I hope nobody liked "Keller"

Because he's GONE now. And all variations on ".*Keller.*" as well.

You have to be careful about who you say "FUCK YOU" to. It might just be the sysop and ... who knows? ... he could be in a BAD MOOD.

So... don't do that. Don't be a jerk. It's not nice.

I wasn't really in a BAD MOOD, even though GoDaddy's been JACKING ME AROUND ON THIS GODDAMNED 426 PROBLEM THEY HAVE WITH THEIR SERVERS.

I feel sorry for the poor little lady who answered the phone when I called yesterday (Friday 8/1/08). That morning I woke up to The Proxy List trashed and The Map script getting kicked from the server every time it tried to upload game data, which if you're familiar with the process happens twice a minute if anyone's playing (like Keller won't be from now on).

It took several tries to manually upload The List in tact and if I hadn't been pressed for time (this was at about 6:30AM, just before I leave the house for my Day Job) I would have gotten back on the phone for another "Technical Support" session.

Ugh.

When the day was done and I got back home I slipped into my beer-swilling outfit and sat down in front of the monitor just in time to see...

426 Connection closed. Transfer aborted.

... staring back at me, twice a minute, in beautiful, bold, 12 point Lucida Console.

You see, for about two weeks I've kept the live ftp transfer log opened in an ssh window to keep track of this problem. Usually, it just runs and runs with no problems. Let me repeat... no problems.

So I get my customer account number, my PIN, and my incident ID in front of me and call GoDaddy. While I'm dialing the number and navigating the menu, it stops. Everything goes back to normal.

Then this... ummm... gal answers the phone. Probably a nice young lady, I'm sure. I explain I have an open ticket and give her the incident ID number, which she proceeds to ignore completely!

"Just tell me what's happening," she says.

And I said, "It's all in that incident ID I gave you. I've explained this a dozen times and I'm tired of explaining it. They told me to call whenever it happens and it was happening before I called but now it stopped."

"Well," she said, "this is the first time you've explained it to me."

I tried, boys and girls, I sincerely tried. She wanted to know, like several of her co-workers before her, what "ftp client" I was using. They want to hear "FileZilla" or "Internet Explorer" or something, anything mainstream but I said, "The ftp client that comes with Debian Linux 4.0r1."

"What's it called?" she asked.

"`ftp`", I said.

"No I mean what's the name of the ftp program you're using?" she said.

I said, "It's called 'ftp'. Do you want me to spell it for you?"

Needless to say (every English teacher/professor I ever had always used to scribble "Then why say it?" on any paper I ever wrote with those three words in it - they weren't very original) the call went downhill from there.

"Listen", I said, "it stopped. We're done. I'll call back when it starts happening again becuase I know it will start happening again. I was told to call back when it happens and it happened but it stopped. We're done. Please don't send me a Customer Satisfaction Survey."

And that was it. She was kind of flustered, blubbering "Why won't you let me help you?" as we... well, I, ended the call.

It started up again about 45 minutes later. I got a different Tech Analyst, who took my Incident ID and immediately escalated it to "Second Level Support". They witnessed the problem (not the first time, but it hasn't ever helped) and I was told ONCE AGAIN that I'd get a response in 24 hours.

We'll see how that works out. They've said that twice before and never sent a response. But it's the third time, so that should be "the charm".

So remember, boys and girls, when you play UT on the Dinkster's servers, he likes to play incognito. And, even though it's not your fault, he might be in a Very Bad Mood.