Open a ticket saying you can’t upload to an application you’ve installed. Don’t include any other information. We love trying to figure out what the hell you’ve done to break something that’s been working just fine, and love even more rechecking ownership of and permissions on files, and tracking back through the logs.

While we’re working on that, open yet another ticket saying the site is entirely down. When we look at it, the site is in fact down, because it can’t establish a database connection. That seems odd, since the site has been working just fine. Until…

After we tell you the problem is the configuration file and the credentials the file is trying to use to connect are incorrect, tell us you haven’t changed anything. Except, oh, you changed the password for the main account user.

When we repair the configuration file to use valid and proper credentials, and then tell you that if you change little, minor things like, oh, PASSWORDS, you need to update configuration files that use those passwords, ask us how you’re supposed to change the file without FTP or control panel access. This will surely make us ask you what the hell you’re talking about because you just told us you were in the control panel and changed the password, and this has nothing to do with us correcting a database configuration file. Ergo, you should be able to do whatever it is you need to do, since presumably you were just in the control panel doing whatever it is you were doing.

An HOUR later, complain that you still can’t access FTP or the control panel. Since both are working fine, and the site is working just fine because we repaired things, this will make us even happier as we go hunting through the logs only to find you locked yourself out – and locked out the actual client as well, since you’re at their location – by continually attempting to log in with an incorrect password. A password that you changed from the control panel. A password that you should know. You kept trying to log in with an obviously incorrect password instead of stopping and just contacting us, which triggered the firewall.

When we tell you what you’ve done – without pointing out the definition of futility, I might add – and then tell you we unblocked your IP and reset the password, respond with a request to rest the password to “changeme”. Nothing delights us like easily guessed, massively insecure passwords.

And finally, when we tell you that we’re not resetting the password to that, give us a snotty “Fine.” followed by a haughty “I want it on the record” that you find our response insufficient and too slow. This despite the fact that the entirety of the issue, start to finish, was created by you, and it took you an HOUR to respond to something we managed to reply to in exactly seven minutes.

All of this will certainly ensure that we put you at the top of the douchebag list, and further will ensure that we let the client know – because they also contacted us about the site being down – exactly why everything was a mess. There was insufficiency going on here, that is certain. It is equally certain that it had nothing whatsoever to do with us.

Good luck finding a host with proactive monitoring who will immediately bounce out at 4AM to fix your server, who owns their equipment rather than leasing it through some third party (meaning no waiting on relays of information, and so forth, cutting out the middle part of all that), and who will go outside the realm of what is normal technical support as we have done in the past, without charging you a dime for it.

Life is much, much too short to be dealing with people intent on being unhappy because Shit Happens. I am well aware – more aware than some others, at this point – that Shit does in fact Happen. You don’t see me being an ass to people around me because I’ve been affected by some random problem happening on a server.

Calzone for dinner, on the last of the pizza dough batch I made earlier this month. No mushrooms (Shit Happens!), but just as tasty with sauce, onions, pepperoni, mozzarella, and three year aged cheddar. It was probably larger than usual, and I ate almost the entire thing, which has now made me feel stuffed, but that’s nothing a good cappuccino can’t solve. Or at least help.

Made a double batch of dough earlier today, to tide me over until we’re in post-surgery and into recovery time around here. I hope so, anyway.

Most of the time, this does not bother me overly much. After all, I have a great deal many more hours at my disposal than most people, meaning I can come up with grandiose plans about various things, and also cement the reputation I have garnered of being a robot rather than a human being. Since the radiation from the cancer treatments still has not brought me any real superpowers, I suppose it’s as close as I will ever get, although I won’t be doing this anytime soon.

