A food bank campaign is currently being run by my employer ("food donations slow down during this time of year, but the need does not!"). I refused to participate, dead-on. This cheesy paragraph is the reason why:

"There is a stereotype that people who get that sort of help aren't out there looking for jobs -- they're actually working but can't make it on their wages."

Makes you think, doesn't it? This is what my thoughts were.

Food drive is not such a bright idea after all. If those people are actually working but not earning enough to buy food, it is doubly wrong to help them out through the food bank. Those people do not live their lives efficiently; it's as simple as that. Imagine a person who spends most of his life at work, but his pay is so miserable that he is unable to buy food. Why is he working there then? The reasons may be numerous, of course. He may not have sufficient skills. He may live in an area where jobs are scarce. He may not want to look for a different job because he is afraid of change. Whatever the reason, giving this man food is not going to help him in the long run. He will be better served not with food, but with training opportunities, with relocation assistance, or simply with an attitude check. THAT is help. All that free food does is making a person a bit more comfortable in his miserable position, which probably inhibits him from seeking truly helpful opportunities. No wonder that "the need does not slow" down, ever! Food banks are like drug dealers--once you are hooked, it's hard to let it go. It's even more horrible that those people actually have kids for whom, of course, they also cannot provide for. It is the greatest mystery of life to me--why would you want to bring a child in your miserable home which doesn't even have food? Just because your brains are polluted with religious crap (as it is usually the way it is with people living below poverty level) is not a good enough reason to raise your children as future dependents of social assistance. Disgusting!

Food banks should be used as a power medicine is used by the doctors: when a situation is disastrous, and only for a very short time period. Victims of floods, fires, hurricanes, or other force majeour conditions--these are the people who should be targeted for help, not people who are unable to find a job that would pay their grocery bill. Even with natural disasters the help should be limited to the first few weeks, and, of course, it should be used only as a temporary, auxiliary measure.

So, sorry, the food bank folks, no help from me this year, no help from me ever. There are many other ways to really help people.

And, oh, by the way, I know what poverty feels like--I lived through it when I was a kid myself.

Date:	2005-04-14 09:00
Subject:	Life
Security:	Public
Mood:	confused
Music:	Blümchen - Heut Ist Mein Tag

What I really do not understand in this life, and I never will, is how people can have a "Pro-Life" sticker on one side of their car bumper, and a "Support our war troops" on the other. Don't they kind of cancel each other out? Is that a Republican thing my humble mind can never hope to understand? Or does "Pro-Life" really stands for "Only-Pro-American-Life"? Doesn't that bible thingy, which pro-life supporters are so fond of quoting, condemn all wars? Or am I asking blasphemous questions and should be shot as an "enemy of the people" right here and now? And if I indeed should be shot, how's that justified from a spiritual point of view?

Date:	2005-04-08 12:48
Subject:	Paris
Security:	Public
Mood:	okay
Music:	Culture Beat - Mr. Vain

I'll be going on vacation to Paris in May. If anyone has any tips (apart from what hotel to stay at, that is, because it's already booked), they would be very welcome. I am particularly interested in major tourist attractions (yes, it's going to be my first visit to Paris, that's why)--there's lotsa buzz 'bout those, and I'd really want to know which ones can be safely skipped. Or whatever else you might have to say.

Firefox is in the news. If you read any computer-related news, you surely at least saw it mentioned in the headlines. Firefox is great, Firefox will blow Internet Explorer away, Firefox is the best thing that happened since airline barf bags were invented.

Well, you can resist marketing (yes, it's open-source, but it's still marketing--community marketing if you wish) only for so long. So yesterday I decided to waste 15 minutes of my time and actually see what kind of animal Firefox is. Just as an FYI--I've been using Opera for the past, oh, 2-3 years, and couldn't be happier with it. Except when it didn't open some of the sites optimized for IE (not too many of those, but it's very annoying when it happens).

