That’s awesome, unless you put all 473 email adresses in the CC field. Sure, it’s not that bad when you read the email on GMail through a regular browser:

Notice how 469 of those email addresses are somewhat hidden from you? Meaning that with just one click, I could have access to 472 new friends. Friends that I can send funny LOLCATS or motivational 7Mb PowerPoint files. Worst, there’s now potentially 472 friends that can send me funny LOLCATS and motivational 7Mb PowerPoint files.

Luckily, I didn’t use my main GMail address. Unfortunately, I first opened this email on my iPhone. Can you guess what it looks like when you open an email addressed to 473 people? It looks like this:

Actual emails, blurred because I’m a nice man. 

Fun Facts: It took me 3 minutes to do the 49 screen captures needed, and about 25 minutes to Photoshop all the pictures in one giant 16397px long strip. Even at the lowest quality setting, this image still weighs 600K.

So to summarize:

1. Avoid the CC Field when emailing to more than 10 people.
2. Scrolling on an iPhone is a pain in the ass.
3. The pain that I’ll go through to prove a point is just ridiculous.
4. This is by far the longest post I’ve ever written, although this one came pretty close.
5. This is not the dumbest post I’ve ever written. Not even close.

The catch is, that only every other soldier is getting a rifle. The Commissars are usually saying something like “One man gets the rifle, the next man gets some bullets. The second man follows the man with the rifle, and when he is shot, picks up the rifle and carries on fighting!”

That’s exactly how I feel at work right now.

Hopefully I won’t get shot. But if I am, I hope someone will carry on fighting.

I love that show. Bring it back.

This post is about tech support. Let me present to you the life cycle of a support request.

Initial contact – 00:00 hours in the cycle

Client: “HI. I have an issue fix it NOW. THIS REQUESSSST IS URGEN! NOW FIX IT.!”

Initial reply – 00:02 hours in the cycle

Tech Support: “Hello. I need more details in order to help you. Can you provide me with (list of items to provide). Sincerely, Me.”

Follow up – 24:00 hours in the cycle

Tech Support: ”Hello. You opened help request #12345 yesterday. I am waiting for (list of items to provide). If this issue has been resolved through other channels, please let us know and I’ll close this help request. All the best, Me.”

Follow-up – 48:00 hours in the cycle

Tech Support: ”Hello. You opened help request #12345 48 hours ago. I am still waiting for (list of items to provide), and am not able to help you without that information. Please contact me by phone at your earliest convenience to resolve this matter. If your issue has been resolved through other channels, please let me know and I’ll close this help request. My direct phone number is (gives phone number). All the best, Me.”

Follow-up – 168:00 in the cycle

Tech Support: ”Hello. This is the third follow-up on case #12345. Your help request has been pending for 7 days. If I don’t hear back from you within 24 hours, I will close the incident. (Lists all contact information). Best, Me.”

Closing the incident – 192:00 in the cycle

Tech Support: ”I am closing incident #12345. I have been without any reply from you for 8 days, I will assume this issue has been solved by other channels. If this issue has been resolved, simply ignore this message. If you are still experiencing the issue described in the original request, simply reply to this email including the requested information in my initial reply. Have a nice day, Me.”

Client wakes up – 192:01 hours in the cycle

Client: “You CLOse this? Why???? Problem not fix! Crappy service! Fix problem NOW! NOOOOW! I,m getting beind in my education Bcause of U!”

Here we go again – 192:02 hours in the cycle

Tech Support: “Hello. I need more details in order to help you. Can you provide me with (list of items to provide). Sincerely, Me.”

Hit send, bang head on desk, pour drink, repeat.

+++++

Show of hands: who thinks I’m kidding?

In itself, posting a graphic on your wall is not a big deal. But let’s say – hypothetically – that you then happen to read the caption of the graphic, and it read:

Hand drawn – all rights reserved. Do not copy.

Then you clicked on the picture and saw that once it’s been embiggified, there’s a not-so-subtle watermark on it.

Of course because I can Google shit, my first thought was “bullshit!”. I’m willing to bet it was your first thought too. Unless you thought that it’s a hand drawn watermark?

But being the nice friendly Canadian I am – balanced by the huge skeptic that I am – I had to say something, but something relatively polite and mild. So I wrote this comment under the “hand drawing” that went like this:

“Hey! What graphic program did you use to create this drawing?”

This reply came less than a minute later:

It’s not from a program, it’s done by hand.

