To be blunt,

are there more assholes in the world these days? Or is it just my life experience? Sure seems that in the past few years I've encountered more people that are just JERKS. I mean flat out jackasses. They mostly hide behind the protection of email, a faceless tool that seems to bring out the worst of people. Maybe I dwell on them, and it's good story telling, or maybe not. In the past month alone I can think of these examples:

1. While at a restaurant, late so it was near empty, I asked a guy "so how was the steak?". He just stared at me, didn't answer. Oh yes, he heard me. He was spooky. And he wanted another Espresso. I had visions of him going on a killing spree.
2. RE: The lady in my neighborhood that followed me home to yell at me for "driving too fast"
3. A pinball parts customer of mine who was griping about their order taking so long. It had been 4-5 days and they picked Ground shipping (or didn't pick Priority). He said he didn't see the option, and I told him that it did default to the cheapest method, to get this: You know, I tried to make nice with you and now you call me cheap. NO more emails. I will not buy from you ever again. and I will tell all the people i know not to also. You are a JACKASS. You dont insult the customer. If they are not here by friday I will get my money back. I should have never waited this long. POOR CUSTOMER SERVICE.
   I WILL NOT OPEN ANYMORE MAILS FROM YOU SO DONT EVEN SEND THEM.
   LOOK FOR A PAYPAL COMPLAINT ON FRIDAY IF THEY DO NOT SHOW UP.
4. Last week, I bought $200 worth of parts for my business via the Internet. The guy sent me a PayPal payment request, for which I paid. For some reason, the payment didn't include what I was buying, and you would have thought it was the end of the world. I got a nasty immature email back stating since I didn't say what it was for, they'd send pictures of what they spent it on. Excuse me? I explained what it was for, included a copy of the invoice I showed as having the info, and said I was a little shocked at their email. I thought I'd get an apology. What I've gotten, and still getting, are long emails telling me what a jerk I am. Quotes are: "Be as unprofessional as you like and lay it off on anyone that makes you feel comfortable. While you're feeling all superior on next week, don't for get to look in your mailbox."  and "When things get screwed up and no one can find you, you want to blame others. I know, you're really a comedian. This has all been a joke and I should be laughing."  and " I can have any attitude that I like. Your over inflated need for special attention not withstanding, so I gave you some." and "You decided that you could treat people at great distances from you like monkey poop and they would just love it." And mostly what I've said to this person is that I'm shocked at being treated this way, and told him many times I paid the invoice I was sent. This is from the owner of this small company. I'm still amazed.
5. Three+ years ago, a jerk in KC basically stole a pinball machine from me. The other day he felt compelled to email me with a link to pictures of how he restored it. 

That's just my thought of the moment. I guess though, I've said it before, will say it again: I hate people. 

Isn't it getting a little ridiculous?

I actually thought it was getting better. Seems like saying "Merry Christmas" wasn't offending as many people. The word 'fat' is still in our vocabulary, a little surprised there after being challenged in court by the OBESE people. 'Retarded' has gone the way of the dodo, being joined soon I predict with friends Moron, Imbecile and Idiot. That's going to be a tough one to swallow, and I'm fighting for the rights of the idiots everywhere to call them what they are!!

I'm tired, really tired, of other people telling me what's offensive. Never have liked it when people tell me what to do, just cause they think they can. If I'm offended, so be it, don't TELL me I am. How I feel when I use a word or hear a word is none of your damn business, let alone something you really know. Words are words.

Fat actually is no longer politically correct, I kid you not that the accepted phrase is "Enlarged physical condition caused by a completely natural genetically-induced hormone imbalance or too much fast food which is not your fault, is it?". Can you believe that? OK, I added the last part, but "completely natural"? Come on. I'm fat cause I eat too much, don't exercise, and drink beer. It's not a hormone imbalance.

I kid you not that the following words are ones you're not supposed to use any more: Bum, Crazy, Criminal, Failure, Fairy, Founding Fathers (too sexist), Garbage man, Ghetto, Handicapped, Illegal Alien, Janitor, Midget, Psycho, Secretary, and Trailer Park (it's a mobile home community). You have now been educated.