So, Firefox. I can only imagine how miserable all those IE users are to like Firefox that much. Here are the things I did not like. At all. Here:
* Tabbed interface sure works. But: it looks ugly, it's not set by default, and the tabs can't be moved to the bottom.
* Firefox is slooooww! Even cached pages open 2-3 times slower than in Opera! New, uncached pages take forever to load. Subjectively, I got an impression that even IE is faster than Firefox. Hmmm...
* Settings can only be imported from IE, not Opera. I don't have any settings in IE! I don't use the damn thing!
* I'm sure there was more, but I probably got too skeptical by then.

Did I like anything? In-page search, I did! Man, that thing is worth killing for. Truly original and convenient. However, this is definitely not enough to lure me away from Opera. Firefox is made for suckers who want to break away from IE, and it succeeds beautifully at it. I can now safely ignore marketing buzz once again, knowing that a quality product will not escape my attention no matter if it's covered by press or not.

Oh, it is so annoying! Halloween is already over, but people still have those pumpkins, ghosts, skeletons, and George W. Bush stickers and yard signs up! Isn't it about time to remove them?

Date:	2004-04-29 09:35
Subject:	Stock market spam
Security:	Public
Mood:	curious

Of course, everyone knows, that spam messages in regards to "wonderful opportunities", "strong buy warnings", and "stock on the rise alerts" that became all too common recently in our email boxes and fax machine trays, are actually nothing more than advertisements purchased on behalf of those same companies being advertised (everyone knew that, right? Right? RIGHT???).

It is all the more interesting to actually track the real-life performance of these stocks. So, in just a moment your curiosity is going to be quenched with a little nifty table that I personally compiled, which contains the listings and performance of all those "aggressive investor" stocks (which are usually nothing more than pink sheets or overboard junk) that are supposed to make you insanely rich in just days.

Symbol	# of shares bought	Purchase date	Purchase price (1 share)	Current price (1 share)	Gain/loss per share	Gain/loss per batch
EFSF (OB)	100	12/11/3	$.45	$.695	$.245	$24.50
GXY	100	12/13/3	$2.66	$2.00	($.66)	($66.00)
QENC (PK)	100	1/13/4	$.29	$.085	($.205)	($20.50)
PDPR (PK)	100	1/28/4	$.17	$.105	($.065)	($6.50)
ITDJ (PK)	100	3/15/4	$.0051	$.0039	($.0012)	($.12)
WYSK (PK)	100	3/31/4	$1.01	$.70	($.31)	($31.00)
CYPM (OB)	100	4/6/4	$.108	$.052	($.056)	($5.60)
AMTK (PK)	100	4/13/4	$.39	$.30	($.09)	($9.00)
QIIIF (OB)	100	4/27/4	$.40	$.37	($.03)	($3.00)
QANT (PK)	100	4/28/4	$.015	$.016	$.001	$0.10
TOTAL					($1.1712)	($117.12)

Now, as you very well can see, this is not a very solid investment. Of course, I suspected that, but the results turned out to be soooo much worse than I thought. I wonder if this form of advertisement pays at all...

Now, I don't watch the Home Shopping Network, QVC, or whatever else they might have. I do, however, catch a glimpse of what they sell when switching channels. Sometimes the stuff they sell is so ridiculous I just have to stop and see if this is for real.

Well, yesterday was one of those times. I don't remember which shopping channel it was, but they were selling collectibles. Namely, the reminder angels (they have a string tied on a finger as a reminder). Now, if the idea of a collectible reminder angel itself does not seem ridiculous to you, you must be either a collector yourself, or in serious need of therapy.

Anyway, as unfortunate as it is, the designer's fantasy did not stop here. Not only are the figurines the reminder angels, but they also have a look of frail elderly from a third-grade nursing homes. Or, and did I mention that this was also their patriotic line? Namely, "Show Your True Colors" figurines holding an American flag.

For those of you who are a little bit slow on the uptake, I will repeat again:
- reminder angels
- shaped as frail elderly people
- with patriotic motives.

Wherever the designer guy buys his grass, it must be top quality...