So I just let it go. I figured that who cares if that person likes to pretend that she drew a picture by hand when she really just applied a filter. What difference does it make to me? No skin off my back, right?

Wrong.

It turns out that I have a fairly obsessive-compulsive thing going on, and I’m not really able to let go of things. It didn’t help that over the following weeks, that person kept posting all kinds of new “hand drawings” that were clearly done with the help of a computer program. I became literally obsessed by those “drawings”.

I also have a background in social sciences, which unfortunately means that I really really want to help people – even the ones that don’t want to be helped.

So I did what I do best. I asked questions until I got something that could put my mind at ease. My goal was not to catch the person in a lie – even though that would’ve probably been much more gratifying in the end – but to make that person realize why I thought she was using a computer, and ultimately make her realize that people were seeing through her game. I thought that if I could at least get her to admit that I wasn’t crazy for saying her “drawings” looked like photoshop filters applied on pictures, I would call it a day and move on.

You already know that’s not going to happen, right?

For a few weeks, whenever a new “drawing” was posted, I would ask questions about it in the Facebook comment section. How long did this take you to do? What medium did you use? Would you document the work in progress? How did you scan the drawing to your computer? I took it one step further and started commenting on other stuff she posted. When she posted lyrics of a song, I commented that I too loved that signer. I tracked down movie dialogue and literary quotes she posted as her own and commented on how much I enjoyed that movie or book.

Basically, all my comments said: “I’m watching you. I know what you are doing. You may be fooling hundreds of people, but not me!”. There was also a little of “Please stop being an idiot, people know we’re related”.

Finally after 9 “drawings” and a few posts, I received this private inbox message:

Just to be clear on the hand drawings: I do use a Wacom stylus to do them. In 2005, my right middle finger was broken in 5 places so I can’t hold a regular pencil anymore. The only photoshopped part is the watermark, and that’s done to protect my work. Since I use a stylus, they are really hand made drawings.

I immediately stopped posting on the person’s wall, and sent her a polite but frank email about the “drawings”. Basically I asked her point blank to send me the .psd file of one of her “drawings”. I got this:

Maybe for the next drawings. I never keep the electronic files as they take too much space on my computer. You’re funny, it’s like you’re the drawing inspector! LOL!

I told her that I wasn’t, but that I did work with Photoshop and computers in general for the last twenty years or so, and that I was pretty sure that I could recognize a filter when I saw one. I told her that I didn’t mind if her thrill was to apply filters to pictures, but that being told that it was a hand drawing bugged me a little (but apparently not her hundreds of Facebook Friends, who only had good comments to make on her talent). I also included this graphic in my reply, telling her I took 5 minutes of my lunch break to make it.

You can make this bigger. You know you want to.

I concluded my email by saying: “Clearly, you can see where I’m coming from, right?”

Her reply came quickly.

I totally understand how you could be mistaken. Don’t you think that if I post them to Facebook saying they’re hand-drawn, it’s because I’m proud of having succeeded in making these? What would I have to gain by telling people I’m doing these by hand if I’m not?

It took me a good half hour just to think about what I was going to answer, or really if I was even bother to answer. In the end I went with a really long reply, that I will not post here. But basically, I offered these thoughts:

• Maybe it’s just something that started innocently by posting one filtered picture to your drawings folder. Then you started receiving positive feedback on your talent, so you didn’t want to disappoint your fans and basically painted yourself in a corner.
• Maybe you simply like the attention.

I then offered that this whole questioning thing had next to nothing to do with her, and all to do with me. You see, I question everything, so why not question that? However, I’m always willing to be proven wrong. So in the spirit of friendship and family, I offered to make the three and a half drive to her place with a nice bottle of wine and watch her draw for an hour or two.

I even offered to blog about how great of an artist she was, and promised to publicly apologize on her Facebook wall if she could prove me wrong.

When 24 hours passed without a reply, I figured the matter was settled. I had called her bluff and she couldn’t answer. Case closed, moving on. I refrained from any and all comments on her new “drawings” when she posted them. I had tried to help, and had failed. No sense beating a photoshopped picture of a dead horse.

See, I can totally joke about this. I even made the following images on my lunch break and had a good chuckle about it. They are some of her “drawings” overlaid on graphics I found on-line.

Well, that kept me busy for about 7 minutes.

