Pineapple Express: Someone Is Wrong on the Internet?

[Cadence]

If someone wanted to say something really obnoxious but not worry about it being recorded, is there anything they could play in the background while speaking or ways to put hiccups in their speech or some such to make it hit with the deep fake detectors?

 

[Ryujin]

That reminds me of a call I answered in 2009. I was coming off of a 12-hour shift at midnight, driving home, when my boss (same one as before) called me to go to a customer site. I get there and find they're using two ancient servers, apparently linked somehow, running an OS called "AEGIS" I'd never heard of before. The one server was only giving error messages, which I couldn't interpret because of my unfamiliarity with the system. However, our website listed "AEGIS" as a system we supported, so the customer, in desperation, had reached out to us and paid our one-time fee for instant tech support.

I called my boss (same jerk as my previous story) and explained the issue. He told me he'd reach out to one of our subcontractor techs, who was the whole reason we had "AEGIS" on the website at all. He only worked for us on a one-off case-by-case basis, and I hadn't talked to him for a few years at that point. Then I sat down with the manual. Let me tell you, it is sheer torture to try to comprehend a manual written in 1983 when you're exhausted and running on caffeine fumes.

An hour later I heard back from my boss, who told me the tech was not reachable on any of the numbers we had, and after some research, my boss found out he'd moved out of state the year before. No forwarding address, no emails to us, nothing. So, there would be no support.

By that time, by some miracle, I'd found something in the manual that looked like what we were seeing. I ran the suggested update, and then the manual said the linked server would also need to be restarted to get the system up again. I told that to the customer.

Customer Technical Manager: "No."
Me: "... Uh, what?"
Customer Technical Manager: "You can't restart the other server. What if it doesn't come back up?"
Me: "I mean, that's the only way according to the manual to get this server back up. Downtime should be minimal."
Customer Technical Manager: "No. I'm not going to let you do that."
Me: "Well, what else would you like me to do?"

And then the customer said a thing that has stayed with me through the rest of my career to date. I can still hear his exact voice in my head, saying something so profoundly dumb (coming from what is supposed to be a tech person) that I'd never heard the like before or since. This next line, I guarantee you despite my terrible memory, is verbatim:

Customer Technical Manager: "I want you to wave your magic wand and make the problem go away."

So, I continued reading the manual to see if I could achieve a second miracle and find some tech workaround to do just that. I was still reading at 8AM, when my boss finally had mercy and sent one of my coworkers to relieve me. I explained everything to that guy, and finally got to bed by 9AM. By 9AM, the customer's overnight technical manager also left and was replaced by another guy. My coworker told him the same thing and what would be needed to get it up again.

New Customer Technical Manager: "Sure, go ahead! Let's get the system up!"

And before I even fell asleep, my coworker got the customer up and running, receiving many email kudos from my boss and the customer technical manager. I got complained about for "not solving customer problems."

My similar issue was a bit more succinct. I had been working at my current position for just a few months. An Engineering prof placed a call about his printer spitting out a page, with a few gobbledygook characters on it, every time that he turned on or woke up his computer. I looked at it for a couple of hours and could find neither the cause, nor a solution. It didn't stop him from using the printer; it just wasted a page every now and then.

After I left the prof called our help desk and said it still wasn't fixed, "... and send someone competent this time."

The issue wasn't solved for weeks, because it was Microsoft's problem. Every time the computer was turned on or woke up, it polled for plug&play devices, which is what was spitting out the characters. A .DLL had to be renamed or deleted, to fix the issue. I never forgot what that prof said and for the next 10 years he was at the bottom of my (and my co-workers') priority list.

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

FWIW, my personal #2 bit of legal tomfoolery is the infamous (in some circles) Becky Klemt Letter.

This was always my all-time favorite legal response. Short, succinct, and perfect.

A letter of note.

(Note- there is a use of one curse word, so if that's not your bag, don't click the link)

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

This was always my all-time favorite legal response. Short, succinct, and perfect.

A letter of note.

(Note- there is a use of one curse word, so if that's not your bag, don't click the link)

Someone clearly earned a beer & bratwurst for that response.

 

[Maxperson]

FWIW, my personal #2 bit of legal tomfoolery is the infamous (in some circles) Becky Klemt Letter.

https://www.texasbar.com/AM/Template.cfm?Section=Say_What_&Template=/CM/ContentDisplay.cfm&ContentID=35461

Oh my God that letter is freaking hysterical!

 

[Cadence]

I wonder how much it would cost Hasbro for an online ad with a still picture of Taylor Swift having a 5e24 character sheet playing a bard and rolling a natural 20.

How much of a push would it take to make social media explode arguing about what species she would play.

Disclaimer: I probably couldn't even name a swift song, but it feels like a marketing thing. And now I wonder what a shot of her and Beyonce playing with Dolly DMing would cost. I can name a few Dolly songs.

 

[Ryujin]

I wonder how much it would cost Hasbro for an online ad with a still picture of Taylor Swift having a 5e24 character sheet playing a bard and rolling a natural 20.

How much of a push would it take to make social media explode arguing about what species she would play.

Disclaimer: I probably couldn't even name a swift song, but it feels like a marketing thing. And now I wonder what a shot of her and Beyonce playing with Dolly DMing would cost. I can name a few Dolly songs.

Maybe ask Pepsi Corp how much it cost them for this Superbowl commercial. With inflation it would likely equate to just 2 top 40 performers, today.

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

I wonder how much it would cost Hasbro for an online ad with a still picture of Taylor Swift having a 5e24 character sheet playing a bard...

A bard????

Why do you hate Tay-Tay so much?

What did she ever do to you? What, did you break up with her and then she wrote an incredibly popular song about it that made you look bad?

 

[Ryujin]

A bard????

Why do you hate Tay-Tay so much?

What did she ever do to you? What, did you break up with her and then she wrote an incredibly popular song about it that made you look bad?

I wouldn't want to set the odds on that one.

 

[Cadence]

Maybe ask Pepsi Corp how much it cost them for this Superbowl commercial. With inflation it would likely equate to just 2 top 40 performers, today.

We're talking Hasbro money here, so still picture and not Superbowl ad...