Musable

When you  have hundreds of servers at a NOC somewhere, and you’ve been around for going on nine years now, there is no getting around the fact that you will end of with a bunch of dead hardware over time: servers where the motherboards have fried, the power supplies have shot themselves, disk drives that have been replaced or pulled from retired machines, miscellaneous cables, screws, and wires. If you’re smart, you take care of these things as they happen, salvage the usable parts as spares for the other equipment, and then get rid of the rest. If you’re not smart, or if you’ve been so focused on other things that this cleanup is allowed to drop down the to do list, like me, at some point you have to bite the bullet and get to the business of getting it cleaned. This was that time.  I dragged my brother over to the NOC and we gathered up about 20 or 21 dead boxes and assorted other material that was making moving around in the cage a dance. Today, I broke out anything usable from those boxes, prepped the drives for destruction, and hauled all the servers out. I should know better than to do all that on one day - but as I was feeling uberproductive, and have felt that way since my battle with the stomach bug, I just wanted to knock it out. I did. Now my back is paying for it. Multiply the number of servers time 35-40 pounds apiece, handled several times from start to finish to determine workability, and that would probably be why. Still good exercise for the upcoming gardening season.

Ads, that is. Specifically, Super Bowl ads. This year’s crop was mostly lackluster and seemed to involve much more violence than years past - although one of my favorites from previous years is the FedEx ad where the caveman kicks some poor prehistoric creature and then gets stomped on by something much, much larger.

This year, though, a year of difficult economics and ongoing wars in faraway places, seemed to bring out the brute in the advertisers. I watched most of them though, because they were about as interesting as the first three quarters of the game. A couple, in fact, were more interesting than the game through those first three quarters.

Bud Light wants us to know that suggesting not buying the beer for a company meeting in order to cut costs will get you shoved out a second or third story window by your peers. I wish someone had brought the beer to meetings when I was in the corporate world. As it stands, we (geeks) only got pizza and caffeine. C+

Angels and Demons (movie trailer): Snooze. I’m not a fan of Dan Brown’s writing at all. At least Tom Hanks has a decent haircut for this one, unlike that mop he had for The DaVinci Code. D.

Audi: The Transporter makes his getaway through the years, in various models from Audi. Who among us of my age or older doesn’t remember the preppy dorks with the sweaters tied at the sleeves around their necks, holding that monster of a cellphone? Just a fun ad.  A.

Cheetos: Get rid of annoying, self-important bitches by throwing Cheetos on the ground under her and causing pigeons to swarm en masse, a la The Birds. I’d rather eat Cheetos myself, but hey, whatever works. B+.

Pepsi: Bob Dylan and will.i.am team up for “Forever Young”, to remind people even older than me that they can still be hip and drink Pepsi. When I drank sodas, I preferred Coke over Pepsi. B-.

Doritos: A snowglobe subs as a Magic 8 Ball, telling us there will be free Doritos (when someone flings the globe at a vending machine) but alas, no raise (courtesy of someone flinging the globe into the nads of the boss). Workplaces are a bit macabre this year. B.

Budweiser: Conan O’Brien is assured that the ad he finally agrees to do will only be shown in Sweden. Not counting the splash it makes across Times Square. Meh, although the 80s retro-Swedish thing they had going for “drinkability” was mildly amusing. B.

Year One (movie trailer): At first, I thought someone was remaking History of the World, Part One. Instead, it’s Jack Black and Michael Cera at the dawn of mankind. The trailer shows exactly the sort of humor one would expect, and I doubt anyone will be going looking for the answers to the meaning of life or even the sort of sly comedy that can be found in this movie’s doppelganger (then again, it’s hard to do snarky comedy as well as Mel Brooks does). B-.

Toyota: Venza? No. D.

Bridgestone: Mrs. Potatohead yammering at Mr. Potatohead, cutesy comedic moment (”Sheeeeeeeeep!”), she loses her lips, they bounce away, still talking, she puts on her angry eyes, he smiles, they drive away. With all the violence in the ads, I halfway expected them to slam into the back of a wire mesh something or other and have one of them made into french fries. I suppose that wouldn’t have been a good ad for a tire company. C-.

