Tannin
Storage? I am Storage!
Dear Dr. Jeckel,
A few weeks ago my #1 ISP closed up. I have another account with the people who host my web page and which which offers better service than Dingo Blue, but is expensive - $1 per hour flat rate - so I use Netconnect sparingly. It was time to look around for a new service provider.
Here in Oz, that's not easy, particularly as I'm in a regional centre, not one of the big capital cities. I wanted a reasonable monthly rate, unlimited download - I won't even consider this 300MB max cap crap - and as reasonable a level of performance as one can expect on dial-up. Eventually I settled on Primus, one of the major telcos, as the 4-hour cut-off aside, they are not too bad. Not nearly as good as Dingo Blue, but probably good enough to see me through until someone finally makes me a broadband offer that makes sense.
Now, the old Dingo Blue had two rates: $30 per month flat, or $25 per month so long as I had at least one phone set to use them for long-distance. So to take advantage of the $5 saving, I switched my home phone STD over to Dingo Blue. ('STD' = Australian term for 'long distance'. The term is used to describe certain other things overseas, I gather. :wink
Poor Dingo Blue: Outside of modem calls, I make maybe two local calls a month from that phone, and long distance maybe once a year. I don't think they made much money out of my long distance business. I was with them for maybe a year and a half, and one month I think they actually got to bill me. Grand total of $1.10 as I recall.
Anyway, when Dingo Blue closed up, I didn't worry about it. So I wouldn't be able to make STD calls unless I got an alternative provider? So what. Not worth bothering to make a call to organise it - I have a mobile, a web connection and three lines at the office where all my calls are tax deductable anyway. But then Primus called: seeing as I was using them for Internet access, how about my phone lines? Even then I wasn't going to bother, but they offered a discounted local call rate - 16c instead of 20c a call, I think it was. Hmmmm.. 4c a call, maybe 4 or 5 calls a day on average, that's ... er ... about $1 a week. Might as well, I thought, and then I would get long distance access again too, just in case I ever wanted it. So I did that. It would take a couple of weeks, they said, before the services switched over. Fine.
Well, the couple of weeks passed, and then at about 8:30 one night earlier this week, I was cruising around the web and the line dropped out. I thought nothing of it. Didn't bother dialling just yet as I had a few other things to do. Two hours later I went to log on again: nuffin. Couldn't dial out. I buggerised about for a while, even digging an actual telephone out and plugging that into the line instead of the modem. Dead as mutton.
So I grabbed the mobile, looked up the service difficulties and faults number in the phone book, rang it. After an interminable period of navigating my way through the automated answering system, I finally got to key in my number and got "Our records indicate that this service is provided by another phone company. Click!"
Pricks! They could at least tell you the proper number to call. So I got the phone book out again, looking for Primus. Now these guys are the third-biggest telco in Australia, I think, certainly a major provider. And would you believe it, they are not listed in the telephone book. No entry under "Primus" or "iPrimus" in the white pages, nothing under "telephone service providers" or "Internet services" or any other damn thing I could think of in the yellow pages either.
Eventually, I had to admit that these cheesy low-rent bastards, a supposedly major national carrier, couldn't even get it together to spring for a $30 listing in the Ballarat phone book - hey, this is the book that serves an area of about 200,000 people, it's not like it's the back of Bourke. So I called directory assistance, got another stupid automated voice recognition system, though this one was intelligent enough to spit out the correct number eventually.
Dialled Primus faults line: another stupid press the number routine. A minute or two of number-pressing finally got me through to the faults department and, you guessed it, a recorded message: "Thankyou for calling Primus faults. Please disconnect all devices connected to your phone lines and try again with a working phone. If the fault persists, call us back. Click!"
Idiots! I already did that.
Dialled the second time. Press this number, press that number, buggerise about again. Action at last! "Thankyou for calling Primus faults. Please disconnect all devices connected to your phone lines and try again with a working phone. If the fault persists, call us back. Click!"
Called a third time. "Thankyou for calling Primus faults. Please disconnect all devices connected to your phone lines and try again with a working phone. If the fault persists, call us back. Click!"
