• Announcements

    • Robin

      Welcome!   03/05/2016

      Welcome, everyone, to the new 910CMX Community Forums. I'm still working on getting them running, so things may change.  If you're a 910 Comic creator and need your forum recreated, let me know and I'll get on it right away.  I'll do my best to make this new place as fun as the last one!
The Old Hack

Things that make you MAD

Recommended Posts

So, my friend Jens is still struggling with terminal cancer in his liver. After fighting it for almost two years now with various ups and downs -- and incidentally now being in a very very small group of 5% that has survived that kind of cancer for that long -- his doctor basically hands him his death sentence based on a telephone diagnosis and two months old tests that the doctor has apparently extrapolated from. Or possibly extracted from his rectum.

After spending days in misery he gets in touch with his other physician who strenuously disagrees with the diagnosis. Yes, Jens has a new problem. But no, the other doctor has trouble seeing how it is related to his cancer. Impending liver failure carries certain symptoms such as jaundice, black rimmed eyes, digestive issues -- none of which Jens currently shows. Unless it is possible for these symptoms to take a holiday to the Bermudas or something, his diagnosis is at best incomplete or at worst totally screwed up. AND YET THE MORON WHO MADE IT STILL GAVE IT TO JENS WITHOUT THE SLIGHTEST HESITATION OR AWARENESS OF FALLIBILITY.

Excuse me a minute. I need to go check if murder is still illegal in Denmark even if it is a quack who really really deserves it.

...it is. Darn. *sighs*

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Having [urine]-poor Wi-Fi in my room. I can't even watch a single YouTube video, even on lowest quality, without it taking two hours and a million refreshes to watch the next five seconds. Websites are horrid and tend towards failing or leaving out features, like pictures or chat windows. And forget about downloading or uploading anything.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
1 hour ago, Zorua said:

Having [urine]-poor Wi-Fi in my room. I can't even watch a single YouTube video, even on lowest quality, without it taking two hours and a million refreshes to watch the next five seconds. Websites are horrid and tend towards failing or leaving out features, like pictures or chat windows. And forget about downloading or uploading anything.

Is it just your room or your house in general?

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Being knocked offline for five days by a ham-fisted construction worker who removed our (now Frontier (grrrr)) FiOS ONT box from a wall of our house so his crew could install new siding. He unscrewed the box, handled it less than gingerly, and managed to break the MOCA connector (a vital part—don't ask me to translate, please). Mrs. Prof says she caught him dangling the box by its cable at one point before he tried to reconnect it.

Hold on, day one's not over yet.

We called Frontier Communications (now owner and customer service provider of FiOS in Texas and California) to report the problem. They try and walk us through rebooting our router (an idiocy that will be repeated with almost every subsequent call). I take over her cell phone (our land line having been knocked out with the ONT box), explain the problem, and manage to wrangle a trouble ticket number and a technician appearance about 30 minutes later.

The technician—who worked for a company contracted by Frontier—diagnoses the actual problem, gets our land line temporarily working, and calls to get a replacement ONT box. He finds that they're out of stock and won't be restocked until the next day. He leaves his cell number and says we should call him to see when he'll come out. My wife turns a shade more livid than she already is and calls the siding company to demand a credit for damage to our premises.

End of day one.

Day two is a cat-and-mouse game with the technician. Mrs. Prof manages to get through to him once, only to be told "I'm on the phone with my supervisor, can I call you back in five minutes?", or words to that effect. She waits. An hour later she calls again. Then again. And again. Only to get the technician's voice mail each time. I try calling via a number that he won't recognize. The call gets answered, but apparently without the knowledge of the technician (who is carrying on some kind of shady conversation with a group of people). I hang up and try again. And again. No joy.

Mrs. Prof decides to start making late-night calls to Frontier, trying to get the status of the trouble ticket. She fails miserably and angrily.

End of day two.

Day three starts with more phone calls, each including at least one "reboot your 'modem' (i.e., router)" instruction by the representative. I refuse to use the words "customer support," since they seemed hell-bent to avoid providing any support whatsoever.

Mrs. Prof has had to return to her office since she can't work from home without internet access, so I'm the one making the calls. I find out that the previous technician closed the trouble ticket. I then push the rep to send out a new technician, this time an actual Frontier employee, who arrives within the hour with a new ONT box. He replaces the old one, only to find that he can't activate the new one. To make matters worse, our land line service goes out again. He gives me his cell phone number (heh) and promises to keep the trouble ticket open.

Quick note: giving a trouble ticket number to a Frontier rep apparently does little good, since they take at least 30 minutes to find it and then misread the entries on it. We had five such tickets issued during our ordeal.

Surprisingly enough, the second tech calls back and tells me that we are "in the queue" to be activated, and that it's a problem that is affecting Texas and California customers where they cannot activate new boxes. This fails to satisfy Mrs. Prof, who makes even more fruitless calls to tech support as day three ends.

