Well it wouldn't be very underground if you knew about it, now would it?



Oops...I've said too much...

[Citation needed]

Well, see, that's the thing, I don't want my problem to "increase in severity and complexity." I (speaking as the hypothetical customer on the phone) want my problem fixed. That's it. Not a more severe problem. Not a more complex problem. A fixed problem.

But to get back to the point....

I get the use of the word escalate, in the sense of moving upwards, but to me it also has the connotation of being worse, just from the way it's used in other parts of daily life. E.g. "The fighting in Iraq escalated today."

I don't actually know what the right word should be when the CSR says "I'm going to (blank) your call."

Just saying "I'm going to move your call up the ladder to a more qualified person" would be nice. It gives you the sense that (while) the person speaking can't help you, they may get you connected to someone who can. Not as pithy obviously, but (to me at least) sounds a lot more neutral and a tiny bit positive.

And if it wasn't for false hope, there would be any hope at all.

Don't want to put words in Runaway1956's mouth, but I'm pretty sure he's angry more at the choice of the word "escalate" then the idea of tiered CS.

So in the end, pretty much a rhetorical question, since everyone knows that "escalate" sounds so much more professional then "I hate you, stop asking for a manager, I'm just going to pass you off to the stoned guy who thinks that DSL is the second generation of LSD."

Slashdot?



(I kid, I kid)

You fail English? That's unpossible!

Yeah, but only for about five minutes. Then all the heat from the rockets would set the atmosphere on fire. So congratulations, YOUR ROCKET PACK DESTROYED THE WORLD!

I don't care.

I don't know, 8 years ago a bunch of guys in a couple of airliners seemed to work out well....and hell, they didn't even have to build the plane themselves!

Really, how much more useful is a F-22 when compared to a UAV with cruise missile support from a ship off shore?

Plus, I don't know anyone who owns a cube laptop.

Maybe a G3.....

Duuuuuuude........

Then teach them how to distinguish between websites with good writing and websites with slashdot.com. Of course, the second example may be a little extreme.

If a bomb hits my blackberry while I'm using it, I'd probably be a pretty poor reporter for my village as well.



Just saying, they're called crackberrys for a reason; how far can you get from yours without going through withdrawal symptoms? :)

Like "hey, the only active ingredient in a drug should not be cocaine."

Well duh, meth has a perfectly good reason to be in there as well. Geez, what are they teaching kids these days?

Actually, if you are a modern civil engineer, you could probably get by just fine using nothing but Newtonian mechanics.

And just a note for all of the non-civil engineers out there; knowing "nothing but" Newtonian mechanics doesn't mean simple, back of the hand calculations. A (good) civil engineer needs to know the math that applies to many different subfields. For example, take the Zipingpu Dam, just knowing how to build that dam doesn't mean anything if you're building it over a weak spot on the earth's crust.

Similarly, just building a skyscraper doesn't mean just knowing how high you can build it before it falls down. It also means knowing how to model the effects of air flow around the building, the effects on/by the type of material used, etc. Anyone remember Gertie?

For more, feel free to see Wikipedia's article on civil engineering.