People Are Stupid...

I work for an ISP. I work in the field in a fairly large market with a couple of branches that shoot off to cover more remote areas. One of these areas is pretty far out. The microwave link from the main market to this town alone is 17 miles long and there are no main roads going directly from one to the other. Getting there is an hour long pain in the ass of driving through alternating chunks of Amish country and butt raping hillbilly backwoods. I don't enjoy having to go there.

I went there on Thursday, though. There was a customer who was complaining of slow speeds. No signal? That's my department. Throughout my career, however, slow speed has almost always meant that the problem is on the customer's end. Our phone techs are absolutely useless though so they, as our phone techs nearly always do, blundered past about 300 obvious signs and issued a request for me to check it out.

I get there and do my initial assessment.

1. Good signal.
2. Wireless router with 1 desktop, 1 laptop, and one xbox 360.
3. Computer work area completely covered with food crumbs as if an animal had been living there.
4. Customer who couldn't have been more of a doofus if he'd had buckteeth and laughed like Goofy.
5. Internet speeds are extremely slow.

I ask him to turn off the wireless laptop. I reset the router. Improvement already (duh) noticeable. I begin a series of ping tests. Extremely high latency. Customer is in my ear bitching that Halo 3 is unplayably laggy and blah blah blah. Is your computer on when you are having lag problems with Halo 3? Yes. Hmmm... I wonder. Go to system tray, right click on Limeware icon and choose exit. Ping latency clears up immediately. I told the customer I turned off Limewire and it fixed the problem and he informed me that he didn't have limewire on. I turned it on. Showed him as the problem came back. Clicked the red x to exit and showed him that it was still running in the sysytem tray. Closed it from the system tray and showed him that the problem had gone.

He had songs and some (and of course I looked at his queue! are you kidding?) seriously kinky ameteur porn downloading about which he made a really pathetic excuse. Apprently he "accidentally clicks on porn sometimes when he's choosing songs to download." I don't know what kinds of songs come up with the search terms that bring up this particularly consistent strain of porn. If I ever hear a song called "Teen Rape" from a band called "Russian Amateurs" I'll entertain the possibility of believing this dudes story.

Anyhow, he proceeds to tell me, as I'm recommending anti-spyware software, that his computer is spyware free because Norton scans come up clean. His norton is in a state of warning which, when checked, says that it has long since expired. His virus definitions date back to 2005. He also states that he's using Limewire pro so his music downloads are all legal. That's when I chose to stop keeping my mouth shut. I explained that paying Limewire just means that you are getting the spyware free version of Limewire's software. The downloads are still illegal. He countred by stating that because he's not selling the stuff he downloads it is legal. I explained that it's illegal either way but that your more likely to get caught sharing than you are downloading. He counters that he doesn't share. He downloads the songs directly to My Documents and bypasses Limewire's "Shared" folder. Aww... stupid man. Unless you know what you are doing this does not prevent you from sharing. He didn't know what he was doing. I showed him, with delight in my heart, that for years he had been sharing his entire My Documents folder with everyone on Limewire. This included family photos, personal documents (his Resume and the like) and home movies. He told me I was wrong but as I clicked through the options in Limewire I got to watch it dawn on him that I wasn't. I explained to him about file sharing and legalities. He didn't understand how they could tell where it was coming from since his computer had a private ipaddress from the router. The router has an ip address from the ISP. It's like a funnel. This shit isn't conceptually difficult unless your in serious denial about the fact that your bedroom pics of your girlfriend have been shared with p2p users the world wide. HAHAHAHAHA. Yeah, my meeting with this guy went on forever. He wanted me to watch him play Halo 3 so he could show me how it lags and prove that turning off Limewire didn't fix anything. Of course, Halo 3 performed perfectly because turning off Limewire had, in fact, fixed the problem. He wanted to show me his videos of him playing Halo 3 and explain how he was putting them on youtube. He even explained how he had made a (godawful) intro graphic to match his Xbox Live screen name. When he finally conceded that everything I had told him was correct and that the problem had nothing to do with me or the ISP I turned to leave. His girlfriend came home at that moment. She was pretty and well dressed. She spoke to me for a few minutes. She seemed pretty smart too. She certainly seemed to not only understand my explanation but also seemed to have known in advance that the problem was no with the ISP and that her boyfriend was just a big windy doofus.

So there it is. If anyone is interested contact me and I'll tell you where she is and shit. Someone needs to rescue her. She could do better... easily. Most women could, my wife included. This, however, was an extreme case. So... eligible bachelors in OH please email me and I'll find a way to get you in contact with her.