Aug 27

While troubleshooting a problems with circuits provided by AT&T I’ve had to deal with a number of people. If I end up building a simple tech support relationship after a few hours I sometimes ask where in the world the tech is. I also sometimes will ask if I don’t recognize as accent or if I think I do know the accent and want to verify it.

In some cases though, I ask out of frustration. Frustration caused by not being able to understand the person because English is not their first language. Today was one of those days. The support person was from Singapore. I was troubleshooting errors on a T1 circuit that was provided to a city in Arkansas. This troubleshooting was being performed in the middle of the day. The office had been running on the backup circuit so intrusively testing the main circuit was ok.

Now I work with vendors a lot. I realize that it is cheaper to provide around the clock support by using call centers in other parts of the world during prime times. By doing this you can have employees working ~8am to ~5pm local times. I am ok with this. However if it is 1pm Central Standard Time. Why am I speaking to singapore? Is there no one in the United States of America who can troubleshoot a T1 circuit?

ATT, why am I speaking to Mr. Gonzales in singapore? To add to the situation, we are talking over each other because of the lagged out voice call. It feels like we need to say “over” each time we complete a statement.

From what I can gather Tier1 is in India or Pakistan. and Tier2 is in Singapore. There is a tier3 but you can only talk to them if ATT manages the router. I know the implementation and designer guys are in the USA. New York actually I believe. So setting up the circuits I get to speak to people in the USA. For everything else I am having to deal with Singapore and India. For what I pay, I want someone in the USA during business hours of 8am-5pm Central.

May 6

My line of work seems to drag me in many directions at once. One of the biggest challenges I face daily is staying on task. People seem to be one of my main distractions followed by computer distractions such as web browsing, email, and IM. I love answering people’s questions via IM and Email but sometimes I have to close the clients. At home this is fine, but in the office I need to remain reachable, so the clients cannot be closed. In order to stay focused I seem to always rely on music I like.

I’ve been lucky so far that my companies have always allowed me to listen to music I enjoy. I’ve also been lucky to have ended up with nice speakers at the companies within a few months. Keeping the volume at a level that does not disturb others and trying to make sure that there are no questionable lyrics has ensured I stay under the radar. For the past few years I have also been making use of closed ear headphones.

Headphones seem to really be a great way to block out the office noise and replace it with some of my own. This works great for creating a work environment that is quite productive and allows me to stay in the zone for hours on end. Staying focused on what I am doing becomes a breeze and my mind doesn’t seem to wander around everything that is happening.

I listen to mostly electronic music. This broad genre contains many different styles with various tempos. This makes it extremely easy to have music playing that fits the task. If I’m on a roll and knocking things out I can listen to some fast paced beats. If I’m moving slow and working on someting delicate I can listen to some slow paced chillout or triphop music.

I’ve recently purchased some new Ultrasone HFI-780 closed headphones. These sound great so far. Next time you find yourself not being able focus, try some music. If you already listen to music to stay focused, I’m always looking for new music.

Apr 4

After the Creative/Daniel K. fiasco, Daniel has decided to move on from modifying creative drivers for the general public. This is likely the best choice for him and I for one do not blame him for choosing this path. I’m sure many Creative customers would prefer to continue to get updated support packs. Daniel has posted a goodbye message on the Creative forums.

Daniel says:

"Although I still have my doubts, they've said I would not be threatened if I provided patches instead of the actual binaries, because of licensed technologies built into them (Dolby/DTS).
While this could even be true, most of the disabled features are Creative's own technologies, which means they've disabled them on their own choice.
Daniel goes on to say:
They were after me and, on a chat session, they asked me what I'd like from them, as if I were expecting something.
They've promised me a free X-Fi 2, but I told them it was not necessary, because I was getting a couple of cards from other companies that contacted me.
Well, at least they are getting flammed all over the web and they are certainly mad about it and I could feel it while chatting with them. That is an enough reward for my hard work."

In the goodbye post Daniel has put links to his forum posts with the driver support packs. I’m going to go ahead and link to the filefront pages as well as post the file hashes.
SB Audigy series Vista Support Pack v2.15.0004EQ with Equalizer (02/24/2008)
Download from Filefront
File hashes:
- CRC32: C99B3CF8
- MD5: 133B743BAAFADD9D681C56B0A0E0DEF2
- SHA1: D8C979C6E1BED6C3C3AB1C6FB425AD417D74A09C

SB Live! series Vista Support Pack 2.10.0001A (03/07/2008)
Download from Filefront
File hashes:
- CRC32: 15AFA064
- MD5: BBED0409A6941767ED263634B7A420EC
- SHA1: B84E8E37DDA0504204DA79AA8B8B585FD37D8461

Gameport support pack for Vista 32-bit (x86), updated on 02/01/2008
Download from Filefront
File Hashes:
- CRC32: 44585B0B
- MD5: F52B755900825968C4F5687CBA0E4C08
- SHA1: 9C4D1016DD79570F5BCA56C9A651148883532271

SB Audigy Value/SE/LS & Live! 24-bit Windows Vista Pack 1.04.0077B (02/06/2008)
Download from Filefront.
File Hashes:
- CRC32: 2218C974
- MD5: 3087EBB1C27F0DE19459F9FEECA1E7B7
- SHA1: 6C95377A0777D39ADC99193A43D43B2F764E68DD

SB X-Fi Xtreme Audio Windows Vista Pack 1.04.0078A (02/06/2008)
Download from Filefront.
File Hashes:
- CRC32: 837372DB
- MD5: 0FF904877BA557E8E4DDBBE04F89EDEA
- SHA1: A2CF2FFF4816DBBC005A24D4E5E6BBA89A12AD05

Hopefully the above links will survive the test of time. I have stored the above files safely but do not have the bandwidth to host them. Should the filefront links fail I will find mirrors.

Daniel, I wish you the best. Publicity like this doesn’t come everyday, I would not blame you a bit for exploiting it a bit to get your foot in the door at Creative or a competitor if that is what you want to do. Who knows, you may be very happy with your current employment. I can’t help but wonder if your Paypal account is tipping the scales with donations…

Good Luck Daniel!

UPDATE: 07.01.08

Well it looks like Daniel has edited some of his original posts. The drivers are also no longer on filefront. I have found an alternate location here.

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