Here's the latest though, and give me a break. Just give me a break. It's "Nerd" and "Geek". Yup. Some fucking college professor on the East coast has determined for you and me that: "using terms like nerd and geek "perpetuate the stereotype" that nerds are "socially inept" and geeks are people with a "special expertise." They are so damaging that he believes that "much like racial epithets, he says, they should be avoided."

Good Lord! I'm a nerd and I'm proud!

Charity losers

We had a garage sale last weekend, and in typical fashion, much of the leftover stuff was slated to go to a local ever-asking-with-the-hand-out-charity. My first choice was one of those places that rents in a nice strip mail (drop off only), and send postcards in the mail begging for stuff. I'm no saint here, I picked them cause they were closest, a new place so I thought they'd be thrilled to have the traffic, and yeah, I want the write off. Lots of stuff good and bad, and seriously. Who ever really takes inventory of the crap you dump off? They simply give you a blank "receipt" which you could write down anything up to the IRS legal limit and not be questioned. Scammy smelling already. Us being a little more organized (if you can believe it), take pictures and actually make a list.

So rewind to a pet peeve of mine; simply saying Hello or Thanks. If you've been in the support sector, you know what I mean. You're busy working on some stupid budget that is only going to get rejected with "We approve this project, but cut the costs in half" and someone pops their head in to your office and says "Todd! Applied is down. When I alt-click to calculate the state premiums, I get a Windows exception error that DMXFUKU dot DLL has caused an error. "

Oh, let me hop right on that. And how are you?

It's equally annoying in email or chat or at the grocery store when you hold the door open for some old bag who thinks she's still hot who don't say a word, by golly I SHOULD hold the door for her! Ever ignored the phone cause you know who's calling is going to ask you the SAME question again about their computer? Now now, you people reading that have asked my my input on something and I've given it and you've said THANKS, I'm not talking about you. You rock. Most of those people won't ever find my blog any way. Hell, as a total side line, I fixed my neighbors Internet the other day and I got not only cookies, but banana nut bread!!!

OK, back to the local charity. Here it is, Monday morning, the Clampett truck & trailer loaded with all sorts of stuff including a TV, books, computers, clothes, luggage, table & chairs, and tons of misc THINGS. All ready for my local charity to sift through like Christmas and put up for sale to support their little non-profit organization!! Cool, they've got a covered drive though (absolutely necessary in this desert climate):

Me: Hi! How ya doing!? I've uh, got all sorts of STUFF for ya.

GW: We don't take TVs

Me: (I'm fine, how are you?) Why not?

GW: We just don't take them.

Me: OK, well fine. Lots of stuff here anyway. Know who takes TVs?

GW: Fred!?! Who takes TVs?? (Fred says XXX Glendale Avenue. Thanks Fred)

I pop open the back of the truck to help unload. I'm THAT kinda helpful guy. I unload an Apple Macintosh all-in-one PC. I set it on the cart.

GW: We don't take monitors.

It's not a monitor, it's an all in one computer.

We don't take computers.

Me: (slight annoyed laugh) Listen dude, ya gotta take the good with the bad! You quickly unloaded my good table and chairs. I got three computers, if you don't want them, how about you throw them away?

GW shrugs and says "Put them over there"

Me nodding, then grabs a stack of books and puts it on the cart. Uh-Oh, GW sees me:

"FRED?!?!?!?!" Fred comes out. Looks at what I've just done and states "We don't take books"

What? Are you fucking kidding me? I lost it a little and had enough "Tell you what, how about you put all my shit back on the trailer then and I'll take it somewhere else?" And they do. I got one last comment from them about they can't afford to pay for trash haul off. It was very canned and rehearsed. Yeah right I thought, but you can take the good stuff and sell it and pay for this fancy new building and the postcards in the mail begging for garage sale leftovers.

20 minutes later another local place that takes donations for Multiple Sclerosis took it all, did most of the unloading and not only gave me receipts, but gave me a handful of coupons for 20% items in their store. And they said thanks. I'll be going back to them.

I'm fine, how are you?