Now flash-forward to yesterday night. I see this post in my Facebook timeline:

To all you guys who “sag” your pants and show your butt and underwear …did you know it originated in prison? It was a signal to the other MEN that you are “available”. So if you wanna keep going around looking like you’re “available” for another dude to “tap that” then keep thinking you’re cool while I think you look like a Fool!!! BTW it’s called – PBS (Prison B*tch Syndrome).LOL Pass this on to the droopy pants that you know.

Can you guess this is from the same person? So I did what I always do when I see people pass on false information or chain letters. I posted a comment basically saying “don’t post crap!” and linked to snopes.com.

That comment got deleted in less than a minute. Thinking that maybe Facebook didn’t like the included link – I had linked to a specific article – I commented again. Deleted in less than a minute once more. That made me suspicious… Sure enough, I discovered that all the comments I ever made on any posts on that person’s wall had been deleted. I could sort of understand that, saving face and all. But surely this comment was something different… Why delete it?

So I reposted my comment on my wall, tagging that person in the comment.

“For those of you who didn’t have the chance to see my comment on (person’s name)’s wall before it got deleted…”

That comment was “liked” in less than 10 seconds by that person. Interesting. Thinking that it really was a link problem – I mean why would someone delete a comment from their wall and then instantly like the same comment on my wall – I made my way to her wall to leave a simple comment without any link and was greeted with this gem of a post:

What if I post that I have blonde hair, blue skin and live in a mushroom? Would you call me out on this too? What difference does it make to you? If you don’t agree with what I post, just hang up and go to the next caller. If you’re looking for an excuse to come to my house with wine, you should be mature enough to just come over without having to make up a whole story to justify doing it.

I am now convinced this person truly believes the reality she constructs. I mean seriously, how do you go from a polite version of “I think you’re a fucking liar” to “I’m looking for an excuse to go visit you”? You that I saw last time about 12 years ago for 5 minutes when I dropped off some clothes for your kids at your place. You that in those 5 minutes, asked me for 100$ and a television set.

Delusional.

The worst part of this is that I now realize that some people are just beyond any kind of help. And honestly, isn’t this the saddest thing you’ve ever heard? I know it’s number two on my all-time list.

Because really, nothing can be sadder than learning that I’m related to La Schtroumpfette.

I’m falling off the face of the Earth for a while. I have some IRL stuff to take care of, and it wouldn’t be fair to Blog, Tweet or Facebook about it. Take care. XXX

However, I’m also a guy who doesn’t go to bed that early, especially when I happened to nap from 5pm to midnight. So here I am, half past midnight, sitting in the living room, phone ringers off, when I see this on my TV screen:

Yes, my TV provider offers HD TV, but for some reason their cable box is WLD (Way Low Def).

Call display on the TV. Brilliant.

That happens to be “the number and name” of the person making the anonymous phone calls. How do I know that, you may ask, seeing as anyone who calls my house and has the “block my name and phone number” option would be displayed exactly like this? There’s a few reasons why I know.

1. Nobody calls my house at half past midnight to “not talk”. If there’s an emergency of some sort, people are happy that I pick up the phone, even if they dialed a wrong number.
2. There is a history of some kids in my daughter’s class – including the current friend – calling my house in the middle of the night, but at that time they did it from a listed number. I tracked them down and got them to admit it was them. This time they figured out I couldn’t track them from an unlisted number. Hey, at least they are learning.
3. It so happens that three days ago, my daughter received a call from that friend from an unlisted number. But since it was before I told her to stay away from my daughter, they had a decent conversation.
4. The first night those kids started making anonymous phone calls to my house, they called three times within 15 minutes. The machine got the first call, but they didn’t leave a message. I picked up the second call, and they hung up after I said hello a few times. On the third call, I just picked up and said nothing. After a few seconds, I heard one of them say: “I don’t hear anything”.

In a surprisingly lucid and calm moment between the bouts of rage I called my phone service provider to ask them what could be done about this situation. Basically, I wanted calls from that person intercepted before they ever got to my phone. I was happy to settle for “no one with an unlisted number can call me” if that was a possibility.

Unfortunately, I was told that the phone service provider can’t take on himself to block incoming calls from a specific number, even if they have the technology to do it, even if I specifically ask them to do it. WTF?

The normal procedure is to *57 all anonymous calls. That command sends to the police the time and phone number of the last call received from the number who dials *57, at a cost of 5.00$ every time I use the option – to a maximum of 10.00$ a month.

