And here we have one of my reasons for creating, and then recreating, this blog. And just on a day when I didn’t think I’d have much newsworthy to snort over.

Out in Alberta, we have a teenager with some pretty no-nonsense conditions on his staying out of jail. Like, say, being on his best behaviour and keeping the pease. Pretty standard stuff, you’d think. But it didn’t occur to this appropriately slapped teenager that maybe he should consider how he gets to his appointment with his probation officer a little tiny bit more carefully next time. He ends up doing something–probably lazing around the house–that lands him dangerously close to the wrong side of being late for his appointment. No biggy, you say–he just calls his officer and lets him know he’s gonna be 5 minutes late, right?

Stop making sense, right now. We don’t mock people who do that on here. Rather than picking up the phone, he decides instead to pick up a bike and cruise on over to the police station in style. Not a bad idea, if the bike didn’t first have to be picked up from someone else’s property. Now he’s made it to the police station on time and doesn’t have to worry about going to jail for not being late. Instead, he’s on his way to jail for breaching the conditions of that probation anyway. How’s that working out, I wonder? Oh well, at least he can say he wasn’t late, right?

The month is just over half over, and already things have gone and decided breaking is the thing to do. It started last week, with the near breaking of my plans to return home this past weekend–plans that were changed for other reasons, which will be elabourated on once the appropriate people have been properly hunted, nailed to the nearest wall, and my time and effort in aranging things is appropriately compensated–in blood, if necessary.

Then, earlier this week, the old blogging stomping grounds of LiveJournal, where I still occasionally show up mostly because I’ve yet to convert all the cool people away from it to much more fun things, decided it would be fun to break my LJ RSS hack. More specificly, one of their upgrades apparently broke their own authentication mechanism. That only ended up being fixed an hour ago–and not, laughably enough, before several people who were experiencing similar problems re: their RSS feeds had decided to bring it up quite blatantly in the dev community–I should really consider watching that community, now that I think about it.

Last night capped off the reason for renaming the month of August to the month of Broken. We needed to get laundry done. As in, like, ASAFP. Which turned out to be at just about midnight last night–hey, we never claimed to keep a normal schedule. That was around the exact same time we figured out that hey, this building’s supposed to have two working washers and two working dryers. This building has one of each. And the broken ones are broken in such a way that by the time we figure out they’re broken, we’ve wasted a dollar in each. Those are, to my knowledge anyway, still broken–we’re presently air-drying the affected articles of clothing. Sadly, my name isn’t on the lease here so I don’t get to personally scream in some poor maintenance bastard’s ear about it, but Jess will undoubtedly take amazing amounts of pleasure in doing exactly that just as soon as she can find 30 seconds to breathe.

Well into the third week of August, and we’ve already had plenty of things go breaky smash on a technical and non-technical front–an average of one per week at this rate. I’m officially renaming the month of August to the month of Broken. Now, to go whip something real quick up to make it official on this here website.

Sometimes, the department of national defense really screws with my head. I think they do it on purpose. Soldiers suffering from PTSD won’t be prescribed marijuana, which the folks on the pro-legalisation and/or decriminalisation side of the issue say can and does help with situations like that among other things. But, the folks who ultimately are in charge of such things apparently have little to no problem with testing out ecstasy under the same circumstances. Yeah, we’ll just throw you in jail at worst and kick you out of the millitary at best for making use of a supposed gateway drug, but here, let us help you blow right through that gateway at warp speed. Did I skip out on logic 101, here? Am I missing something? Or has the DND finally made that left turn at Loony avenue? I honestly lost track about a paragraph into that article. I can has clue plz?

I worked for Dell until mid-2008. They decided around then my job would be much better done from a call center in India. Flash forward to last week or so. One such Indian technical support agent had apparently been called up to help her find and view pictures a customer had on her hard drive, but couldn’t remember where she’d put them–I used to get calls like that all the time. They used to take maybe an hour, if you happened to have a customer who was particularly clueless when it comes to something as simple as “Now don’t touch anything for a few minutes or I won’t be able to control your computer from here.”. They used to be so simple I could do them in my sleep. And they used to still pay me at least $100 for the assistance–hey, I didn’t make the policies or force them to call me. They used to not end like this.

A woman calls Dell tech support to ask for help in locating pictures of herself on her computer. The pictures end up on a newly created Web site. She accuses the support representative of creating the site.