See it here

Date:	2004-04-21 08:25
Subject:
Security:	Public
Mood:	bitchy
Music:	Office sounds

It is simply amazing and scary how little tiny things can piss the hell out of you when you are in a less-than-perfect mood, and how you wouldn't give a fuck when your mood is good. Well, for some reason my mood is not so good, so here's the list of the little annoyances. You can print it out, frame it, and put on a nearby wall, or you can just put a little mental note to yourself regarding how phonephobic is a little crazy these days. The list is in no particular order.

1. Joggers (do these fuckers have a life, or do they just make a point of running at me on straight and narrow sidewalks all the time? C'mon, aren't you lard asses supposed to be heading to work at 7 in the morning?)
2. As if plain joggers weren't bad enough, there are also assholes with the dogs. And the dogs DO NOT LIKE ME, PERIOD! And that shit they leave after themselves is actually supposed to be picked up!
3. Buses. No, I have nothing against public transportation (which I myself use, by the way). It just pisses me off that they have schedules with times like 7:36, 10:52, and so on, and then they can be up to 10 minutes late (never early). What is the fucking point of schedules this accurate if they can just list "7:40 or later" and "around eleven"? Wouldn't make any difference anyway.
4. Speaking of bus riders - why the hell some of you are so damn loud? I could care less about how your boss sucks, how bad the service was in the store you visited and such. Chinese riders are the worst, however. When you have 2 Chinese women in a bus, it's like riding in a freaking chinaland - these people are simply incapable of speaking quietly.

Anyway, you may be thinking why you should care about this stuff. As a matter of fact, you shouldn't. This is exactly the kind of small things that really get under your skin when you don't feel quite stellar. I just had to vent it somewhere.

Hmmm, I wonder if I have neglected my own journal long enough. For those who've been bugging me about it ... well, I guess you have a point. No promises to return to regular updating, however ... but one(s) can always hope :)

Having been bored to death last week, I analyzed all my spam to compile the list of spam criteria. Of course, this is personally my list, and you may be receiving other forms of spam. Besides, the 25 criteria below only cover about 75% of my spam. Still, this is pretty good to know if you have not tweaked your filters. Some stuff is kind of surprising and is not entirely obvious. Anyway, here we go:

Top 25 Spam Criteria That Work:
25. Subject contains "life insurance".
24. Subject contains "mortgage rate".
23. Subject contains "get out of debt".
22. Subject contains "free help" (I suppose just "free" would work even better).
21. Date in the header is missing.
20. Subject contains "xxx" (you would think they know better than this).
19. Message body contains "[tr][td]" (replace "[" and "]" with "<" and ">". For some reason I have never ever received a legitimate email with a table in it. Usually a font tag follows this combination anyway).
18. Message body contains "{wphone}" (whatever that is supposed to mean).
17. Message body contains "click here to be removed" (works unbelievingly well).
16. Subject is all uppercase.
15. "Content-Type" contains "multipart/alternative" (be careful – some legitimate maillists have this attribute as well).
14. Message body contains "geocities.com" (obviously, be careful with this one – I just don't have any acquaintances that use geocities, but you may).
13. Message body contains "usinet".
12. Message body contains "********" (at least eight asterisks).
11. Message body contains "remove.htm".
10. "To:" is missing (again, be careful with this one as some legitimate maillists can also have this attribute).
9. Message body contains "r e m o v e".
8. Message body contains "tranzmail.net" (this one probably wouldn't pertain to everybody, but still...).
7. "To:" does not contain "@" (figures).
6. Subject contains " " (at least for spaces in a row).
5. Message body contains "&#" (I can hardly imagine anyone besides spammers encoding letters this way).
4. Username starts with a number.
3. Username is blank.
2. Subject contains "Spam:" (funny, huh?)
1. Sender username mostly contains numbers.

Date:	2003-09-09 09:00
Subject:	Lookee what I found on the DVD shelf in Urbandale library!
Security:	Public
Mood:	okay
Music:	Deus Ex soundtrack - UNATCO

Date:	2003-09-02 09:47
Subject:	For the "ridiculous" collection
Security:	Public
Mood:	cynical
Music:	Pulsations web radio station (France)

The Murphy USA gas station (which belongs to Wal-Mart) in Windsor Heights has recently been fined for selling cigarettes to minors. They were also prohibited from selling cigarettes at all till November (or so the posted sign says). As a result, gas prices (which used to be the lowest prices around, at least as far as I would drive for gas) are now just about the same as everywhere else.

