I hate automated attendants!

Thank you for calling Blorte Technologies -- the leader in non-linear coherent phase cancelling napkin dispenser systems. Your call is very important to us. (But not so important that we would have a real person available to answer it.)

This call may be monitored for quality assurance purposes. (The guys in the back room get such a bang of out listening to what you say when you think you're on hold.)

Please listen carefully because our menu options have changed. (They actually changed back in 1987, but if we get you to tie up the phone line longer, we don't have to take as many calls.)

If you know your party's extension you may enter it at any time. (Which is why we don't release our in-house extension list.)

For a company directory, press the octothorpe key. (We could have said the pound key, but we wanted to impress you by knowing the original Bell System name for the button. Not that it matters anyway: we transliterated each name from English to Russian to Koine Greek to Arabic and back to English, so they now consist exclusively of the letters C, Z, V and Y. "Jones", for example, is encoded "CZYCVVYZ". Good luck.)

To speak with Sales, press "1" now. (Transfers you to an endless loop of the first 26 seconds of "Summer" from Vivaldi's "Four Seasons" interrupted by periodic warnings to stay on the line.)

For customer support on the Microfleem 3000 product line, press "2" now. (The product doesn't exist, but it sounds good. This option rolls you to a voicemail box that hasn't been checked since Bill Clinton's first term.)

For customer support on the Macrofleem 2670 series, press "3" now. (Transfers to a call center in Pakistan. Caller-ID equipment automatically harvests your phone number so that other Pakistani workers can call you when you are in the middle of important work to renew your free subscription to a trade magazine you never heard of.)

For all other calls, please stay on the line. (This transfers you over to a silent circuit, punctuated every few minutes by several clicks and a brief blast of ring tone to make it sound like the call is actually going somewhere. We take bets to see how long people will wait before hanging up. The record is three hours and eighteen minutes; it would have been longer, but the janitor unplugged the phone system so he could plug in the floor buffer.)

Thank you for calling, and have an extraordinary day! (That'll make 'em gag!)

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Coming soon... the true story about getting equipment shipped from a manufacturer about 175 miles away. Won't be today, though -- I'm not allowed to use the words that are coming to mind right now. Suffice it to say that neither CW station is on the air yet. The dots are well and truly agitated.

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This is just too freaky. Not ten seconds after I posted this installment, my phone rang. It was Nigel calling to renew my free subscription to Servo Test and Measurement magazine. At least I think that's what he said... the background noise and his rather thick accent made it tough to be sure.

Stive for five -- no, make that three

(Itzallicanstan -- AP)
The Department of Homeland Security today joined with the Food and Drug Administration in warning citizens against the recently discovered bagged spinach threat. In a hastily called press conference this morning, DHS spokesman Gern Blanston revealed that investigators have confirmed widely-held speculation that terrorist mastermind Osama Bin Laden is actually Bluto, and has launched this latest campaign to commemorate the five-year anniversary of the 9/11 attack.

Reports indicate that Bin Laden / Bluto has teamed up with noted genius Wile E. Coli to contaminate American produce, particularly spinach, in order to thwart his arch rival, Popeye. Video recently aired by Al Jazeera shows what appears to be a staging area in a remote desert location littered with crates marked "Acme", with a band of masked gunmen chanting and carrying banners painted "Death to Popeye".

In the video a bearded man who identified himself as Sheik Radylnrol, launched into a tirade against the western agricultural establishment. "They used to call me Sweet Pea and tried to keep me and my people down. Whenever we tried to assert our destiny they would break out that ****** spinach, weird music would start, and the next thing we know we'd be laid out on the ground, bleeding and oppressed. Someone has to take a stand, and the next time those vegetarian oppressors try to dominate us, they will pay -- and not through the mouth!" Attempts to reach his mother for comment were unsuccessful; ever since she changed her name to Madonna some years ago, Olive Oyl has refused to discuss the radical conversion of her child, or his ambivalent gender or origin. Her publicist says she is besieged by media interest after the smash success of her latest hit, "Like an Extra Virgin".

One of the early casualties of the spinach attack was noted entertainer Papa Smurf, who passed away yesterday morning in a Beverly Hills hospital. Doctors apparently failed to recognize the danger symptoms in time, noting that they were so intent on treating Smurf's apparent cyanosis that they missed the gastrointestinal distress. "We're all feeling pretty blue around here now," one staffer noted.

An assistant to Bluto who declined to be indentified was heard shouting "The infidels used to be able to rip tin cans open with their bare hands, but now they're so weak they have to pack spinach in wimpy plastic bags! Their days are numbered!"

Well. The end of the week. We have pictures from the CW Plus network, and pictures from what will become the main CW network feed. We have new racks in place, power run, cable ladder installed. The CW debuts Monday... but not at our stations. Critical equipment that we ordered a month ago is still not here. Some is still in Canada, less than 200 miles away. Some is still in England.

The woman from Fedex and the incredibly tall dude from UPS are feeling sorry for me now: every time I see a truck pull up I hustle to see what they have brought. Today it was nothing.

I'm still busy, but doing work of secondary importance. All I can hope is that when the rest of the gear arrives, we can slap in place and it will play. In the meantime, we're waiting as fast as we can.

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Hannah is just starting her junior year; several mornings ago she wandered into the study after hearing a radio spot for a discount meds-by-mail outfit. "Next year I qualify for the senior discount on my prescriptions," she said, "and I can get fifty percent off food poisoning at Waffle House!"

Funny, I didn't know Waffle House served spinach. Good thing there aren't any around where we live.

How to sell expensive equipment... not

1) Have a web site that shows equipment, but don't give clear specifications so that customers can tell whether the devices will accomplish any particular purpose.

2) Include detailed descriptions in the web site of equipment that does not actually exist, or list features that have yet to be written. Photos of prototype equipment are even better!

3) List a non-working phone number on the web site as the sales contact.

4) Don't include your main phone number on the web site, either.

5) In case a potential customer happens to break through your first ring of defenses by having your main phone number in his contact list, have that number connect to an automated attendant system with so much background noise that you can't understand the instructions.

6) Further enhance your phone system by picking the person with the thickest accent in the office to record the messages and prompts.

7) Set up a convoluted series of menus to navigate with the touch-tone pad... but make sure that no matter which options are selected, the caller gets dumped into the same voicemail box.

8) Make pressing "0" a shortcut to this catch-all voicemail to nowhere.

9) Don't bother to return messages, especially if the caller indicates that he needs very expensive equipment immediately.

I won't get into naming the company... but it's a wonder they sell anything. How they remain the largest manufacturer of broadcast character generators is a complete mystery.

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Testy? Me??? Why should I be in a mood? Our two new CW stations are due to go on the air next Monday, and most of the crucial equipment has yet to arrive. Some of it's in Canada (so near and yet so far!); an encoder is still in England. The video switcher that is the heart of the whole thing is not supposed to arrive until October 11th... I'm trying to arrange a loaner or a demo unit in the meantime.

Bricks without straw.

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Just to set the record straight, my last blog (instant lunch) is not representative of my lunches in general, which are expemplary. I am just finishing an outstanding sandwich of sliced turkey on homestyle rolls and looking forward to several homemade
oatmeal chocolate chip cookies. I was merely captivated by the anomaly of having to wait for an "instant" product, and not casting any sort of aspersions on Laurie's provision. Furthermore, even though she has occasionally claimed otherwise over the course of the past 17 years (our anniversary is Saturday), I love her most.

So there.