So I recently canceled my land line. And it was a frustrating trip full of domestic and foreign imbeciles to get from A to B. I understand now the stories of people getting stuck in a phone maze and being in customer support hell. Let me set the table for you, much like everyone else I have a landline telephone. And it was very nice to have, the only problem was I hadn't really used it in a few years. Well, other than to have hooked up to my Dish Network receiver. And that's about it. I kept thinking to myself, "self, you just need to get rid of that and save some money." I have recently been using my cell phone more than my landline and it just made sense to cut the cord. The only people who would be upset about this would be my local newspaper who would call at least five times a week with a robot call about subscriptions and the Original Gutter Company. Hell, they used to call all the time even when I lived in an apartment. I wanted to keep them on the phone some time and give them all my information and then have them come out for the free estimate. That would have been great to see them come out and realize it was an apartment complex. But I didn't because I really didn't want to waste that much time on the phone with them. So back to canceling my land line with ATT. And I figured while I was doing that I'd go ahead and increase my DSL service to the fastest speed they offered. I don't use my landline but I use my internet all the time so that made sense to to do. On paper it seemed like an easy enough thing to do, turn one off and bump up the other. Done. So one Wednesday afternoon I called. That was the end of the easy part. If I had any idea of how much of a clusterfuck this was all going to turn into I may not have even tried. I called, talked to the robot voice. Oh my God, how I hate those robot voiced phone mazes. I think they're technically called VRS, voice response systems. What they should be called is the seventh level of hell. First off, you sound like a retard when you're talking to them and half the time the robot voice on the other end can't understand what you're saying. Good God people, if you're going to use some kind of technology like that at least use one that works. Those all suck and put you in a worse mood than you were when you were calling in the first place. As bad as they are, at least they speak English. More on that later. So I got through the robot voice phone maze and was actually going to be allowed to talk to a person. As I've outlined before, I'm not too patient so you can imagine how I love these voice systems. When I got to talk to the lady on the other end I explained that I wanted to have my landline disconnected and also have my DLS line upgraded to the highest speed they had available. I was giving names, numbers and all that and she checked and I was able to have the data only service in my area so I was good to go. She finished up on her end and said everything for both requests should be done on Friday. Nice! So I crafted an email to send out to everyone I knew to let them know that as of that Friday, I would no longer have a landline and I would be cell only. Sent that out and then just waited for Friday to get here. Friday morning rolled around and I woke up and turned on my phone and dead line. Nice! Didn't have a chance to check the internet but I figured if the phone was ok I should be good to go. 7:36a.m. on that Friday was the last good thought I had about ATT for quite a while. I went to work, uneventful day, came home and wanted to see how fast I would be going on the interweb now. No connection. That's weird, it said it my computer was connected to my network. So I quit my browser and relaunched and still nothing. Restarted my computer. And still nothing. What the fu.... So I went to check out the router and modem and the DSL light on my modem was blinking red. No signal. But my laptop sure as hell was getting a signal. So I figured it was hopefully a quick fix. I called the tech support line, went through the robot voice maze and got to talk to someone in tech support. In Mumbai I'm guessing. She was pleasant enough while I was giving her my info and giving her the background on why I was calling. She said the line signal looked good and that I should wait an hour or two to make sure the order had fully processed and that could be the problem. She said if after that time if I still had no signal to call back tomorrow and they could work on more fixes if need be. Ok, not ideal but if the processing was slow there wasn't much I could do about it. So I decided to just wait and see what it looked like in the morning. Woke up and went into the office to check it out and still blinking red so I was back off to the phone maze this time. Talked to the robot voice again and wound up talking to Jerome in St. Louis. Explained to him again what the situation was and what I'd been told and hopefully he could help. And after a few minutes of looking into my account he came to the conclusion that I needed to talk to someone in what they call the Provisioning Department (more on that later) and they could help. Unfortunately they weren't in on weekends and I'd have to wait till Monday to talk to anyone there. Really? Fuckers. So now I was going to be without service the entire weekend because of some problem that shouldn't have been a problem in the first place in a department I can't reach. That's just fucking great. So I think after that news I was a little short with Jerome from St. Louis for the remainder of the call. It wasn't his fault but he happened to be the one on the other end.