Even though I hate smokers even more than Mr. Bushy-poo, I still can't believe that dumb-asses who fined the gas station did not see that that's what was going to happen.

----
Spam Gauge = still too high

Date:	2003-08-21 13:58
Subject:	To All of You
Security:	Public
Mood:	crazy
Music:	Shaggy - Sexy Lady

All right, all right, all right! I know, dammit! It was indeed 2 months ago when I updated lj. And yes, I remember that I promised not to do such a thing ... ever! It probably makes me a damn liar, but hey, c'est la vie!

On a calmer note - even though it's been a month since we are back from Jamaica, the letter I promised to so many is still in process. The first 2 weeks I was buried in work (which, unlike a year ago, was just piling there waiting for me to come back). And for the past 2 weeks I was writing the damn letter, which now looks more like a CIA report on the island of Jamaica.

As an additional excuse - I also resumed my studies, and am taking an "Introduction to Databases" course, which should be fairly easy since I know this stuff anyway.

Well, stop bugging me now - I have a letter to write!

---
Spam Gauge = 207

Date:	2003-06-23 09:12
Subject:	Moving in
Security:	Public
Mood:	excited
Music:	Astral Projection - Aurora Borealis

It is amazing how fast one can adapt to the new environment. The day before moving in our "home" was located at the rented apartment, and the day after "home" undoubtedly moved to the new place. And it sure feels like home now, with everything moved in.

The joy of new residence is immense. The apartment we rented was by no means a crappy place to live, but when we occasionally come back to pick up some little stuff that's left there, it feels like a dump (especially with all that dust that accumulated behind the furniture in two and a half years we lived there). Next weekend is gonna be filled with cleaning chores fun - yewww.

Anyway, the hardest part of the mission is accomplished - the furniture was distributed (essentials - to the new home, the rest went into garbage). Of course, now there are dozens of boxes sitting in all kinds of places around the new home (and, mind you, the one you need is ALWAYS buried with at least three on top of it), but at least food, kitchen utensils, bedding, and, oh yeah, the computer are now in places where they are usable. Also bought new night stands - the old ones were donated to us by friends when we moved to WDM, and, honestly, even while they do not look too awful, they are made of oak, which means they SUCK SUCK SUCK. Put them into "storage bedroom" - maybe will use them to light the fireplace if its gas supply ever malfunctions :) Oh my, do I hate wooden furniture. The dinner table is next to go - it's a typical wooden round dinner table for four with awful wooden chairs around it - yuck! It didn't look too bad in the previous apartment because they had wooden doors kind of traditional styling overall, but in the contemporary environment it looks like a sick dinasaur in serious need to be shot. It was a gift as well, as you might imagine.

The computer was all set up yesterday; surprisingly, everything is working, even the new DSL line (although it is now 640/128 vs. 640/256 that MSN had). Old email is still functioning, and so is the new one. Qwest phone will be disconnected very soon, and the old email will go, too (which, among other things, will mean that spammers will have about 150 messages per week bounced back to them ... or to whoever's address they faked).

Anyway, it is all rather exciting. The view from the windows is wonderful, but the birds are singing a bit too loud at times :) All in all, I can live in that place.

We will most probably take vacation in July and go to either Jamaica or Aruba. Since you always need to adjust once you are back from vacation, it would be great to merge that need with the need of after-moving-in adjustment. Will sure deplete whatever cash left in the account, but hell, fall is the season to start saving, not summer, right? (well, I actually just made this statement up to justify the vacation, which shows that the need for having vacation is desperate).

Cash, however, is a funny thing. It looks like it flows in just when you need it the most (I understand this might not be a case for everyone out there, but I like to think that cash is compassionate to people's needs). I went to the bank a week or so ago to withdraw some money to send it by Western Union. I withdrew 400 bucks, sent $375 by Western Union, paid $23 for the Western Union service, and ended up with $102 in my pocket. Normally, of course, I would return the money to whoever made a mistake, but in this case there was no way to find out who screwed up - the bank people or the Western Union people.

