The (Other) End of the Internet

When I got home from the hospital today I was greeted with some really wonderful news. One of our web hosting providers (we use two of them) recently “upgraded” to a newer version of their software and, in the process, they managed to break our MySQL connections. For those who want to know what I just said, WordPress [the blogging software you’re gawking at right now] stores all its information in a database which is served up by a program called MySQL. That database was accessed by telling wordpress to connect to mysql.domain.com (domain being only an example). Well, their new software changed that connection to a different address, but it happened to be one that didn’t work because somebody somewhere made a typo in their settings (which I don’t have access to and can’t even look at, much less change).

While I was in the hospital, my wife was on the phone with this company’s tech support about 5 times. I think she got to speak with someone who actually understood English one time, and he didn’t have a clue what a database server was, much less what the proper address for one would be.

When I got home I tried giving them a call. I got some guy who sounded exactly like the recording of the guy who does the voice for the NOAA Weather Radios. This guy was either brain damaged or just had absolutely no short term memory whatsoever.

He asked for the username on the account.
I told him.
He said he couldn’t find it and asked me for the name the account was under.
I gave him my wife’s name (and spelled it).
He said he couldn’t find it and asked for the User Name again.
I gave it to him (and spelled it).
He said he couldn’t find it and asked for my wife’s name and asked me to spell it phonetically.
I responded “First name: T as in Thomas. A as in Apple. M as in Moron! I as in Ignorant! Last name: L as in Lazy! A as in Asinie! -”

and he hung up on me. Go figure.

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