Pinball Fun in Kansas

Wow, sure did hit me hard last night how much I miss my KC Pinball buddies. Brutha Burt had a small get together/pinball tournament and set up a web cam so I could enjoy the show. Was really nice to see, hear, and chat with some old friends, and relive the past when pinball parties were a lot more common than they are for me now. (Sniff). It was a late thought to grab pictures, and I only managed to get a few:


I hear Don won. Big surprise........

Welcome to my mansion. Watch your step.

Believe it or not, I was taking a whiz the other day when it struck me about something I've been meaning to blog about for a long time, and now enough time has passed since I left "my old job", I think it's safe. In the days where I did a lot of hand-holding computer work (downloading pictures from the camera, how to burn a CD, cleaning up spyware), I ran in to a lot of disgusting, weird or just wrong things. A lot of these people lived in very expensive multimillion homes, but money doesn't make you normal or smart, that's for sure. The following memories are from a half dozen people over the course of a few years:

1. In one home, the teenager's toilet was jammed very close to the tub & shower. The white shower curtain was pulled back towards the toilet, I couldn't help but notice it was yellowed at the bottom. You figure it out.
2. In the same mansion downstairs, one of their two retrievers (I assume) had taken a big dump in the middle of the oriental rug, it looked like it had been there for awhile.
3. Same house, different kid about 12 years old, had a porn DVD (and a rental to boot) in his non working PC. Don't ask me what I did with it, it's a secret.
4. You know those Folgers pre-measured coffee-in-a-filter packs they sell, for the people that have the money and are too lazy to measure their own coffee and put in their own filter? Convenient? Sure! So when I was asked if I wanted some coffee, she got out the filters, got out the pre-measured coffee packs, slowly tore one open and dumped the contents in to the new filter....
5. A week later on a follow up visit, the turd was still there.
6. Oh, and they put their old nice golden retriever down, why? "Well, we were going on vacation..." Nice.
7. Once at another mansion, I was called because the printer didn't work. It made no sense, that it would just stop working, but it seems like I was always being called to this house to fix weird problems. And not for the first time, the young bratty son who obviously had his dad's prick like attitude is saying to Mom as I'm standing right there: "Mom! We don't NEED him. We need to get a new computer! How much is he going to charge anyway?!". From what I could surmise, yeah, he wanted a new PC. One that downloads porn faster I bet! In this case I found the problem. The printer port had been disabled. Huh!? Wonder how THAT happened!?!?!?!
8. I once had a nightmare virus cleanup at a house with three PCs. They had twins, and their PCs were side by side, and the third was on another floor. They all got one of those damn pop up virus programs that make using your PC impossible. I was able to spend about 3-4 hours and cleaned it all up, and was even thanked with a bottle of expensive wine. I sent in my bill, and I did get paid, but with it was a note that said "Todd, here's your money. We paid a neighborhood kid about $25 to fix the email problem that you did not. He fixed everything and more in about 20 minutes".
9. I had this one lady who was well, just dumber than rocks. To make her feel important I guess, she scheduled "Lessons" with me. I'm not teacher, and I'm not always patient, especially with DUMBASS people, but I tried. These lessons involved me standing behind her for an hour or so while I instructed her where to click on the screen while the PC prompted her. Sometimes I even had to take her hand and move the mouse for her. We're talking copying pictures off her camera people, not complex Excel pivot tables! And not one lesson on this, MANY lessons. She didn't read the screen, and didn't seem to retain anything. I also set up her stereo while there once, and sometimes spent a lot of time cleaning up her Internet messes. The last call I spent there actually was challenging, seems like a driver update made her new HP printer stop working properly. She refused to pay $150 of the bill I sent. Why? I was told by her husband's secretary that she felt I didn't do the work, that I should have known better about the problem since I was a computer guy.
10. One job I had to do was simply to set up an online stock portfolio in Yahoo, and then teach the same secretary how to update it. Picture this now, I'm given his entire investment data, worth in excess of 5 million, and later his wife doesn't pay me $150. I always wanted to send him a thank you card.
    