Fast and Furious (movie trailer): I love how they leave the number off the end of this. It’s number four, as it happens, but who’s counting? Fast cars, explosions, hot women. I saw a previous trailer of this movie that basically tells the entire movie - something I’ve always wondered about, since what’s the point of going to the show if you can tell what happens from the trailer? Anyway, we know this will make a lot of money, but why buy ad time on one of the most expensive nights to run ads for something that’s a lock? B-.

Castrol: Buying this motor oil will make monkeys suddenly fly out of your butt. No, not really. They’ll just show up at your house to work on your car - get it? grease monkeys! - and then you’ll kiss one. B.

Land of the Lost (movie trailer): Will Ferrell ruins one of my favorite childhood shows, campy as it was. Thanks a lot, Hollywood. B-.

Doritos: It’s magic, but apparently (and obviously) targeted for the manly, heterosexual men who watch football. Women drop their clothes, you get rich, cops dissolve like the Wicked Witch of the West, all due to the magic chips in a Doritos bag. Until you run out. Then you get hit by a bus and stick there like a fly that went splat. D.

Sprint: It’s been a long time since I’ve flown anywhere, and it will be a long time before I fly again, because of the nightmare that is air travel these days. If roadies ran the show, though, I might be inclined to change my mind. This and the Callahan ad from Sprint are both good. B+.

Monsters versus Aliens (movie trailer): One of the 3D ads, for which none of us had glasses. Bummer. No one in this house had goggles courtesy of any alcohol haze, either. C.

GoDaddy: GoDaddy ads suck, in my opinion, and always have. Don’t like the founder, don’t like their sleazy ads, including this one where geeks put naked women in the shower, via their computer. They must be paying Danica Patrick a racecar full of money. F.

Frosted Flakes: After your kid eats a bowl of sugar, send them out to the fields we’re building to run off their temporary energy. Or something to that effect. D-.

Heineken: John  Turturro waxing philosophical does not make me want to drink your beer, especially when he sounds like some people I know when they’ve had a few over their limit. C-.

Pepsi: One of the better ads during the evening. Bowling ball dropped on the noggin? “I’m good.” Socked in the face with a golf club? “I’m good.” And so on. Amusing physical comedy, with a reminder that you can be a man, take whatever knocks life doles out, and still drink a Pepsi (or a diet Pepsi). A-.

Pedigree: Another good ad, showing the dangers of having pets other than dogs - like a rhino, an ostrich, or a warthog. Picking up warthog poo would definitely be a job for Mike Rowe. A.

Budwesier: The first of three ads featuring the Clydesdale horses. The dalmation (we saw him previously in the Rocky-esque ads) fetches a stick, gets an atta-boy. The Clydesdale fetches a huge branch from a tree. I think I’d have preferred something else. A canoe, a beer wagon, or a small car. Harmless ad, but dull. C.

Budwesier: Third generation Clydesdale, speaking with a Scottish brogue. C+.

NBC: Heroes. Never got into it, don’t watch it. Probably never will. B-.

Budweiser: The other Clydesdale ad, featuring the love of the Clydesdale’s life, who is regrettably in the circus and taken away. He breaks away, tracks her down, she flips the circus performer off her back, and they run away together. Better than the other ad. B.

Star Trek (movie trailer): After the Star Wars films, one of the the most anticipated movies, and this trailer was the best you could do? C-.

Gatorade: The finale to those “G” commercials that have been on.  G stands for Gatorade. Who would have guessed that, what with all the athletes talking about performance? B-.

Race to Witch Mountain (movie trailer): The Rock protects two kids. Or are they? C-.

Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen (movie trailer): There are robots and explosions. And stuff. B-.

Toyota: If you ever have to drive through the fifth circle of hell - also known as August here - apparently the Tundra can take it. I did mention to my family, though, that the use of the word “tranny” was probably going to cause some folks to think of something other than what they intended. C.

Priceline: Shatner does his schtick. B-.

Overstock.com: Carlos Boozer, bling, and a bunch of kids. Boring. C-.

Universal Orlando: Be a hero, take your family to an amusement park. B.

Coke: Everyone’s an avatar in this day and age. Until they have a Coke, allowing them to just be regular people again. B-.

Pepsi: Pepsuber. Pepstupid is more like it. D.

Bud Light: The lime in the beer will cocoon you in a bubble of spring. Most people I know who drink a lot already have a cocoon about them that really doesn’t need any enhancement. C-.

