August 2, 2006

           Don’t expect me to be happy today; my new bicycle got stolen. I know, why wasn’t it chained and so on. The reason is that the Comcast cable installer parked his truck, walked right on to my patio, threw it in the back and sped off right in front of my picture window. By the time I got out through the living room, he was half a block away. This is more like burglary than robbery.
           I immediately called Comcast and they told me to go to hell. Not in those words, but still. They said unless I had his name and employee number they were not going to do anything. Like I don’t know they all work out of the compound over by the water plant. Comcast said they would not do anything, that I should call the police. The police are going to go looking for a $30 bicycle?
What about the rest of the day? First of all, Daniel’s mother cancelled his lesson today. Jim was in this morning and got a fantastic lesson because he learned the right questions to ask. The booty guy was in and commented himself that he’s never seen such effective teaching.
           I was over at ChipTech at opening time this morning. Florida can be aggravating because of people who cannot make decisions. I wound up going over there twice because I could not get past the people with half-brains. Fred had returned a MBU (Motherboard) because it was the wrong model. Thus, I had a letter of credit. Now he wanted the correct model, but there was no order for it. Elvis, our salesman, quit y’day. The decision was simple. Use the credit to pay for a replacement motherboard. They can’t do that. It must be a new order, or we must produce a copy of the old order. This we could not do because the old order was for the wrong part.

           From there I went to Office Max and bought a combination scanner fax printer and a few other things. The important item was that scanner. Let’s see if I can embed a scanned picture for you. Nope, I see that the pictures defaulted to pdf (Adobe) files. I see that it will be difficult to bypass that operation, yet I may have no choice. There is no option to change pdf to jpg. It is a Brother 420CN, so all the fancy features only work on pdf files. Typical modern-day ripoff.
           There’s more bad news. I finally found out the name of that Jewish lady that has been falling all over me. Debbie. I had to cut her off late in the day. She called me up about those photos we scanned and how they got lost on her computer. Basically she knows nothing about running a computer and got some kind of mistaken impression all she had to do was call me up for directions. I had to inform her that scanning the pictures was a favor not to be repeated and that telephone tech support was not a service that I offered. She was miffed at this. How could anyone who knows computers want money to help her? “Make an appointment” I told her as nicely as I could to someone who assumed I was at their beck and call.
           Is that how you spell beck? Could that be short for beckon? Anyway, back to being in a bad mood. I can do it, I know I can. Okay, how do you like those people who are thick as a brick? They are truly the ignorant sub-class of this planet, but as necessary as maggot for the system to function. Who remembers the Cardenas SSID (wireless) signal I was picking up a few months ago. It turns out to be the neighbor three doors over. They are two Spanish-speaking brothers who just cannot get anything right.

           The plan was to approach them to share their high-speed Internet connection so we could split the service bill into four equal shares. No need to elaborate on that, but it took the better part of two hours of talking to explain it to them. For example, they had no idea whether they had DSL or Cable Internet. They could not understand how I could tell by looking at their phone bill. Nor could they grasp equal shares. I asked the one guy, Jorge five times if they had DSL. Twice he said no, twice yes and once that he didn’t know.
           Also, everybody loves those people who don’t know anything but try to pretend they aren’t dumb by asking a ton of questions that, while related to the topic, are actually an attempt to channelize the conversation into areas where they can dominate the social aspects of every interchange. This was such a heavy conversation that I am not so sure I want anything to do with them. They kept going back to saying their monthly DSL bill was $60. When I asked to see the phone bill, they would change the subject.

           For example, he wanted an in depth description of how the router worked. He went on about this for a half hour, yet could not grasp even the most basic explanations. Turns out he does not know the words even in Spanish that describe the operation, and then it turns out it is not even his phone line, but his brothers. Then the brother comes out and wants the whole explanation to start over again. This is an old trick, try to get free information out of somebody by asking stupid questions over and over.
           Remember, I can follow basic Spanish, so I knew very well the tack things were taking. They were trying to get enough information to swing a better deal, but in that old peasant manner. For example, the offer was to split the Internet service three ways. Suddenly they could not remember exactly what the bill was and were trying to get us to split their phone bill as well. I can bail anytime, so I heard them out.

           Then I went inside and looked at their hookup. They already have a d-link wireless setup. None of their equipment worked on the Internet, either. I quickly looked through a few of the settings and this would be hard to troubleshoot even if the system was in English. The only way to do this is to rig up a laptop with an English interface and use that to configure their system. The d-plink was useless, since all their equipment was hard wired. However, now it is beginning to make sense.
           I figure the wireless signal I picked up two months ago was their d-link. I think they quit paying the bill and Bellsouth cut off their Internet. They are not bright enough to see this. Now Bellsouth wants a $60 reconnection fee and they want to split that three ways. Maybe. It would be Adam and I, the Mexican guy across the way actually prefers his dialup system. So there is no Internet service and their d-link is broadcasting a useless signal. Also, I suspect they think they are going to get their computers fixed up for free in the deal. Both their computers are configured wrong to get anything done on a network.

           Since I did not appreciate them failing to say they did not even have Internet service until the conversation was over two hours old, I told Adam to inform them I am not going to do anything until they show me they have working service. Everyone is hoping I will go get a computer all setup to test their lines. I explained that takes time and is expensive, while all they have to do is call Bellsouth and ask. I’m not doing anything until I see one of them log on.
           Now it is clear why the signal was so strong and why it quit working after a few days. They may not be smart enough to know the Internet is working on their phone lines. They hooked up a Voip line around the same time and assumed that is why they can’t get online. Remember, I speak Spanish, so I know once I got inside, I had to ask the same questions on average eight times each. Does this phone line work? Yes. Can you talk on it? No. How does it work if you can’t talk on it. Because it doesn’t work. But you just told me it works. It works, but you can’t talk on it. How do you know it works if you can’t talk on it. Because it works when he takes it to his friend’s house. So we start over, I did not ask you if the phone works, I asked if the phone line works. Yes. Can you talk on it? No.

           As I say, if it was not about my need for Internet service, I would never have anything to do with such people. I was raised around people who do nothing but give you the runaround and I don’t care for such folk. A typical couple of stupid jackasses without a clue what is going on, but they’ve picked up you want something. Two friggin’ hours to dig out of them they did not even have the service we were talking about. Get used to this brand of nonsense if you ever go to South America. They would rather die than admit they don’t know something.
           Okay, a few people saw it already. Just beside the new Brother Printer. I’m so glad I only hang out with people smart enough not to make negative assumptions. Yes, it is a bingo marker. By negative assumptions that would be someone who concludes that I must be a little old lady with bingo-itis addicted to gambling and spending my Saturday nights and rent money playing 24 cards and no social life outside the bingo hall. No, not my buddies. They would know that marker is where that characteristic red dot comes from that appears on all the accounting documents I file. In addition to the regular stamps, this stamp in the lower left corner indicated I personally handled that document. I had to do some accounting because I was inexplicably a little short on the rent this month.