So I wait till Monday to call. And by this point I had been seething about it for the entire weekend. Why, they managed to get the phone disconnected right off but couldn't get the internet service upgrade handled. Not only no upgrade but because of moronic capabilities, no internet service at all. So needless to say I wasn't in a good mood when I had to call in for the third time. But Jerome had given me a tip, he'd given me the responses to the robot voice to get to a person in only about three steps. Thank you Jerome. So Monday at 9:00am I'm dialing away. Got to the robot voice and the questions he was asking didn't fit the responses I had from Jerome. I kept saying them but the voice wouldn't acknowledge them. Are you kidding me? I thought I'd be right through to a person and close to having my problem fixed. Fuck you Jerome. So for the third time I'm explaining my problem to a very nice lady on the other end. Unfortunately she can't make anything out of it and transfers me back to the tech support side. And on hold more. That's one thing I'd left out of all this. You'd be on hold for five minutes minimum in getting connected or getting transferred. I was really starting to think they were doing it on purpose hoping people would just give up and go away. I'm too stubborn so I played their little phone game. So seven minutes later someone in tech support again picks up, again, in what I'm assuming was Mumbai, and I had to repeat my story. Honestly ATT, come the fuck on. You have an account number, I have a problem ticket, why is none of the info traveling along with me in your phone maze? Every person I talked to I had to repeat the issue, and because it was dragging on, the story got longer on each successive retelling. So I'm talking to Mumbai and after about ten minutes on the phone (half that spent on hold while they 'look something up', I swear to God I hate that phrase now) they determine that it needs to be fixed by the Provisioning Department. What? That's just where I was transferred from? Could someone act like they know what the fuck is going on and fix the fucking problem? So I was getting bounced back state side to the Provisioning department for the second time this call. And I'd been on the phone about twenty minutes so far. But at least I was going to be talking to someone who I didn't have to ask to repeat what they were saying every time. Not to sound like Archie Bunker but if you insist on having your call center overseas you need to invest more time in the English lessons. So I'm back in the provisioning department talking to Denise. And at this point I wasn't inclined to be too nice. I had to explain, AGAIN, the whole story and where it was at this point. Which seemed really stupid since I had started out in your shitty department not more than twenty minutes ago. Where did all those notes go? Ass. So she's looking things up and she says to me it looks like the order was never completed. What the fuck? Are you kidding me? Wasting all this time and not having service for the last three to four days because some chair warmer couldn't process the order right? I think at that news she sensed the frustration and almost ready to boil over anger, and she seemed to be very helpful and said she'd fixed that and that when I went home I should have my DSL service ready to go. Well thank you Denise. Good to see at least one person in this whole operation didn't have their head up their ass. Or so it seemed.
So I get home and son of a bitch, that fucking little red light was still blinking at me. Mocking little motherfucker. So I again call the tech support line. For those of you keeping track at home, I would be talking to, at minimum, my seventh person in four days trying to get this fixed. And was far from happy. So I dial up the number and was talking to "Gabrielle" in what I can only guess was Mumbai by the lilt in her voice. Now why do you keep banging on Mumbai, you may be asking? Well, I'd had enough time on hold that I'd been Googling call centers trying to see where I may be going. Turns out that most companies that employ overseas call centers have the center based out of Mumbai, India. I think that article said like 80% of oversea call centers were based out of there for one financial reason or another. So I'm not just pulling Mumbai out of my ass, I did my research on where I was focusing my hatred. So I'm talking to Gabrielle, or at least that's what her stage name is. And I think stage name is the right term. People are already frustrated when they're calling those numbers and even more so when they know 100% for sure they're talking with someone over seas who they can't understand. So you have a lot of American sounding names on the other end of the phone. Instead of Rajiv, Madhuri and Gupta you have Steve, Gabrielle and Tony. Very weak attempt and faking everyone out but they keep doing it. So like I said, it was her stage name. And again, I'm relaying the story up to this point and seeing what could be done. And at this point I know I was a little short with her because I could tell so myself. I'm not an engineer but I'm not a tech idiot. I know my way around computers and a pretty good level so I was kind of questioning some of the things she was telling me to try but what the hell, at this point I didn't have much choice and was along for the ride if I ever wanted to have that little blinking red light go away. She first told me that because of the canceled phone line only one jack in the house would be live and that that would be the dedicated data line. I told her I knew that the one it was plugged into was the dedicated line. When I moved into my house I had to have some rewiring done with the phone lines and at that point, I'd already assigned that jack to be the dedicated DSL line. She wasn't understanding me or wasn't varying