Damn. Two hours later my father calls again. My mother is in the hospital. Something about her blood chemistry, but no actual details.
I did try to return his original call once lunch was over. No answer.
Well, dang, dude - hope she’s OK.
Yeah, she’s ok. Just some chest pains and extremely high blood pressure.
And I’m steaming pissed off at her.
My mother has spent most of the last 30 years doing nothing but badmouthing my father. Apparently, in front of my sister and my niece, she was chewing him out in the hospital for not being able to read her mind and know what she had been thinking and experiencing when she wouldn’t tell him. When she was wheeled out of the room, my father broke down crying, saying “I can’t do anything right by her.”
And I am ashamed that, due to my circumstances (she helped with my bankruptcy and I still owe her some money) I have kept my silence on this for far too long.
My sister let her have it. I’m sure I’ll hear about that (disrespecting her :rolleyes:). Then I’m going to let her have it. I’m fucking done listening to her badmouth my father. My own issues with him notwithstanding.
Agrees with purplehorseshoe. That bites.
Makes my mini-rant about my mouse dieing sound so petty.
The fucking dog across the hall has now been barking and whining and howling for two fucking hours with no end in sight. The owners are a pair of fucking douchebags.
ComCast.
Their Internet service is really reliable (for me) and they provide the speed they promise; why is their customer service so disjointed and unreliable?
Their Web site lies. If you login to your account, click on the link that says “upgrade my service”, you get a page with service tiers and prices. Apparently, those are fantasies. Remember, I am logged into my account, so it knows who I am and what services to which I currently subscribe.
I add the upgrade (to 20Mbps) to my cart; I consult one of their reps via online chat, and he concurs that ($55.95) is the correct price for me. I start the final checkout process, which hands me over to another chat rep. He also confirms it is the correct price, and removes the shipping charge since I already have a functioning ComCast modem. The Web site and both reps know I am an Internet-only customer; no TV or voice.
I complete the entire checkout process, everything is rosy, and I get the end-of-session survey; there is no question I went all the way through the process, as confirmed by checkout rep #2.
Fast forward three days: no faster speeds. I finally check my account online, and it reflects no changes at all. Site says: “for questions, call” (toll free number), which I do. Of course, they can’t help me, because phone CSRs have absolutely no connection whatsoever to Web CSRs, can’t see the same deals, yadda yadda. When I ask her “what do you suggest I do”, she is really dumbfounded. And, frankly, had horrible telephone skills; every third word was “um”.
I go online and start the same process again. I sign in, add the same $55.95 deal to my cart, and start the checkout process, which invokes an online chat session (this is their designated way of checking out). Rep says “no can do” on the $55.95, but can do $71.95; since I am an Internet-only customer, that’s the best they can do…despite their Web site telling me otherwise. Oh, and two of their other reps from earlier in the week apparently must have been janitors that hacked into their CSR system and were giving me the $55.95 price as a joke (no, of course he didn’t say that).
So either Web site + two reps on Tuesday were lying, or today’s rep is lying, or…it’s AT&T and Bank of America syndrome: everyone is competent in their own little universe, but the entire fucking company is completely dysfunctional.
Oh, and to complete the hilarity: when I got today’s post-session survey, I completed it and included about 8 lines of text in the Comments box about why I rated them poorly. Hit the button and…SQL Server error: string or binary would be truncated. Now, I’m a SQL Server developer, and the fact that a major corporation, on one of its most basic, most-used, most-customer-focused features fucks this up so badly is just one of those “well, of course!” moments (no, there’s no character counter or message about the max size for the Comment; I even trimmed it down to about 5 lines and still no go; only after going down to about 70 characters could I get it to save).
They are indeed. Letting your dogs affect your neighbours is always a douchebag move, in my opinion.
A Comcast CSR explains why - apparently it’s part crappy training, part bad oversight, part a whole bunch of different programs they have to switch between awkwardly, and part complete disincentives for staying on the phone with each customer any longer than is absolutely necessary.
That really sucks, Chimera. I’m sorry.
My own rant is kind of stupid: my mom, who was diagnosed with end-stage liver disease last week is acting weird. Weird as in, more like she was before she was drinking than ever before. She’s purposeful, upbeat, energetic. And it’s freaking me the fuck out. I’d grown so used to her surly, sour disposition and frequent nasty comments. She used to have to rest up before she even made a trip to the grocery. Now she’s going out multiple places a day, doing stuff all over the house and not getting tired at all.