The other day we bought a trash can at Bed Bath & Beyond, which didn't turn out to look as nice as we hoped it would (in fact, it was too damn huge for the kitchen where it was supposed to be used). So we returned it, and the gal did not cancel the original coupon, so we ended up with $20 in cash again.

If that's not enough proof for you - take this. Who would have though that taking surveys on the Internet could result in any more than a couple of bucks of rewards in form of a K-Mart gift card? Well, one of the program sent in a check for $95 the other day. And this was not in error, mind you :)

Plus, there is a possibility that I get a salary increase in July. Would come in handy when we return from vacation :)

Anyway, that should be enough news for now. I have work to do and boxes to unpack. Next time I'll try to come up with some not-so-positive news :)

----
Spam Gauge = 315 (new high)
(ALL of it on the MSN account)

Date:	2003-06-11 14:29
Subject:	Upgrade
Security:	Public
Mood:	tired
Music:	Where's that "digital out" checkbox,you know?Can't hear shit

Well, of course the upgrade was not as smooth as I wanted it to be. First, even though I didn't really hope that winxp would load after I replace the motherboad and the processor [you did, you did! -- inner voice], I did not anticipate the scale of the problem.

Anyway, the very first problem turned out to be the lack of the additional 12V 4-pin plug on my power supply (because P4s weren't around when I bought my case). So much for hoping that current power supply would last years and years. I quick trip to CompUSA showed that they have never heard of any adapters to connect a regular power plug to 4-pin connector. And, of course, there was no way to look it up on the Internet since the old motherboard was already removed, and the desire to put it back never struck me [besides, you are too damn impatient to wait for another day and look the adapter on the Internet at work and then wait another 3-5 days to have it delivered -- inner voice]. Even if such an adapter exists, the new noname power supply had already been bought and CompUSA is now 40 bucks reacher.

The very next problem, like I said before, was the fact that winxp would not load with new motherboard and CPU. It just entered the infinite reboot loop, but I managed to notice that bsod was, in fact, displayed for a fraction of a second somewhere in between the loops. And no, I was not planning to reinstall winxp any time soon [yes you were, only after buying an additional SATA hard drive, which, of course, would not be soon -- inner voice].

For those who forgot - winxp is cardinally different from previous versions of Windows, which are now considered obsolete (like Win95, 98, and even Me). You cannot just reinstall it over the old copy - it installs anew deleting all your settings (thanks nature, the actual programs in Program Files folder remain where they were). Which amounts to another day of immense fun of reinstalling EVERYTHING (as opposed to the need to reinstall some of the drivers). And believe me, I have a lot of junk on my harddrive I cannot live without. As of today, the most essential programs (all drivers, Internet access, firewall, sound, and some minor goodies) have been reinstalled, and it might take another week to restore all the bells and whistles.

On the up side, the new motherboard-CPU combination rules. I have not run 3DMark & PCMark yet to see what the actual performance gain is, but it sure feels faster (even considering that almost no resident programs are back yet). I overclocked the 2.4 CPU by 10%, and so far its temperature is in its mid-40s Celsius, which is much better than 70+ of the previous (not even overclocked) PIII [ha - if you just reglued the fan properly, you would most likely have your 40s too, lazy ass -- inner voice]. So, overall I am one pretty happy [whatever, cut it out, people are bored enough already *BANG! BANG!* -- inner voice]

[Damn, he's still moving *BANG*..............]

----
Spam Gauge = 264

Date:	2003-06-06 08:24
Subject:	PC Upgrade
Security:	Public
Mood:	good
Music:	Snap - I've Got the Power

A couple of days ago I gave a very good look at my home PC, and suddenly realized that the only upgrade I did in the past (almost) two years was replacing the old ball-based mouse with a nice optical Microsoft one. Hmmm, that called for action ... immediately!

