Andrew Hale: IT Talk & Other Topics

Providing technical support isn't easy. You have to know your systems and policies for computer usage, how everything works for troubleshooting when things don't work the way they should, and how to assist your users. Helping a user in person is relatively easy. You can show them what to do, explain things a little better and it's usually faster too. However, not every environment has that luxury. A lot of Help Desk techs and people with other IT titles assist users via phone or email. This makes things a bit more tricky, especially phone support. With email, you can prepare each message, verifying that it's carefully crafted and has all of the information you need to provide (plus, if you're smart, you've got templates or hotkeys setup for canned responses). On the phone, you have to think a bit more on your feet and hope your people skills are up to snuff. Below, I examine some general questions and run through a scenario where asking the right questions can

Despite the faults I can find with my VLX 600 (the runt of Honda Shadow line-up), I still love it. It's great for around-town riding, comfortable, and doesn't look terrible from the factory either. However, my two primary complaints about it are the lack of overall power (I can't say at what RPM power starts dropping since it doesn't have a tach), and the sound. I could even live with the power it has stock but it's way too quiet. With stock pipes, the VLX sounds like a really awesome sewing machine. To top it off, the bike sat for the better part of 2 years before I bought it. The previous owner said that he started it up every now and again and it seems to run alright, but low-end throttle response is choppy at best. It also took longer than average to warm up and seemed to show symptoms of running bit lean. With that, my goal is to make the shadow run better, get a bit more power and overall, just give it some balls.