from the script. So I take my modem around the house, while Im on the phone, and try it in every jack in the fucking house because this dullard won't acknowledge what I'm trying to tell her. Oh, I'm hating you Gabrielle. So I got done plugging it into every damn jack in the house and no green DSL light. Just like I'd told her. I'd more or less determined at this point that it wasn't anything on my end and that there had to be something up on their end. Either a field not filled in or a switch not flipped or something. So she put's me on hold. I think this was the second time I'd been on hold and I was getting less pleasant by the minute. She tried some other line test on her end that took forever and still didn't fix the problem. So at that point she says I'd have to have a tech come out and check the line. Are you fucking kidding me Gabrielle? That's all you've got for me? Oh, I was done with all of them at that point. Fuck all you all. This was a Monday night and the next available appointment they had was Wednesday from 8-12 or 12-5. FUUUUUUCK!!!!! Ok...deep breath. I just cut in before she'd finished her speech and said put me down for Wednesday morning. She said would that be Wednesday from 8-12? Ummm...that's what the morning is Cupcake, did you seriously ask that question. So she signed me up and was giving the 'are you satisfied with the blah blah blah' end of call bullshit and I think I hung up before she'd finished the last word in her sentence. So if you're taking notes, we're five days into this and no closer to having my service back than we were when I placed the order almost a week ago. Oh, and she also said I'd have to call back so that they could calibrate the modem for the signal. Fuck you Gabrielle. So Wednesday rolls around and I'm up bright and early, ready to go in case they showed up right at 8:00am. That never happens...well I'm sure it happens for some people. I mean, someone has to be first obviously, it just never seems to be me. So I'm waiting. 9:00. And waiting. 10:00. And waiting. 11:00. And waiting. 12:00. ARE YOU SERIOUSLY FUCKING WITH ME ATT? It was 12:03 and not so much as a call to say they were running late. I was livid and on the phone again right then to see what the fuck was up with this short bus of a company. I was going through the phone maze again and just shouting 'AGENT' at the robot voice. After a couple prompts it transferred me to a human. I explained the whole story, again. And I almost asked that lady "why are you asking me all the same questions the robot voice already asked me? Didn't it get passed along? If not what the fuck good it is having that thing there at all? Is it just so you can trick people into thinking something is happening?" But I didn't. And I think she was picking up on the anger in my voice at that point and asked me to hold while she conferenced in someone. That someone turned out to be Richard in the Little Rock call center. So again, I explained the story to him. I think now I'm up to like the tenth time explaining what's going on. And he was very apologetic, not to mention understandable, and was pulling up some records and files. He was a little dumbstruck as to why they even suggested sending a tech out, he said they would have gotten there, checked the line and said, "Yep, lines dead." So he looked everything over and the line was fine and he said it didn't look like the order was ever entered properly from the beginning and hadn't been provisioned properly. Ah, the provisioning department. Let me relay to you folks what he told me happened. Sigh.... So when you cancel your landline but keep the data line, the line goes dead all together. No voice or data. Then the provisioning department has to make the provisions for there being a data only signal going to that line. And that part of the order was never done right. And no one up until now was bright enough to know that. So he fixed the order 'paperwork' and sent it back though. All the while being very apologetic. And I told him flat out, "Richard, you have been more helpful in under ten minutes than everyone else I've talked to over the last six days combined." He then was telling me that while the department is usually pretty quick, depending on the volume of requests, it could take up to two hours for it to be finished. And he gave me the number and extension to call back if it wasn't. I thanked him again for all of his help and he was again apologizing for all of the hassle that this had been and was telling me it shouldn't have taken this long to get resolved. At least I was happy about the acknowledgement that they knew it was a pain in the ass. So I got off the phone with Richard and had to go back to my bedroom to grab something before I went into work and when I went back by my office, all the lights on the modem were solid green. And our long national nightmare was at a close. So Richard from the Little Rock call center, thank you.
Sunday, March 6, 2011
Wednesday, February 16, 2011
Hey Look, A Shiny Thing!
So I didn't really have any sort of event or experience to write about. Well, at least not any to drone on the way you've all grown accustomed to and, I can only assume, love. I do however have a lot of random thoughts that bounce in and out of my head and while I do find them interesting, really aren't enough to qualify in my mind blogworthy on their own. Really like days of free association. Have a thought, that's great, think about it. Oh, what's that over there, there's another thought. That's cool. What was I just talking about? It's a little like that. Who am I kidding, it's exactly like that. So I'm going to umbrella all of these under the banner of my short attention span. And this could be the first of may like this. This particular post will just be the verbal equivalent of leftovers with a few different subjects.