Some days, though, the lack of sleep brings out the cranky, especially if I am also not feeling well. Like today. This makes me want to kick someone’s ass right off the planet for tossing a nonsensical legal threat our way about information in a domain registration that she provided, even though we have pointed out what she is saying means nothing and she readily admits she doesn’t understand the “jargon” – and by “jargon”, I mean English. Apparently, she is simply terrified that one of her “fans” (she is an actress, apparently) will find out her address from a years-old cached pieced of information on google, something that we do not control, last time I checked, and do some stalker-like thing, or kill her, or both. Or something. This is the time when I want to state it flat out for people: you are just not that important. You are not fodder for the next American Justice where some crazed, obsessed person hunts you down and kills you. You may tell yourself, actress aspiring to be famous, that someone would care that much, but let’s face it here: you provided your own biographical information to IMDB which is quite handily on your own web site, and it wouldn’t take a rocket scientist or some weirdo even slightly off their meds to find you. I know: I tracked down someone, including their name, date of birth, current residence, current hobbies, other web sites they visit, and the fact that they coached little league from a single piece of information (an IP address attached to a comment they left on a blog we host). With all the information you have provided on your own, deranged psychos could track you down if they wanted. They haven’t. This should tell you something about your place in the greater universe.

A day where you think it would be nice to be able to eat and drink the way you used to. That an icy cold beer and a pile of wings would be great after sweating off a couple of pounds working on the ranch, except that you can no longer drink alcohol due to the radiation burning off the lining of your mouth and you really can’t eat wings any more because the chewing issues make it virtually impossible. That it would be great to settle in with a margarita and a blackened chicken burrito with extra sweet and hot chile sauce, but the spicy foods are offlimit now for the same reason alcohol is, and you know even as you sow the seeds in the garden that you’re unlikely to ever be able to eat habaneros or even jalapenos again any time soon, if ever.

On the other hand, on a day like today, where I’m having some trouble catching my breath and generally feeling like crap – oh, not to mention having a slight bout of anxiety over the fact that the doctor wants me to have a chest CT because of something they saw on the chest x-ray they wanted before I started hyperbaric dives after having yet another tooth pulled – it’s nice to Get Shit Done. Like sow the cukes from seed that I’ve wanted to do for several days now, for a total of about 140 seeds planted, with a little overflow from my nephew helper, who put half a dozen seeds in several holes while I tried to convince him that really, one was all that was required. I also directly sowed some more tomatoes and peppers, because let’s face it: there are rarely enough, and we intend to do a lot of preserving this year. If we have the space, I want to fill it with something. That includes the newest 8 x 4 frame I polished off today in the herb garden, with a little assist by my sister, who hauled a load of dirt and poop for me amongst the five others that I brought over and mixed in. Tomorrow, while we wrangle a scheduled CT from the hospital people and I stay out of the hyperbaric chamber until we determine what the hell is going on – and if I have walking pneumonia, I will, as I have told several people, be pissed – I will begin work on the final 8 x 4 frame for the herb garden. Tonight, I may just go ahead and sow some things in flats that really want the much hotter weather we will no doubt be heading into very soon, and set them up on the heat mats in the garage, turning on the lights for them in the morning.

It’s a day where you also get nice, chatty mails from certain clients, about their newest projects, and about being a test case who found a bad link on our site. Or from someone who understands the information (some of it erroneous) at some random, invisible data mining company is not the end of the world as we know it, which then leads in a roundabout sort of way to a discussion about critters and gardening/sustainability. Or from someone who congratulates us on ten years of putting up with all of this. Or where a pooped out puppy sleeps on the back of the couch while you work from home on a laptop, ass planted on the couch yourself, his tail slapping against the cushion now and then, his nose crinkling as he sniffs out a rabbit or turtle or whatever populates puppy dreams, every now and again his paws wiggling manically, chasing down a bird he will never catch, growling and then squeaking out what would be a bark were he awake. Or where you watch as your nephew, having discarded his swimming diaper at some point, stands on the patio in the shade, fresh from the pool, with only his water wings on, downing saltines with a slab of cheese between them, crumbs falling from his mouth and sticking to his wet chest. Or where you decide, apropos of nothing, that Saturday would be a great  time for a spaghetti dinner night, and that homemade pork/beef/veal meatballs in homemade sauce, with homemade Italian bread as a vehicle for carrying butter and garlic, would be a rather fine thing indeed, even as you muse about the possibility of making homemade pasta, just to top it all off.

Or where, in general, despite never having as much time as you think even though you don’t sleep, berating yourself for not writing nearly as much as you would want to (or anything at all, for that matter), and having a list of todo items that is constantly expanding, you think this is a pretty damned good life, overall, and that you wouldn’t trade a minute of it for anything.

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?

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.

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.

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.

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.