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Jul

Welcome to Charter. How may I disgust you today?

Categories: Blog, Functionally ReTodded and Rant

As you may or may not know, I’ve more than my fair share of run-ins with Charter Communications and their line of residential (non)services. I’ve had near strokes dealing with their Madagascar-based tech support where some dot-head can’t vary from the script for one second to actually listen and hear me say "Hey FUCKO!!! I’m a network administrator and not a monkey feeder at some temple like you, and I’m telling you that IT’S NOT MY GOD DAMNED NETWORK CARD!!!" I’ve gone insane spending two hours on hold only to have some ass-hat hang up on me while "attempting to transfer me" to her supervisor. Of course, I’m sure that supervisor is some dot-head based in Madagascar.

The trouble is, it’s not a Charter problem really. It’s a telecom/customer service problem for many companies in this country. You can thank the shareholders and board members the next time some guy named "Sam" takes your call and you realize that only one of you even barely speaks English.

Offshoring: It’s FAN-tastic!

That said, the wife and I came to the realization yesterday that we were paying WAY too much for our phone and internet services at home. In light of that realization and that our Charter Business contract for internet service had expired, I decided to crawl into the cesspool known to laypeople as "Bundled Services."

I know you’ve all heard of bundled services. You are beaten over the head constantly on TV, radio, magazines, billboards, etc., at all the ways you can save money by letting one company handle your phone/internet/television services. Of course, they don’t tell you that the shit-tacular service you got for just your television will now be shared amongst all of the things you hold dear in your home that aren’t your kids.

But it’s a brave new world out there, and a family doos what it gots ta doos.

So I contacted Charter residential yesterday about bundling our services. I’ll skip the details of that except to say that I worked it out so that we’d save $70 a month, which ain’t exactly ashtray change.

Of course this switch means that we have to:

a) cancel our business internet

b) get a new residential cable box

c) re-program our wireless router

d) return the old business internet cable box

e) have someone from charter handle the provisioning of our VOIP service on site

And most of these items require direct contact with customer service, so you get the idea. This is going to be painful.

Yesterday I got home to a wife that had been on the phone with customer service three times, each consisting of 20 minutes on hold, 30 minutes of retardation with someone that is less internet/tech savvy than my 6 year old, and then an attempted transfer to tier two support and / or a manager that results in getting hung up on, which just lights the fuse for the next call.

So we got the kids to bed and I calmly contacted tech support. 30 minutes on hold and a dot-head with a script later, I was transferred to a supervi…click.

Call back again and get someone from Appalachia, which is a welcome change indeed. He recognized my networking and troubleshooting prowess immediately and deemed my assessment correct, that the modem we were using was still tied to the business unit, and we agreed that I should get a residential modem, have it re-provisioned, and then go from there.

However, one of our old business internet modems worked when connected directly to a computer, but not thru our brand new wireless router. So, at 9pm, I called D-Link tech support. Hello Katmandu? How can you help you?

Fast forward several holds, then a few redundant power cyclings, and we got nowhere fast. I arranged an RMA replacement of my brand new wireless router (in a mere 7-30 days of course), and went to bed grumpy.

By the way, my least favorite tech support instruction is the "Please disconnect the power from the router and wait five minutes…"

People, I have it on good authority and experience that that particular recommendation is complete bullshit. There is nothing that five minutes powered off will do that 10 seconds won’t do. At that point, just hold down the reset button, plug it in, and move along. That five minute thing is just so you might set down the phone for a second and they can then hang up on you.

Back to the story.

I decide to go straight to the Charter office this morning for my new modem, hoping that I can drop it off at home later and my wife can get it configured with tech support and then get off her ass and get some work done (just kidding sweetheart).

I walk into the office at exactly 8am and there are two women at the counter. One is waiting on someone else and the other is waiting on me. After going thru the usual "I don’t see an account in your name" bullshit, we finally are able to find my account information. Never mind that I’ve had charter service for over fifteen years. I’m sure it’s my fault.

Anyway, the woman waiting on me is clacking away with her three inch fingernails and I glance to my right and see the other girl, who is now not waiting on anyone, lotioning up her hands and her ashy arms.