Would it be too cynical of me to figure the agent in question didn’t actually end up fired from the outsourcing center he works for? It’s articles like this that kind of make me very glad I don’t actually ever really have to pick up the phone for something unless they’ve already screwed it up.

Apparently, according to the article, Dell’s in the midst of a lawsuit over it. I can see this going full circle in the near future–lawsuits in New York among other places were, after all, what lead to them opening up more call centers in North America after all, for all the good it did. What was that they said about hindsight?

Does anyone actually even remember remotely considering doing something relatively useful with Google Wave? A few geek blogs I follow were all over it when it first opened up–hell, even Mike was singing its praises for a time. It was supposed to be the thing to replace email/twitter/facebook/what have you. How’re we doing on that? According to Google, not well. So it’s dying a slow and painful death that’ll drag out until the end of the year. I won’t say I saw it coming, but well…

I have a long and complicated history with Windows XP’s service pack 3. Mostly, it consists of me installing it and it doing all manner of bad things to the machine it’s installed on–like, for instance, being partially responsible for the temporary breakage of an internet connection. Recently though, I’ve noticed a slightly disturbing trend. Machines older than mine and less stable than mine are taking SP3 with little to no problem and even less headache. And I’ve personally seen it installed on one with plenty of other problems of its own–hello, less than stable IE 8. So there was definitely something out to get me–now I had proof.

After exiling SP3 from my machine for being pretty much a complete and total failure, I’d also a while later gone ahead and got rid of Eset’s Smart Security product for a whole host of other, unrelated reasons I’ll get around to posting at some point in the maybe not too distant future. That fixed a few dozen other slightly irritating, but not ultimately hindering, problems. After seeing SP3 crop up on some of these machines and ultimately not cause mass amounts of destruction, I decided just before I came down here to install it again on mine. I took that opportunity to test IE 8 out on a non-frankenputer as well, but I’ll save that for when I figure out what about the offending machine is making it break. And, surprise of surprises, it didn’t result in extreme amounts of bloodshed, or physical damage to the computer.

So, after much of the getting pissed with Microsoft for making yet more work for me, and after confirming not once, but five times that SP3 did not, in fact, break me severely on install, I officially withdraw any cursing, swearing, or overall snarkish remarks directed at Microsoft on its behalf. Instead, I shall officially aim those remarks at Eset/Nod32, and add them to the 50 billion others I’ve had plenty of time to prepare and direct at the offending antivirus manufacturer. But don’t worry, Microsoft still has much for me to snark about–I still have to figure out in exactly how many pieces they’ve managed to break .net framework on this machine, which may or may not warrant a separate entry. But SP3, at least so far, is not as evil as it looked a few months ago. Good job, MS. Now fix your framework, goddammit.

Only in Quebec. A guy ends up with a property tax bill upwards of 200000 dollars. He’s not exactly enthused with the rate of increases to his taxes, and decides to make a point of telling the folks down at city hall exactly that by showing up, one assumes on or before the due date, with no fewer than 200000 dollars in pennies. Apparently, it required the use of a kiddy pool to carry them.

A Quebec man, fed up with his skyrocketing property taxes, carted more than 200,000 pennies down to City Hall to pay his bill. But he was denied, and asked to simply cut a cheque.

A cheque? Hell, I thought you wanted money! Tell you what, I’m just gonna go pay the whole thing off right now.

Like I said, where’s Foxworthy when you need him?

Of course, I didn’t exactly expect anyone would actually take me seriously. Now I know better. Guy gets in some hot water for drinking at a beach where alcohol’s not permitted. Okay, slap on the wrist, you’d think–this is Canada, after all. Except rather than give his actual name, he gave the name Andrew Moron instead. And was promptly fined for impersonation. I’ll now make the obvious suggestion that perhaps this guy should go right ahead and legally change his name. In the meantime, have a moron of the month award. No, it’s not named after this guy.

From the “that didn’t take long” department, my newly re-screwed-up routine. And it only took about 2 or 3 days after the departure of the girlfriend–er, oops, I mean fiance. Personal record for me, I think. Further proof I’m a goner schedule-wise? I was in the middle of reading something yesterday afternoon, and next thing I know it’s 4:00 this morning. Naturally, I’m all sleeped out at this point, so I’m up and mobile. At 4:00 this morning. Did I mention I’m not supposed to be an early morning person? On the bright side, I did have a couple things I needed to get done today so at least I haven’t reached the level of screwed up in which I wake up at 6:00 PM. But, really, 4? AM? Really? Yeah, clearly I have no sleep schedule. This is not cool.

