On Sunday we took Benjamin to his first Cubs game. I bought some posterboard and made him a sign that said, “My first Cubs game!” so we could hold it up and get on TV. We were debating on taking him, because we weren’t sure if our seats were in the sun or not, also we weren’t sure if he would be ok for a whole 3 hours. But he’s been pretty happy and doesn’t get fussy when we take him to parties, so he got the green light to head out to Wrigley with us.

About two hours before game time we were ready to go - I had just finished making the sign, Ben was dressed up in his little uniform with his last name on the back that was given to him by Melanie, and I had all his supplies packed in my mini diaper bag. We headed out with Dave’s dad to pick up my dad in Chicago. After a short pit stip in Chicago, we headed over to Wrigley and found parking about 6 blocks away from the park. Rather than having to worry about maneuvering Benjo’s stroller around the park, we decided to use the baby bjorn carrier. Ben was as happy as a pea in a pod in it!

Once we got to the park Ben was taking in all the sights and sounds. Numerous people we passed whispered about the cute baby in a Cubs hat and uniform. I was as proud as a peacock walking next to my cutie pie! We sat down in our seats, which were on the side of left field. I put my stuff down and Dave and I went to get some munchies, leaving him with the grampas. Ben started sniffling once we were leaving, but I was confident Dave’s dad or mine could calm him down.

We came back with hotdogs, bratwurst and fries to a crying baby. It turns out that Ben would cry louder whenever he heard the announcer’s voice. I guess he didn’t like hearing a voice where he couldn’t figure out where it was coming from! We tried calming him down but he was miserable. The national anthem played and he was wailing through the whole song. I realized his cuteness would only give him so much leeway with the rest of the fans around us, soon they’d be asking us to keep the baby quiet, or whispering to each other how irresponsible it was for us to bring a baby so young to the park. I tried reasoning with Ben but he was inconsolable - he hated that voice! He hated all the noise! It was too much! We got him to the point where he was quiet for a bit, but it wouldn’t last for long. Eventually Dave took him to the standing room only section at the back of the park, where they stayed for most of the game. I went there for a couple innings to give Dave a break. Benjamin was still a bit fussy back there, but as the game progressed he got more used to the level of noise and calmed down. By the seventh inning stretch he was back in the seats with us and actually started laughing and enjoying the people around us.

The game was ok, St. Louis scored a couple homeruns in the first inning, and though we had some really good hits, we couldn’t get our guys across home plate (what else is new?). The day was gorgeous - mid 70’s with wispy clouds in the sky. The annual air and water show was going on at the same time, so every now and then we’d see some jets fly across the sky. We saw the Blue Angels performing while we were getting our car. Ironically, the ear piercing sound didn’t seem to bother Benjamin a bit!

Afterwards we just crashed at my dad’s place because we were so pooped! Benjamin stunk really bad, a mixture of sweat and salty tears. We got him in the tub as soon as we got home.

It wasn’t what I had anticipated, and we never did get to hold that sign, but I think it was still a great day!

Here’s some pics from the day:

For more pics check out the flickr set: Benjamin’s First Cubs Game

Welcome, my son, to a lifetime of disappointment!

Tags: Ben by Yano
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Some of you may wonder what I do for a living. It has nothing to do with web design or surfing the internet (though I wish it did!). Well, about 1% of it is web design. Anyway, I do a lot of stuff, too much for me to put in here right now.

But one of my jobs is tech support. That’s actually what got me started at this company, long, long, ago.

Over the years I’ve worked here I have been in contact with a wide variety of customers, with a wide variety of problems. To tell the truth, I love doing customer support. I love helping people with their problems and coming up with a solution. There are people who are great at doing support, who can make a customer feel at ease. There are some people who suck balls at it - they come off as unhelpful, rude, cocky and they give the customer the feeling that they are just wasting their time. I apologize for those people…they’re getting paid for a reason, and it’s not to piss off customers. Keep a smile on your face and drown ‘em with niceness, that’s my motto.

But I’ve also experienced my share of jerky customers, people who talk to you like you’re nothing, people who feel like they’re entitled to be priority #1 even though their problem may be a minor one. When people are jerky to us, we don’t work as hard to help them. Sure, we’ll try to fix their problem, but we won’t go above and beyond for someone who talks down to us.