Then I have to call and complain to the cops that I’m getting anonymous calls. They can then go the *57 registry, and match the times and my phone number with the phone number of the person who placed those calls.

But what would the cops do about this? Would they even consider doing anything about kids calling my house and hanging up? I had my doubts, so I called them. Not on the emergency number, on their other number for less important stuff. My suspicions were confirmed. Unless I received actual death threats during those phonecalls, the case would not even be considered. The cop who answered me was really nice, and seemed genuinely sorry to not be able to do anything about this.

What did I learn about this whole thing? Knowing that:

1. My phone service provider has some technology that they are not willing to use, for no apparent reason;
2. The cops will not do anything regarding this matter since no death threats have been issued.

I can safely say that my options are limited to these:

• Call all the parents of the suspected anonymous callers and ask for their cooperation in the matter (doubtful that will go smoothly and resolve anything).
• Get a new unlisted phone number (The cost to get a new unlisted phone number is around 100.00$, plus having to distribute that phone number to people I actually want calling me).
• Move to a different continent (May be a little extreme, but might be worth it in the long run).

None of those are particularly attractive options. It looks like I’m condemned to receive anonymous phone calls for the rest of my life or until those friends grow up / get a life.

On the other hand, I learned that I can place anonymous phone calls from my house, and that as long as I don’t issue death threats, I am absolutely not exposing myself to any form of consequences.

Now the only question that remains:

How long will I choose to take the high road before I finally snap? 

This Sunday, my son got shot in the park.

There are certain things a father never wants to hear. One of the first things that comes to mind is the dreadful “I’m pregnant” – which is kind of ironic because unless you ever heard it, you can’t really be a father – and speaking for myself I would rank the “Someone shot me with a gun in the park” pretty much at the top of the list.

On the positive side, the fact that my son was the one telling me he got shot, while walking and breathing and crying (just a little) meant that he wasn’t dead.

But he had been shot. By a BB gun that shoots plastic pellets. Thrice. And the welts he had? Those looked painful. Luckily, had had been shot twice on the left foot and once in the back. nothing near the head or the face. Nothing that was going to leave a permanent mark. Nothing that would change his life drastically.

Nothing that would take him away from me.

Here’s the conversation we had.

Me: I’m going to Scotland soon, and I’m still debating bringing my tripod or not. What would you do?

Her: Well, I guess it depends how the roads are in Scotland.

Me: ??????????? (O.o <– that’s the face I made) Why are the roads a factor?

Her: Well, where I come from the roads are really bumpy, so sometimes we’d get stuck while driving around in our car.

At that point, I’m thinking maybe she uses a tripod to jack the car out of some potholes. That doesn’t make sense right?

Me: (After more ?????? and O.o) How would that change anything versus bringing a tripod or not?

Can you guess where this is going? I couldn’t. Try to guess, then read the rest of this entry after the jump.

That’s what she thought a tripod was. So I laughed, laughed and laughed some more…

Until I realized she thought I needed that thing to get around.

Ouch.

Ladies and Gentlemen – Tripod.

They say it’s the next Rickroll, but everyone knows that the next Rickroll is the Avitaball. Anyways, I’m looking at this, and what do I see at the 1:45 mark?

…and this is a picture of my dad.

All things considered, this move is a step up from our previous location. Previous location was a temporary swing space in a really old building. That being said, the previous previous building was flagged as marked for demolition in 1985. We moved out of there in 2009. The building was finally demolished in 2010. So who knows when our previous building will be renovated / demolished? Maybe 2057?

In the new freshly renovated space, we have new furniture, including state of the art computer tables in our lab with retractable monitors. It all works from a remote, it’s quite something to see. All the walls are new and not full of holes or Asbestos. Apparently the ceilings are full of Asbestos but it’s totally safe. Cough cough.

It seems the only rooms that have no been renovated are the bathrooms. The first week we moved, the men bathrooms were simply unavailable. The whole week. Now they’re open again, but with hindsight, it was probably better when we couldn’t use them. We have bathrooms without urinals now. This would not be a big deal – I can pee in a stall, really – if people using those bathrooms wouldn’t be complete pigs.

I was going to post pictures, but I won’t. You can thank me in the comments. Seriously.

I’m talking about pee everywhere, including in the bowl. I’m also talking about unflushed crap. Graffitis everywhere. Water all over the counter. Oh how I hope it’s water.

Seriously, are people that dumb?