Friday Shuffle - Making Up For Lost Time Edition

This entry should properly be titled "Friday Shuffle - When Things Go Wrong and We Freak Out and the Ridiculous Measures We'll Take To Remedy It Edition".

I assume you've noticed that I've been posting a little less frequently than usual. It's not because I didn't have anything to say - at least that's not the sole reason - but we've had a problem with our Internet service provider. For the past two weeks our Internet service would drop out, sometimes for ten minutes, sometimes for four and five hours. Often things would be fine in the afternoons but come 9pm the problem would start up again. At first we figured they were having some problems after the bad wind storm that came through here two weeks ago but after a week when things didn't get better, I began to get pissed about their shoddy service. I pay to have Internet service around the clock and my bill is paid in full and on time every month. I understand routine maintenance and even emergencies but after a week when it's not better and their website isn't even updated advising their customers about what's going on, I'm not a happy customer. Every time the service went out, I'd get pissed at them all over again. It got to the point where we were down to deciding which DSL service we'd use and I was reveling in the idea of calling our current ISP to let them know we'd just be keeping cable TV service and they could cram their Internet service. I have called this company so many ugly names that there's a blue cloud hovering over my apartment building.

We called our ISP this morning to report that last night we didn't have Internet service between the hours of 9:10pm and when I went to bed at 3am. I don't go into customer service problems with guns blazing and in the past this company has always been very friendly and professional so I told B to just be nice to them and maybe they could help us after all. After speaking with a technician and letting him know about the service constantly being interrupted and telling him that the lights on the cable modem blink as if it's searching for a signal he said it sounded like we needed a new cable modem and he'd be here by noon. Twenty minutes later the technician was at our door, replaced the modem and said that the service should be on within a half hour.

And hour and a half later our Internet service still wasn't working. B made another call and the technician suggested that we disconnect our WLAN router and try going online with the cable. Naturally it worked. Shit. The problem was with our router.

Yikes. For the past two weeks I've been thinking evil things about this company and have have lost count of the times the words "Fuckers!! Incompetent fuckers!" has come out of my mouth through clenched teeth. I completely Richard Jewell-ed my Internet provider. And to make me feel even more like an ungrateful, conclusion jumping ass, the technician suggested that we try resetting the router and starting from scratch with it before assuming it was fried and needed replacing. And it worked. He didn't need to help us that way but he did and was extra friendly the whole time. Everyone was. Every person we talked to in this whole thing was amazingly friendly. I had to spent a fair sized chunk of the afternoon getting all three computers back online via the WLAN router but we're back to normal and I'm a happy customer once again.

So here's the part where I admit that I was wrong and I heartily apologize for every bad thought I've had and every nasty word I've used in conjunction with my cable TV and Internet company. MDCC, I love you. Come kiss me. With tongue.

Sometimes, however, you get faced with a problem and you have to resort to more undesirable yet effective measures to resolve it. For example: Since Christmas I've been freaked out by the milk sold at my favorite grocery store. On Christmas Eve night my husband and I sat down for our annual Christmas tradition of eating chocolate chip cookies with milk while watching It's a Wonderful Life and when I took my first sip of milk it smelled weird. Tasted okay - not 100% right but okay - but it smelled funky. Like ass. As Sari would say, like cow's ass. Actually it didn't smell like as as much as it smelled like rancid meat. And I'd taken a drink of it. All I could think was that I'd pour out the milk from the carton and there would be a dead mouse in it. I did pour it out and the carton smelled even worse. I opened another liter of milk. Same funky smell. By then I'd given up on wanting to drink milk with my cookies.

I figured that maybe it was a problem with that particular batch of milk and so when I went shopping again I bought more milk. This time the first two cartons I opened were fine and I figured the problem was solved until I opened the third liter. Cow's ass again. I was too freaked out to test the fourth.

The next day I was back in my old neighborhood to get my hair cut and stocked up on milk at my old grocery store. I'd never had a problem with ass smelling milk there but then again I can't drive halfway across town every week to get non-ass smelling milk. And I don't want to change my current grocery store. I like it and I don't even think the problem is with the milk itself - it's with the new cartons they started using in December. They've got ass smelling cartons.

There are other shopping options for milk purchases but two of them involve going to the mall. Hell, I hate going to the mall when I'm looking for something fun, nevermind going there in search of non-ass smelling low fat milk so I've chosen option three - going to the grocery section of Karstadt. Yes. In an effort to buy non-ass smelling milk I am buying it in a department store. And I still sniff every carton when I open it.

Let's shuffle.

1. God Only Knows - The Beach Boys
2. Evil Woman - Electric Light Orchestra
3. It's Beginning To Get To Me - Snow Patrol
4. Sing - Travis
5. Run Runaway - Great Big Sea
6. Tom Sawyer - Rush
7. Sam's Town - The Killers
8. Mainstreet - Bob Seger
9. Madrigal - Yes
10. Born To Run - Bruce Springsteen

At least Bixente the iPod is still working fine. And doesn't smell like cow's ass.