My girl waddles off to find me a modem, and during this time, the other woman starts lotioning her feet.

SERIOUSLY!!

Yes, I know I am at work and that I am sitting at a customer service counter prepared to have direct visual and physical contact with our customers instead of in some back office where no one can see me, but I need to lotion my fucking feet. You gotta problem wit dat?

I manage to push my mouth closed after having my chin hit the counter at this egregious violation of any kind of decorum, and instead look back at the vacant chair in front of me.

Then, I hear the recognizable sound. It elicits a Pavlovian response from me as my head snaps right at the thought of delicious sweet Pringles.

And that’s when I see the retard to my right up to her elbow in the can of Pringles and shoveling them into her maw with the same hand with which she had just finishing lotioning her stinky ashy feet.

GAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHH!

Jul

How dare you touch my meat?!

By Functionally ReTodded 1 Comment

Categories: Blog, Food, Functionally ReTodded and Pranks

As you may or may not know, this past Thursday was my 40th birthday. There was much rejoicing and celebrating (photos to follow later this week), but the point of this entry is to tell you about one of the greatest gags ever.

I am a big green egg owner. I have two larges. I love my BGE’s. I love cooking on them. We had some amazing rack of lamb Thursday night, and more stuff thru the weekend.

The reason I’m telling you this is that I’m sort of famous / notable in the little enclave of ours as a BGE expert, as is my brother in law that lives across the street.

One of our buddies in the neighborhood has had his BGE for about two years now and got it thru me. He is a nervous cooking guy and as such, he’s usually asking me or my BIL for advice on cooks, especially on ones that you do very often.

So here we sat Thursday night, full with draft beer and my brother in law mentions that our buddy is doing his very first overnight cook of Boston Butts. Even better, our buddy was cooking them for his son’s baseball team party the next day.

So my BIL and I (and about five other drunks) start talking, and we decide to commit butt larceny. So I set my BGE up for a butt cook and let the temp get settled for about an hour and a half, and we hit the road.

We had a (difficult to find) sober friend agree to drive us over there. Armed with our own aluminum pans and some food service gloves (food safety is never a joke kids), we set out to make our move.

Our driving friend parked behind an ice plant about three houses away, and we drunk folk proceeded to ninja / special ops traverse the yards and enter the subject’s back yard area.

We found just what we expected: a perfectly set 230 degree large Big Green Egg containing two nice looking sevenish pound boston butts. My BIL and I grinned at each other and moved the butts to our aluminum pans and, before leaving, dumped a pile of that night’s chicken wing remnants in their place.

We laughed our butts (pun intended) off on the way back to my house, and after getting the pork on to my grill, we all hit the rack and called it a day.

The next morning, I check the temp.

Perfect.

I open the BGE and look, and the butts are spectacular. Possibly a top ten ever effort on my part. I removed them, wrapped them in foil and towels and set them in an Igloo cooler to finish the work. So I head over to the BIL’s house to see when he wanted to return the meat.

As I was walking in the house, I hear his cell phone ringing, and right after that, the house phone is well. I was about to close the door when I heard my wife from across the street saying my Blackberry was ringing. I was pretty sure of the source of all three phone calls.

After a moment of chatting, we agreed that my 12 year old nephew should go to the door and say "Excuse me, but I am raising money for a state baseball tournament. Would you like to buy some pulled pork?"

We drove over, went to the front door and rang the bell, and Mrs. Victim answered the door.

She did NOT look pleased. Or amused. She looked pissed.

Our buddy came to the door and, after some cajoling, he more or less agreed that it was funnier than all get out that someone stole his overnight cook.

The best part for me was that I had drilled into him the following advice:

Never ever look. At least not before the 12 hour mark. You KNOW it’s not done, so don’t mess up the joo joo by peeking.

Trust the Egg. It won’t let you down.

So when he lifted the lid at 8:30am and saw nothing but a very crisp pile of wing carcasses, two things happened:

He yelled to his wife (who was just returning from Starbucks): "Honey!! Someone stole my meat!"

