Thursday 15th July 2004
I should write one of these things, I suppose....
The good news is that the main reason I haven't written one of these things lately is, well, the lurking suck. Which I'll explain. In a minute.
First...well, actually, it's technically part of the lurking suck. I guess I can talk about it here.
Enough people have assured me that watching Fahrenheit 911 was somehow inordinately critical if I wanted to keep breathing. So, I did. Of course, I downloaded it and watched it here at home, since Michael Moore, in a burst of selective fascism, has declined to protect my right to smoke in cinemas. Not that nonsmokers really bother me, as such; I just don't much like the way they smell.
Anyway: I watched it. Not a lot to report. Reactionary student film attempting to use President Junior's own stupidity against him, and really succeeding only in convincing me that the democrats are morons as well. Which tells me quite a bit about Nominee Lurch, who probably has some slim chance of being elected as President NotJunior, simply because the activists are making such an effort to elect the lesser of two AssHats.
Republicans, of course, can't be activists: they've got jobs.
The latest conspiracy theory--and understand in advance that I give it all the credibility of 'intelligent design', for the moment--is that Junior will be organising concurrent terrorist strikes and computerised voting security holes to invoke the constitutional eventuality of indefinitely-postponed elections, thusly proclaiming himself King George VII, and...I've got to stop playing this paradigm out now; Junior's brain could never grok 'concurrent', let alone the rest of all that.
Which is the most entertaining aspect of conspiracy theories, of course: that people actually presume an intelligence in a government which includes such creatures as DMV 'droids and mailmen. Beware the eventual implementation of Operation: We Would Have Abolished All Civil Rights Last Week but We Accidentally Faxed the Civil Rights Abolishment Forms All Backwards and Delayed Our Own Initiative.
Operation: WWHAACRLWWAFCRAFABDOOI notwithstanding, I went ahead and threw together what will probably never prove to be a particularly prophetic bumpersticker [top right], but might be a sort of novel curiosity...like, you know, other bumperstickers. Just because.
Okay. Real news.
Those of you on the right side of the plane should be seeing a smallish video documenting the final minutes of Tuesday, during which, according to the less smallish video down there in the WorstPacific subsite, my ceiling would be replaced. Which is to say that I have a representative of WorstPacific contracting orally on recorded media that, on Tuesday, I'd get a new ceiling.
Of course, it's now Thursday. And I still have these damned holes in here. As seen in the smallish video there to the right.
Doubleclick on the video to the right if it's not already playing for more on that.
Meanwhile, JestBuy are back in the news. Kinda. More accurately, the Bank of America are in the news.
Remember several months ago when JestBuy extorted $378.71 from me for claiming to have replaced a harddrive without prior permission, threatening to steal my laptop if I didn't pay them their ransom? Yeah. So, we've been disputing that charge with the Bank of Duhmerica [lucky me: I have no need to register BankofDuhmerica.com, since I can just set up Bank.of.Duhmerica.com if and when these idiots push me far enough to compel me to write a whole site just about them >:)] ever since that fateful night. Which, of course, means that now, five months later, the Bank of Duhmerica are finally getting round to, you know, talking to us about it. Which is a problem.
Because: the Bank of Duhmerica want me to take the laptop I haven't got, which might contain the new drive I've never seen, to someone other than the JestBuy who initially kidnapped it, to ascertain whether replacing the drive I didn't want proved to have been replaced for, like, my own good. From this, I now understand that I can go steal Bank of Duhmerica's CEO's car, add lots of neat little RICer things to it, and charge him for the repairs, unless some third party mechanic can show that the car looked just fine before I did that. I have tomorrow all planned out now.
It may come as no particular surprise that I'm officially on file with the Bank of Duhmerica now as being 'rude and sarcastic'. I am, in point of fact, tactless and sardonic; but I can see where they might have missed the distinction there.
Mostly because, once Hunter gave up on screaming at this amazingly stupid frontline guard creature, she handed [read: thrust] her phone at me. Since I'm so genial and gregarious in the first place.
Of all the conversations I regret failing to record, this one tops the list.
GREMLIN: Hello?
IMBECILE: Hello?
GREMLIN: Hi.