I recently this year developed an interest in a TV show, “Ghost Whisperer”. The plot was halfway interesting, the characters were semi-realistic–except for that whole ghosts thing, but hey, some people actually believe they can do that–and it was actually not something I ended up falling asleep to. It was also cancelled. Go figure. I’m starting to suspect it’s an unwritten rule or something.

I ended up finding another show of interest a couple years back–a recommendation by then a fairly good friend of mine. After the second season, cancel city. Yeah, definitely an unwritten rule. I’m just going to stop discovering new things to watch now. I’ll watch them after they’ve already been cancelled from now on. Hey, at least then I’ll know to expect it. That’ll show ‘em.

I’ve met some bad–naye, horrible–parents in my 26 years. granted, I’ve med some even worse kids, too, but still. Nothing has quite come close to this.

“I’m not worried about his health, he looks healthy”‘ shrugged the boy’s father Mohammad Rizal. “He cries and throws tantrums when we don’t let him smoke. He’s addicted.”

There are rumours floating around that it might be a hoax. Whether ’tis or ’tis not, this post serves as notice. I am officially bringing back the moron of the year award. And this fine example of parenthood is the first candidate.

Excluding the hundred billion privacy issues they’re dealing with, now Facebook takes interpersonal guessing games to a whole new level. Apparently, its CEO has decided to perform his own little experiments and see if he can predict who folks would end up in a relationship with based on their Facebook interactions. Now, temporarily excusing the fact the last thing we need is another freaking match making site, he seems quite impressed with a 33% accuracy so far. I’ll restrain myself from pointing out he would have never predicted Jessica and I, for the simple fact of both of us barely use Facebook and she only joined after we’d started dating. But, good try, Zuckerberg. Might I suggest just buying out EHarmony, instead?

I haven’t been keeping up on my usual sources of entertainment this week, primarily on account of having catching up to do in other areas. I kick myself for it now. In list format, because I can, things I could have, and should have, soundly mocked this week. You may feel free to mock one or all of them in the comments on my behalf. I won’t be upset.

• What’s the first thing you do if you’ve just been caught in an afair, and your significant other decides to up and leave you? If you’re this chick, you sue the cell company. Because, you know, there’s just no way he would have found out anyway.
• If in doubt, just nuke it. That’s a solution being tossed forward by an apparent expert for stopping the oil spill in the gulf. I’ll have my shrimp with a side order of radiation, please. I always thought “Nuke it from orbit. It’s the only way to be sure.” was just a movie quote. Clearly, I don’t get out much.
• Ways not to impress the Afghanistan president, number 54761: call him a weirdo and predict he could trigger a civil war. Yes, even if he did say, supposedly jokingly, he might as well join the dark side. Yes, even if he’s not doing a whole lot better in charge of that country than the dark side. And yes, even if you are–as I think you would be–absolutely and completely 100% in the right. That’s just not cool–especially if you used to work in that country for the UN.
• When even actors are downloading their own movies because it’s more convenient and less annoying than paying for them, you know there’s a problem. Question is, what’s the industry planning to do about it? Answer: probably not much–that would actually require effort.
• And, in the political arena, because I can’t go on a mocking spree without it, we have this wonderful piece of I’m not sure what. Liberal party of Canada leader Michael Ignatieff would just like you to know that, if you didn’t spend all that much time outside of Canada and living as varied a life as he has, you’re not as Canadian as he is. Might I ask, exactly from what planet was he exiled before landing in Ottawa? I didn’t know spending 30+ years in the US and/or the UK–he did both–made anyone more Canadian than the next. Boy have I been set straight.
• And in unrelated news, Montreal won tonight. I thought I told folks to fix the playoffs. They’re still broken.

See what happens when I stay away from news sources? People don’t get mocked. Clearly, we can’t have that.

College admins, take note. I’m trying, via Ontario’s second career program, to give you money. I’m actually standing here with my hand out, with untold dollars in said hand. We have just one problem. Your websites do not tell me how much of said untold dollars you want for courses and/or residence fees where applicable. Nor, I’ll add, do you respond to my phone and email requests for same. In fact, if I didn’t know better I’d say you were trying to make me not want to give you money. You’re succeeding.