I guess it’s good - the antipsychotics she’s on must be working. She is also (hopefully) not drinking and apparently going to her AA meetings. I don’t know how to respond to this, though. It’s so fucking confusing, but at least she seems to be taking her condition somewhat seriously and whatever drugs she’s taking may be working.
I hope my sister and I will be able to get compatibility testing soon. We want one of us to be a live donor - the likelihood of her getting a liver in time (before she dies or is removed from the transplant list) is unlikely. In the meantime, I’m cleaning up my diet and exercising. I don’t want to find out I’m compatible only to fuck it up by being fat. The seizure disorder I have probably won’t help, but guess that’ll depend on what meds I’m taking. I’m scared.
The problem with super big companies like that is the difficulty in managing the sheer number of employees and guaranteeing a consistent signal and experience across the management structure. Comcast (and I don’t work for them) has tens of thousands of customer service reps scattered over scores or even hundreds of sites. This means many hundreds of managers and supervisors. They probably don’t even report up through the same VPs. Then you’ve got the constant turnover of relatively low paying/high pressure CSR positions, and the fact that companies usually don’t like to spend all that much on training for positions with that kind of pay and turnover.
I went to an operetta (like a musical) last night. I loved the music! When it came to my absolute favourite song in the show, I was sitting there, enjoying it so much - and the idiot in front of me chose that exact moment to loudly unwrap a candy.
Those candy things (and the people who think it’s okay to unwrap them during the show) should be banned.
'tis a sad day when people need to explain that an operetta is “like a musical”… which one was it, out of curiosity? I’ve been trying to expand my operettaistic knowledge.
I Pit oak-pollen season in Tampa. I’m allergic to it, the yucky green dust is everywhere, we’ve had no rain in weeks.
I just had a really embarrassing moment in Second Life (online chat room).
My polyglot friend took me to a roman club event. Eveyone dressed in togas and talking Latin. I thought I was keeping up until someone told me that my English was OK, but that my Latin sounded like I’d gone to school in Siberia.
My friend stepped right up to defend me by saying “Please don’t pick on my American partner, she is trying to learn Latin now.”
All of a sudden, everyone was so nice to me…“Gosh, your Latin is so good for an Amercian”, “Latin is very hard to learn as an adult”, “I think you probably meant to type this instead of that word.”
Goshdarnit, I know that I’m an ignorant American and a product of public schools. They weren’t being snarky, they were being nice. It still burned.
… as someone who’s often been in the situation of being helped and helping others with their second languages, I’m embarrased on the latinists’ behalf. They should have asked, rather than jumping to conclusions.
I’m the product of Spanish private schools and had one (1) year of Latin, like every other Science-track Spaniard my age +/- 15. And I still have nightmares about “the usage of ut and cum”, almost 20 years post-facto.
Nava, they were trying to be nice to me. It just felt really condescending.
I’ll be the first one to say that my Latin is terrible. I took one class at the community college 3 years ago and have been pretty much self taught since then. Its a hobby, something I do because I think its fun to understand the etymology of the written word. I have zero interest in being able to actually speak it, and my study habits reflect that.
Its coming in handy with my polyglot friend, though. He’s Polish, Latin was his second language, French and some Inuit dialect were 3rd and 4th. English is his 5th, so when he gets stuck for a word in English, he can toss a Latin word at me and I’ll usually figure out what he meant.
I’m now going to share a really geeky story that will probably bore the heck out of almost everyone.
I used to be in the SCA. One of the things I learned from the weavers was that proper red dye was made from crushing and boiling little worms. They called it vermiculum. I’m a font of useless information, so I filed that little factoid away for future use, but never did anything with it.
One day, my friend was telling me about some flowers and couldn’t find the right word so said vermiculus instead. Suddenly, my mind made the connection to vermilion and it was such a WOW!!! I’m really learning this shit!!! moment that I jumped up, grabbed Lucky and danced him around the room 3 times.
Sorry for the double post, but I just almost fainted. Bill came in to tell me that he was going to run to the store and asked where my shopping bags are. I’ve turned an evil oil guy into a tree hugger. I am SO good!
flatlined, could it have been that they would have charged his ass for new bags if he did not bring some?
That gets the attention of the ferengi in all of us…
Speaking of learning languages, I found out the other day that “ferengi” is Ethiopian for “foreigner.” 
I thought that was awesome.
No. There is no bag charge where he went. I’m going to be wearing fake diamonds when we get married because he wants me to look sparkly and I love him. He is using my cotton shopping bags because he loves me.
Isn’t that a great feeling? Learning stuff makes my brain happy.