So I have what you might call an epilogue to the Snowpocalypse post. I had cleared off my driveway of snow the afternoon of the Super Bowl (I think I owe the NFL .73¢ just for typing that) and among other things I found out that my 24 year old hand me down snowblower works great when the bottom surface is ice. My driveway still has a good one to two inches of ice on it still. So the paddles didn't get stuck at all on that and got the whole thing cleared off pretty quickly. And in essence I just got rid of all the stuff that would give me traction on the ice. Oh well. And I got the end of the driveway shoveled out flat and even cleared a spot for the mailman to pull up to drop my mail in. I'm not sure who was clearing out our edition roads but the ruts in the road were getting pretty deep. So when I cleared out the end of the driveway I figured that'd be a little helpful. And it looked pretty good and the car backed out pretty easily. And that was the last time I was out on Sunday. I go to leave for work and son of a bitch if the damn blade hadn't come by and fucked up the end of my driveway with all the slush and stuff. That's wrong...frozen slush and stuff. It had gotten cold enough that there was no getting rid of it. It's there till it gets warmer. And I like that the pile the plow got in front of my driveway is tall enough to scrape the bottom of my car. NICE! That has to be great on all the parts underneath. I just hear it scraping every time I back in or out...thanks snow truck dick.
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I'm on record...'Glee' sucks. There, I said it out loud. Everyone, you can quit fucking talking about how great 'Glee' is. Ahhh..fucking 'Glee'..they're on Oprah, they're the greatest, they're gonna do this song...I give a crap. Go watch your local high school swing choir, it's more interesting. I'm tired of "Glee" being forced down everyone's collective throat because you're supposed to think it's great. It's like "Ally McBeal" all over again, "Hey, it's interesting because it's different." It's not fucking different, it's a sitcom (and that's generous) and they sing. People that love it make every excuse in the world for it to be good, "it's campy", "it's fun", "it's something different". No, it just stinks. Biggest problem I have with it, it's not funny. They call it a comedy because they have Jane Lynch. Great job, you have Jane Lynch playing Jane Lynch. And don't get me wrong, I think she's great, 40 Year Old Virgin, Talladega Nights, Best in Show. She is really good. But they cast her because they saw "Role Models" and said "hey, do that again every week". And the songs even stink. They had 'Don't Stop Believin' on the pilot and they can't even get a good song after that. You know, when the best part of your show is the guest stars you're able to con onto being on your program, you have a problem. You're really not too far removed from being "The Love Boat", and that's not being fair to the memory of "The Love Boat". Sorry to besmirch your good name Pacific Princess by even putting "Glee" anywhere near your memory.
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I just saw someone recently at a liquor store and she had a shopping cart. And I'm not talking about some downtrodden lady outside the store with her own cartful of sadness. She was using a cart in the liquor store. I guess that also begs the question, when did liquor store start furnishing carts? Now don't get me wrong, I love my liquor. It's one of the main four food groups. Jack Daniels...personal friend of mine. I have a number of bottles of wine at any given moment. Hell, I have my own kegerator for God's sake, so I think it's safe to say I'm a fan. Now I said all that to say this, I have never needed a cart at a liquor store. Let me repeat that, I have never needed a cart at a liquor store. Ok, once I needed a cart for liquor, but it was an extreme situation. A large work group went to an event called "Carb Day" and we rolled into the track with seventeen cases of beer. And apparently my backward state and it's liquor laws only allows for four cases of beer to be bought at one time. So I had to do multiple trips to get it. And it's a little difficult, not to mention heavy, to lug around four cases at once. But that's an event with a lot of people. And seeing how there was no event of any sort this time of year that would really warrant a cart (unless you have some really big Valentine's Day plans), I was left guessing. Now I'm thinking a few things at this point, she's done with AA and this is her big 'fuck off' to that, she's having a party and she's inviting everyone. Not everyone she knows, just everyone. Or she's very lazy and doesn't want to carry anything around the store while deciding between the Zinfandel or the Pinot. Unfortunately I saw this as I had just gotten back into my car and she was going into the store. Because you know if I had seen that while I was in the store I would have had to linger just to see how full someone decides to fill their liquor store cart on a random Thursday.