Congrats to the two colleges that actually volunteered, either via their website or via telephone inquiries, tuition and/or residence information where necessary. Can you please educate some of the others on doing same? I’m looking at you, Seneca. Your email. Read it. Respond to it. Thank you.

I’m the family geek. Which, really, has its positives as well as its rather irritating negatives. And sometimes, it’s neither positive nor negative–just six or seven different kinds of hillarious. Take Friday morning, for example. We’re sitting down for breakfast, and mom brought up an announcement by Google that said they were officially changing their name to Topeka. The announcement, apparently, made headlines.

I didn’t quite have the heart, even after I’d managed to stop laughing, to tell her she’d just been had a day late. But, eventually, I did. She still thought, at least for a few minutes anyway, that it was actually going to be their official name as of–conveniently–April first, the poor girl. In thirty seconds, I summarized the background for Google’s latest of April fool’s jokes. Then got treated to a rare event–I do believe she actually looked like she’d just been handed a 3-dollar bill for a minute.

I’ve been trying for 26 years to pull one over on my mother. Google did it in 24 hours. And all it had to do was make the news. Now, if I’d just waited a day or two longer before breaking the bad news to her… nah, that would be *too* mean. Maybe next year.

All over a trafic violation in Cleveland, Ohio, two guys decide they’re going to make a chase of it. It started out as a high-speed car chase, only for them to realize they probably weren’t going to outrun the cops. Then they thought it might be fun to make a foot race out of it. Ditch the car, jump a fence, say hello to a couple female innmates. Um, what?

Turns out the fence they jumped put them right into the yard of a female corrections center. Where, naturally, they were promptly, well, taken in.

I guess it could be argued they were just turning themselves in. If that’s the case, someone should probably point out to them they turned themselves in to the wrong prison. Hopefully while on their way to the right one. Apparently, a couple more guys who didn’t find themselves on the wrong side of the wrong fence at the wrong time were also arrested. So much for bragging rights. Instead, the whole group gets nominated for moron of the year.

One of these days, I’ll remind myself I meant last month to remind myself to pick a theme and stay with it. It won’t be today, though. I decided I like the 3-column approach much better, particularly so far as my plans for the site go. Mostly, I’m not cramming everything over on the right hand side, which makes my life just slightly easier. Of course, there’s yet to be a theme created that I haven’t had to slightly modify to meet my tastes. That goes just as well for this one. And, in the process, the blog very nearly went completely sideways–thus further solidifying the fact I should not be messing with PHP, particularly on no sleep. Much as I shouldn’t be blogging on no sleep–I’ve managed to require use of the backspace key roughly a dozen times so far, but that hasn’t stopped me either. Fortunately, WordPress is very good about warning me when I’m about this close to completely and totally screwing things up. And its documentation is plenty good enough that, if I do manage to screw things up entirely too wrongly, unscrewing them isn’t too difficult either. Now, if they just had a similar solution to my ability to screw up posting. Oh well, can’t have it all. Now, perhaps I should consider correcting this no sleep thing. I’ve broken the blog enough for one night.

Only in England does something like this come up. And, only in Canada does it actually make headlines. And, only on this blog will it be mocked. A 23-year-old from London, while walking his dog, decided just because the dog wanted a walk doesn’t mean he had to. London’s legal system felt otherwise.

Prosecutors said Paul Railton was spotted driving at low speed along a country lane in December, holding his dog’s leash through the car window as the animal trotted alongside.

Railton pleaded guilty Monday to not being in proper control of a vehicle. His lawyer, Paul Donoghue, said 23-year-old Railton acknowledged “it was a silly thing to do and there was an element of laziness” while exercising his lurcher, a type of crossbred sighthound.

Yes, I’m lazy. Sometimes, too lazy. Way, way too lazy. But even I’m not quite *that* lazy. Even if they actually wanted to give me a lisence. Say, can he also be charged with being a contender for 2010′s moron of the year?

A 67-year-old guy, supposedly receiving old age benefits in Calgary, Alberta, has apparently made an attempt to rob a bank. Armed with, of all things, a fork. Clearly, someone should be talking to our government about maybe increasing how much he’s getting paid from the Canada Pension Plan. He could use the money. So could I, but I’m too lazy to find a bank to hold up. Or a fork to do it with.