Round and round and bloody round I went. Eventually, I went to bed early.
Woke up around 3:00AM, wasn't sleepy, felt like surfing. For a half hour or so I tried to read, thought about playing Age of Empires, finally admitted that I wanted to visit Storage Forum and jumped in the car and drove to the office, where I surfed happily for a couple of hours before coming home to bed.
In the morning I called Primus again, nearly fell of my chair when got an actual human being. After 15 minutes on hold (while she tried to get someone technical to test the line, and I wondered if my mobile battery was going to last) she told me that it was an actual physical line fault and that they would send a technician out to repair it within two working days. I should have said "what the hell do you mean two working days, I want it fixed now!" but I couldn't seem to find the energy. I should have pointed out that the likelihood of suddenly getting an actual physical line fault on a still, cold June evening when I hadn't had one with the other phone company for five years, right through rain and hail and driving storms and heatwaves was somewhere about the probability of a butterfly fart in hell, but I was feeling weak with withdrawal symptoms - hell, I can't remember the last time I had to face the purgatory of that interminable time between getting out of the shower and being dry, dressed, and ready for work without the web to keep me company. So I just said "thankyou" and hung up, then drove straight to work without even drinking a single cup of tea. (I usually breakfast on Storage Forum, two smokes, and three giant-size pint mugs of tea.) It was the first time I've beaten Kristi in for ages. She found me there with a cup of tea in one hand, trackball in the other, and Storage Forum up on the 21 inch Mitsubishi.
At five o'clock I was about to go home when I remembered the phone call that morning. Hadn't she said two working days? Yike! It might not be fixed yet! I better send out for pizza and stay here. So I did. Finally went home about 11:00ish. Sure enough, no phone. And then another ordeal to face in the morning. I was one and a half hours early for work today.
Tonight, the line is working at long last. I think I'll just bring forward my cable hook-up and tell them to stick their phone-line up somewhere sideways.
Anyway, my question, Dr.Jeckel, is this: if I go and murder someone at the phone company, will you give evidence to say that it was justfiable homocide?
A few weeks ago my #1 ISP closed up. I have another account with the people who host my web page and which which offers better service than Dingo Blue, but is expensive - $1 per hour flat rate - so I use Netconnect sparingly. It was time to look around for a new service provider.
Here in Oz, that's not easy, particularly as I'm in a regional centre, not one of the big capital cities. I wanted a reasonable monthly rate, unlimited download - I won't even consider this 300MB max cap crap - and as reasonable a level of performance as one can expect on dial-up. Eventually I settled on Primus, one of the major telcos, as the 4-hour cut-off aside, they are not too bad. Not nearly as good as Dingo Blue, but probably good enough to see me through until someone finally makes me a broadband offer that makes sense.
Now, the old Dingo Blue had two rates: $30 per month flat, or $25 per month so long as I had at least one phone set to use them for long-distance. So to take advantage of the $5 saving, I switched my home phone STD over to Dingo Blue. ('STD' = Australian term for 'long distance'. The term is used to describe certain other things overseas, I gather. :wink
Poor Dingo Blue: Outside of modem calls, I make maybe two local calls a month from that phone, and long distance maybe once a year. I don't think they made much money out of my long distance business. I was with them for maybe a year and a half, and one month I think they actually got to bill me. Grand total of $1.10 as I recall.
Anyway, when Dingo Blue closed up, I didn't worry about it. So I wouldn't be able to make STD calls unless I got an alternative provider? So what. Not worth bothering to make a call to organise it - I have a mobile, a web connection and three lines at the office where all my calls are tax deductable anyway. But then Primus called: seeing as I was using them for Internet access, how about my phone lines? Even then I wasn't going to bother, but they offered a discounted local call rate - 16c instead of 20c a call, I think it was. Hmmmm.. 4c a call, maybe 4 or 5 calls a day on average, that's ... er ... about $1 a week. Might as well, I thought, and then I would get long distance access again too, just in case I ever wanted it. So I did that. It would take a couple of weeks, they said, before the services switched over. Fine.