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I have forgotten so many seeds of ideas to write about it's really starting to get annoying. I at times have a horrible memory. Sometimes it's like that of a crack addicted tree frog, and that's not being fair to actual crack addicted tree frogs. I'll have this good idea, or at least what I'm calling a good idea, and I think it's so good I can write about it later. And later comes and I cannot pull what the thought was. And of course I don't write it down, that's for old people with shit memories. Well call me grandpa because I've forgotten a lot of good subjects. I only wish I could remember some of them. I know I thought they were good because I can remember being excited about thinking what I could write. How's that, I can remember being excited about the topic but I can't remember the topic. Way to go dipshit, what's a brick of Post-It™ notes cost? A dollar? Nice. In one ear and out the other. Gone in sixty seconds, and just as annoying as the Nicholas Cage move. See, now why do I feel compelled to always take a swing at Nick Cage. Ghost Rider, Season of the Witch, National Treasure (any of them), Brining Out the Dead, Zandalee, Captain Corelli's Mandolin, The Weather Man. Oh yeah, that's why.
So I have what you might call an epilogue to the Snowpocalypse post. I had cleared off my driveway of snow the afternoon of the Super Bowl (I think I owe the NFL .73¢ just for typing that) and among other things I found out that my 24 year old hand me down snowblower works great when the bottom surface is ice. My driveway still has a good one to two inches of ice on it still. So the paddles didn't get stuck at all on that and got the whole thing cleared off pretty quickly. And in essence I just got rid of all the stuff that would give me traction on the ice. Oh well. And I got the end of the driveway shoveled out flat and even cleared a spot for the mailman to pull up to drop my mail in. I'm not sure who was clearing out our edition roads but the ruts in the road were getting pretty deep. So when I cleared out the end of the driveway I figured that'd be a little helpful. And it looked pretty good and the car backed out pretty easily. And that was the last time I was out on Sunday. I go to leave for work and son of a bitch if the damn blade hadn't come by and fucked up the end of my driveway with all the slush and stuff. That's wrong...frozen slush and stuff. It had gotten cold enough that there was no getting rid of it. It's there till it gets warmer. And I like that the pile the plow got in front of my driveway is tall enough to scrape the bottom of my car. NICE! That has to be great on all the parts underneath. I just hear it scraping every time I back in or out...thanks snow truck dick.
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I'm on record...'Glee' sucks. There, I said it out loud. Everyone, you can quit fucking talking about how great 'Glee' is. Ahhh..fucking 'Glee'..they're on Oprah, they're the greatest, they're gonna do this song...I give a crap. Go watch your local high school swing choir, it's more interesting. I'm tired of "Glee" being forced down everyone's collective throat because you're supposed to think it's great. It's like "Ally McBeal" all over again, "Hey, it's interesting because it's different." It's not fucking different, it's a sitcom (and that's generous) and they sing. People that love it make every excuse in the world for it to be good, "it's campy", "it's fun", "it's something different". No, it just stinks. Biggest problem I have with it, it's not funny. They call it a comedy because they have Jane Lynch. Great job, you have Jane Lynch playing Jane Lynch. And don't get me wrong, I think she's great, 40 Year Old Virgin, Talladega Nights, Best in Show. She is really good. But they cast her because they saw "Role Models" and said "hey, do that again every week". And the songs even stink. They had 'Don't Stop Believin' on the pilot and they can't even get a good song after that. You know, when the best part of your show is the guest stars you're able to con onto being on your program, you have a problem. You're really not too far removed from being "The Love Boat", and that's not being fair to the memory of "The Love Boat". Sorry to besmirch your good name Pacific Princess by even putting "Glee" anywhere near your memory.
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I just saw someone recently at a liquor store and she had a shopping cart. And I'm not talking about some downtrodden lady outside the store with her own cartful of sadness. She was using a cart in the liquor store. I guess that also begs the question, when did liquor store start furnishing carts? Now don't get me wrong, I love my liquor. It's one of the main four food groups. Jack Daniels...personal friend of mine. I have a number of bottles of wine at any given moment. Hell, I have my own kegerator for God's sake, so I think it's safe to say I'm a fan. Now I said all that to say this, I have never needed a cart at a liquor store. Let me repeat that, I have never needed a cart at a liquor store. Ok, once I needed a cart for liquor, but it was an extreme situation. A large work group went to an event called "Carb Day" and we rolled into the track with seventeen cases of beer. And apparently my backward state and it's liquor laws only allows for four cases of beer to be bought at one time. So I had to do multiple trips to get it. And it's a little difficult, not to mention heavy, to lug around four cases at once. But that's an event with a lot of people. And seeing how there was no event of any sort this time of year that would really warrant a cart (unless you have some really big Valentine's Day plans), I was left guessing. Now I'm thinking a few things at this point, she's done with AA and this is her big 'fuck off' to that, she's having a party and she's inviting everyone. Not everyone she knows, just everyone. Or she's very lazy and doesn't want to carry anything around the store while deciding between the Zinfandel or the Pinot. Unfortunately I saw this as I had just gotten back into my car and she was going into the store. Because you know if I had seen that while I was in the store I would have had to linger just to see how full someone decides to fill their liquor store cart on a random Thursday.