CareerBuilder: Repetition. Then add an element. Repetition. Then add an element. Then add another element. Repetition. And so on. I know some people hate that sort of ad, but it’s effective here because it does really give the flavor of some of the dullest jobs I’ve ever held. A-.

Bridgestone: People will steal your tires when you buy them from us, even on the moon. Odd. C.

Cars.com: You may be the most confident person in the world, able to perform open heart surgery with a ballpoint pen from a bystander and tell the dean of a prestigious school that his job is yours, but you still can’t buy a car without the butterflies acting up in your stomach. B.

Hyundai: Bunch of bosses angry at their people because Hyundai won an award. B.

E*Trade: The talking baby creeps me out in these ads, just like it did in the Quiznos ads. B-.

Pixar (movie trailer): A flight of fancy, literally, for the movie Up. B+.

Denny’s: Because even hit men need to eat. D-.

Monster.com: Sometimes you get the moose head mounted on your office wall, and sometimes you get the ass end standing on your desk. B-.

GoDaddy: Another sucktastic ad. F.

Bud Light: Drinkability, this time in English, with obstacles drawn in to trip up unsuspecting people skiing down a very large mountain. C.

H&R Block: They do your taxes, then send Death after the bum who missed those extra deductions for you. C.

Teleflora: Talking flowers that rank right up there with the Tide talking stain. C-.

Monster.com: Not really an ad, but an invitation to a contest involving the NFL. C-.

SoBe Lifewater: Another 3D ad, with Ray Lewis, and two other guys it took me a few minutes to place (Matt Light and Justin Tuck) in a ballet with lizards, performing Swan - excuse me, Lizard Lake. Amusing. B.

Coke Zero: Troy Polamalu does a takeoff on the original Mean Joe Greene Coke ad from 30 years ago. Even though I doubt many of the younger folks have seen the original or know what it’s about, the spot is amusing on its own. B+.

Cash4Gold.com: Ed McMahon and MC Hammer sell off their bling to pay the bills. B+.

Vizio: “You’re an idiot becuse you didn’t buy our television”. D.

Taco Bell: Creepy stalker guy wants to fast track a relationship with a woman he just met. D.

Hulu.com: Alec Baldwin at his snarkiest. Yes, it is an evil plot to destroy the world. At least they’re up front about it. A.

Coke: The bugs are after the sugary essence that is Coke, and band together to heist a bottle from a sleepy guy on a picnic. Beautiful effect of butterflies breaking apart and flying away after impersonating the bottle at his hand. A.

I made more notes than I thought. While we’re on the subject of ads, though, a couple of items also come to mind. Those new Geico ads with the eyeballs on top of the stack of money? Don’t like them. And speaking of Geico, there’s one thing that’s bugged me for a long time about the Caveman versus Billie Jean King spot (BJK looks good for her age, too): why does he believe he’s winning the match? Was there something left on the cutting room floor from the beginning that we missed? Or are we supposed to just assume he is either an idiot living in his own fantasty world or that Geico has rigged everything against him because they’re the sponsor?

I am officially giving up trying to figure out why people have to be douchebags. Not just that, actually: why they have to be lying douchebags, about things that are so easily checked that it would be laughable if it were not so insulting. For instance: don’t try to tell me that you get “thousands” of pieces of spam a day that you then have to clean from your mailbox. We can check the logs, you know. We can see exactly what has been delivered and exactly what is sitting in that mailbox and exactly the time that mailbox was last checked. We know you receive maybe - maybe - 30 pieces of mail a day, almost all of which is spam and which we can see is deleted by the scanner, with the other three to six pieces of mail delivering because they are not, in fact, spam. Don’t try to tell me that you’re missing our billing invoices because of this supposed spam problem you’re having here when the billing address is at another provider entirely - can’t you see the failure of logic in just suggesting that? And don’t tell me the responses you’ve received to the very, very infrequent tickets you’ve opened have been short with just a “sorry - server’s busy” answer. We can look at the tickets you’ve opened and see that there’s nothing of the sort in them, and there are some very lengthy responses from us with quite a bit of detail about various things in there, almost nothing of which is related to this supposed horrendous spam problem you have. Beyond that, you haven’t opened a ticket since February of last year. One would think that for such an issue of such importance would have resulted in a ticket or ten in the span of a year. And finally, don’t try to keep changing your claims on subsequent emails, to things even more absurd. It won’t make you look any less foolish. Nor will informing us after three rounds of long emails that you’re not going to “waste” your valuable time doing our job - which, by the way, we haven’t asked you to do.