Well, the couple of weeks passed, and then at about 8:30 one night earlier this week, I was cruising around the web and the line dropped out. I thought nothing of it. Didn't bother dialling just yet as I had a few other things to do. Two hours later I went to log on again: nuffin. Couldn't dial out. I buggerised about for a while, even digging an actual telephone out and plugging that into the line instead of the modem. Dead as mutton.
So I grabbed the mobile, looked up the service difficulties and faults number in the phone book, rang it. After an interminable period of navigating my way through the automated answering system, I finally got to key in my number and got "Our records indicate that this service is provided by another phone company. Click!"
Pricks! They could at least tell you the proper number to call. So I got the phone book out again, looking for Primus. Now these guys are the third-biggest telco in Australia, I think, certainly a major provider. And would you believe it, they are not listed in the telephone book. No entry under "Primus" or "iPrimus" in the white pages, nothing under "telephone service providers" or "Internet services" or any other damn thing I could think of in the yellow pages either.
Eventually, I had to admit that these cheesy low-rent bastards, a supposedly major national carrier, couldn't even get it together to spring for a $30 listing in the Ballarat phone book - hey, this is the book that serves an area of about 200,000 people, it's not like it's the back of Bourke. So I called directory assistance, got another stupid automated voice recognition system, though this one was intelligent enough to spit out the correct number eventually.
Dialled Primus faults line: another stupid press the number routine. A minute or two of number-pressing finally got me through to the faults department and, you guessed it, a recorded message: "Thankyou for calling Primus faults. Please disconnect all devices connected to your phone lines and try again with a working phone. If the fault persists, call us back. Click!"
Idiots! I already did that.
Dialled the second time. Press this number, press that number, buggerise about again. Action at last! "Thankyou for calling Primus faults. Please disconnect all devices connected to your phone lines and try again with a working phone. If the fault persists, call us back. Click!"
Called a third time. "Thankyou for calling Primus faults. Please disconnect all devices connected to your phone lines and try again with a working phone. If the fault persists, call us back. Click!"
Round and round and bloody round I went. Eventually, I went to bed early.
Woke up around 3:00AM, wasn't sleepy, felt like surfing. For a half hour or so I tried to read, thought about playing Age of Empires, finally admitted that I wanted to visit Storage Forum and jumped in the car and drove to the office, where I surfed happily for a couple of hours before coming home to bed.
In the morning I called Primus again, nearly fell of my chair when got an actual human being. After 15 minutes on hold (while she tried to get someone technical to test the line, and I wondered if my mobile battery was going to last) she told me that it was an actual physical line fault and that they would send a technician out to repair it within two working days. I should have said "what the hell do you mean two working days, I want it fixed now!" but I couldn't seem to find the energy. I should have pointed out that the likelihood of suddenly getting an actual physical line fault on a still, cold June evening when I hadn't had one with the other phone company for five years, right through rain and hail and driving storms and heatwaves was somewhere about the probability of a butterfly fart in hell, but I was feeling weak with withdrawal symptoms - hell, I can't remember the last time I had to face the purgatory of that interminable time between getting out of the shower and being dry, dressed, and ready for work without the web to keep me company. So I just said "thankyou" and hung up, then drove straight to work without even drinking a single cup of tea. (I usually breakfast on Storage Forum, two smokes, and three giant-size pint mugs of tea.) It was the first time I've beaten Kristi in for ages. She found me there with a cup of tea in one hand, trackball in the other, and Storage Forum up on the 21 inch Mitsubishi.
At five o'clock I was about to go home when I remembered the phone call that morning. Hadn't she said two working days? Yike! It might not be fixed yet! I better send out for pizza and stay here. So I did. Finally went home about 11:00ish. Sure enough, no phone. And then another ordeal to face in the morning. I was one and a half hours early for work today.
Tonight, the line is working at long last. I think I'll just bring forward my cable hook-up and tell them to stick their phone-line up somewhere sideways.
Anyway, my question, Dr.Jeckel, is this: if I go and murder someone at the phone company, will you give evidence to say that it was justfiable homocide?
