They're winning.

*ring ring*

Your humble correspondent: "Hello, Panix"

User: "Hi, I'm calling from Foo Corp, we have service with you. We can't get to our Internet or email.
Is your system having problems?"

YHC: "No, the system is operating normally at this time." *look up account* "Um, it looks like we only provide web hosting and some POP mailboxes for you, not any kind of connectivity, unless that's under a different company name."

U: "Yes, we get our connection from someone else"

YHC: "..."

U: "Oh, um, I guess I should go call them."


I do not click "update journal" simply on account of HAW HAW STUPID USER. There are plenty of other places with, frankly, much better / more amusing examples. The problem is that a variation on this conversation happens almost every. single. day. As soon as a computational device enters the equation, basic logic is tossed to the four winds. You don't need to know a damn thing about routing or DSL or email to intuit that if your connection to the Internet has gone bye-bye, the correct people to call might just possibly be the people who PROVIDE IT.

If we judge by averages, our species deserves no better than reality TV and armpit-fart bands.

"It's better than sex! It's BOOKS!"

audiovile just sent me the best quote EVAR:

"I am still in the thrall of one insatiable desire, which hitherto I have been neither able nor willing to check. I cannot get enough books. It may be that I have already more than I need, but it is with books as it is with other things: success in acquisition spurs the desire to get still more. Books, indeed, have a special charm. Gold, silver, gems, purple raiment, a house of marble, a well-tilled field, paintings, a steed with splendid trappings -- things such as these give but a silent and superficial pleasure. Books delight us through and through, they talk with us, they give us good counsel, they enter into a living and intimate companionship with us. What is more, not only does a book win the reader's affection for itself, but it mentions the names of other books, so that one stirs the desire for another." -- Petrarch

I love the universe again.