14. April, 2004 - the strike may be done

• In breaking news from yesterday morning, Buses could run Saturday. Negotiators came to a tentative agreement yesterday morning about 9am after negotiating all night, and the union’s executive board was to vote on it yesterday afternoon. The Met Council votes this afternoon, and the general membership of the union will vote either today or tomorrow, with bus service resuming on Saturday, and back in full-swing on Monday. Terms of the contract haven’t yet been made public. [press-patch]
• Meanwhile, around the U, Riders welcome bus strike’s end as students are looking forward to getting back on the bus. [daily]
• There’s a longer article: Tentative deal set to end strike that still doesn’t give any details on the settlement. [press-patch]
• But Looking Ahead: Funding issue shadows future of Metro Transit, and even with the strike ending, the state legislature needs to figure out how to give transit a stable source of funding. [press-patch]
• In the continuing Tech Support saga, it’s no wonder I’m having so many problems with Cisco Systems Technical Assistance Center. It’s really run by Convergys, and the Indian accents of everyone who’s worked with me are explained nicely by the fact that they’ve moved most of those jobs to India. Further, the woman I was working with has quit, so I’ve got to explain the problem all over again to new techs. I guess her quitting isn’t surprising, either, since India call centers face employee exodus.
• In fact, I was starting to think that Installing Linux on a Dead Badger would be easier than getting through to someone who actually cared at Cisco, but then one final call to Cisco headquarters got me through to the executive assistant to John T Chambers (the CEO & President), where I left a message explaining the situation. I got a call back a couple hours later, and got to spend fifteen minutes explaining what the product was (are you sure it’s a Cisco product?), who Convergys is, and generally cluing in the person at Cisco to why this was all a problem. Since she’d never heard of the product, it’ll take her a while to figure out who should deal with this problem, but maybe there’s some hope of progress.

Copyright 2008, Dave Polaschek. Last updated on Wed, 14 Apr 2004 09:12:35.