He then thought to himself "Jesus, I burned those butts down to nothing."

Nevermind that it is very unlikely to burn something so badly that it’s DNA and / or species changes. I mean really.

I must have laughed for half an hour straight, but all the while I was telling our buddy how to proceed as far as foiling, resting in the cooler and pulling the pork. I also said that I’d come over and help pull it if need be. I even said that having that meat stolen by me was kind of like having your children kidnapped by The Super Nanny or the Dali Lama. His butts really couldn’t have been in better hands.

Fast forward to my little birthday soirre Saturday night, and I was sort of shocked that he and his wife didn’t show up for my party after saying they’d attend earlier in the day. But I kind of understand why now.

The stolen butt story was the talk of the party (besides grown men funneling beer). Everyone there, literally, was talking about our prank. I am prouder of that prank by the moment and I look forward to doing it to someone else in the future.

Anyway, I just wanted you all to know the story and to watch your butts. You never know when a group of drunken neighbors may try to steal yours.

Jul

40 things about turning 40

By Functionally ReTodded 5 Comments

Categories: 1Doh, 2Doh, 3Doh, Blog, Functionally ReTodded, GBD, News and Rant

I’m sure all of you are waiting to send me cards, presents and even cards filled with money, so I will go ahead and let you know the details. On July 3, 2008 I will be turning 40. Forty. Four Zero. I’m not upset about it. I’m not sad about it. I’m not anything about it. I genuinely stopped associating anything with the number of years I’ve been alive when I left my wife’s 30th birthday party. And as I have said many times over the past two and a half years, the alternative to getting older every year is a good deal more troubling.

Anyway, in honor of my birthday and in no particular order, here are 40 things about turning 40.

1) I have way more hair on my head than I thought I would.

2) I have way less hair anywhere else than I thought I would.

3) I feel way younger at 40 than I thought I would.

4) I feel way older than I think I should.

5) Now I can hold my head high when entering the clinic asking to have my prostate exam.

6) I should not ask for a prostate exam at the dentist’s office, the movie theater or The Home Depot.

7) If I were 400 years old, I STILL wouldn’t be able to watch The McNeil Lehrer show.

Ditto for NPR.

9) When my dad turned 40, I was almost 15. Fuck was HE old.

10) As I turn 40, my kids are six, two point five and one. I don’t think I’m old at all.

11) Maturity is CLEARLY not age based.

12) 40 sounds like a good age to focus on developing one’s career.

13) I feel like maybe I should feel ashamed rummaging thru the xbox 360 rental section at Blockbuster.

14) I don’t.

15) As much as I hated my job at 30, I LOVE my job at 40.

16) While I hoped I would be, I’m still pretty shocked that the wife and I are still the wife and I after 22 years.

17) I love my wife and kids more than I let on sometimes.

18) Will I ever NOT love pizza?

19) I don’t look like I’m getting older. Why the hell does everyone else?

20) Is there a forty year old on the planet that owns less tools and knows how to do less WITH those tools than me? I’m pretty sure 1doh could run circles around me building a birdhouse.

21) Same goes for cars and car maintenance. I’m pretty sure I could cure cancer before I could change my own oil. Is that healthy?

22) When does one begin taking Geritol? What does it do anyway?

23) Should I concern myself with the farm report, rainfall amounts or titty bars?

24) I am constantly surprised and yet not surprised at all by the stupidity AND the kindness of strangers.

25) I am more conservative politically than I was at 30.

26) I am more disgusted with the republican party than I was at 30.

27) I’d like to start taking my kids to early season Auburn Football games so they experience that in person.

28) I want to teach my kids to do more things than I was taught to do.

29) Is your 40th birthday literally the last day it’s remotely acceptable to drink beer(s) via a funnel and some rubber tubing?

30) I have far few friends at 40 than I had at 20 or 30.

31) I have far better friends at 40 than I do at 20 or 30, and I value them more than I did then as well.

32) I am far closer to my family than I thought I would ever be.

33) I regret the time lost in my life due to my stubborn nature and my short-sightedness.

34) I am about 70-75% comfortable in my own skin and about who I am.

