Hewlett-Packard Chat Support Not Selling Any Favors

I bought my latest HP computer for the company’s excellent customer service reputation, so imagine how blown away I was by the Machiavellian sales tactics I had to fend off in my last chat “help” session with them.

Unfortunately, the technical help guy at HP Real-Time Chat Support wanted to start selling me solutions even before we had diagnosed the problem, and it was all I could do to keep him on track to determine what had gone wrong with my machine.

I had contacted him about an unsaved file that was lost when I left my two-month old computer on overnight (kind of dumb, yes, but never a problem before). Lost data? Maybe I needed an uninterrupted power source, the techie recommended. Memory failure? Not exactly, but still he offered me more memory at a rebate price – equally unlikely to fail, but fast as all get-out! (Why you only have so many gig of RAM? Tsk, tsk. That’s practically cave man times! How do you live without at least four times that?)

Well, I kept at him with laser focus and we eventually concluded that the machine never powered-down to stand-by mode and so had shutdown automatically to protect itself from overheating. My “helper” hadn’t any product for that, except to suggest I purchase an extended warranty.

My paranoia was in full bloom from his seeds of doubt. But he’d gone too far now. I was ready to take the piece of crap back and demand a full refund.

Well, I didn’t, and I’m still limping by on my anemic number of gig a whole year later. And now when I see how HP is raking in the profits, well, it makes me worry about the future all over again. Because after my difficult HP chat session, I had to ask myself: What happens when this type of relationship becomes the norm and not a single human endeavor is safe from the shysters pitch?

I went to that HP chat guy for help, and instead I got sold something. What if that happened when you went for help in other places, like for example, church:

“Bless me, Father, for I have sinned. It’s been six months since my last confession.”

“Tsk, tsk. Six months, you’ve missed a lot of time and deals, but I have something for that.”

“Father, shouldn’t I confess my sins?”

“Yes, child, but first let me show you our ‘Overdue For Confession’ Personal Atonement Kit, complete with a rosary and mini self-flagellation whip.”

“How much? Never mind. I’ll take it. Father I have sinned.”

“Of course you have, child, and you will atone. Now here I have the Adultery Kit, the Murder Kit, Fornication—what do you need?”

The Jump Drive: Evil Enemy of Organization

I don’t know about you, but my computer organization is screwed. I mean, it starts out okay, but it ends up all mucked up, as time and files fly by.

It’s not that I don’t have an order, it’s just that I never get rid of anything. So I have millions of files, many with strange, abbreviated names from various previous computer incarnations. But my real downfall has been this hairy-faced bastard of a jump drive.

Seriously. The jump drive totally screws my organization. I cannot keep the latest file version in any one place. I have to make a big mess because I’m in a hurry and I can’t do my freaking electronic filing. Isn’t it bad enough that my dead-tree files are in chaos? No, I have to make a virtual mess of things as well, apparently.

And whatever you do, I don’t want to hear about The Briefcase. That folded-leather devil sitting so smugly on the desktop is really an evil brain-eating ogre. It rips the skin off new drafts whole. I don’t even want to think about it.

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Girls Are Grody, Clorox Reports

Girls may be made of sugar and spice and everything nice, but apparently that’s a lot more disgusting than snails and puppy-dog tails if you consider the amount of germs they leave behind.

The latest news on the germ front, ladies, is that our desk drawers have SEVEN times more germs than men’s desks. The news could make the more germ-phobic among us consider a sex change, or at least boiling one’s hands at regular intervals-that is, if you believe this study and don’t attribute it to some conspiracy to sell us more bleach.

After all, what is the point behind a study to see which gender is the filthiest, other than to be rather insulting to women? Why, to sell us more germicide, of course, even though by the sounds of it we will never get to the bottom of all the grody bacteria and moldering viruses that pollute the places we put our hands daily – yech!

Anyway, I certainly don’t have time to sterilize my paper clip collection, even if they do show traces of last month’s soup I spilled on them. And so what if my keyboard collects crumbs like a second placemat, it’s still typing, and I’m still here using it despite the staggering number of micro organisms living on the “a” key alone.

What doesn’t kill me now only makes me stronger or kills me later. And what bleach doesn’t kill only gets strong enough to kill me later, too. So, really, what’s the point knowing females gather filth at a rate totally eclipsing male filth? If God wanted me to worry about all this bacteria, she wouldn’t have made them so invisible.

Oh, Anna Nicole.

Neighbor: Did you read the story in the Oakland Tribune about the high rises?

Hank: The only news I’ve heard in the last day is about Anna Nicole Smith.

Neighbor: Yeah, (pause), she sure had a pair of high rises.

To Anna and her high rises, and all the high rises they in turn caused, may the poor dear RIP. Anna Nicole Smith was a real Bad Apple, and so we salute her short, entertaining, and mangled life. Hey, we can’t all be good.

Passwords Piss Me Off

My life in passwords recently spiraled out of control and went crashing through the infobahn guard rail in a fiery heap. I lost a little contol over the paperwork, started blogging, next thing you know, I’m traveling at the speed of light toward unadulterated chaos, not a clue for a code word to save my life.

Once upon a time, I enjoyed a moderate amount of control over my passwords. I always used the same ones over and over, so I would just start putting in my favorites. Eventually, I would find the right one. Life was simpler then.

One day I read how screwed I would be if someone figured out my bleeding passwords. They could clear out my accounts, erase my blog, and do irreversible damage to things that I would definitely freak out about. Ever since, I’ve found myself making up the most esoteric passwords imaginable. Nobody in a million years would guess them, and the least likely to guess them, as it turns out, would be me.