from 7-11. We checked, rechecked, triple checked the money order and it look legit. The max on a money was $500. We deposited in our bank and 2 months later, our bank account was out $1294. Checked with the bank and was told the money orders were registered in the system as $2 each. So we were paid $6 for a $1300. – I think this is on the money order issuer for letting someone modified their system.
- Oh this one still make me mad to this day. Those days, I was getting call from representative of Police/Sheriff/Firemen organization. During one of those calls I received, I finally relented and agree to donate $75. They send a UPS guy over the same evening to pick up the check. The next day got another call from this guy and said he is sending ups to pick up my check. Told him it was picked up yesterday and he said that was not for him. I said sorry, I am not cutting another check. He was upset that I reneged on my pledge. At this point, I felt that these people are scammers more than representing the Police organization! Well month later, looking at our bank statement, there was an e-check for $150 made out to one of those organization that I did not authorized! Talk to the bank and they said there’s nothing they can do.
You may be asking why didn’t I involve the law enforcement? Well, I was young and inexperienced. I was struggling to make ends meet and trying to put each incident past me if there wasn’t anything I could do about it when my time would be put to better use trying to move on. I notched these as life lessons. When you are down, you get trampled on more often than not. But one thing I am glad I did was never gave up when facing these adversities, it will toughen you up.
When someone said what i need is simple - run!
Fresh out of college, I took a job as a sale consultant for a startup software company. Being young, eager, and stupid, I was trying to close my first sale contract alone and in one of the requirement meetings with the client, the client said ” I have accounting background, my needs are simple. I just need the software to do standard accounting functions! That’s my requirement”. So off i went to meet with the developer with that simple requirement! MISTAKES # 1.
Time to sign the contract – off i went to get the contract signed and the owner had his accounting manager meet with me to go over what the deliverables are. He agreed with everything and requested I added just one more little requirement – ” Can you add until we are satisfied!” MISTAKES #2.
Well as you guess by now – I created a big messed. In one of the demo sessions with the accounting software, the client complained that what he wants is a simple accounting software, and this is not what he wanted!
Another case in point
Back in the cash register days where POS systems are rare and very very expensive, my wife asked me to create one for her Japanese restaurant. Of course I was excited as that was what I was in the process of developing. In fact, I had a work in progress system that I could demo for her and get her feedback. Well, she was “too busy” to review and said to have everything that was needed for a restaurant POS system! So, I chucked along during my free nights and weekend and was 80 % completed and I needed her to review in order to proceed. Reluctantly, she sat down and her first comments was, “Why did you do it this way, it doesn’t make sense”. I asked her what she had in mind and she said all she knows is this was not what she had in mind and I had to figure it out myself and come up with a simple POS system she can use.
To be honest, beside those missing fancy icons and graphics, which wasn’t my forte, it was a very functional system that would work in majority of the small to medium restaurants with just a little customization. I am good with app design and coding, but can’t draw a crooked line.
Who is teaching who? - It's in the optics
In one of company I worked at, we had a very small IT team consisting of 1 Manager, 1 system analyst, and 1 programming analyst. Remember this was a long time ago before the Software Engineer title or Software developer are a thing. If you remember Norvell networking and programmers, you will know what i mean. Due to my background and work experience, I was given the choice of either being a System Analyst or a Programmer Analyst position with the company. I picked Programmer Analyst because I just love writing codes. While we were still looking for a System Analyst candidate, I was pulling double duties doing my primary duty as well as in house tech support for everything computer.After several months, we finally filled the System Analyst position with someone who came fully loaded to all kind of credential ( MBA, Novell certification, MS A+ certification etc). Our CFO was impressed, and I am glad to have another colleague on the team to help out. Long story short, your credential can get you in the door, but you need more than that to get through your work day! Just an fyi – I have no credential other than my BS diploma. I have comtemplate taking the Novell networking certification and the MS A+ but taking tests are not my thing mainly because I am afraid to bomb it! But what I lacked in certifications, i more than made up for it with tons on hands-on, in the trenches experience. Back in those days, I was able to diagnose an issue with a PC pretty accurately and differentiate between a software related issue from a hardware related issue.
Day 1 on the job, he was tasked with updating the firmware on the company router. He managed to bring the entire company internet and network on its knee. We marked this as someone just having a bad day at work. It happens to the best of us, no biggy! I offered him my assistance whenever he needed help as we are on the same team. In the days and weeks ahead, Mr SA (name withheld) would constantly approached me with how-to questions and I gladly answered. After a while I start noticing a certain traits in our interactions: I am pretty much a soft spoken kind of guy with a soft and low voice. (the wife constantly complained that I don’t speak loud enough to be heard!) and Mr SA has a pretty loud voice. So a typical conversation would go like below:
Mr. SA: Hey Eric, how do you fix this issue?