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I have forgotten so many seeds of ideas to write about it's really starting to get annoying. I at times have a horrible memory. Sometimes it's like that of a crack addicted tree frog, and that's not being fair to actual crack addicted tree frogs. I'll have this good idea, or at least what I'm calling a good idea, and I think it's so good I can write about it later. And later comes and I cannot pull what the thought was. And of course I don't write it down, that's for old people with shit memories. Well call me grandpa because I've forgotten a lot of good subjects. I only wish I could remember some of them. I know I thought they were good because I can remember being excited about thinking what I could write. How's that, I can remember being excited about the topic but I can't remember the topic. Way to go dipshit, what's a brick of Post-It™ notes cost? A dollar? Nice. In one ear and out the other. Gone in sixty seconds, and just as annoying as the Nicholas Cage move. See, now why do I feel compelled to always take a swing at Nick Cage. Ghost Rider, Season of the Witch, National Treasure (any of them), Brining Out the Dead, Zandalee, Captain Corelli's Mandolin, The Weather Man. Oh yeah, that's why.
Friday, February 4, 2011
Snowpocalypse 2011
So I was snowed in for a couple days this week with one of the worst winter storms I can remember. Let me rephrase that, I was iced in this week with one of the worst winter storms I can remember. Now all of this was supposed to start happening on a Monday night and I hadn't heard anything about it till Sunday night. Thank you Facebook for the heads up. And thank you cable tv for keeping me away from my local news as to miss this kind of important news. At least to go out and make sure I had some things on hand in the pantry in case we did get the worst case scenario that all the weather men and weather women were predicting. But I don't usually put a lot of faith in the weather guessers. I can only image how excited they were to have something like this coming up to be wrong about. And man are they wrong. How many jobs could you keep where if you do your job right 35%-40% of the time you'd still be employed? Not many. I guess in baseball you'd be in the hall of fame with a batting average like that, but for weathermen it's....it's not good. We don't need weathermen. Usually it's just an excuse to put hot chicks on t.v. The only reason they have jobs is because we're too too lazy to walk away from the t.v. and stick our heads out the door. 'Channel Whatever WeatherCenter'? More like 'Bullshit Factory'. You mean it's going to get colder when the sun goes down?!? Visibility is 2 miles? I'm not a bird of prey in search of food, I don't care about the visibility. Weather is really only exciting when it kills people or relocates trailers. There's a chance of rain. Yeah, and there's a chance the next Nicholas Cage move will be good too. Let me describe every weatherman in the world: loud jacket, spray tan, big hair, on the verge of suicide and named something fake. Like Dallas Raines. Yes, that's an actual weatherman's fake name, check it out on your Google machine. The only other industry with names that idiotic is porn, but at least that's useful. And can we please stop calling weathermen 'Meteorologists'. Let's save the fancy 'sciencey name' for the guys who actually do science. No one is giving Al Roker a Nobel Prize for saying, "Now here's what's happening in your neck of the woods." So you can imagine my surprise when 'the big one' that they said was going to hit actually hit. I've noticed that when they get this worked up about a storm nothing happens. And when they don't really see it coming, that's when we get punched in the face with eighteen inches of snow. However, having heard this I took a USB drive into work to copy some things off in case I had to work from home. That drive had been working fine. Then I plug it in there (which I'd done a number of times before) and it started acting weird. Like saying it was going to take forty-five minutes to copy something that I knew should only take a few minutes. So I was wrestling with that for, oh, the better part of an hour trying to figure out what the hell was wrong. Now in this time everyone had left. We got cut early and I was trying my damnedest to get out of there before anything kicked in. And this shitty drive wasn't playing nice. I finally had what I needed (or so I thought) and was on my way just in time to be driving home in an ice storm. Well what the fuck, they got it right. So now to try and navigate what is sure to be an interstate full of jackholes who should never drive unless it's sunny and 74. And boy was I not wrong. There was one especially annoying Prius out on the road that I just could not shake and get around. They were like my traffic nemesis that day. I know I've used the term nemesis a few times before. Like shopping nemesis but it fits. I don't know if it was on purpose but every step I took to try and get around them, they got in the way just in a nick of time. That kind of drive just drives me out of my mind. If there was some sort of recording device set up in my car during drives like that your collective jaw would hit the floor at the stream of foulness that comes out. And I admit it. My mom had the misfortune of calling me while I was en route home. And got to hear a lot of it. Actually she even said, "Boy...you really need to do something about that road rage." Not the first time that's happened. She's been in the car with me before so she has an idea. A few Thanksgiving's ago we went out to the large neighboring city that Saturday after Thanksgiving to do some shopping. It was an outdoor mall and I was driving. Now let me set the table on this, I have incrementally started swearing in front of my mom