Useless Conversation

[Signe]

[Miasma]

There's going to be a pretty good total lunar eclipse tonight.

[Nevermore]

But when is the next Total Eclipse of the Heart?

[Yegolev]

Horkheimer is awesome.

[cmlancas]

Adorno and Horkheimer are even better.

 

Sorry, it happened that I'm writing an exam on cultural capital. Don't hate!

[Yegolev]

I get home tonight to find that the boy is stacking up shoeboxes and knocking them down while wearing his Mario hat.  He said he had to grab the flashy star first so he would flash, then he could knock them down.

Yeah, he has a Mario hat.  Also a Mario Kart motorized car, a Mario electric toothbrush, and a keychain that makes sound effects from the NES games.  He has already decided that he will use it when he dresses up as Mario for Halloween.  I don't mind being Luigi.

[Oban]

Just make sure to keep him away from open wells.

[Moosehands]

And brick overhanging porches.

And psychedelic mushrooms.

[cmlancas]

And flowers that cause you to spit fire?

Oh. Also, signs of him growing a raccoon tail might freak me out too. 

[Moosehands]

[Yegolev]

That was awesome.

I injured my DS.  For those of you that didn't know, it's not a good idea to launch one five feet to land on a hardwood floor.  The left shoulder button isn't responding like it should.  My solution was to buy a Onyx DS and give my white one to the boy.  Yeah, I'm an awesome dad.

[cmlancas]

That was awesome.

I injured my DS.  For those of you that didn't know, it's not a good idea to launch one five feet to land on a hardwood floor.  The left shoulder button isn't responding like it should.  My solution was to buy a Onyx DS and give my white one to the boy.  Yeah, I'm an awesome dad.

Why not... cobalt! (I want!)

[Yegolev]

There were only two on the shelf at Best Buy, both Onyx.  I had already been to Target where they had six, but they were all pink, and TRU had zero.  Stupid casual gamers.

[Merusk]

Fuck the damned phone company.

For the last few months we've been getting "ghost" calls.  The phone will ring, we'll pick it up and there will be nothing on the other end for a few seconds until it disconnects.  We thought we were being pranked, and *69'd then called them back later after a weekend where we were getting a call every hour or so, thinking that the parents were away and the kids were being shits.   The number belongs to some couple with a 2 year old who claimed they were gone that whole weekend.

So we call the phone company to find out wtf is going on, and they say that we need to call the Police and have them investigate, because they show no problems.  The police say, keep a log for a week or so and we'll investigate.  We do so, tracking the time and date and number of each call (at a nice $.75 per *69... ).

 After we turn it over to the police, they come back and say they investigated and don't believe anything criminal is going on.  Ok, great.  Next call to the phone company was today and now they say,  "Well, we'll send someone out to look but we still don't show a problem.  We think it's a problem with your inside phone lines and if we come inside it'll cost you $85 per hour plus parts."

 What? Yes, my phone is calling itself from this other number at random intervals. Clearly that's what's happening here and it's not a crossed wire or some technical problem because you asshats haven't upgraded the switch boards despite nearly 300 houses being built in the area over the last 4 years.   Just like when we had DSL and the reason the connection was dropping was US, and not the crappy local router (which was dropping everyone in the area..)

God damnit, this might just force me to move to a cell phone.  It'll all depend on how much of a hassle phone service through the cable company turns out to be. Fucking Cincy bell.  Gah.

[Yegolev]

Heh.  We're leasing raised floor from Cinci Bell.

[WayAbvPar]

Fuck the damned phone company.

Amen. If I had any other choice, I would tell Qwest to go fuck themselves. Unfortunately, they are the only option for POTS. I don't need long distance or any of that crap- I just need a phone number to give businesses, and in case my cell phone dies and my power is out.

[Engels]

Had a similar experience with Qwest;

My DSL was getting very poor bandwidth, and I pay th extra for the 6 Mbs connection. So I call up their CS, and I have to go through a litany of Q&A about my set up, about 4 modem restarts, them blaming it on my router, them blaming it on my NIC card, them blaming it on both of the computers we have, etc, etc etc. About 4 hours of phone conversation over 2 days later, they finally dispatch a tech to come over. First thing the tech does is check their neighborhood hub, and sure enough, it was failing, but they didn't want to fix it because noone was noticing the bandwidth reduction but me.

The tech changed my particular connection to a working hub. When I asked her why they didn't just fix the danged hub, since even with their 'budget' customers, they weren't even getting that level of bandwidth, she said that they don't fix broken hardware unless there's a 'good reason to'.

I told her about my experience of 4 hours on the phone to the Phillipines and the weeks of failed service as a 'good reason' and she shrugged. What's more, she had to go get a signed agreement from her supervisor to even allow her to switch me to a working switch.

I thanked her, and told her that if she'd not managed to fix it, I was probably going to switch to Comcast. She laughed at me, saying that if I prefered Indians to Philipinos, that was my choice, but aside from that, their policies are identical. 

[Sky]

Yeah, policy. It's a real, how you say, bitch.

Like when I was living in the country. I wanted a cable modem. Our house, modem + set-top box, plus the same for across the street. Would've been $200+/mo. They string me along, finally get them to send out a tech to do a survey, nope not in their business plan to install an extension over 300'. If I want to pay $300-1000 for the installation, they'll extend the line the extra 50'. I calmly explain how it would pay for itself in less than 2-5 months. They just repeat the bit about the business plan and me paying. Neighbor went with satellite, I moved.

Incredible. Great business plan. They make so much money it really doesn't matter what the fuck they do or how much they fuck over the customer.