And that was my tipping point today. Yet another asshat who apparently knows more about running servers and networks than we ever will, lecturing me about a massive and entirely nonexistent spam problem. So for them, I say: fuck it. I will reserve my caring for the people who don’t pretend to know more than they actually know and/or who genuinely need assistance with something. Like the guy who needs help resetting his email client to pick up his mail because he managed to delete it somehow and the woman whose forum was attacked by porno spammers. For those occasions - rare though they are - when assholes like the lecturer appear, bitching for no reason whatsoever, they’ll get an answer to whatever the actual issue is (if there is one), and we’ll move on without even bothering with the nonsense they’re spewing. There’s gardening to be done. Menus to be planned. And there are these guys.

Best buddies.

All of which is much more enjoyable (helping people who need it is really my downfall, gardening brings good things to the table, food keeps people filled, and the animals are darned cute) and much less stressful (well, maybe beyond picking and squishing hornworms, which can be rather icky) than exerting any energy on miserable people.

Tonight begins what will hopefully be the last cold snap for us. I’m also hopeful that the new round of peas and beans, getting a very nice start out there, will make it through (especially tomorrow, which is supposed to be around 20 or so, and then the crazy kicks back in by the weekend when it’s supposed to be 70 here). March is just around the corner, and March around here means time to plant corn. When even Mom is over the cold, cold weather, you know it’s time for spring.

On (yet another) visit to the dentist today - another root canal, yay - I saw these signs:

From a church: “If I’m ok and your ok then why did Jesus die on the cross?”

Beyond what I see as the lack of logic behind the question, did you run out of apostrophes and misplace that other letter e in your collection? Maybe you should pass the plate at your next service.

From a swimming pool place:

“Summers on it’s way”

Four words.  Very simple. Is it so difficult to get it right?

By the way, if anyone happens to stumble across this blog looking for cancer-related information, especially for oral cancer, let me make this recommendation: find yourself a dentist who knows something about oncology as it relates to dental health. Make sure you get your dental work done BEFORE you go in for surgery or radiation/chemo. If you have wisdom teeth that need to come out, get them out - hell, even if they don’t need to come out, get them out. While you’re going through treatment, to avoid the rather hideous issues with trismus that I have since no one apaprently deemed it important enough to stress that this should be done, make sure you do some stretching of your mouth throughout, even though you aren’t likely to be eating or drinking much by mouth. It may be painful, especially when the burns start showing up on your face and neck and any movement hurts, but do it anyway: hop yourself up on the pain meds and do the stretching. It will be worth it after treatment when you’re able to fully open your mouth instead of having a very limited opening that makes eating diffcult and dental work (and you’ll need dental work, trust me: the lack of salivary function is hateful to oral health) a frustrating, time-consuming, and very painful event. If I had to do it over, I would have a) found my current dentist first, rather than getting a cursory review from my previous dentist who  deemed everything “ok” and left me with two impacted wisdom teeth, one of which is now starting to appear through the ripped skin at the back of my mouth and which will be incredibly tedious to address should it need any work, and b) done daily and frequent stretching exercises to keep my jaw muscles from contracting and the scar tissue from building up to the point where my opening is extremely limited at 18-20 millimeters. Know how limited that is? Put your thumb between your teeth, so the nail points either to the left or right, depending on which hand you’re using. That’s how far I can open my mouth. Don’t end up like this.

Today was Inauguration Day here in the US. Since no one offered me tickets to any of the glamorous events, I spent my day in the same sort of unglamorous duties that occupy my time: minding the network and the servers. Periodically checking my seedlings to see if anything else has come up. Looking at weather reports. Watching the various news stations, since ebb and flow of events is typically what drives other-than-normal traffic on days like today.