About 6 or 7 months ago, I had the opportunity to be interviewed by Convergys, an outsourcing company who at the time was handling a contract for AT&T. I didn’t end up taking the opportunity, however, on account of they were very up front about having absolutely no plans for doing, pretty much, anything I’d need them to do in order for me to work there. Like, for instance, installing a screenreader so I can actually use their computers. About that long ago, I stopped thinking about them. And on Tuesday, the office where I would have been working tossed all but a hundred of its employees. Suddenly, I’m actually kind of glad we parted company after our initial conversation. Otherwise I might very well still be exactly where I am right now. Except maybe on employment insurance. Thanks but no thanks–did that dance already. Oh, and as for where those jobs ended up going? You guessed it–overseas. On the up side, at least we’re helping their recovery.

It was recommended to me a few times, primarily by Jessica, that I maybe want to consider checking out a political satire group, Capitol Steps. So out of random curiosity, I downloaded a few of their albums. And have been listening ever since.

Mostly, they do the US politics, which well, yeah, there’s plenty to mock there. But they’ve taken a few stabs at this side of the border too. Everyone’s favourite province to pick on gets a special mention a time or two–hello, Quebec. Especially around the time when they were holding their vote for separation. The awesomeness is surprising. Now, if I can just figure out who it was who did “Let’s Bomb Iraq”. Probably these guys–it’s their kind of thing. Now then. Back to seeing if Beyond Satire has been updated in a month or three.

Edit: I was right, it’s them. Oddly enough, when I heard this the first time I didn’t even know the group existed. I’m awesome. Or maybe not.

There’s a very good, and very logical, reason why it is I never bother to do something as simple as make plans. Something almost always manages to show up to make things work significantly less than well. Like two days ago for example. The original plan, that is the plan we walked to the car with in our heads that morning, was to take a trip to Ottawa for dad’s doctor’s appointment, then maybe grab a little lunch and head home. After we finished with dad’s appointment, the plan changed to maybe grab lunch, then swing by Costco and then home. And by the time we got to the point where we’d have to make up our minds, the plan became a trip to the casino, then Costco, then home. We managed the trip to the casino.

Just about the time we were ready to make our way to the car to head to Costco–we even already had our jackets on and everything, mom started feeling this extreme sharp pain. Now, her pain threshold’s nearly as high as mine, so when it’s bad enough that she can barely move nevermind talk, it’d probably drive most people to either scream or break things. She could barely do either when we started for the car. We very nearly called an ambulance, except we were in Quebec and none of us could speak french overly well. We got her to the emergency room of one of the hospitals in Ottawa. And then the waiting started. And continued. And kept on continuing.

By 8:30, she’d managed only to get as far as urgent care. She’d been triaged, and… that’s about where it stopped. When I finally left at about quarter to 9, she was still sitting there. I headed to Trish’s place to grab a few hours sleep, banking on them not doing much with her overnight. Dad stuck around, banking on not getting much sleep overnight. We were both right.

At 3:00 yesterday morning, they finally got around to admitting her. They were operating on the same suspicion she was–it was a result of some kind of infection, which was producing rather painful levels of swelling. They ran bloodwork, which seemed to confirm it. Then she got to wait some more for them to get around to doing the ultrasound. That happened at about 9 yesterday morning. By then, they’d had her hooked up to an IV for antibiotics and were talking about the likelyhood of a DNC to try and remove any of the remaining swelling or scar tissue that might have been hanging around causing her additional problems. She was pain free, and we suspect infection free, when I dropped in to see her last night on the way here to dog sit and get things ready to mom sit. They hadn’t done the surgery yet, but they still had her on the antibiotics.

I got back here at about midnight, by which time it was pretty much decided she’d be going into surgery at some point today. I, along with pretty much the rest of our family, kept close to the phone for any kind of semi-significant change to the current situation.

At roughly 7:00 or so tonight, that change happened. I got the call first from my grandmother, and then from my dad, letting me know they were taking her into surgery. Apparently, the operation itself takes less time than the prep and recovery do, so we figure they’ll be able to release her before midnight tonight. Whether or not they will is another story entirely, but they’ll be able to. At the absolute latest, barring any random and unforeseen complications, she’ll be home tomorrow. As of right now, though, I have a fairly huge house and two overly affectionate dogs to myself. Anyone want an overly affectionate dog?

How many times have you heard this scenario? Kid does something stupid/irresponsible/that the parents simply have told him not to do, parents get pissed off, and decide to revoke some privelege or another. Kid threatens to call the police. In my family growing up, there was always a snarky response that went along with it. In a family in Illinois, it had a completely different response. The kid ended up not meeting a whole lot of actual resistance, and went about the business of promptly calling 911 after his parents removed his XBox priveleges–quite probably due to the fact he was playing that as opposed to cleaning his room.