11. I informed one lady (I mostly dealt with the wives ya know) that I had family over Thanksgiving and thus would be unavailable. Do you think that mattered? Cell phone rings, few minutes later home phone rings, then a few later cell phone rings (sigh!). So I answer. It would have been just a WEE bit nicer to get "Sorry to bother you" but the conversation from the adult son went something like this: "Todd. I forgot my password. I need to get online".... "Uh, OK, but you don't have a PC password?"... "No, no, to SPORTSGAMBLING.COM, I gotta put in a bet for the Denver game". Whatever dude, thanks for bothering me.
12. Not computer work, I was hired to set up a pinball machine is a restaurant owner's newly remodeled basement bar/gameroom. This area musta been 4000 square feet, and it was really cool. To be polite, I took off my shoes. While on my hands and knees under the pinball machine leveling it, the unmistakable smell of piss in the corner was overwhelming. This came to be known as "The Cat Piss House"
    
13. That seems to be a pattern too, pinball machines in the corner, new houses and piss or pooh. Setting up a pinball machine at another time, in another new house up at a new golf course, I asked for a coupla paper towels to clean up the mini-pooh Barky Von Schnauzer left in the corner. Little dogs are like cats dontcha know!
    

Ahh, the goood old days. I did have a coupla good customers that I was always happy to see, but I gotta admit, I'm glad I'm out of that business. It wasn't worth the hassle.

Getting ripped off sucks

May is going to be remembered for me as the month people ripped us off. I hope it's not a trend. If I sit and dwell on it, I get really ticked, mainly at my own stupid self cause I'm smart enough to know better, but also with people. How can some people purposely commit such blatant fraud and live with themselves? Honestly. We're talking 4 instances. The first is the one I'm most pissy about. I got conned, in the parking lot of Costco of all places, for a "We'll fix that dent and make it good as new for $200". Sure ya will. It looks like crap, worse than before, and they even cracked the paint. I fell for the "Ya need to let that white stuff (hiding their crappy work) sit for a few hours before you wipe it off". Yeah, I'm an idiot, and $200 poorer. What makes me doubly mad is that this dent is one I caused due to my own action, while getting fold up tables for a garage sale. The garage sale didn't pay for my dent so far!

The 2nd and 3rd are identical, I ordered two magazine subscriptions via eBay. Months later when I've gotten nothing, I see that neither did anyone else, and both accounts are closed. Here's how they get ya, their disclaimer is it can take 2 months for the magazines to start arriving, and you only have 45 days to file a PayPal claim or it's too late. These people did this on purpose, they set out to steal. That's pure fraud. And maybe it's not over, I was able to file claims anyway, we'll see. I'm also going to write a letter to Consumer Reports, cause ironically one of the three year $34.95 subscriptions I paid for was for them. I don't expect them to do anything about it, but maybe they'll warn others.

The last is "OUCH, I HURT MY NECK!". The insurance adjusters were out today to take pictures of the "damage" to the Ford when Tracy bumped another lady in rush hour traffic a week or so ago. Being third party, I only know it was a bumper to bumper hit and the license plate frame came off, and supposedly dented her bumper with my tow rings. If you look at the Ford, you can't tell anything was damaged. Here's the thing. It was a bump and Tracy got a little upset, enough so that the lady she hit and swapped info with actually hugged. The police didn't see that it was enough to warrant a report or ticket, and everyone went on their merry way. Right? No. Our insurance company says: "she has sought medical care and is now claiming an injury from what appears to be a very minor accident". Yup, let's con the insurance company!! The good news is of course we were insured and USAA has got a spine. The insurance adjuster was out today and wrote up a claim for $12.83 worth of damage, that's the retail price of a license plate frame. He says false claims are up. Maybe, just maybe she just went to the doctor, and she should, she wasn't at fault, but somehow I smell something a LOT different, and I checked my shoes.

Paranoid

OK, I don't give out my phone number, or Social Security number willy nilly, but you would THINK when ordering something, you would provide your name right? Today's customer paranoia goes like this:

• I received an order for a DVD. The ship to name is "no eye dee"
• I email for a real name, it's not a cheap DVD and I don't want it undelivered.
• Anne D. responds with "my name is anne...with my other quite correct information you should have no need for my last name"
• I note that the email address has her full first and last name. Ha.
• She emails again: "i would like to be erased after the order is in."

Damn right I'll erase ya. I'll get out my big old rubber eraser on a stick and reach over to Washington and WIPE YOU OUT!!! Maybe sign her up for some paranoia newsletters....