And, of course, dealing with the inevitable douchebags in the desk. Here’s a tip: if your web host tells you that it’s your site creating an issue on a server, repeatedly, and finally moves your site to be all by its lonesome on a brand new, powerful server so you stop impacting other users who had the misfortune to share server space with you, and the site still crashes the server where you’re all alone, guess what? It is, in fact, your site causing the issues. It isn’t rocket science to figure this out. So keep your snotty remarks to yourself about how we should use pixie dust or whatever the hell you think is used to keep things running around here to fix your site that we didn’t create and don’t maintain and how we’re always blaming you. It IS you. Best of luck with your next host, who instead of relocating your site will probably just turn it off until you get your shit together. I won’t hold my breath waiting for the apology you said you’d send personally. Oh, and you over there, who wants a credit for those “purported” upgrades we gave freely and you think you didn’t get: guess what that “N” in your plan name stands for, genius? That’s right: new.

Now, I don’t want you to get the wrong idea here. Most of our clients are just normal, civil people. They write in for something, we deal with it, they say thanks (or not, which isn’t a huge deal as long as they’re squared away) and off they go, happily about their business. These other, rude, nasty people are just like weeds poking up in the garden, unnecessarily causing stress to everyone they contact. I had a theory many years ago, and I still hold it to be true: there are simply some people in this world so utterly miserable in their little lives that they seem to be on a mission to try and make everyone else just as miserable. They don’t seem to understand that it’s self-fulfilling to a point: if you’re a nasty bitch, no one is going to want to be around you, which leads to an even more miserable existence (”Nobody loves meeeeeee!”), resulting in more crap you try to shovel into other peoples’ lives, and so on.

Overall, however, not a bad day at all. The network traffic started creeping up as people got themselves in front of their computers to post about the pomp and circumstance, or comment on someone else’s postings. A rather humorous moment when Chief Justice Roberts flubbed his lines and Obama waited while he got his shit together to finish repeating the oath. Traffic peaked during Obama’s speech and then stayed there for awhile as people yammered about whatever they were yammering about, and then settled back down to normal levels. By this evening and the other events, we were right back at usual levels, with only a few spikes here and there. Which left me with time to get my brother to call Hughes about the issue we were having with the satellite.

And that was a colossal waste of time for everyone involved. Usually, when we have this particular problem - had it before, will have it again, no doubt - I fill out their contact form on their customer care page, telling them there’s an issue with the DNS server(s) and the proxy server(s), telling them exactly the behavior we’re seeing with the inability to connect to certain ports (something as simple as port 22 for SSH, for instance), telling them NOT to send me back the canned answer I know I will receive about calling in to the business support line since this has nothing to do with the equipment here and the issue lies at their end, and telling them to pretty please send along this information to someone higher up the food chain - like the network geeks.

What I usually get back is the canned answer: please call for support. But the problems themselves, they go away - I figure they send along the message to network, but have to send me a reply, so fill it in with the can.

Today, however, the contact form did not work. It allowed progress up to the point where you actually put in your comments, and when you submit the form, it times out. Now, if I am on the Hughes network - and I am, by virtue of my connection here - and their support pages are on that network, should I not be able to use their support site regardless of any other issues they might be having beyond being totally down? One would think so, but apparently that is not the case.

So I got my sister to try submitting the page, with my comments, since she’s on a completely different network. Nothing.

And that meant what I dread: calling them, to try and convince them that I do know what I’m talking about and that we really just need to pass the message along to network. I had my brother call, since I’d been dealing with the craptacular service since last night and all day long today while trying to do what I need to do here, was not in the best of moods, and mostly can’t be understood over the phone anyway.

First call: a guy. We go through our spiel. He puts us on hold, and then disconnects us. Great.

Second call: a woman. We go through our spiel. I realize we’re in serious trouble when she starts going through her script without listening to a word we’re saying. I realize we’re in even deeper trouble when she has to put us on hold so she can go look up what “DNS” means. When she comes back, we try again. Back and forth, back and forth. We want someone in network, or at least someone at a higher level. There isn’t anyone, she says.  That, of course, is an outright lie, since obviously she isn’t capable of understanding certain things and just as obviously isn’t running any portion of the network.

We try again. She goes through some things, tells us what we already know: that we do not have a problem on our end. Exactly! My brother tells her that he completely agrees with her: she says we have no problem. We say we have no problem. Can you see how this indicates a problem that is NOT at our end, but at yours, and thus requires that the information be passed along to someone who can actually understand and react to it? She doesn’t grasp this.