I’d love to have been the dispatcher for that call. Especially when he called specificly to ask if that was within his parents’ rights. And then, promptly hung up. So, the dispatcher sent the police to his address, where he was promptly owned. Not only was he informed the parents were well within their rights, but he was also advised that it might perhaps possibly be wiser to maybe consider listening to them. My money’s on the kid behaving just a little bit better now. If only temporarily. Or at least, now the parents will have some more creative threats for the kid if he doesn’t.

At some point during the night last night, and rather inconveniently after Jessica and I had run off to bed and so I couldn’t immediately determine that it was a network issue, this blog, a rarely updated–and, in fact, rather neglected for a couple weeks–political blog, and our email among other things, decided to take a rather gigantic crap on our front lawn. The first ever self-hosted version of the blog–link’s over there in the right sidebar–was started on this network, hosted by DreamHost, in January of 2006. Since then, I’ve always had something going over here. If not a blog, then some little utility or web app I was playing around with just because I can. Or a forum I was testing for one of the RP projects I’m either involved in or dedicating resources to. So I’ve been with them a while.

In that time, I think I’ve only ever really personally encountered… maybe 4 major, “OMG I can’t access a thing” type failures. It may, in fact, even be less than 4. So when I woke up to a screen full of “can’t connect” messages (thanks, Outlook), I was more than a little bit surprised–albeit temporarily. And, admittedly, more than a little bit frustrated–emails I should have received overnight hadn’t actually hit my mailbox yet. Once I managed to get my end of the cleanup out of the way, though, I started looking into something I hadn’t really looked at since, well, the last time DreamHost’s network went and crapped out.

I’ve been eyeing on and off, usually while the blog etc is offline, the idea of moving most if not all of my various outlets fully away from a managed environment. I’ve been running the DH VPS for a few months now, plus I’ve been running two of my own, unmanaged VPS’s for a couple years. Mostly, it’s been a sort of learning environment for me–see how many different ways I can break the system, then reinstall it, and start all over again. And yet, every time something like this happens, I always toss around the idea for a few days of actually expanding my knowledge overall of the Linux environment, and at the same time put into development my own email, and possibly web, solution–one independant from any particular web host. But I never actually get around to doing that.

I’ve done much of the actual research already–the most likely candidate for when I actually decide to take that leap will probably end up being one that centers around Postfix and MySQL, now I just need to find the energy, motivation, and maybe get frustrated enough with my current setup that I finally just say screw it and go with it. It’s probably gonna suck, but at least then I’ll be able to actually figure out for myself what’s up and died on me. Meanwhile, hey, DH, can we get a more stable network please? I really don’t like being forced into considering enduring the necessary brain damage to actually set something like that up. At least not at such a young age.

You need look no farther than moments like this. Not mine, obviously, but good lord I wish I could take credit for this.

No Tickey, No Watchey
Call Center | Ontario, Canada

(I work in the billing department for a cable company. One day I took the following call.)

Me: “Thank you for calling ****, my name is ****, what can I help you with?”

Customer: “Hi, I need you turn my cable back on so I can watch the fight this weekend.”

Me: “OK, if I could get your phone number, I’ll bring up your account and see what’s up.”

(I proceed to bring up his account, and notice he had been installed 6 months ago, and had not once paid his bill.)

Me: “Sir, I’m afraid that we can’t turn anything back on for your account until there has been a payment made.”

Customer: “No, that’s not the agreement. I need to watch the fight this weekend, my boys are coming over.”

Me: “That’s all well and good, but you owe us over two thousand dollars for charges, pay per view and equipment. Nothing can be done until you are up to
date on payment.”

Customer: *angry* “I NEVER AGREED TO PAY YOU ANY F****** MONEY! GIVE ME MY GOD**** CABLE!

Me: “Sir, you obviously don’t understand how this works. We provide a service, and in return you pay a monthly fee. This is where we’re at; nothing can
be done until you pay your balance.”

Customer: “F*** YOU GUYS THEN! I’LL JUST WATCH IT ONLINE, SO THERE! WHAT DO YOU THINK OF THAT?”

Me: “I think you forgot that we supply your internet as well. It won’t be reconnected until you pay your bill.”

Ladies and gentlemen, I introduce to you, the clue by four.