Me: This is what you do to fix the issue. (voice can’t be heard past the doorway)
Mr. SA: Yes this is what you do to fix the issue. (voice can be heard in the hallway)
I noticed that every time I told Mr. SA how to fix a particular issue, he would repeat exactly what I said but his tone would come across as him telling me how to fix that issue, if someone were to only hear the last part of the conversation, they would think that he was teaching me how to do things. I don’t care for claiming credit but it infuriate me when someone use it to benefit themselves.
One morning, my manager called me and mentioned that if Mr. SA asked me for help with a technical question, to not respond as Mr. SA probational period is up and my manager needs to assess his performance. Sure enough a few minutes later, Mr. SA stop by my desk and casually mentioned a problem and asked how I would approached it. Taking my manager request, I politely told him I had a dateline to meet and can’t help him. So he just sat there thinking out loud and rumble off the possible causes and potential solutions (all were wrong) and after a while, he started to become irritating and I just told me the answer. Of course, that didn’t go well with my manager when he approached me later and asked why I helped Mr. SA. I tried to denied it, but he said there is no way he could have come up with the answer if I hadn’t help him.
A Certified <fill in the blank >
For the duration of my tenure there, I was getting more and more calls daily for technical support from everyone in the office to the point where someone finally told me that words are getting out that, most users will only allow me to touch their computers and not Mr. SA. I am not tooting my horn here. From that point on, when I met a “certified” PC technician, it just tell me this person passed a test. Certified doesn’t equate to qualified in some field.
I was at an automotive company and had a high end PC that has a SCSI hard drive with a physical capacity of 120GB but due to operating system 16bit limitation, you can only get half the total capacity unless you use the SCSI controller BIOS to do the partitioninng and I had 2 partition (C: and D:). So my hard drive crashed and had it replaced my the IT technician. He came in and replace it and when he left, I checked and he had only partition it for a C drive. Not wanting to break protocal, I ran after him and told him that he can used the SCSI BIOS to get me the second partition. He looked at me and then pulled out his Microsoft A+ Certification card and ask me if I know what that is? He left after that. Oh well, it was about a 5 minutes task and I decided to do it myself even though I wasn’t Microsoft A+ Certified. I ran into several A+ certified technicians back in those days, a few were friends. But I had since learned practical experiences trumped a piece of paper in some cases. Don’t get me wrong, there are professional fields where that piece of paper trumped all!
To be honest, I cannot pass a test to save my life. It just seem like when I am faced with multiple choice options, I tended to over analyzed and would pick the wrong answers even though I had originally selected the correct answers. A simple straight forward question may end up with me trying to figure out if this was a trick question or where the questioner was going with the question.
Who needs enemies when you have friends like:
Mr M
So who needs friends when you have wonderful guys like this “friend” helping out at the shop. This “friend”, call him Mr. M, was helping out at the shop at the request of a silent partner. I had leased a minivan for the shop and part of the lease payment was subsidize by the business. It was my main mode of transportation as I need it to pick supplies and for delivery. My Mitsubishi Eclipse was parked at home. One day, Mr M called and asked me to pick him up as his car had broken down. So I did. Next he asked to borrow my Eclipse, I agreed thinking it was only for a couple of weeks till his car is fix. Weeks turned to months and his car had not been fixed. Then one day, Mr M called asking for a ride again! I asked where’s my Eclipse? He said, oh my girlfriend’s sister is driving it. I asked when is she returning it. He said, oh she is going to school in San Diego and needed a car!!! So one day, I told him, my brother is back in town and will need the car. Got it back and a month later, he asked if my brother was still in town. Without thinking, I replied no. Guess what, Mr M said, good, I am coming by tonight to pick it up!! Yeah I know I should have said no way! But I was too stunt to respond. I could not never imagine there would be someone like Mr M character!
There are a lot more Mr. M antics that can probably filled a book. Maybe I will add more at a later time.
Mr. W
This one is on me. Mr. W and I used to work for the small software consulting company. He was their main developer. Being young, we both were ambitious and wanted to start our own company. I took the computer shop route and Mr W. went the fancier route, started his own software company, with a couple of employees. I was a little green with envy with his setup. We did talk about some kind of collaborations down the road. One day while visiting his office, he asked if I could signed my name on application “card”. He explained that since he owned the company, he can’t signed on the card. The card looks like one of those marketing post card they send for applying to something. I didn’t think too much about it and signed. A couple of years later, I got a called from someone representing American Express telling me I “co-signed” for Mr W. American Express card. The word co-signed threw me off. Long story short, they wanted me to pay for his delinquency. I was in shock and speechless, mind racing as to how I had gotten myself in that mess. This was time where, I was struggling to keep my shop afloat with mounting debts. I reached out to Mr. W and he said not to worry and he will take care of it. Not sure what happened after.
Some time passed and I had forgotten about this incident, Mr. W stopped by my shop and wanted to order two computer systems for his clients. He asked for 30 days to pay off the systems. That’s the last I heard from him. Like I said, this one is on me. I was too naive and saying NO was difficult.