MORON: Uh, yeah. As I was trying to explain to her, my report shows that your laptop had a...CD Drive replaced? And it's not working? Our policy requires you to take the laptop in question to an authorised service centre and get an affidavit show--
GREMLIN: Yeah. I haven't got the laptop, which didn't have a broken CDRom. Your notes are wrong. I had a laptop; JestBuy replaced its drive without consent, held my laptop for ransom, and required us to pay them $378.71 on a Bank of Duhmerica MasterCard under duress. Since then--
BUTTSUCK: Okay, but--
GREMLIN: Since then, I've renounced physical possession of the laptop in question, and can no longer have it inspected by anyone.
PLEBEIAN: Okay, I understand that; but, our policy requires that the laptop in question be looked over by a qualified service technician to determine whether these repairs were necessary.
[Beat]
GREMLIN: Works for me; lemee know how that turns out.
TARD: Uh...well, we'd need to have you take the laptop to this service centre for examination.
GREMLIN: What laptop?
LEMMING: The, uh...laptop in question.
GREMLIN: No such animal. I no longer possess it.
VEGETABLE: I understand that, Sir; but our policy requires us to have you take the laptop to an authorised service centre to...to have them decide whether the repairs were necessary.
GREMLIN: Really? You actually have a preexisting policy stating that Gremlin must take a phantasmagoric laptop to an authorised service centre for diagnostics of a problem which could only have been detected before it was fixed, if it was fixed at all, in the event that it ever existed? You're a christworshipper, aren't you.
CHRISTWORSHIPPER: Uh...well, our policy states that you'd have to take your laptop to a qualified service centre. That would be someplace like RadioShack, for example.
GREMLIN: Right. You want me to take a laptop which no longer exists in our universe, to a place I have no reason to go--
RUDE, SARCASTIC TWIT: Well, Sir, we just need you to--
GREMLIN: Are you talking? Never speak. You want me to take a laptop which exists now only in some sublevel of hell to a place not remotely involved with anything you'd ever be a part of, to have them not look at the nonextant machine, to not see what it wasn't like prior to its maybe being fixed and certainly being held hostage. Okay? See? I'm one a'them thar smart dudes. I get it. Now: having done all this, and, optionally, created a few universes, to what end would I have accomplished this compendium of miracles?
INSECT: Uh...okay, see, I understand that this policy might not make sense--
GREMLIN: Time out. My IQ beats yours by an order of magnitude. This isn't an issue of comprehension. Or, it is, but in what you'd probably call an ironic way. What I need from you is exactly this information: how do I take a laptop I haven't got to a place I wasn't going so they can fail to look at a circumstance which isn't modern. And: why.
BOVINE: Well, no; you'd have to take the laptop with you.
[Beat]
GREMLIN peers painfully at the ceiling, watching for any malicious deities up there, before remembering that the only thing up there is Kristen Taylor the Known ChildAbuser.
[Secondary beat]
GREMLIN: You're a bit of a moron, aren't you.
BIT OF A MORON: Okay, Sir, I don't appreciate--
GREMLIN: You have my permission to kill yourself. Transfer me to a biped.
BLATHERING TWAT: --you're speaking--
GREMLIN: Less talk; more transfer. Lemee know when the nerve conduction velocity has got this from your ear to your brain. I'll get some coffee.
SUBMITOCHONDRIAL WASTE OF CARBON: All right, Sir; please hold.
The idiot is replaced by the comparatively pleasant Litchfield School for SpEds Marching Band's rendition of Girl from Ipanema in B Minor on Kazoos.
Ultimately, we connected to a manager, who more-or-less understood the paradox of requiring we his employers to do anything with a laptop we didn't have. He promised to look into it and call Hunter back. And, when he didn't, she called in to talk to some other frontline moron, who read everything in the file aloud, including this libel that I'm rude and sarcastic. So, that's kinda cool, in a way.
So. Let's move on to laptops which do exist. In whatever capacity.
I'm not sure quite where to start on this little anecdote. Except that, technically, I already have, since it happens to include the whole JestBuy.com/Bank.of.Duhmerica.com issue you just read through [or gave up on and ran off to heavy.com to watch cartoons] somewhere in its middle. I guess I'll start at the beginning.