So, after balancing the family budget (which basically involved counting whatever money was to be left after the condo downpayment), the decision was made to make a minor partial upgrade - I will replace the processor (the PIII-933 I currently have kind of sucks by now), and, since the motherboard only supports PIII, I will also replace the motherboard, which amounts to several hours of immense weekend upgrade fun).

It is kind of sad to part with my current ASUS CUSL-C motherboard, because the only thing that is wrong with it is that you can't stick a P4 in it. Anyway, both the board and the PIII processor will be shipped to my in-laws, who wanted to get own computer for, well, 4 years now. Should give them a good start, especially if they replace the fan and overclock the processor to 1GHz (which I never did due to being too damn lazy).

Not doing upgrades for almost 2 years was definitely not a smart thing to do. First of all, I didn't even know what chipsets are in the market now. Second, I had no idea about what processors are out, and what they cost. Third of all, I really need to follow the industry news as there were millions of tiny little things I never heard of. On the other side, since I never buy any motherboards not made by ASUS, it was somewhat easier to choose what to get.

I ordered both the processor (which is a P4 2.4 GHz with 800 MHz FSB - very overclockable by the way) and the motherboard 2 days ago, and they will arrive some time today. Whoo-hoo! Can't wait to open that case and screw around as in good ol' times :))

The motherboard is a beauty! Here we go, introducing P4P800 Deluxe (865PE chipset):

Date:	2003-06-04 08:37
Subject:	Condo
Security:	Public
Mood:	good
Music:	Master Blaster - Mix

We had the first walk-through yesterday - the unit is mostly finished now! Of course, there were twenty three million little tiny defects, but I was surprised that the most major item was just lack of caulking in some places (and yes, we invited our know-it-all friend who, as a matter of fact, found 95% of all those defects for us). Other stuff included too thin painting jobs in some places, minor scratches and unremoved pencil markings on the wall, a little dent on the side of the refrigerator (guess they are going to install it in some other unit now, and keep moving it around until someone doesn't notice the dent -- oh well, not my problem :), some unfinished nailing jobs on the deck, and (hehe) someone forgot to paint the top of the fireplace mantel (and I bet is going to have his ass kicked for that). Other than that, it all looked pretty damn good. Besides, they are going to fix all this during the following week, then we have a final walk-through and mark whatever they might have missed (hopefully there won't be a lot). Then they do another check in 30 days just to make sure we are happy, and another check in 11 months. Oh, and there is a 4-year warranty on top of all that :) (usually it is just basic 1-year warranty, but our builder will shell out $350 per unit per month to got us all covered for extra 3 years - wouldn't even dream the guy would be THAT obsessed with customer service).

The appliances that were installed were just wonderful. They even included a $150 ice maker with the fridge and installed the best dishwasher Maytag had to offer (and even gave us some dishwasher detergent for starters - geez). And if we are to full the fridge with food, we'll grow fat in a week - the thing is that huge. Then there is a nice smoothtop stove (again, they included two kinds of stove top cleaner - geez) and a fine microwave. Washer and dryer are one stacked unit which looks kind of ugly (at least when you compare it with the rest of appliances), but it is supposedly efficient and is hidden in a closet anyway.

And I just loved the programmable thermostat. You can give it a different program for day and night time, plus you can do different programming for different days of the week and seasons. Wow! The furnace has 90% efficiency rating (they put it in to compensate us for lower ceilings).

We also got pretty lucky with the garage. The garage strip goes around the buildings, so some people have garages not quite near their building entrances. Ours, on the other hand, is right across the entrance door! It is roomy, too - one guy managed to fit a semi in (without a trailer, of course :), although I bet it was not an easy thing to do, plus he is storing his kayak on top rims.

The view is really nice, too. You can see the garages below (which, of course, is not too exciting of a view), but there is a hill behind them (since we are in the second floor, the hill takes up most of the view). The hill is completely undeveloped - I believe there used to be a field there when all this was farmland. Anyway, there is a family of deer living around the field, and we actually saw one when doing the walk-through. It's like Animal Planet channel when you look in the window :)) The realtor also mentioned that there are some coyotes living in that field, so there might be some eerie shriek fun at 2 am in the mornings :)

The third floor of our building is all done now, and 5 out of 6 families already moved in. A family of "two very very nice and sweet" people (as the realtor put it) is living right above us (the guy is a cook), and below we will have a lady physician. Well, we'll see if they are gonna make good neighbors or not.