We ask for a direct email address for support. She claims there isn’t one, that the only contact is via the form. Another lie, as everyone has email. We then ask her another puzzler: if she (or someone there) cannot solve the problem or offer a way to get it solved, and the contact form does not work, just what the fuck are we supposed to do? Actually, that was my question, and I’m sure she must have heard that, but the boy cleaned it up before asking her that.  We then had to walk her through accessing her own company’s customer care area and contact form, then walk her through filling out the form, to teach her how to use it and to see what happens when someone like us tries to use it, rather than calling in for completely ineffectual support for a problem that doesn’t exist at our end.

Our call ended with me demanding the corporate mailing address. I have a printout of the diagnostics for the uplink and downlink, and it pretty much all reads BAD and MARGINAL. I’ll be including that, and something fairly similar to what I just posted above, in my letter.

Minus the “fuck”.

Maybe.

There is a rather annoying commercial I’ve been seeing for some company that promises to scan your computer and zap all the stuff that slows down a system, fix malware, and other assorted things. The ad begins with a bunch of people whining about how slow their computers are, shows the typical error messages that pop up on Windows systems, and in the middle, says the scan is only for PCs. Fair enough. Why, then, do they insist on showing people pounding away on Macs and gleefully reporting at the end of the ad how much faster their systems are? I’m sure only people like me notice these things, but it’s rather amusing to think of someone who does indeed have a Mac thinking that this might be just the thing for them (even though it isn’t) because some of the people in the ad are shown using machines just like theirs.

I know, it’s been awhile. But the summer months are filled top to bottom with work, both on the ranch and at the company.

A typical day begins at around 5:30. The dogs, all of whom sleep with me, start rustling around, and Newton - a creature of habit - has to go out. So, we all get up, I let the dogs out, check their food and water, check Gandalf’s food and water, grab some tea, and sit down to look over what’s going on: sort some helpdesk tickets, kill off spam, pull up the weather report, see if we have any servers inbound that will need to be set up, and so on.

Then, it’s outside to check on everything that’s growing out there: harvest whatever is ready, watch for bugs and damage that might indicate there are critters to deal with, pull weeds, see if any of the existing plants have given everything they have and need to be pulled, plan out the next rotation of seedlings, get everything watered and/or fertilized (seabird guano for the corn - very high in nitrogen).

Inside, it’s now about time for lunch and a review of what’s going on with the business again: most tickets, a bite to eat, some coffee, and a cooldown from outside. The NOC is a good place to be during the heat of the day if there’s something that needs to be done there. Otherwise, more work, then…

Back outside for more weed pulling, more watering for the things that really need it (cukes, watermelons in particular), making trellises for anything that needs it, planning for the things that will need support down the road, checking the flats to see what has popped up.

On days like today, I might have some bread dough going, which needs to be kneaded, risen, shaped, proofed, and then baked - that will bring me in and out during the day. At times, there’s a special request (cookies, my brother asks, as they head out to my aunt’s place). Usually, I’m also planning and making dinner at the tail end of the day as well. On any given day, there may also be a trip to the doctor or dentist in there somewhere. I’ve been visiting the dentist quite a bit, as oral cancer and the associated treatments are hellish on the teeth. That’s one of the reasons many oral cancer patients simply have their teeth pulled before they start treatment. The aftereffects are horrid, and when you consider that people like me can barely open their mouths afterwards, you can imagine having a dentist and an assistant trying to do anything inside that limited space. So far, I’ve had several root canals, replaced fillings, filled new cavities, already have a couple of crowns with a couple more on the way, and in general should probably just set up a cot at the dentist’s office to save time.

In the evening, more work: maintenance items, handling the occasional ticket, heading off to the NOC for setups if I didn’t get to them during the day. If mom happens to be gone, at dusk it’s also time to round up the chickens and make sure they’re in the coop, ready to bed down for the night.

My days ends somewhere between midnight and 3 AM, at which time it’s off for a nap. Then we start all over again a few hours later.

Most days, I’d say, are fairly normal, happy days, and no douchebags puncture things by being…well, douchebags. The worst are those who take zero responsibility for anything: like the ass who requested that we transfer a domain in. We told him it would have to be unlocked, and never received a followup from him that he’d unlocked it and it was ready to transfer. Fast forward a year: now he’s bitching at us because the domain is expired. Well, we tell him - nicely, I might add - you need to go renew it at the existing location because it was never transferred. He quotes our own ticket responses to us, for some reason, as if a) we don’t have access to them already or b) it says anything other than it says, and then follows up a couple of days later with a pompous directive that we are “hereby informed” that their account is terminated effective immediately, when a simple “please cancel” will do. The topper? We’re apparently nasty and have poor service because we didn’t read his mind, and we’re not to “grace” him with any further replies. No problem: into the filters you go, just to make sure that no mail ever is received from you (and sets off the autoack for the helpdesk) and that no mail ever goes out from here to you. But we’d like to thank you for demonstrating why techs everywhere wind up despising people.