So here’s a couple tips to enhance any experience you have with customer support:

- Be nice. If you’re nice to us, we’ll work hard to fix your problem. If you’re mean, we’ll still fix your problem, but we will just do enough to fix it. For nice people we might throw in some extra help or advice to make things work better.

- If you have an error, write down the error somewhere so when you call us, you can tell us exactly what the error is. Just saying “I’m getting an error” isn’t going to do anything!

- Make sure you check any troubleshooting tips in your manual before calling in. We’re going to ask you the exact same things when you call us. Don’t get upset and scream, “I’VE DONE THAT ALREADY!” You don’t know how many people call us and never try the steps in the manual first…we’re just trying to cover all the bases!

- Never say, “It’s not working!” and let that be the end of your complaint. If it’s not working, tell us what’s wrong. Tell us if it’s ever worked before. Tell us if anything had changed before you had the problem. Give us as much info as you can about your problem and what it was like before the problem.

- I know you’re smart. I know that maybe some of the things we walk you through to troubleshoot you may know how to do and might be easy. But if we’re having you troubleshoot on the phone, try not to get ahead of us or assume that you know what the next steps will be. We get a lot of people who hit enter before we tell them to, or who have deleted massive amounts of data because they thought they were supposed to run a query before we gave them specific instructions. Don’t be a hero, let us guide you.

- This might be a big problem for you, but it’s not going to help if you call every 2 hours asking for a status update. If you want, send an email to check on the update, this way you have a trail in case the support tech is a total ass and is actually surfing the internet instead of working on your problem.

- Being nice goes a long way. I know you’re frustrated, but we’re really trying to help you out.

Hmm…that’s all for right now.

Pictures from Ben’s Cubs game coming later today!

Tags: Daily by Yano
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Happy Birthday to my sister Claudine. She lives out in Michigan now and I miss her terribly. I hope Dan is good to her today!

She’s a classy gal…I mean, she’s so classy she had makes people feed her White Castle Burgers!

Tags: Quickies by Yano
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Today we’re taking Ben out to his first Cubs game! Watch out for us at the 1:20CT game…we’ll be the ones holding the sign that says “My First Cubs Game!” in the stands on the left field side (not in the bleachers, in the terrace).

Pictures later!

Tags: Daily by Yano
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Because I’m the queen of useless but interesting information…here’s a little thing I found while surfing the net. Ever wonder why the 24 second shot clock started in basketball? Or why it’s 24 seconds. Probably not. But let me tell ya! Back in the day, all a team had to do was get a nice lead in the game, then just waste the rest of the game passing to each other and playing keep away from the other team until the game was over. This made some really low scoring games, and people weren’t interested to come to watch because it was so boring! So they decided to create a time clock for possession. But why the 24 seconds? Here’s why:

The question we want to consider here, though, is “Why 24 seconds?” Given our penchant for favoring round numbers, why didn’t the NBA adopt a 30-second clock, or at least a 25-second clock? What’s so special about the 24 seconds?

The answer is that Danny Biasone, the aforementioned owner who pushed for the adoption of the 24-second rule, based his proposal upon his observations, experience, and simple arithmetic. In Biasone’s judgment, basketball was most exciting when it was neither a stalling contest nor a wild shootout, but a well-paced game in which team took 60 shots apiece. Since professional basketball games were 48 minutes long, Biasone divided 2880 (the number of seconds in 48 minutes) by 120 (the total number of shots taken per game when each team attempted 60 shots) and arrived at an optimal figure of one shot every 24 seconds. From such a simple formula came a change that completely reinvigorated professional basketball, a rule it is now hard to imagine the game ever did without.
From snopes.com

Now you know! You can spread this knowledge to your friends at critical times during basketball games so they can say “Shut up!” and kick you in the head.

Tags: Cool Link by Yano
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Is anyone else having problems with the daily YWIM quiz? I got an email from a concerned player who said she couldn’t access the page.

If you have no idea what I’m talking about, feel free to play the daily Yanowhatimean? Trivia Game! That is, if you can access it. The game is hot and heavy with Noelle, Cav and Redpac currently fighting for the top spot. It’s always a lot of fun, and trashtalking is welcome!

Tags: Cool Link by Yano
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Some of you may remember when my ex-coworker Sam (not Sammy Joe, but the one better known as Aquaman) guest posted on my blog and gave his account of how Redpac and I abused him by throwing a small jar of body butter at his balls. If not, you can
read what he says about it here.

