But how else does one prove their superiority?
The wifi is down.
I am the (THE) most technically proficient person in the house I share with several other people, despite the fact I am a web developer, not a network nerd.
I have therefore the rôle of household network engineer.
God, our fucking internet supplier sucks dog cocks, but fuck me, what a waste of my phone balance, my patience and my time. It turns out that the least qualified person to fix the problem (my landlady) is also the only person who can fix the problem. It is 09:37 and I have opened a beer. It has been 1 hour and 37 minutes trying to get some idiot in a call centre to accept my credentials just so he can ping the fucking router and acknowledge that his fucking company has fucked up.
I mean, what can I do? I restarted the fucking thing, I logged into the admin, I used the “ping” function to prove what I knew already.
But I need to somehow run the gamut of “security” questions to which I do not know the answers in order to get the fucking people who are supposedly responsible for providing service to provide that service. For fucks sake, just ping that router, see if it is answering, and if so tell me. If not, either examine your financial records in case the bill has not been paid, or have a look at the local hardware. It is your job to solve problems, not to make them harder!
Man, maybe I should do tech support, I apparently know more than most of their morons, and - rant notwithstanding - I apparently have better phone speaking prowess.
Just FYI, the phone drone might well actually know what they’re talking about, but are required to adhere to script and not actually use their own brain if they wish to stay employed, so I’d be more inclined to blame manglement. Lots of call center experience over here, and several companies I’ve done such work for really hated it when the phone drones started getting all uppity and thinking they’re intelligent life, not just office machinery
Yes, I get that. But I also know what I am talking about, like, for example, I can describe the TCP/IP protocol in detail.
When some random customer calls and starts talking above your fucking pay grade, pass the call onto a supervisor, who has hopefully sat though an O’Reilly online course on “what is localhost and why it it important?”
Again, they may well not be ALLOWED to exhibit any initiative or common sense. Get upset at management that inflicts such policies, sure. The phone agent likely would agree with you on that. Just try to route the ire to the party who actually has any power in the situation, please.
“Ping the router” is a simple, easy one liner in a command prompt. It is something anyone can do.
ping 123.456.789.0
Trivial, and… yet fairly informative. tracert is even better.
I mean, sure, that is not MY router, and they probably would not be able to actually hit my router at all due to firewalls, but even such a basic step could inform them where the fault lies.
Why do they need my landlady’s ID? Why do they not have some monitoring system that tells them there is an outage in the area, or even one house?
Sure, those are rhetorical questions, because in my industry we have fine-tuned monitoring systems because even a 2 minute downtime could mean a loss of thousands of dollars.
But there are FREE opensource monitoring systems.
Ok. I’m going to stop getting so worked up about this, partly for my blood pressure, partly because I don’t think anyone wants to delve into the ISO TCP/IP standards.
The answer to every why question is “Asshole management”. Next question.
Then the victims could present him with a bill?
( I’ll get me coat… )
Or, as we learned above, asshole management.
So, in the continuing adventures of “Asshole Brooklyn: Keep Your Shit In Your Burrow”, that body of that squirrel is still on my street. Worse, one of my Shitty Brooklyn Neighbors keeps shovelling it under my parked car so the town can’t pick it up and dispose of it.
I’m TIRED of being the only responsible adult on this block. Obviously, cutting all power to the neighborhood ( i.e. their ‘fap-cams’ ) and then burning down their houses is just a fantasy at this point.
Still, at this point I am truly open to some Unethical Life Pro Tips.
My car insurer pisses me off. Collision coverage for the Camry would be somewhat more than for the Sebring, but in order to get either collision or comprehensive coverage I’d have to submit a mechanic’s “Vehicle Condition Report”, which asks questions like “is the vehicle roadworthy?”. WTF? It just easily passed a pretty stringent Ontario mandated safety inspection. Of course it’s “roadworthy”! You know what’s not roadworthy? The piece of shit Sebring with no front brakes and exhaust system falling off, on which you already provided collision and comprehensive coverage!