Once upon an era, I bought a laptop. Well, you could call it that. It was a Commodore SX64. It was a laptop in that it was portable...in that it was only about fifty pounds and pretty well self contained. It did its job. Twenty-odd years ago.
It was portable. Which was good. Since, so am I.
About ten years later, I upgraded to a laptop. Which was portable. And which was a Toshiba 80286. And which really kinda just sucked. Especially for eight thousand bucks. Wholesale.
I wound up playing with palmtops, which sucked less, all things considered.
A few years after that, I made the desperate error of upgrading to a Dell 80486 laptop. Never do that. It also sucked.
A couple of years after that, I upgraded yet again. To a Sony PCG818 80686 laptop. It sucked less. It had a DVRom in it. Yay for me.
It broke. Thirteen months later. Dead. Since I'd bought it for thirty-five hundred bucks at SoundTrack, along with their Extended Warranty, I felt oddly justified in expecting them to fix it for me.
This story, not being news--or, actually, being News. Of the Stoopid. Already online. The point is that they never fixed the damned thing so I wrote off their whole company as incompetent frauds.
Then, I went to CircuitCity to look at laptops. I found one. A Sony PCGFX210 80786. I bought it. It was actually on sale, and only cost me about fifteen hundred or so. Yay again for me.
Grabbed the Extended Warranty for a few hundred bucks. Just in case.
Eventually, the Sony PCGFX210 broke. I invoked its Extended Warranty. Which, instead of letting me take it into the store to have it fixed, let me take it into the store to learn that I shouldn't have done that, and that the proper thing to do would be to call these people I've never heard of to get an empty box. Why that had never occurred to me is...anyway....
I get the empty box. I fill it with the broken laptop. I mail it off to these people to fix it. I notice a pattern here. I go to JestBuy and grab--what else--a HewlettPackard ze5185 80886 laptop. And an Extended Warranty.
My PCGFX210 returns. In the mail; not from the dead. It's still broken. But: curiously enough, it's covered in JestBuy stickers.
I can't guess why a laptop sold by CircuitCity, repaired by CircuitCity, could ever be infected by JestBuy stickers. I take the whole, broken thing back to DoubleMeat Palace here to ask what in hell the deal is.
The manager sees the stickers, gives the matter a good second's worth of thought, and offers me a bribe.
How'sabout they just gimee a giftcard for the amount I paid for the PCGFX210, including the Extended Warranty, and even including the sales tax, and I can just go grab a laptop off the shelf and everyone'll be happy and I won't rush off to tell the world that CircuitPity are somehow related to JestBuy.
I bought some stuff. Including another laptop. A HewlettPackard ze1250. And, naturally, an Extended Warranty. I gave the thing to Hunter. I had an ill-fated HP ze5185, after all.
The ze5185 died; JestBuy.com covers that ongoing suck in some detail.
Hunter's ze1250 has now died. And been troubleshot. And been sent in to have its motherboard replaced. And been sent back to me. And been not fixed. And been troubleshot again. And sent in again for a new motherboard. And sent back. Not fixed. Troubleshot. Sent--
The dizziness got to me. I didn't send it anywhere. I took it in to CircuitPity to get it dealt with once and for all.
So, Dallas is this guy who works at CircuitPity. He told me how everything was cool, see, since, all I have to do here is send the ze1250 in the One Final Time, and then, I get it back, see. And it either works, or, if it doesn't, what I do, see, is I take it back in there to CircuitPity instantly and, now that I've had it NotFixed thrice, he'll just gimee a new laptop. Right then and there. That instant.
I, at this point, relent.
Got the broken ze1250 back yesterday. NotFixed. Took it back to CircuitPity to invoke the additional witnessed oral contract I have with Dallas. Who wasn't there. Some of the witnesses to the contract were there, but not Dallas himself. His manager was there though. And she assured me, in front of the witnesses who'd seen Dallas assure me, that Dallas would never have assured me of that, simply because the fact is that they've never had the power to, say, give out giftcards as hush money. What I need to do now, in order to get a new laptop, is to send the ze1250 back in for the fourth time out of three [sounding like JestBuy yet?] and then, see, if they can figure out what's wrong with it this time, then they'll fix it or gimee a new one or fuck up their file again [at this point, this one damned laptop has something like five disconnected files in their system, none of which can be tracked down through my name, number, address, serial number, model number, or random keypunching (which one of the witnesses to Dallas' little act of fraud ultimately tried out for me)] or whatever. Maybe even concede, this time, that the thing's still broken, and revert to their NoLemon®* Policy [*NoLemon® is a registered trademark of JestBuy, which is connected to CircuitPity in no way whatsoever, except for being the same damned people], and, then, maybe, let me have new laptop.