Day four, Friday. My wife starts early with a 6:30 a.m. call to Frontier. We spend two hours on the line in an attempt to find out the status of our problem. In the end, I am handed the phone and am given yet another trouble ticket. I'm told a technician won't be able to show up until the next day (Saturday, Day Five, i.e. today). I read them the Riot Act and demand a credit for their apparent incompetence. I'm told I have to call "customer service" to request the credit once our box is working again.

Later in the day, I try to call the second technician. He actually returns my call, asking if I've been contacted by his supervisor. I say no. He says he'll get the guy to call, which he does.

This is the first time that I speak to someone who actually knows what's going on. He explains the details about the "in the queue" remark, saying that technicians have been working overnight to solve the system problem. He also tells me that the technician scheduled to come out on Saturday (today) won't be able to do anything, since the affected ONT boxes are literally being activated one box at a time. I can do nothing but wait until our particular button is hit.

I call Mrs. Prof at work and try to explain what I've been told. She responds as if I'm a "customer service" rep for Frontier. I tell her to stop it and to instead call the supervisor, who has given me his number and invited me to give it to her. She makes the call, then resigns herself to yet another night of waiting—this time, without calling Frontier every 90 minutes.

Day five. Saturday. Today. I'm in the middle of trying to remix a song when our phone actually rings. No one is on the other end when I answer. I hang up and check for a dial tone. I finally hear one for the first time since our box was replaced. A minute or two later, technician number two calls yet again (on the land line this time), asking if we're online. I tell him yes as far as phone and TV are concerned, but I'm waiting for the modem I've just power-cycled to reinitialize. He tells me to call when I have results. Said results come a couple of minutes later, when I am able to connect Firefox to my home page for the first time since Tuesday.

In the end, I talk to the second technician again a few minutes later and give him my profound thanks, which I ask him to share with his supervisor. They turned out to be the only Frontier people who seemed to give a damn about our problem.

The story is not over yet. My wife has the address and phone number of Frontier's corporate office. She intends to relay our story to them in painful detail, the more painful the better.

Meanwhile, I have managed to finally catch up with what I've missed since I've been gone and am now about to watch the Dallas Stars' final regular season game, hoping that they'll win and take the Conference crown in the process. Whatever the outcome, it can't be worse than our experiences of the last five days.

 

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Believe it or not, we nearly had a repeat of my previous story. I woke up from a nap at about 6:00 p.m. to find that our phone, TV, and internet were all out. Again.
 A 90-minute cell phone call with a near-totally unintelligible person was required to get my service restored.

I personally hate Frontier Communications. Your mileage may vary.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Yeah, any calls that claim that any government entity is taking action against you are fake--federal law and all fifty states mandate that offical notification of legal proceedings must be served in hardcopy. That means that at minimum you would receive a written notice in the mail, if not an officer of the court coming round with a summons.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
1 hour ago, Pharaoh RutinTutin said:

So far today I have received two robocalls claiming that the IRS filing a lawsuit against me.

I got that same call on Monday. Tax filing deadline day.

Click.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
1 hour ago, ijuin said:

Yeah, any calls that claim that any government entity is taking action against you are fake--federal law and all fifty states mandate that offical notification of legal proceedings must be served in hardcopy. That means that at minimum you would receive a written notice in the mail, if not an officer of the court coming round with a summons.

Pitty more people don't realize that and go "I'll wait for the official letter thanks."
If they did those scams would have died out from failing too often by now.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Smokers.  I'm allergic, and these people walk down the street creating toxic clouds, stand in front of doorways preventing my entering or exiting, and light up at outdoor concerts and events in places which send their fumes pouring across the entire audience, forcing me to leave and miss the show.  I had to quit going to the local RenFaire because I couldn't even get a drink of water on 95 degree days because the line would be engulfed in tobacco toxins.

You want to have a bad habit, fine, but keep it out of my air!

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

So, the US department of Justice has announced that they're suing North Carolina over the whole anti-trans bathroom law. That's not what makes me mad. Reading some of the reactions makes me mad, like how many feel that doing this will allow perverts and pedophiles to be able to sneak into women's bathrooms to spy and rape. someone even commented saying "they're making the .04% trans comfortable by putting the 50% female population at risk." WTF? As far as I'm concerned trans people go to the bathroom for the same reason most of us do, to have a piss or crap, not to peek under bathroom stalls, it's more like the law NC put out would "criminalize the .04% trans so that they could keep out the .00000005% sex offenders" (all percentages based on the tweet I saw and I highly doubt they are accurate anyway). If people are worried about sex offenders posing as members of the opposite sex to sneak into public bathrooms, then the laws for sexual offenses needed to be beefed up more. Also a lot of the reactions focus on those that are born male but identify as female using female bathrooms, I hadn't seen any mention of those born female identifying as male and I wonder if it because those same people that are complaining about this would be like "well that that's their risk if they want go into a bathroom with real men and it's their fault if anything happens". It does seem like the majority of those complaining about this are males while a lot that are defending this action and debating against the complaints are female. But still it was really aggravating to see the stupidity in all that.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

As far as restrooms are concerned (locker rooms and showers are a related but much more difficult issue) I've ended up going with what I think is a realistic view - based on the simple question of "how, and to what extent, do they plan to enforce it?".