from college till now. I know she doesn't care for the work fuck. Almost everything else is on the table. And I'm a grown ass man and if I drop a few bombs no biggie. So over the course of the years I'd gotten a little more comfortable swearing in front of her. And sometimes it's been hard not to drop the F-Bomb, I say it so much it's more like a comma than a word. So back to the shopping, we were driving in the parking lot trying to find a spot. We came up to a four way stop and apparently of the two of us that pulled up to it, I was the only one that noticed. The ass clown going the other direction just blew on through when it was my turn, to which I exclaimed, "Well don't fucking mind me!!". It was a reflex. And immediately after I said I it occurred to me that I had said it. And it wasn't like a bad reception thing and maybe it got garbled. She was sitting two feet away. And it's not like her ears were gonna burst in to flames like everyone's eye's burst into flames after Janet Jackson's nipple came out during the superbowl, curious where all the blind people are from that. And then I waited. And waited. And nothing, not even a sigh as to say, "Really...was that necessary?" So I didn't say anything and everything went along as normal. But that was the last time I did that and I've caught myself several times since then but managed to change it at the last minute from HBO swearing to TBS swearing.
Anyway, back to the jackwagon Prius that was impeding my getting home. Did I also mention they were hitting the brakes at random for no reason. Well done you dick. I can see it if a stop is coming up or if you're making a turn. But you're on the interstate with no exits near....quit riding the brake in the ice you moron. When you look in your rearview mirror and wonder what caused the pileup behind you, you can know it was because of your random brake hitting. Dick. Which I'm sure you were doing with a smug sense of superiority and holier than thou attitude. You know, because you're saving the world because you drive a Prius. You're not saving the world. You're just a pretentious douchebag who wants everyone to think what a great person you are for driving that car. And this was a pretentious douchebag who had no business being out in any sort of weather that you couldn't describe as Phoenix. This is the point where I'd like to say I got around them, flipped them off and was on my way having put them safely behind me. But I can't. They managed to block my every move to get by all the way to my exit. There's a part of me that wouldn't have minded seeing them on the news later as one of the many slide offs the police were dealing with. The impotent rage subsided and I was finally home. God, I love that phrase. Impotent rage. If you're being honest with yourself you've had it too. Especially in traffic. Where you get so mad and worked up about something and you will never get to have the outlet you want for all that anger. You just have to choke it back knowing you can't (or depending on the circumstance, shouldn't) let that rage out. And any of it you do let out just floats away up into the atmosphere no where close to it's intended target. Impotent rage. Works for a lot more instances than just in the car. Feel free to use it whenever, you don't even need to credit me. So back to getting home, I did have to make one stop. They had been calling for a lot of ice in my neck of the woods. Like an inch plus of ice. Like downed tree limbs and power lines ice. So I figured I would pick up some extra fire wood for the fireplace just in case. And I guess 73% of the city had the same thought. Normally you can go to just about any gas station this time of year (check local listings) and find the pre-bundled firewood. And the last time I'd been out I'd seen a bunch of it at a couple of the local gas stations. So on my way home I figured no problem, I'll just stop there. It's on the way, and I'll be set just in case. No firewood. Went to the next station. No firewood. What the hell people? It's not milk, it's fire wood. I guess other people had the same idea and they'd also heard about it earlier than I had to go buy their wood in a panic. I finally found a station that had some so I got a few bundles and went home. That last mile or so was when I noticed my windshield wipers weren't really working. They were moving. They were just encased in ice and not really wiping anything. That was fun. Got home and a couple hours after I'd gotten home I saw an email that was calling off work for the next day. Well, not calling it off but saying don't go into the office. Now who was looking smart for bringing some stuff home? Must have been someone else because that shitty drive of mine died. What that hell man! It wasn't that old and it was babied. I really baby most of my electronics and that was no different. I tried for the better part of an hour to make that fucking thing work. And nothing infuriates me quicker than electronics that should be working just fine but for some inexplicable reason just decide to tell me to go to hell and stop working. Oh, the urge to take a hammer to that thing was growing. Idid have the thought that I could maybe save some of what was on it so it hasn't tasted the hammer. Yet. I managed to get what I needed to get done done through strategic use of my sent folder. It wasn't as quick as I would have liked but I managed. Only out of work for two days. The weather didn't get as bad as all the talking weather heads had forecasted. Really? They were wrong? GASP!! I guess I should take away from this that I depend on technology too much for as easily as it will fail me and that I should keep more firewood on hand in the winter time just in case things ever do break bad and I need to use it for more than just the nice ambience of having a fire. Oh, and weathermen suck. That too.