35) I’d like to learn more about macro and global economics so I can be more educated when I vote, invest and bitch about stuff.

36) I always regretted not ending up with a cool nickname.

37) Despite being told for years that your taste buds change and that "someday you’ll like asparagus/broccoli/cauliflower/any bean that isn’t a green bean/any other awful vegetable," I don’t think I ever will.

38) I wonder how my parents (all of them) do what they do at 20+ years older than me. My knees and ankles hurt like fuck when I get up every day as it is.

39) I look forward to turning 50 WAY more than I did yesterday.

40) PAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRTTTTTTTTTTTYYYYYYYYYY!!!!!!

Jun

My new cause in life

By Functionally ReTodded 0 Comments

Categories: Blog, Food, Functionally ReTodded, Pop Culture, Rant and Uncategorized

Unless you live under a rock or under Avitable, you know who Jessica Simpson is. She is the big-tittied daughter of a minister turned overbearing pimp of his children who was married to Nick Lachey and on that MTV show "Newlyweds" that showed us all how dumb naive she was about money and cars and life and sex and laundry and cooking and everything else.

She has also dated/not dated/dated/not dated Dallas Cowboy QB Tony Romo since the tragic end of her marriage to Mr. Lachey.

She’s a talented singer. You only have to watch this clip to know how talented she truly is.

Now, sarcasm aside, I actually like her and think a lot of her dizziness is an act. But she has taken five years of shit and smiled through it all. She’s spent her life lorded over by her pedophile of a dad who can apparently only talk about two things in interviews:

Jessica’s boobs are real and made her uncomfortable.

Jessica’s commitment to her virginity until marriage (this was obviously before the newlyweds show).

We agree on both counts, just so you know. Her boobs make me very uncomfortable, specifically when I hurt my penis while masturbating to them using cheap conditioner, shaving cream or just a handful of Newman’s Own dressing.

I was also committed to her virginity despite the fact that I knew Mr. Lachey planned to do permanent harm to her mysterious lady parts.

Enough about me. Today I’m stumbling thru my usual news reads: Wall Street Journal, Barron’s, The New York Times, AVN weekly, and WWTDD, and I found this horrid story on Fox News.

Here’s a photo because no Jessica Simpson story is complete without one:

meaty goodness

Now PETA has their collective gay pot smoking hippie hemp panties in a knot and made Jessica public enemy number one, along with adding a list of the top five reasons why only stupid girls would brag about eating meat. Here’s PETA’s list (followed by my witty rebuttals):

1. Meat increases the risk of breast cancer. A 2007 study of 35,000 women published in the British Journal of Cancer found that women who ate meat were far more likely to develop breast cancer than women who consumed none. Will Jessica’s next t-shirt will say, "Real Girls Smoke 3 Packs a Day"?

I hope she does because T-shirts are funny, don’t hurt anyone, and who in their right mind is sitting around waiting to make dietary decisions based on what this girl has scrawled across her fun bags?

2. Real girls don’t support animal abuse. Compassion is super sexy , if the huge number of hot celebs ditching meat is any indication. Young women turn vegetarian in droves when they learn that the meat industry cuts the sensitive beaks off newborn chicks and cuts off the tails of baby piglets.

Hey you dumbass PETAs (who I am about to start calling PITA). You’re rotting from the inside out because you eat no protein. Unless you’re a vegan. But if you’re vegetarian, then you don’t mind fucking over fish and plants. You don’t think tomatoes have feelings? Or Chilean Sea Bass? And for every devout PETA person who lives like this, there are five carrying signs while wearing a leather belt or some $600 shoes made out of kitten scrotums.

3. The meat industry is destroying the Earth. The only thing that’s hot about the meat industry is that it’s toasting the planet . According to the United Nations, raising animals for food causes more greenhouse-gas emissions than all the cars, trucks, SUVs, planes, and ships in the world combined.

Absolutely and completely bullshit. There is no way on God’s not as green as it used to be earth that that’s true. If it is, I would contend that human farting is a thousand times bigger problem than animal farting. Why, my father alone is probably making Al Gore cry himself to sleep daily. Oh, and the next thing the UN says that’s true will be the first thing. Stupid dictators.

