Love is Over.

Twenty years. Twenty years is a long time. It's a long enough period of time that it has a name, like century, or millennium. It's a score, by the way.

My family has been loyal customers of the Puerto Rico Telephone company since we moved to the island. My dad worked for them for around 15 years, and we've probably used their internet service for more than ten years now.

Obviously, what goes around, comes around- these guys have our back, right?

No.
They don't.

Allow me to elaborate- it all started in February. I noticed that my DSL signal would reset itself, and cycle this behavior repeatedly for an hour or two, then go back to normal. It would do this one day, and then be fine the next five days. A minor, if odd annoyance, I thought at first. Then, it started happening with more frequency, and during specific times, usually early night. Mind you, this modem is new, the other one had died back in late 2008.

So, I ring up customer service. They make me dance through the whole 'reset your modem, take off the filters, plug it directly to the computer' jig that they always make you do regardless of what it is you're calling them for. Finally, he asks "But, do you have internet now?"

"Yeah, like I said, it comes and goes."

"Oh, ok then. If you have internet now then problem solved, call us if you need anything." Click.

...

I should've sensed trouble right then and there, but despite the angry rantings liberally peppered throughout my blog, I can be a very patient and forgiving person. That little session repeats itself once or twice more. It's March by now. This time, I don't let him get any words in. "Look, I've called you thrice before and you guys always put me through the same useless procedure. The problem is not how my modem is connected to the computer or the wall, I think that's been proven emphatically."

"You're right sir, I see that you've called before. What I'm going to do is put in a report, so that our guys can check the connection on our side. We'll get back to you." Click.

Remember kids, 'We'll get back to you' is a nice way of getting people off your back when you don't feel like dealing with the problem.

I call once again, and once again they think they're gonna make me unplug my modem. "I've called many times already, I'm not doing that. The problem's on your side, and you said you'd report it."

"You're right sir, I can see that you've called us before. This problem might need a personal visit from one of our technicians." No shit, you think?

He didn't give me a specific time or day, but he took my number and said the technician would call to set up a house call. I bet you guys can see where this is headed. He didn't call, and he came in at a time when no one was home. Left a note saying we weren't there.

And you didn't call, fucker!


Anyways, it's April by now, and since I'm not home much, I'm not on the internet much either, so I usually miss most of the working week's internet downtime. Also, I'm tired of getting nowhere with these people. What really kills me is when the reset cycle happens during weekend nights, and kicks me off any online game I'm playing. It begins to worsen, and the signal deteriorates to the point where whole days go without internet, and the phone line itself is getting buzzy. By the middle of May, whe have no internet and no phone. We start calling much more frequently, and finally get a technician to come over. "The problem isn't inside your home."

BRILLIANT. Give this man a Nobel. Captain Obvious bows before your might.

"We'll have to check over at our side."

Here we go again.

He disappears as quickly as he came. We wonder if he was but a mere fancy... An ephimeral apparition from the great beyond, meant to instill false hope within our hearts. We call a couple of more times, and they assure us that they're testing our shit. It's June by now. Finally, this other technician comes over. "When I saw your case, I had to come over as quick as I could. I couldn't believe how long you guys have waited for service! Don't worry, I'll have you guys fixed up in a jiffy."

Holy shit could it be? A technician that has heard our plights?

"Seems the line that comes from the distribution pedestal is broken... The break is about twenty feet from here. I'll need to go fetch the blueprints to this area and see where the line goes through, and we might have to break some ground to find the line."

"Hey, do what you gotta do, I just want this fixed."

He leaves, and that's the last time I see him. I call once more, and talk to someone in charge. "I can't believe you guys have been waiting for so long! I'm filing an official complaint case."

Sounds offcial enough, but as expected, nothing comes from it. Nothing comes from the following calls we make, either. It's July now. My dad's been talking around with his old PRT buddies. "Oh yeah, technicians and contractors try to avoid breaking ground like they avoid a syphilis-riddled plague."