There will be NO genitalia inspectors guarding restroom doors. ANYWHERE. Trans/fluid people who are currently presenting as whichever sex doesn't match their physical equipment will do what they've been doing for approximately forever: use the restroom that matches their presentation, and close+latch the (stall) door for privacy. Yes, it will be illegal, just as it has been; but no it will never (or almost never) be detected, just as it hasn't been. And so, it will in reality be no big deal - and this will become apparent as soon as those who earn their living by being offended on someone else's behalf pick a different someone else to be offended on behalf of.

And the perverts who expect to be able to go into the women's restroom with beards, or into the men's restroom while similarly-obviously female, and ogle or molest the people legitimately there, will stand out and be subject to prosecution. As they should be.

The overwhelming majority of trans people would really prefer that the world NEVER treat them as "trans" or give them any special consideration for being "trans" - but instead treat them as their gender. Except of course in those very limited situations where the physical plumbing is directly relevant to the treatment. (When it's the person beside you naked in bed, the plumbing usually matters. Ditto when it's the person on the gurney with a groin injury. When it's the person beside you with their pants down in the next restroom stall, or the person applying for a job as a cashier, not so much.)

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

I've been waiting all day for my new laptop to get here, checking the FedEx website on occasion. Imagine my dismay when I find a delivery exception posted: "Customer Not Available or Business Closed. Delivery will be re-attempted the next business day."

I'VE BEEN HERE ALL DAY! THEY'VE NEVER EVEN KNOCKED ON MY DOOR OR LEFT A DOOR TAG!

Rotten idiots either went to the wrong house or are lying through their teeth.

I called FedEx and complained. Got told that they would do "everything that they can" to re-attempt delivery today. I'm not holding my breath.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
42 minutes ago, CritterKeeper said:

Either that or they suck, we'll just have to see which it is.

Mrs. Prof handles negotiations of multi-million-dollar Postal & Transport Policy (i.e., logistics) contracts for a major service of the U.S. Government. Trust me—they suck. Bad enough to not win the contracts she's negotiated.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Buying a new phone - which turns out to be an utter utter POS.

 

Unpack the nice shiny new phone. Manage to (eventually) pry the back off to insert the battery and SIM card.

The phone has two SIM slots.

The SIM card I have won't go into either one, no way, nohow.

Turn the phone on anyway, and attempt to set the local time and date.

Adelaide - no, it doesn't know about any time zone for Adelaide (Australian Central Time - GMT+9:30). According to this thing claiming to be a phone, there is only one time zone (and one city) in Australia - Sydney, which is half an hour wrong for us.

Turn the thing off, and try to remove the battery - bloody thing fights me even then.

Eventually get the battery out, and pack everything away in the box.

I'm taking it back to the store, and getting a refund.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

I don't like interacting with people directly. There's something just inherently stressful about social activity of any kind.
I'm willing to tolerate it for family, or if it's just occasional. it doesn't bother me as much on forums, I think because I'm not really interacting with people directly so much as voicing my opinions on a dozen other more-or-less anonymous opinions. there's no expectation to socialize, no time limit before things get awkward. I can go at my own pace, and if I need to vanish for a month or two without anyone really questioning things, I can. nobody's going to give me a hard time for just cutting myself off from the rest of the world for a while to relax. If people get too close I can find a new one, come up with a new name, a new 'me', and move on... That's SO much harder to do IRL.

I wasn't a bully when i was a kid because i wanted attention, i was because i thought it would drive people away, i STOPPED because it was getting attention.

Phones, no, email, no, text, fuck off, face to face... eh, I've learned to tolerate it, somewhat... Still, avoid if possible. (the only kind of contact with people that DOESN'T bother me is physical; hugs, holding hands, being close...)

if I'm honest it's probably one of if not the biggest reason why i have trouble job hunting or keeping jobs. It's kinda hard to get references or move up the ladder when you actively avoid getting to know or spending any more time than strictly necessary around your co workers and superiors, when the entirety of the personality they see is a scripted act of someone who isn't unnerved by regular eye contact or desperately trying to find a way out of the room as quickly as possible...

When i'm talking i will often break into a rant, less because i like the subject and more just so people can't talk to me.

I like being isolated. Going for days or weeks on end without a shred of contact with the outside world is relaxing... and near impossible to pull off sometimes. The periods of isolation are probably the only reason i haven't snapped and done something regrettable being unemployed and broke as long as I have. If it weren't for the job hunting or the constant stress over how i'm going to pay everyone back, this would have been the best year I've ever had rather than the worst...

...

And my father is trying to push me towards seeking help from a support group.

a SUPPORT GROUP. As in being around other people on a regular basis. needing to be around coworkers is bad enough!

...i can't get out of this house soon enough.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now