Leprechaun here (as you might have guessed from the pleasing green tint to the font as well as the title of this entry)~

Good morning fellow campers and co-conspirators in driving Impish insane!

Well actually I think it’s pretty safe to say we don’t have to drive him to insanity this morning. Hell, I doubt we’d even need a golf cart to get him there, someone with a walker and a busted hip could probably escort him to insanity and not even break a sweat after Impish’s experiences of last night and this morning!

How can I possibly make this bold-faced claim of our “beloved and feckless leader”? Simple. I got this e-mail this morning…the only one he has been able to send in the last 12 hours:

I hate AT&T.  The brand new router they sent me is no good.  Took me hours last night with some jack-wagon who couldn’t speak English to figure that one out!  Then it took me all morning with still another bozo-bus to get my OLD modem back up and running because the computer thought, since it was set up for a new router and that router disappeared, that the service was being hijacked.  I had to answer the question of “Who’s your favorite singer?” as a secret question that I set up like 10 years ago!  Only had two chances and it took both Mary and I to figure it out on the second guess!  I was so pissed!

Camel Dung!

Horse-radish!

(Mary has me trying to cut down on my foul language before Izzy calls some other 9 year-old kid a fucking moron and I get called by the principal)

Anyway, got to get to work.  Text me when you get this and I’ll try to slip away and call you.

See poor Impish went and tempted the Norns and Fates, he opened a can of worms by trying to upgrade his computer technology. Specifically, he attempted to go from an ancient 5-year-old DSL modem (works only on a single computer) to a current router/gateway with wireless capabilities (allows multiple computers online at same time and sans pesky cables).

The Norns, Fates and  one of their evil agents of torment, AT&T responded by sending him a fancy new router,  accompanied that is by another of their evil agents of torment, Murphy and his laws. It seems that after Impish spending over an hour on the “plug & play installation” phase of things, Murphy decided to entertain himself by applying his laws to the situation and cause the router to fail after working for only 15 minutes!

This brought about multiple rounds of calls by Impish to AT&T Customer Service and Tech Support (both EXTREMELY oxymoronic). This is usually fruitless, extremely frustrating and any progress can be measured in micro-millimeters/ hour spent on the phone with them as anyone that has ever dealt with either place well knows. If you are extremely blessed to have never experienced this sort of thing, or like me take pleasure and solace in knowing you’re not the only person tormented by these people, please refer to the comic panels at the end of this for a humorous summary of what the experience is like.

Impish finally managed with tech supports “help” ( I use the term in the broadest possible definition and meaning) to get his computer to once again recognise his antiquated modem a scant 10 minutes before he had to leave for work and to take his daughter to the bus leaving no time for a D.L. issue to go out.

Progress after roughly 8 hours of working on the upgrade from the time he opened the Pandora’s Box he received from Arrogant Technology & Torment? None. Frustration level? Epic. End result? After 3 more hours on the phone this morning, he gets to go through the entire affair again on Friday when another Pandora’s Box arrives!

Chances that come Saturday morning Impish Dragon will be a heavily sedated drooling and babbling idiot in a straight jacket with instruction to pee in the corner of his round rubber room? Almost a surety.

Now, lets see those comics while having a chuckle or 2 at Impish’s frustrations and expense!