Dance After Dark Photography

I was hanging out with my friend Dave tonight, enjoying a late-night milkshake at Steak ‘n Shake. When we came back to his complex, we found that some dipshit had super-glued a note to my driver side window. Apparently it’s reserved parking. I haven’t visited that complex in 4 or 5 years, and there are no signs anywhere to denote resident & guest parking. Dave thought the spot I parked in was one of the guest spots. It’s a new thing, and they’ve changed the rules and assignments recently.

Thankfully the dipshit didn’t do anything permanent, but I have to question the logic of leaving a threatening note super-glued to someone’s car while, in the same note, confirming that tomorrow and every night thereafter the car in that same space will belong to the asshole responsible for the note. Leaving it tucked under the wiper blades would’ve been fine. Even a rude and threatening note left that way is acceptable to me. I was in the wrong, albeit unknowingly.

If Dave didn’t live there, I’d be tempted to go back next week and super-glue the same note to the car in that space with grammar and spelling corrections.

I liked this guy’s sense of humor.

“Hi. I’d like to replace my modem.”
“Okay, sir. We can do that, but do you mind telling me why?”
“I need a new one.”
“I can imagine, but is the old one malfunctioning somehow?”
“Well… (ahem) My dog malfunctioned it.”

I’d just like to mention that I have proven once again that I am, in fact, retarded.

I splurged yesterday and bought myself a new keyboard and a Graphire4. The keyboard is the spiffy clear & white model that comes with new Macs, and the Graphire is a long-overdue replacement for the Graphire2 tablet that’s been getting temperamental over the past year. It lasted forever, so I can’t complain.

How am I retarded? I’m getting there.

The reason I bought the new keyboard is that my old one cuts out sporadically. I’m actually willing to blame the Graphire2’s problems on that also, since it was plugged into the keyboard’s USB port instead of directly connected to my G4. The cord wasn’t long enough to do anything else, and the short cord & groovy features of the new model were enough to make me just replace it anyway. That aside, the keyboard made for some interesting typing. Sometimes a letter or three wouldn’t register, but I type fast enough that on occasion I’d miss an entire paragraph before I realized the keyboard wasn’t working any longer. (Long story short, sometimes I’m thinking about other things while I type, so I’ve got my eyes closed or directed up toward the ceiling. Strange, but it works for me.)

Skip ahead to today, and I’m getting all kinds of frustrated because the brand spankin’ new Graphire keeps right-clicking when I hit the left click button. I updated the drivers, same problem. I noticed that it would continue doing this until I hit the Escape key on the keyboard, so I’m thinking that the keyboard is part of the problem. Just as I’m beginning to curse the world, I notice one small detail that had slipped past unnoticed.

I’ve been resting my hand on the Control key. On a Mac, that makes a left-click into a right-click. This keyboard has absolutely no extra space around the edges. There’s about a millimeter of plastic around the outside, so when I rest my hand on the board as I’ve been wont to do, I am in fact holding down the Control key. Hitting Escape fixed it because I picked up my left hand to do so.

I’m not just retarded. I’m a fcuking moron. (heh)

For those who aren’t familiar with the Rocket Science Chronicles, they started when I worked as an overnight dispatcher at AAA. I saw every call that came through and caught all of the dumb things done by co-workers and customers alike. Click on the “rocket science” category if you want to read the previous Chronicles. (Bear in mind that they were transferred from my LiveJournal, so this is a “best of” collection.}

On the way home from work tonight, I encountered a very slow driver in a red Lincoln. He was going about 25 in a 45mph zone, and he kept hitting the brakes at every crossroad. Of course he was in the left lane with no one at all in front of him. Because of traffic, it took me a while to safely get into the right lane and pass the guy. (It felt like an eternity.)

I had a bad feeling passing him, so I sped up to get ahead of him quickly. Sure enough, he nearly clipped my back corner when he got into the right lane behind me. Less than two minutes later, I saw him in my rearview mirror as he slowed down and turned left from the right lane, cutting off another car that was about to pass him and nearly hitting another guy headed in the opposite direction.

If you’re going to nominate yourself for a Darwin Award, at least try not to take other people with you.