[WayAbvPar]

This thread inspired me to call Qwest and cancel my Caller ID (went from $4.50 a month to $7.50 a month recently). Every time I deal with them I feel like I wandered onto a used car lot with my wallet sticking out of my pants. I finally asked when the cancellation would be effective (today), and then thanked her and hung up as she was asking about my Internet connection (after having quizzed me about my cell phone plan, including asking how much I paid (None of your business, that's how much, fuck you very much)). I may need a rape shower.

The REAL reason I hate Qwest-

My wife and I were moving into a new apartment a few years ago. This just when things started heating up for House Daenyr in Shadowbane, so I wanted to make sure my internet connection wasn't interrupted, since I wanted to be around to help out as much as possible. The apartment to which we were moving was Comcast-available (the place we were in had some shitty fly by night local provider that sucked total ass as an exclusive provider), so I was going to use cable Internet instead of Qwest's DSL. I call them 2 weeks before we move to make sure everything is done on time. I tell the pimple on the other end of the line that I am moving soon, and thus need to cancel my service. I then tell him that my last day of service should be <insert date of move here>. He tells me that he has already canceled my service. I tell him that I need access for another two weeks, and please to be keeping it on, kthx. Oh, no- it will take 10-14 days to activate your service again. WHAT THE FUCK? The retard can push a button from his cubicle that somehow automagically severs all lines and ties between QWEST and my apartment? And there is no way to undo it? Bull fucking shit. I screamed at the retard and then his manager for a few minutes and finally hung up in frustration.

In the 2 weeks I was offline, HD's city was destroyed and 80% of the guild quit playing. Not saying I would have been able to prevent it, but it sure would have been nice to be there for some of it.

Fuck Qwest in every orifice you can think of. The instant anyone can provide POTS for even close to their price I will gleefully call them and tell them to fuck themselves for all eternity.

[Merusk]

Oh, and St. Patty's season is upon us so I've updated the avatar.

[WayAbvPar]

I wonder if she would fancy a game of hide the shillelagh?

[Lantyssa]

Gods bless the Irish.

[stray]

Oh, and St. Patty's season is upon us so I've updated the avatar.

Word.


[edit] Damn Photobucket sucks..

[Selby]

Fuck the damned phone company.

Funny, I had the same problem about 4 years ago.  We would randomly get phone calls, I could talk to people 3-4 houses down without dialing them, etc.  Turns out that the switchbox was from the 1940's when they built the neighborhood and it had NEVER been upgraded.  It was dying due to some heavy rains washing a ton of dirt and mud into it and the connections crossing and corroding at random (apparently).  It took them over a week to fix it after I told all of my phone buddies on the new and improved party line that if they wanted this to get fixed quickly they needed to call at all hours of the night for hours on end to drive them nuts and they mostly responded with "why bother? I'll just get a cell phone."  At least once it was fixed the annoying humming on the phone line went away ("sorry ma'am but that is your phones and the lines in your 60 year old house, not our problem." ORLY when I just rewired the entire phone system in the house when we moved in BECAUSE it was humming when I hooked up our previously perfectly working phones to the line).

I hate about EVERY single service that is provided to me.  The cable company is a bunch of fuckwits as described ("*Click* It's off now!  Have a nice day!" But I didn't want it off "oh, sorry it will be 10-14 business days to set up a service appointment at your house that you have to pay for to turn it back on"), the power company doesn't do dick for our house since they buried EVERY line with the cheapest service available and I can't get more without $15k in permits and trenching labor, the phone company charged me $10-15/mo more "just because" for 6 months, I'm sure the water company will do something to piss me off eventually.

[Sky]

Gotta head out to the new beer distro I found. They have a nice selection. Been working through some Anchor Porter, some Ayinger Celebrator Dopplebock and a GREAT limited edition Saranac, an Imperial Stout (9%). They've really turned the brewery around, it's great having an incredible brewery in your backyard, especially when it was known for shit beer when I was younger. Also have a great concert series, that's where we saw Dickie Betts, Blues Traveler, Smokin' Joe.

[Salamok]

The REAL reason I hate Qwest-

stuff

All of that pales in comparison with the real reason everyone  should hate qwest:

q.com

no one deserves a domain name that cool, especially not them.

[lamaros]

I am fucking hungover and I didn't even drink that much. I am sick of drinking dodgy beer. Ugh.

[schild]

The REAL reason I hate Qwest-

stuff

All of that pales in comparison with the real reason everyone  should hate qwest:

q.com

no one deserves a domain name that cool, especially not them.

What makes it worse is it just redirects to qwest.com.

[Oban]

Fuck the damned phone company.

Fuck you too, now pay your bill.

Thank you, come again!

[Merusk]

Fuck the damned phone company.

Fuck you too, now pay your bill.

Thank you, come again!

Bastards.

hey they fixed it tho. It WAS a crossed wire (gee imagine that!) The tech said he had no idea how it could have happened and seemed genuinely surprised it was a technical problem and not our 5 year old house. 

I also think I'm going to have to change the avatar. It's really fucking distracting.

[Rishathra]

I also think I'm going to have to change the avatar. It's really fucking distracting.

[Signe]

Because all your other avatars have been so fucking less distracting? 

[Merusk]

Because all your other avatars have been so fucking less distracting? 

Yes, actually.  Something about this one I find particularly distracting.  Hrm.

[Oban]

Equilibrium could have been better without the puppy.

[Lantyssa]

Yes, actually.  Something about this one I find particularly distracting.  Hrm.

Maybe it's the pasty white female in front of a dark background thrusting her chest forward?