Last month, I was thisclose to folding my side business after having to deal with a rash of insanely belligerent and rude customers. I had one person request a refund for a $25 purchase she made six years ago WTF?. Another person, who had been using one of 'our' products for years without complaint, sent me a profanity-laced screed out of the blue one day telling me how I was trying to cheat him out of his $25 registration fee and how he was going to to spread the word about how evil I was, etc.. He had trouble setting up our program on a new computer and was sick of my shit - now, note that he didn't ask for help or anything first, there was no request for assistance, no "hey, can you tell me what I'm doing wrong here?" - he just worked himself into a lather all on his own, and sent me the kind of thing that I'd be afraid to send to a stranger, lest that stranger turn out to be a guy with a gun, a short temper and an overactive sense of dignity. So, after much wrangling to get him to tell me enough information about his order so I could even verify that he was an actual customer, I gave him a refund because I wanted get rid of any obligation I had to him. He, apparently wanting to be a martyr about this, said he didn't want a refund, he just wanted to scream at me because I was such a dick (though, again, he hadn't even tried to ask for help or contacted me in any way). Another person bought the program, had trouble with the setup and instead of asking for assistance sent me a screaming CAPSLOCKFUCKYOUBASTARDCOCKSUCKERFUCKYOU letter. Another refund. Now, I don't get upset about refunds, it's the assholes that make the job unpleasant. So, after a few weeks of dealing with the mentally unstable, I was about to close up shop. The money's nice, but not life-changing, and really, the relative joy from the cash is easy to offset with the aggravation of having to convince myself over and over that their problems are bigger than anything my tech support can fix.

Then, yesterday, I got a FedEx package from a customer who was happy with the tech support I provided. He sent me, all the way from Switzerland, a surprise package of chocolates and champagne. Fuck all the rest, Arthur, you're the best.

Shocking new photographs show the cause of the Martian Avalanches!

No word as yet on what the rovers were running from or why they thought driving off a cliff was the best way out. Rover operators Thelma Johnson and Louise Green could not be reached for comment.

On Secure Passwords

Fail Dogs

$7,250 Speaker Cables Turn You Into a Dancin' Fool

Newton, Mass. - September 21, 2007 - Pear Cable Corporation, a manufacturer of high fidelity audio cables for both home and car environments, continues to redefine the limits of what is possible in high-end audio cable design. The glowing review of Pear Cable's new ANJOU Speaker Cable, bolsters the argument for describing the cable as one of the world's best.

Dave Clark, Editor of audio review publication Positive Feedback Online describes the ANJOU performance as being "... way better than anything I have heard..." He goes on to say, "Simply put these are very danceable cables. Music playing through them results in the proverbial foot-tapping scene with the need or desire to get up and move. Great swing and pace--these cables smack that right on the nose big time."

I've really got to ditch this programming crap and get into selling voodoo audio gear. I mean, I can write this kind of nonsense:

"Opus MM Speaker Cable consists of many heavy strands of individually insulated oxygen-free copper. We specifically chose the strand size for its low noise, low resonance properties in audio signal applications. OPUS MM is so quiet and resolving that final adjustments to the network require tolerances to 1/100 of an ohm and 1 picofarad. The extremely quiet listening environment provided by the new Transparent Music and Film Studio was instrumental to the development of OPUS MM. To keep resonance from obscuring the nuances of the music signal as it travels through the cable and network, a large mass of epoxy damping material encapsulates the Opus MM network, which is then encased with carbon fiber. The network pod sits upon a thick acrylic plinth supported by four adjustable feet, to insure stable 4-point contact and decouple the network from room borne resonance. OPUS MM unleashes thrilling levels of performance in low level information retrieval and dynamics and creates a wide-open conduit through which your favorite music can flow."

I got yr fuckin Acryilc Plinth, right here...

I wouldn't ask $30K for my stuff, though - so as not to become an internet laughing stock. I'd keep it relatively cheap, like Monster cables, which are apparently not much better than coat hangers, but are still a bit of a prestige item.

Frognarok

Jazz giant Teo Macero died last week, as my brother notes. Macero was born in our little home town (or the town that's the standard first response when answering the question "so, where are you from?" - it's a good first approximation). But, as far as I know, the only mention of this anywhere in the city is a small sign in the lawn in front of the library. Not really a jazz town, I guess.

Other noteworthy people from Glens Falls (or thereabouts): major league pitchers Dave LaPoint and Dave Palmer; pro wrestler Hacksaw Jim Duggan; Edward C. Prescott, 2004 Nobel Prize in Economics; EVOO enthusiast Rachael Ray; Gerald Solomon, 20-year member of the House of Representatives; Chief Justice of the US Supreme Court, Charles Evans Hughes.

Also, The Who opened one of their many comeback tours there, one year.

What have I cast on the world? a creature powerful in form, of supernatural and gigantic strength, but with the mind of an infant. Oh, that I could recall my impious labour, or suddenly extinguish the spark which I have so presumptuously bestowed.

Sullivan, again, on the "terror war":

“Have we misread the world - and over-estimated the threat - even more profoundly than we realize? That is the question.”

Of course you have. And many of us on the left have been trying to tell you that for six and a half years. But, and maybe you remember this, we were derided as a “fifth column”, traitors, America-hating terrorist-huggers, and worse, by people who insisted this was (and still is) the mightiest clash of civilizations the world has ever seen. You guys over-estimated the threat, hyped it, worked yourselves into an embarrassing frenzy and then based a disastrous foreign policy around what you imagined.

It's nice that Sullivan himself has started to see the light on this, but there are still millions of people out there who revel in the myth of a Great War to save our civilization from the Muslim hordes; a myth he played a large role in creating. Sadly, it's probably easier to create such a myth than to destroy it.

UK Earthquake Damage

Googirl, Goo girl

(via Fark)