Technology

here’s another dimension to “stump google”… extra points if you can stump both google AND yahoo!

ok kids, time to play a fun new game! it’s called “STUMP GOOGLE”. simply enter three common words into google.com. your goal is to come up with a “no results found” page. the rules are simple: no proper nouns no made-up words spell everything correctly (it’s easy to stump google with a misspelled word) here’s my one winner so far: unbeliever plant-based simian what are your winning entries?

i want to start a company called “we give a shit.” people can call in and complain about whatever they want to complain about, and we will be sympathetic and empathetic and listen and soothe, and generally act like we actually give a shit about their problems. we don’t solve; we merely are a shoulder to vent on. there is no automated phone menu to suffer through first. we give a shit, inc. yes, i do realize the totally impractical implications of this — for instance, what if white supremacists called to complain about nonwhite people? there would be no sympathetic ear from me; in fact i’d certainly go off on them. so sure, there’s a million reasons it wouldn’t work. i’m just tired of being treated like an insignificant piece of trash in a big corporate system. what started this rant? i spent waaay too long on the phone today with sbc, attempting for the second time to understand my bill. their bills are the absolute WORST i have ever seen. they are (possibly intentionally, by design) absolutely and utterly the most confusing invoices i’ve ever seen. i’d wager that probably 95% of their customers have no idea if what they’re being charged is correct. i’m a pretty sharp cookie, and i STILL don’t get it even after approximately 1 hour on the phone with three different customer service people, two of whom insist that i have not been overcharged for anything. part of the problem is that charges and credits aren’t always listed on the bill in the month that they occurred, and every line item has a date range attached to it, and the date ranges don’t necessarily match up with the bill date. and some things that are labeled “discount on service” are discounts (with a […]

aaahhhh…. it feels good to be wired once again. i won’t go into gory details; let’s just say that it’s taken me a week to figure out that all i needed was a new ethernet card. once i installed it, it was like magic. i take back any nasty comments i may have made about tiger and dsl or dhcp or routers.