Anyway, as you see the experience was very positive (which, honestly, I did not expect as this was mostly supposed to be a defects scavenger hunt). The closing is still on the 13th, and we will be moving stuff from our current apartment to the condo until the end of June. Then I will probably get all sarcastic and negative again :)

----
Spam Gauge = 284

1. Secured mortgage yesterday. Went with 15-yr conventional (did you know that if you go with 15-year, you will have 23% equity in your house in 5 years vs. 7% if you choose a 30-year loan?). Closing date is June 13, and we will probably go some place Caribbean after we move in. Hell with remodeling - vacation is more important!

2. Finally got my final exam graded ... at 100%, which amounts to a straight A for the whole course. The rest of the education will be put off until after the vacation (cash flow doesn't balance that nice even after that, unfortunately).

----
Spam Gauge = 175

Geez, it's been almost two weeks since I took my final exam, and they haven't graded it yet! Must be so hard to grade 50 multiple choice answers!

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Spam Gauge = 182

Well, guess what, folks. This morning, after 1 week of inactivity, my MSN email account started working again. MSN folks are the men of their word. Yeah, right.

What I somewhat regret is that in a month it will all be over, and I will not find out whether they will "upgrade" my pop3 to web-based again without asking me first. I am just that curious.

The whole scenario of working with MSN tech support reminds me of an RPG (role-playing games - in case you were sailing far away and don't know what this stands for) in some wicked way. You call, you score experience points, you wait, and then you make a level. You kill a big boss in the end and you are done. Net result is a week of your time wasted.

The stuff below is going to be boring, but hey, I don't make anybody read this, so you might just as well stop right here without missing anything.

---

A week ago, my email stopped working showing the same symptoms as last time. The symptoms included non-functional pop3 email, suddenly functional web-based access, and a generally sick end user at the computer terminal (hmm, that would be me).

Level 1.

Web tech support. There were 2 units at this level. The first one was confused to death by referring it to numerous ticket numbers issued in March, so it could not perform any old tricks on me (like making me install sucky MSN8, removing and re-adding the email accounts, and otherwise having an easy ride). The first unit called a 24-hour time out and gave pointers to another try.

24 hours later. Web tech support again. This unit was almost identical to the first unit, hence, same tactics was used. The unit was fairly easily defeated, and looting the corpse revealed a note with the telephone number for Level 2 tech support. However, a new 24-hour time out was activated.

24 hours later. The second unit was pretty smart and managed to fool me. The phone number turned out to be Level 1 support, and not Level 2 as promised. The third support drone was scared by numerous ticket numbers and retreated undefeated, "accidentally" transferring me to billing department. You may imagine her surprise when I attacked her with non-billing related issues. So, she retreated as well leaving a note with a different number for tech support...

...which again turned out to be Level 1 support. This one was tricky in that way that it did not recognize web tech support ticket numbers as valid, so I had to explain all stuff all over again. The unit, however, escalated the issue to level 2 and activated a 48-hour time out (you know, you need more and more time to make a new level in any RPG, and this one is no exception).

48-hours later.

Level 2. Calling a level 1 tech support resulted in a drone screaming and hiding behind the back of the level 2 monster. This one is a much more serious enemy. It used all the standard level 1 weapons, plus it made me repeat all level 1 steps BOTH in Outlook XP and Outlook Express, plus it made me reset TCP/IP and reboot the computer (twice). This was a very devastating battle that lasted for three and a half hours (6 pm to 9:30 pm - so much for going to bed early).

The subject finally was defeated. Level 3 defense was to be activated ... in 72 hours.

72 hours never passed. The email started working this morning. Just like last time - I did nothing, and it just started working. MSN had it its way, as usual.

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Spam Gauge = 198
(why so low? because I had to delete spam from the box using hotmail, and most of it didn't make it to SpamKiller count)