Are these guys professionals?

This is really ridiculous.  I'm not sure if my ISP is staffed by professionals or just a bunch of guys killing time.  Every single time one of their 'technicians' has showed up in person 'to solve' my problem, the guy is obviously lost in space and has had to go back with his tail between his legs.  Whenever I call their help desk, they are also not knowledgeable at all, just dancing around until the problem disappears.

Really frustrating third world class service.

Tonight my ISP is a pain in the ass

I've gotten kicked out of Yahoo! Messenger and had to logon again at least ten times already.  Skype appears to be more recilient, but I've been logged out from it too anyway.  Sometimes I also can't get to a website because of some error you only get when you're not connected to the Internet.

I don't even want to call the ISP cause I know all of their operators will be busy, and most likely will suggest I run a scan with my antivirus.  Sometimes I really miss Internet service from the civilized world.

Breastfeeding record bid

Ananova

I disagree that this breastfeeding record should be measured simply by counting how many women are breastfeeding simultaneously in the same room. It doesn't make sense to me.

What would be interesting is to find a woman who can produce industrial amounts of breastmilk. This would be a record worthy of attention.

Clooney calls on Bush to act over Darfur crisis

Times Online

Buddy, here you are putting the cart in front of the horse. If you do want Bush to take action on this, first you gotta show him where's the oil, or what's his backers' slice of the action gonna be. Otherwise, like in the North Korean case, you'll only get things like the 'Oh, we gotta use diplomacy as much as possible' kind of answer.

Horse kills teen trying to stop it from winning race

AZCentral.com

Yeah, I can believe that. Really stupid, but not a rare sample of their brain power I'd say. I've also read of people in other parts of Latin America fish by pouring poison in a lake. When the fish die they come afloat and are easily collected with a net. They go to sell this fish in the town's produce market, and then they're surprised that people fall ill eating this fish.

Voluble old lady

There's an old lady in this town... I don't get to talk very often with her, but when we do, somehow we end up talking also about some particular office that offers a really dreadful service.  It happens that one of this old lady's daughters works in that office.  Yes, she agrees with me that service is worse than poor, but she excuses in the name of the office --even though she doesn't own it, nor run it, nor anything-- by saying that those guys are always flooded with massive amounts of work.

This morning I happened to talk again with this lady, and once again the topic of this office popped up.  Hey, but this time she said:  When is it going to be the day those guys get serious with work!!!

What happened?  She's got a beef with her own daughter?  Nooo!!!  Her daughter got married and quit her job at that office!

Owning a cable TV network must be it...

In the apartment where I live now there's paid cable TV, rather than free satellite TV.  Among the channels I get now there's no ABC Asia Pacific, from Australia, which I used to enjoy a lot in my old place.  This channel is not even available as an add-on to our cable TV.  Bummer.

So I sent an e-mail to ABC Asia Pacific asking them to invite themselves to join the roster of our cable company.  Their programming is free and very high quality anyway.  The reply from the Australian guys came promptly this morning:  My cable company demands a very expensive payment from ABC Asia Pacific in order to carry their signal, and ABC just can't afford it.

I'm like, what?  Provided you've got your own dish antenna, you can receive ABC for free, yet those cable guys want to charge to ABC for the luxury of carrying their signal?  But they're already making a lot of money out of the monthly fees I pay to them!  Fucking greedy bastards.

Mosquito coils

I wonder who the fuck is keeping standing water up here near the 18F of my apartment building.  You'd think that by living this high, you won't have flies nor mosquitoes coming through your window, but here I do have mosquitoes!  I sometimes even hear those small insects that look like locusts making the kind of sound they do to attract their mates.  It sounds too close to be coming from the ground level.  Somebody is definitely raising those buggers somewhere near my 18F window!

So now I've had to close my window cause I already got bitten twice by a mosquito.  I lit up a mosquito coil that stinks very bad.  I wonder if this really kills or just scares away the mosquitoes.  In the supermarket I saw they sell some device that has an ultraviolet lightbulb surrounded by some mesh with high voltage electricity.  The idea is that the mosquitoes will get attracted to this special light and get electrocuted when they come in contact with the mesh.  Funny I read in the "How It Works" website that actually mosquitoes can't see ultraviolet light!  So, how is that machine supposed to attract them then?

Shame on you, Philips!

As soon as I moved to my current apartment this past January, I replaced all of the lightbulbs in my dining room cause they were all incandescent and here their quality is really crappy.

In my previous apartment I'd been using the incandescent type, but they'd burn out within one month.  Then when I switched to the fluorescent lightbulbs, I forgot about the problems and didn't need to replace any of them for over a year until I moved out.