I gave the manager what I like to call Triplicate of Choice, at that point. I let her know that I wasn't leaving until I got A) a new laptop, B) her acknowledgement that CircuitPity suck, in that they're functionally incapable of meeting the needs of their existing and future customers, or C) arrested for Peaceable Assembly. She chose the middle one; they always do.
Meanwhile, though it remains a matter of record that I did, in fact, accept this bribe in exchange for my silence on the matter of CircuitPity handing broken laptops over to JestBuy [who claim that they can't fix laptops, though, in fairness, that claim has yet to be repudiated], it does not remain a matter of fact that the laptop with which CircuitPity bribed me actually works, nullifying, as far as I'm concerned, the deal.
So, I've registered CircuitPity.com now. I'll fill it up with a more verbose version of this particular suck when I have more time.
Then, like an idiot, I went off to VillageInn.
Here's the problem with that tactic. The manager quit. Not that I blame him. But: he was cool. His replacement could be cool, but...here's the story as I understood it. Inasmuch as I actually ever did.
Got there; sat down; glanced at menu; set it aside; waiting. Rambam/MondoHebe/BigFatJew [he may have more names than I have, at this point] eventually arrives--specifically after Village Idiot have officially kicked from diurnal hours over to nocturnal ones, therefore scaling down the menu to a few examples of Yuck and, I noticed as I compared them side by side, raising the prices on everything by about fifty cents each. Which I found curious. Particularly since Denny's do exactly the same thing, all while having those ironical little WE NEVER DISCRIMINATE signs on every surface in the building. I mentioned that.
Time, then, passed. As time is wont to do.
Eventually, the new manager arrived at the table. Initially, I'd thought that might be a good thing, since I was out of coffee and still waiting for anything resembling a chance to order food now that everyone had shown up. Instead, she let us know that some customers had just left, complaining about our conversation.
I should mention at this point that customers always leave complaining about our conversations. But that Ken the ExManager cheerfully told them to go to hell. And stay there. This new manager has yet to learn that trick.
I asked her which word they hadn't understood. Which turned out to have been a begged question. Because, you see, they'd understood every word. Like how we were actively disparaging VillageIdiot by looking at its menu, and terrorising the server by ordering food.
She was not, it appears, joking.
So, we now have a choice. Which I clarified. Several times. Just to be sure I fully understood my options before generally ignoring them until I got back here to write them down and present them to you. I can either A) never again not say what I never said, while not treating the server as I didn't, or B) get out.
I got not out. I just nodded slowly at her for a while. Then I asked whether these strawmanned excustomers had complained about the muzak, too. Then I asked whether I could. Then I offered to decline to sue VillageIdiot over the upsetting muzak if I could just have some damned coffee. She chose to settle out of court.
So. That was pretty much my day. And week. Month. Year to date. And then some. The lurking suck. Although....
I did finally, after two years, get round to adding homeowners' insurance to this place. Which works out nicely for me, since the forecast is bleak [it's starting to drip here and there in the ceiling--in new places--again]. Now, once so much as a drop of water lands on so much as a used and discarded BandAid, I'm reporting the damned damages to the lawyers I have on retainer for roughly zilch per year, so they can go after WorstPacific and ask precisely the question I asked on Day One: why in the deepest suburbs of hell aren't you just hiding behind your corporate insurance and letting them cover the damages instead of making it necessary for me to sue you into extinction? I'll be interested to learn the answer to that lingering question. And I won't be surprised if it turns out to involve some sort of fraud, like misappropriated funds and tax evasion. Call it a hunch.
So, that could be called a bit of a silver lining, maybe. Not the one at the perimeter of a cloud of course; more like the one surrounding a black hole of suck. But, it's a start.
More later....
--Gremlin