I don’t often let people get to me, but this guy just didn’t seem to understand the nature of computers. He was running a traceroute out through the network and back to his own static IP address and getting timeouts & slow responses. I explained that certain parts of the network limit traceroute traffic to improve overall performance, so a timeout may not really indicate a problem. We ran a few different speedtests as an alternate measure, and he got near-stellar results on every one.

Still not satisfied, he said:
“I don’t care what the speedtest says. That’s not the speed I’m actually getting. You have to resolve this.”

Well, sir, a web-based speedtest is dependent on network traffic, so it can return results a little slower than the speeds you’re actually getting, but I don’t believe it’s possible for a speedtest to give you results that are higher than your actual speed unless there’s a problem with your computer or your local network. Even then, it would generally reflect network problems. That’s why we ask that you bypass all of your equipment and connect directly to ours to compare results.

Went on for about 20 minutes because he insisted his network was fine. Finally, as a “we won’t just give up on you” measure, I referred him to our speed department via e-mail. I knew they couldn’t do anything further, but at least it gave him an option. The guy never quite broke the Rude Threshold, but he wasn’t accepting what I told him. I don’t B.S. people, so having someone flat-out deny a pretty clear fact bothered me. On Christmas Eve, no less.

Imagine my surprise when the guy called back 5 minutes later to apologize. He had an issue with his firewall slowing down traffic on a few major ports. 80 was good, hence the speedtest results, but his traceroutes and some of his other dealings were being slowed to a crawl. He asked for my supervisor to thank me for remaining professional and helpful despite (in his words) “my attitude and unprofessionalism.”

You just don’t get that very often. A genuinely nice person who can admit to being wrong and make the effort to call back and apologize. Blew my mind.

The Rocket Science Chronicles have slowed down considerably since my days at AAA. I deal with computers and some rather sophisticated networks now which have the potential for greater complexity and frustration, but on the whole the people I deal with are more professional and more reasonable. Thus fewer Rocket Scientists find their way to me. However, this guy was a real gem.

The call started off with a 10 minute preamble which basically amounted to “I’m a high-paid lawyer, so obviously I’m very smart and important. In fact, you should pay me for deigning to talk to you.” After all of that, what was his question?

“Does my e-mail come in when my computer is turned off?”

Well, yes. It will still come to your inbox on the mail server. It just can’t get to your computer until you turn the computer on and check your mail.

“That’s unacceptable. I get important messages throughout the day. I can’t have them delayed just because my computer is off. I want this fixed now.”

(on the inside) Well, sir, we could try beaming it into your brain as you sleep, but we fried the last guy we tried that with. So I’ll just sign you up for the experiment, then? Good.

Tonight is a full night. It’s barely 1:00, and I’ve already got three gems. Rather than posting every 2 minutes, I’ll consolidate the best.

member i slow on fuel
Well, I can agree with that middle part.

power locks and windows - not sufre onaibags
I’m guessing “not sure on airbags.” It’s one of the questions they’re supposed to ask. Most reps just don’t.

tire is falt. member need help gettin g off.
Sure. Blame it on the tire.

I once spoke with a guy who would only say that he was on I-95 at exit 153. He wouldn’t give me city and state. He just kept repeating the exit number, asserting that any idiot could find him with that. “Well, sir, we should have service out to you sometime in the next four hours.” “Why four hours?” he asked angrily. “First we’ll check Florida. That puts you a little north of Ft Pierce, I think. Next we’ll try Florence, SC. If you’re not there, I’ll send someone to North Carolina.” At that point he interrupted me and said, “You skipped Georgia, smartass.” “Well you see, sir, there are only about 100 exits in Georgia. At exit 153, you’re either in Florida, South Carolina, North Carolina, or Maine. That’s why I said four hours - one for each state. If you’d prefer not to wait, you could help me narrow it down a bit.”

This one is a co-worker’s favorite. Apparently he’s got his own file.

“Keys is lockin the galert think th=j aht was bedarde”

And for the vehicle location: “hodge pughg scrappinr”

One letter makes such a big difference.

vehicle is stuck on a 12 inch high stoner in the member’s lawn