Guys, this is why immigrant workers come and take all your jobs. Just because the work you have to do sucks, doesn't mean you can leave a paying customer in the dark! Do you have to get the blueprints? Go get them! Do you need to file city permits to bring equipment to break ground? Fucking do it! It's your job- you KNOW you have to! Don't just avoid the calls in the hopes that some other guy gets stuck with the job!

THIS is the kind of shit that is making Puerto Rico destroy itself from within! Well, you guys won. You won't have to do the work. You know why? Because we called the cable company. We got cable tv, 4MB internet, and VoIP telephone, for a lower price than your telephone+1MB internet. Not only that- we went to the cable company on Saturday, and their technician came in SUNDAY MORNING to set us up! SUNDAY MORNING!! Puerto Rico Telephone technicians (more commonly known as Turds) only work Monday to Friday, 9am to 4pm!

Puerto Rico Telephone has failed in the grandest of scales. Fuck you guys, fuck you guys to hell. Go eat a baby dick. You guys are lower than PuDS. From now on, I'll lead a Holy Crusade in the name of informing everyone I meet how much you guys fail at everything. Even if I don't do much, as long as I can convince at least one person to switch, I'll be happy. I hope the economy takes you guys out, because you truly deserve the worst this world has to offer.

Thank you cable technician guy, for hooking me up on such short notice, and for showing me the light of the internet once more.

Ok guys, this has got to stop

There’s really something wrong with Puerto Ricans, I swear. Today is definitive proof of that, but I’ll get to that in a bit. Look, as I mentioned before, I don’t drink- that doesn’t mean I have a problem with drinking- most my friends drink, and I don’t think any less of them. Hell, every few years or so, you might even catch me sipping on a beer or something, and I certainly enjoy wine if the chance appears. The problem I have with drinking, is that most people do it to knock themselves out and lose all feeling and physical connection to this plane of existence.

There’s a bar pretty much across the street from my university. For reasons beyond me, it seems to be open by six, seven in the morning (or maybe it just doesn’t close at all). I know this, because I’ve got friends that drop by at eight a.m., staggering in alcohol-induced giddiness. I KNOW it’s alcohol-induced because I can SMELL them across the campus. These are students of the university, they’ve got class, and some have work. Who in their right mind comes to class reeking of rum?

Tell me, you, reader, being aware of how alcohol impairs you, being aware of what your limits are, being aware how intoxication changes you, how do you convince yourself that boozing up at day-break is a good thing to do? I’d like to know how the thought process that goes through the head of such a person progresses. You can’t possibly tell me that such a person doesn’t realize how obnoxious, belligerent, and unaware of their surroundings they can become when drunk. It’s incredibly annoying and rather disappointing how a person can be proud and happy about the fact that they were drunk in time for class. It speaks volumes about people.

“Dude, you’re being a wet blanket.”

“Oh c’mon, it’s just a few drinks.”

“C’mon man, that was pretty funny!”

I feel very strongly about this, but those that I confront disregard this completely. What’s so fun about being impaired and losing touch with reality? Puerto Rican culture seems to encourage reckless partying (among other things that I’ll certainly rant about in later posts). People brag about how drunk they managed to get- it’s almost like bragging about how many cartons a day you smoke. They re-tell their stories about how the drove off a cliff or woke up with the car wrapped around a tree- but they’re uninjured, so hey, nothing happened, let’s keep drinking! Does everybody really need a bad reality-check before they can step back and say, ‘Hmm, you know, this probably isn’t the best way to start the day…’ ?

In aviation, there are five attitudes which we are taught can be the downfall of any pilot… They’re very universal, actually.

Anti-authority- I tell you, ‘Fifteen bottles of rum in the morning is not good.’, to which I get a ‘who made you the drink police?’. Telling people that their drinking is stupid will usually encourage them to drink more out of spite.

Macho attitude- You’re not awesome unless your liver collapses.

Resignation- ‘Lol, so I’m drunk… What’s done is done :D ’

Invulnerability- ‘So that dude crashed because he was drunk… I *know* how to drive drunk, it won’t happen to me :D ’

Impulsivity- ‘Damn… I’m so drunk out of my mind… Let’s go drink some more! ’

I believe this describes the Puerto Rican hard drinker perfectly.