Come mid-April, not even four full months have passed in my new apartment, and already one of these fluorescent lightbulbs is dead!  It's the same brand and model as before, and I see in the old box that it claims it's gonna last three years!

For those of you who are curious, it's a Philips Essential 14 Watt Cool Daylight fluorescent lightbulb made in China.  Yeah, of course I bought it brand new at a reputable hardware store!

Thank you for taking care of my moral integrity

Lately I'd been having problems with my ADSL at home two to four times a week.  This was really very annoying.  At our office we use the same ISP, and the same plan as whatever I have at home, yet I only see this problem at home.  I was starting to wonder perhaps it's a problem with the wiring in this building alone?  But that can't be.  The office is in a building far older than my apartment building.

Yesterday evening I had more and more problems trying to get connected.  I called the ISP helpdesk, and I got a recording telling that they are aware of connection problems and are already working on it by installing upgraded hardware.  I left them my mobile phone number so they'd send me an SMS to notify me of the upgrading status.

Now that this fixing work is finished I see that my trusty porn sites are unavailable, censored!!!  How thoughtful of them to decide what is propper or not for me to see!!!

Fucking helpdesk

Man, how I hate this ISP helpdesk.  Granted, the connection speed itself has noticeably improved over the last few months.  When I'm watching TV or listening to the radio over the net, I get less interruptions, which is really a pleasure.

But whenever I have problems, and lately it's happening a couple of times per week --rather than once a month like last year--, I try to avoid calling the helpdesk, hoping that the problem will go away by itself.  Sometimes it does after perhaps one hour.  But today I needed to talk to those guys, gee.

The girl said that she 'reset' my connection, and it now appears to be working fine.  But to make the story short, everytime I talk to them I feel like I'm talking with one of those car mechanics who tell you lots of things are about to break down in your car.  Hey, I know when something's wrong with my computer, I work with software, and I know what I'm doing!

Fuck, I didn't change anything in my network configuration, yet the girl was suggesting me to check my firewall and restart my computer!  Some other day the guy said that 90% of the connection problems were caused by viruses in the customer's computer, so please run a scan and check again --and this happened before he took the trouble of listening to what I had to say!

Libby Traces Approval of Disclosure Back to Bush

Los Angeles Times

If this is true, then Bush is really really disgusting. I even remember seeing him on TV saying that he'd fire anyone involved in the disclosure of the operative's identity. So, if he's a man of honour, I think he should fire Cheney and step down himself. (just daydreaming!)

The science behind our diets

A few days ago I read in the news that after all, people who follow low fat diets don't have a reduced risk of some kind of heart disease.  So what am I to make of this?  Perhaps I shouldn't feel as guilty eating all those greasy delights anymore.

Also, I've noticed that in this freaking steamy weather I sweat so much that when I go to an air conditioned room and the sweat on my shirt dries, it leaves like a white cloud where it used to be wet.  I can't believe this is detergent.  It can only be sweat.  So, what's that white thing made up of?  Must be salt.  So, if I'm losing so much salt through sweat that it even leaves visible marks on my clothes, then it shouldn't be so bad that I generously compensate through my eating habits.  Actually, perhaps it's a must that I replenish that salt!

Okay, so I'll do as I say, and I'll have for dinner one pork chop, fried and served with a very nice sauce made of finely chopped garlic, chopped parsely, salt, and oil.  Looking forward to extending my life!

Fucking spammers

These are pathetic guys.  Today I already got 14 pieces of spam, and there're many more hours to go before the day is over.

Sometimes they send me two identical but from different "from" addresses.  What?  They think that if they send it twice, I'll believe them twice as much?  Or I'll buy twice as many perhaps?

Somebody should go out and give those guys a lesson, really.

I don't think it's a lot of different guys sending me spam, just a handful; two or three perhaps.  This is because there're times in which I get only four spams for several consecutive days.  If they were a lot of spammers, then the average should be relatively constant.  I also see that the things they peddle vary with time.  There was a time they were sending me a lot of penny stock shit, then the penis enlargement crap, then the Viagra, Cialis, and so on.  Oh, and the Brazilian spammers.  Those South American guys insist on sending greeting cards from people I don't know, but their links supposedly to see your electronic card in reality lead to download some executable.

If they're so good at using computers, why can't they use their knowledge for something good?

Mother fuckers.

London 'too risky' for US school band

Ananova

These must be the kinds of dunces who fall for Bush's scaremongering and "war on terror", in which "Iraq is on the forefront of the war".