Anyway, back to the jackwagon Prius that was impeding my getting home. Did I also mention they were hitting the brakes at random for no reason. Well done you dick. I can see it if a stop is coming up or if you're making a turn. But you're on the interstate with no exits near....quit riding the brake in the ice you moron. When you look in your rearview mirror and wonder what caused the pileup behind you, you can know it was because of your random brake hitting. Dick. Which I'm sure you were doing with a smug sense of superiority and holier than thou attitude. You know, because you're saving the world because you drive a Prius. You're not saving the world. You're just a pretentious douchebag who wants everyone to think what a great person you are for driving that car. And this was a pretentious douchebag who had no business being out in any sort of weather that you couldn't describe as Phoenix. This is the point where I'd like to say I got around them, flipped them off and was on my way having put them safely behind me. But I can't. They managed to block my every move to get by all the way to my exit. There's a part of me that wouldn't have minded seeing them on the news later as one of the many slide offs the police were dealing with. The impotent rage subsided and I was finally home. God, I love that phrase. Impotent rage. If you're being honest with yourself you've had it too. Especially in traffic. Where you get so mad and worked up about something and you will never get to have the outlet you want for all that anger. You just have to choke it back knowing you can't (or depending on the circumstance, shouldn't) let that rage out. And any of it you do let out just floats away up into the atmosphere no where close to it's intended target. Impotent rage. Works for a lot more instances than just in the car. Feel free to use it whenever, you don't even need to credit me. So back to getting home, I did have to make one stop. They had been calling for a lot of ice in my neck of the woods. Like an inch plus of ice. Like downed tree limbs and power lines ice. So I figured I would pick up some extra fire wood for the fireplace just in case. And I guess 73% of the city had the same thought. Normally you can go to just about any gas station this time of year (check local listings) and find the pre-bundled firewood. And the last time I'd been out I'd seen a bunch of it at a couple of the local gas stations. So on my way home I figured no problem, I'll just stop there. It's on the way, and I'll be set just in case. No firewood. Went to the next station. No firewood. What the hell people? It's not milk, it's fire wood. I guess other people had the same idea and they'd also heard about it earlier than I had to go buy their wood in a panic. I finally found a station that had some so I got a few bundles and went home. That last mile or so was when I noticed my windshield wipers weren't really working. They were moving. They were just encased in ice and not really wiping anything. That was fun. Got home and a couple hours after I'd gotten home I saw an email that was calling off work for the next day. Well, not calling it off but saying don't go into the office. Now who was looking smart for bringing some stuff home? Must have been someone else because that shitty drive of mine died. What that hell man! It wasn't that old and it was babied. I really baby most of my electronics and that was no different. I tried for the better part of an hour to make that fucking thing work. And nothing infuriates me quicker than electronics that should be working just fine but for some inexplicable reason just decide to tell me to go to hell and stop working. Oh, the urge to take a hammer to that thing was growing. Idid have the thought that I could maybe save some of what was on it so it hasn't tasted the hammer. Yet. I managed to get what I needed to get done done through strategic use of my sent folder. It wasn't as quick as I would have liked but I managed. Only out of work for two days. The weather didn't get as bad as all the talking weather heads had forecasted. Really? They were wrong? GASP!! I guess I should take away from this that I depend on technology too much for as easily as it will fail me and that I should keep more firewood on hand in the winter time just in case things ever do break bad and I need to use it for more than just the nice ambience of having a fire. Oh, and weathermen suck. That too.
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