4. Meat will make you fat. All the saturated fat and cholesterol in chicken wings, pork chops, and steak eventually leads to flabby thighs and love handles . I hope the upcoming "Jessica Simpson’s Intimates" line comes in plus sizes! Going vegetarian is the best way to get slim and stay that way.

Fuck you again. If you ate 5,000 calories a day of asparagus and didn’t exercise, you’d get fat. That’s the trouble with trendy bandwagon clubs like PETA. They don’t like to let facts or, God forbid, MATH, get in the way of a good quote.

5. Eating meat steals food from starving kids. Jessica’s trip to help kids in Africa got a lot of media buzz, but by gnawing on meat, she’s essentially stealing food from the mouths of starving children since it takes up to 16 pounds of grain to produce just 1 pound of meat. If more people went vegetarian, we’d free up enough grain to feed every person in the world.

I’m pretty sure that the sabre-rattling dictators that run their countries steal way more food from starving kids than Jessica Simpson. Look at her for God’s sake. Do you think she walks into the Golden Corral and says to the guy behind the counter, "Hey Cutie. I’ll take the Old 96er please. And make sure I get plenty of grissle?" Of course not. Like any hot skinny chick with big tits, she probably does some blow before dinner, loses her appetite and then just takes a bite of the lobster before she purges and ends the night by giving the star quarterback a hand shandy under the table.

So my message to you, PETA, is to get off your high horse, stop lying, and do us all a favor and fuck yourselves mute.

Jun

Devious Minds

By Functionally ReTodded 3 Comments

Categories: Blog, Functionally ReTodded and Pranks

One of the many things kids miss out on today due to video games, the internet and girls that start putting out at age twelve is practical jokes and pranks.

I mention this because my neighbors went out of town this weekend and we were tasked with keeping an eye on Gilbey, the fun but sometimes annoying schnauzer.

When I was getting ready to go to their house Saturday morning, GBD gave me the garage code:

BAMA

Being an Auburn household, I smiled and said "well, it won’t be that for long," and I headed down the street.

Since the keypad opener thingy is 11 years old, finding programming instructions for it took a while. But I did find them. And I changed the code (it was limited to being four characters) to TGRS.

After I told my BIL and his 12-year-old about it, we started brainstorming some other ideas for pranks we could do to the out of towners, or anyone else we knew for that matter. I thought it might be a fun summer if we pulled a few pranks that didn’t result in permanent damage or human waste (i.e. saran wrap over the toilets, etc).

So when the homeowners returned, I handed them the list of things we came up with that we COULD have done, so they don’t feel nearly as bad about the door code (which I didn’t change. I reluctantly gave it to them and said that I’d tell them how to change it in a week). The funny part was, before I went down to see them, GBD was talking to them and laughing when they asked for the code and she left them by saying "I’ll give you a hint…it’s four letters."

I tell you all of that to tell you this. last night, several of the neighbors were over for some beer, rack of lamb and some fellowship, and we started talking about the pranks again. I was also talking about public pools and my disdain for the urine-water ratio, but further that I always made sure I was holding one of my kids when I was peeing in the pool, just in case they finally have a chemical that will actually turn the water purple if it detects urine.

Editor’s note. This part assumes that you had a friend or neighbor with their own pool growing up, and their moms were constantly telling you not to pee in the pool since there was a chemical in the pool that would turn purple if it touched urine . Now back to the story.

That’s when my neighbor Superios started laughing and said "We should just palm one of those liquid food coloring bottles, walk up behind someone that’s in the water, dump it in, and after the water starts turning, start pointing and loudly yelling "Holy crap!! That guy’s peeing in the pool!!"

And my someone, we mean someone we all know and would make fun of forever and a day.

How freaking great an idea is THAT?

And I think the added benefit would be that it would scare the shit out of all the kids that were peeing in the pool at that time.

Anyway, happy pranking everybody. I welcome comments or prank suggestions that we can try out during the summer.

Functionally ReTodded

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