My side of the story, however, is a little different. Redpac and I had gone ALL the way over to Buca di Beppo for lunch, and through the kindness of our hearts, remembered that Aquaman might be hungry so we got him some food. We brought it back to the office, and he was very grateful for the meal. Of course, being poor computer software technicians, we needed to get paid back for the money we spent for his lunch, plus extra for our labor. Because Buca is far, we were very tired - it’s like a block from where we work! So food and labor came out to about $40 - a small fee for a feast brought right to him.

He protested, and didn’t want to pay up. We were a bit annoyed that we did him this special favor and he didn’t want to compensate us for all we went through. So we decided to give him a choice - pay up, or Yano throws a can of Campbell soup at your crotch. He complained, he whined, he yelled, he threw his hands up in the air…but Redpac and I stood firm. He took advantage of our kindness, and he needed to be punished.

Of course, we’re not heartless, so after all his whining and crying we gave him another choice. It was the Campbell’s soup or a can of body butter lotion. The soup was significantly heavier than the lotion. However, I would have one shot with the soup, and five with the body butter. He had to make a decision - if I used the soup there was a chance I would miss with my one shot and he wouldn’t feel any pain. But if I hit my mark, boy, would that hurt. Or if I used the lotion, I may try three or four times, but it wasn’t half as heavy as the soup.

He decided to go with the body butter.

…and as much as he says that I throw like a girl, my aim was off because I didn’t want to hurt him too bad - he’s lucky it wasn’t Repac throwing it!

After three tries, I kind of hit my mark…I couldn’t try for another one because I was starting to feel bad.

Aqua was a great sport about it all - I think it was the anticipation of the lotion hitting his crotch that was more painful than the actual hit!

Thanks to Redpac, we found the long lost video of the event for your enjoyment:

Yes…there was a time when we had too much free time at the office!

Tags: Video Gaga by Yano
4 Comments »

Oh no! It’s been almost a week since I’ve posted a picture of BeeBo!

Tags: Pictures by Yano
3 Comments »

Over the last couple weeks, every time I would see that day’s date I would get a nagging feeling that there was a special occasion coming up, that there was a birthday that I needed to celebrate or something. I knew that Marilyn and Vern’s birthday were on their way, but there was still that feeling that wouldn’t go away…there was a special day coming and I didn’t want to miss it. Yesterday night (well, actually early this morning) I was writing out some checks (yes, I still write checks) and I put in today’s date, and it hit me like a brick. Today would have been my mother’s 63rd birthday.

I felt a little bad that it took me so long to realize it, even though for weeks I had a feeling it was coming. Are memories of her starting to fade? Have I become so involved in my crazy little life that I had almost forgotten about her?

Nah, I still think about her constantly, I’m just horrible with birthdays. But I did feel a twinge of guilt. If she had still been alive and I had done this I would have been in big trouble because I’d be racing around to find a gift for her.

It’s amazing how much our lives have changed since she’s been gone. Babies have been born, people have gotten married, graduated from school, moving on with their lives. But all of us remember her in our own way, from promises we made to her on her deathbed left unfulfilled (you know who you are) to lighting a candle in her memory at a wedding…she’s still a big part of our lives.

So happy birthday, Mommy, up there in heaven making Benjamin laugh and giggle when we aren’t there…

…and before you mention it, yes, I, too, wondered what the hell is going on with that doll’s legs. I have no idea!

Tags: Daily by Yano
7 Comments »

Benjamin went to his 4 month doctor appointment yesterday. We went through the routine at the doc’s office - take off his clothes, bring him to the scale, get his length measured (funny that when you’re a baby it’s your length that’s measured, not height), get his head measured and then have the nursing staff remark on how cute his hair is. They checked all his stats against the baby growth chart and said that he was at the 50th percentile for all his measurements.

Normally, I’d want my baby to be above average in things like when he walks, when he talks, etc. But in this case, being average is great. As a first time parent I wonder if he’s eating too much, if he’s eating too little, if he’s turning into a little butterball or if he’s going to be a stumpy little fellow. Even though babies are considered normal as long as they’re between the 5th and 95th percentiles, it’s good to know that Benjo lies right in the middle. Not to skinny, not too fat, just right.

Tags: Ben by Yano
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