Now, this is what convinced me that Puerto Rican society has reached rock-bottom- here I was with a friend of mine at a gas station where his mom works at. He comes at me with a ‘You’re not gonna believe this’ grin on his face. He puts in my hand the newest drink product that’s gonna come out to the market. Do you know those aluminum Capri Sun drink pouches? The ones that come with a little straw?

It’s called Gasolina. Yes, Gasolina, like that godforsaken reggaeton bullshit.

The packet says that it’s made of rum, tequila, and fruit juice. That’s right, people- it’s a fucking shot pouch. Its alcohol content is 11%, and the pouch bigger than the aforementioned Capri Sun pouches.

Am I the ONLY person that thinks this is fucking ridiculous?! It has a fucking little straw like the juice pouches! It’s called Gasolina. What. The. Fuck. It has ‘Puerto Rican ’ plastered all over. Basically, Puerto Ricans needed to make alcohol somehow MORE accessible and storable. Geez.

Sometimes, I wonder about the people that surround me.

The Problem With Blogger/Wordpress

Hey all-

So, I'm at a bit of a crossroads. I started blogging. Seems like a pretty simple thing to keep up. Three posts in, I make my first long post, that looks even longer thanks to the narrowness of this particular theme. 'Hey!', I thought, 'I'll just do that nifty 'Read more' post break- that way I can have just the first paragraphs, and the entire thing on its own page :D'

Oh, how wrong I was. Call me naive, but a post break seems like a very standard-issue thing to have for a blog. I mean, it's like... I dunno, making an art page that doesn't accept jpgs... Or, a kite without a string. It's stupid.

Anyways, there SEEMS to be a way around this, Blogger calls it a Blogger Hack. Yes, that's right, what's standard-issue for any other blogging service is an actual, forceful intervention in the code for Blogger. Seriously, what the hell? They actually have a help page about invading the template code with some new strings to, in the end, just change ALL the other posts to a 'Read More' post... Yeah, that's right, you don't hack the post, you hack the entire template! Even a one-line post will say 'Read More :D" on it forever. Also makes me think that, if they took the time to come up with a hack, they could have simply coded this into the wysiwyg editor, like Wordpress has.

So you might be saying, 'lol but at least u found a hak to do it in the meentim ;)!1!!"

Ha! Ha!

No.

The hack requires my template to have some very specific code that just doesn't seem to exist within it. Either that, or the hack is for Blogger, not Blogger Beta (Is Google taking over everything?), a soon-to-be-mandatory conversion that I joined preemptively. Hindsight is badly coded, apparently. During all of this, I'm talking to Andrew (or Ipsum, as he is known in the text placeholder underground), and he tells me about the Joys of Sex Wordpress. He talks well of Wordpress, and since he's used both, I figure the least I could do is give it a go. It started off gloriously, seeing as SOMEHOW, 'Gravekeeper' wasn't taken... This already put it ahead of Blogger by a few light-millennia. Andrew sweetens the deal: I can just import everything from Blogger as-is. This is good shit.

Ha! Ha!

No.

Apparently, Blogger Beta is so buggy, unstable and just so ew, that the Wordpress guys just don't dare code the importer to bring in stuff from there- you can only import Blogger Classic. This is... Vexing. I try searching the forums (in both places), usually getting a 'ur fuked', 'i just copy pasta evrything frm bloger to wp', or a DIFFERENT hack that STILL requires me to have code in my template that is simply not there no matter how many times they claim it to be. In the end, I got tired of it and just posted the entire thing. I hate it, but fuck it, nothing else has worked. If you can find a fix, I'd LOVE to hear it. Seriously, you'll win all the internets in the world. I'll get you women, men, and anything in between.

Help me, and I'll post a pic of me a friend and I call 'Happy Nigga'.


PS: I find it so hilarious that the Blogger Spellchecker does not recognize 'preemptively' as a word (it's an adverb, smartasses), but knows the right way to spell 'Nigger'. Make of that, what you will.