I sent the insurance agent an email that, fueled by a small excess of late-night rum, was possibly more strongly worded than absolutely necessary, the essence of which was that I’ll just stick with liability insurance for now, and rather than tracking down a mechanic to fill out their stupid form, I might save time and money by tracking down a better insurance company instead. I’ve been with these fuckers for damn near half a century, back when they were State Farm and then got taken over by a Canadian entity. My best friend used to work for them before and after the transition, and hated the stupid bureaucracy both before and after.
One other thing occurs to me as I go over, in my head, the conversation with the auto insurance agent, who incidentally also tried to upsell me on my home insurance (apparently I’m not covered for foundation seepage, only sewer backup, but for only a few dollars more … 
). This other thing is that in going over my coverages, I’m paying $85 a year for one of them. And what is that for? It’s for first-time accident forgiveness!
Let me lay out the facts here. I’ve been with these fuckers for damn near 50 years, and I never had an accident claim. Not an at-fault claim, not a not-at-fault claim, nothing. They’ve just been taking my money and paying out nothing. For half a fucking century. Back in the day when they were State Farm, I had a six-star accident-free discount and they sent me a letter providing a no-cancellation guarantee because of my flawless driving record. And these fuckers are charging me $85 a year for the privilege of not having my rates go up for the first time that some asshole smashes into me!
I shudder to think what my life would be like if my health insurance was dependent on these rapacious mercenary fuckers.
In other news, I have put the old corded electric lawnmower along with the weed whacker out on the curb in the vain hope that some fool will take them, which is unlikely. This is to reorganize the garage to make room for the new car.
And, naturally, it’s going to piss rain today, after treating me to a summer of drought. Which not only makes it much less likely that anyone will pick these things up, but also guarantees that the nearest transfer station (aka “dump”) will be an unholy mess of mud by Monday when I have to take these things there. Trust me, been there, done that.
I just got a letter from my HOA (and before anyone starts up on the horrors of HOAs, I have generally been happy with them) about a problem with my mailbox. It refers to a previous inspection on May 21 pointing out that something needed to be repaired. Someone had knocked the finial off the post; I purchased a new one and was able to get it replaced in early June. This new letter refers to the earlier letter as if nothing had been done, and threatens a “due process hearing” and potential fines of up to $100/day.
Now, a couple of weeks ago the door to my mailbox came off. It’s been sitting inside the mailbox, and the carrier has been putting my mail and packages inside the box, without any complaining note. Due to recent health issues I haven’t been able to address this, but I plan to get to it as soon as I’m able to stand and work on it.
I sent an email to the management service explaining all of the above. Now I’m waiting to see what they say.
Anti-rant! I wish to thank the neighbourhood scavengers who took away my old (but still working) corded electric lawn mower plus weed whacker that I left out at the curb last night with a “Free!” sign on it. This saves me the major hassle of a trip to the dump.
Well, the HOA is right to be upset.
A post without a finial is like an all-you-can-eat buffet without surströmming.
Update: Sleep study results received. I have mild sleep apnea (or at least, it was mild that night) so I’m getting a CPAP.
I’m very tired, so I hope it helps.
Small town [inherited the family house and moved back in] and we KNOW it is reasonably safe, the town is not that large, has sidewalks and all …. we have not had a trick or treater for almost 5 years
The annoying thing about the finial is that when it was first knocked off I was able to replace it on the mounting screw, but someone kept knocking it off until I finally broke up.
When I went out this evening to put the trash bin out I was able to get the mailbox lid wedged in place, although I know that the mounting bolts are not properly set. This had worked before, but I suspect from past experience that when the mail is delivered the lid may or may not stay in place.
I have a petty board kvetch. The Topics Playlist thread has been running for some time. It’s all about, hey let’s list songs that are longer than 8 minutes, or songs that feature a harmonica, or songs with a piece of furniture in the title. I tripped across it and decided to play (with Elvis Costello’s Blue Chair in the aforementioned topic).
Then the next three topics are all about Disney songs from Disney movies. Like I know shit about Disney movies.