I don’t recall people being total jackasses when I was younger, and I certainly don’t recall the sheer level of ducking responsibility that seems to invade just about every human being these days. When we screw up, at least we have the decency to say so, and then fix whatever it is. When it’s something as stupid as a domain that you didn’t bother to follow through on that you’re being idiotic about now, I’m going to have a hard time finding any sympathy and I’m certainly not shouldering your failure for you. I try not to rant about work on ye olde blog here, but it slips out from time to time. Apologies to my handful of readers.

As long as I’m ranting though, I have to make a comment about one of these Nutrisystem commercials that annoys me to no end. It’s the one with Jillian Barberie, the one wearing so much eye makeup she looks like a raccoon. She’s blathering on about the things she loves, like football. A football is tossed to her, and she catches it. “Football,” she says, tucking the ball under her arm. “How many girls could do that?

That little piece pisses me off. Every girl I know could catch a softly tossed football. A lot of them can catch one that’s being thrown at them while running a pattern and while being defended by the other team. This ties in with Nutrisystem’s pimping out of all those retired football players, I suppose, and is apparently supposed to appeal to some rundown housewife in Podunk, IA, who never played sports at all when she was younger, but damn, could they be more condescending about the implication that girls just can’t do that stuff?

Pictures of stuff coming, promise. Food, garden, chickens. For real.

One in a never-ending series.

1. Open a ticket whining that your site is down, and that there have been no visitors in an hour.

Your main problem here is that we have access to the monitoring reports, which show no issues, and access to your site’s logs which not only show continuous, unbroken traffic to the site, but shows you logging right in the site yourself - multiple times - in the same “hour” that you’re claiming the site has been down. If you’re going to try to exaggerate, or just lie outright, as least make a tiny effort instead of tossing something our way that can be debunked in the span of less than two minutes.

2. Whine that where you used to receive a couple hundred pieces of spam a day, you’re now receiving next to none.

Your main problem here is that you’re a dumbass: no one wants to actively collect spam except those people running honeypots. You are not one of these people. The single largest group of tickets we receive in any given day revolves around email. A large portion of that subset of tickets revolves around ways of reducing spam. We do quite a lot of continual adjustments to the filters we have at the network and server level because all your neighbors on that same server do not share in your perverse need to feel important because some spambag sends junk to your domain. I have never, in all my years of being in the tech field, found anyone who ever wanted more spam and not less. Telling us that our quality has “deteriorated” because your ego requires that you collect junk mail wins you no points.

3. Threaten any sort of legal nonsense when your site is down. Because you allowed your domain to expire.

Your main problem is that I despise it when people do that sort of thing. It’s pretty much a one way ticket to getting your account terminated instantly for being a douchebag.

There is a reason that a lot of tech people burn out and seek other fields. The 85% of people that are nice and civil when they contact support for anything are far outweighed by the 15% who are rude, clueless asshats when contacting support for something.

I haven’t really been paying attention to the main site, but apparently I probably should have, because nothing I’ve posted in the past week has shown up. This is what I get, I suppose, for looking after other peoples’ stuff better than my own. There is an automated job I use to post things that I write and save, and not only has it not posted them, the posts have vanished entirely after the job runs. That’s not a good bug (or, shall we say it isn’t a beneficial insect, given that this is at least in part about gardening?). Time for another automation job, or a return to the way I used to post, just posting things as they were typed up. We’ll be catching up on what’s been happening here.

“No action is required on your part.”

This is plain English, I think. Only two words with more than one syllable. Seven words total. This is why it astonishes me that we receive a ticket from someone telling us they don’t understand and asking what they need to do. Is it that they are surprised they have to do nothing, that they don’t believe us, or that they truly don’t understand a simple sentence? I hesitate to claim the latter as the explanation but in reality, it does seem to be that way. How do these people manage to get through a day without killing themselves in some tragically humorous way?