Tech Crap

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cricKet wireless sucKs!Large Tuna’s 84 year old mother (Mom Tuna) recently moved in with us. Now that she’s here with us all the time she no longer needed a cell phone. She had gotten one of cricKet’s cell plans since it was cheap and she only used the phone for emergencies. In February she tried to cancel the service pre-moving in with us…neither customer service phone number on the bill worked.

In March she tried again, this time after a long hold she managed to get through to a customer service representative who found out that she wanted to cancel, asked if she could please hold and then left her on hold for 45 minutes until frustrated as all get out mom finally hung up.

Today we get a bill for two months showing the account as still active! So, I call the number this time ready to give someone a piece of my mind….except…their customer service number never actually connects you to a human…just one automated system after another.

I got online and found their “new business” number which…SURPRISE…someone live answered right away! So I proceeded to explain what was going on and that I needed to cancel this account and their customer service number provided anything but. The lady was nice and gave me some sort of “back door” 866 number to get a live customer service agent.

And I did get a live one…who…in…broken…English…explained…that…she…couldn’t…help…me….but…the…cancellation…department…could. And then she put me on what would break the record for the longest hold I’ve been put on. But I wasn’t getting off the phone without this shit getting done. Finally Elise the cancellation lady, whose English was slightly better than the previous broad’s, came on the phone. For the third time I explained the troubles mom had trying to cancel the account and that I wanted to get this resolved.

She then told me she understood and asked if there was any friend or family member I could think of that I could have take over the account! OMG! Now I had lost all patience and proceeded to Chew. Her. Ass. I couldn’t have been more rude but listening to the same hold music for almost an hour really just put me over the edge. I didn’t find any sane reason that I would curse someone else with shitty customer service and horrible reception…especially someone I actually like and want to remain on speaking terms with.

After a massive reaming from me…which I’m sure she only understood about a quarter of she finally realized it was time to just cut me loose and give me what I wanted in the first place. So at the end of an almost one hour and forty-five minute phone call they finally cancelled the account!

Word to the wise…all the horror stories you hear about cricKet…they are ALL true. Worst company ever.

As sad as this is to admit…I finally just got my cell phone internet access fixed. I’d never had it before, got a phone that was capable of web surfing but it never worked. After an hour on the phone with tech support I can finally *gasp* surf the web on my cell phone!

It’s scary that I’m supposed to be a part of the tech-savy generation…

Here’s just a hypothetical *cough*true story*cough* situation…

Say I meet you for the first time and let’s just say you tell me you’re a “hacker”.

And so in JEST I snarkily (it’s a word! No? Ok.) reply

“Oh, so you uh, like, know how to hack Gibsons?”

And you say “Yes.”

And you’re actually serious.

It kinda tips me off that you’re NOT a “hacker”.

And it’s a pretty good bet the conversation is going to halt right there.

And I’m going to pee my pants from laughing so hard.

It boggles my mind that people still watch that damn movie and BELIEVE it.

Figured I’d take a break from cleaning for a few minutes to start doing all the updates to my various blogs…

Figured I’d start with this one…

Didn’t figure I would make my whole fucking blog disappear!

I don’t know what happened or why but after the update everything was just blank. Somehow managed to fix it (don’t ask me how, there was some fiddling and many swear words involved) but I just about lost my mind because silly me didn’t back up! Methinks I’m ready for a beer now…jeez lousie…

P.S. 2.6.2 looks pretty damn nifty back here…I suppose after I finish my others I can sit down and play with it! wh00t!

Below is a reprint of a post I’d written in the VirtualDJ help forum. I figured Google will index this post someday and maybe the next poor shmoe having VirtualDJ/Live365 issues can use this :)
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Hi ya’ll I’m new to the forum :) However, I figured I’d post this as I was quite frustrated earlier about not being able to find a working solution to my problem anywhere online. I work at an online radio station that used Live365 and was using Winamp to broadcast my show. Last week my brother bought me a copy of VirtualDJ as a surprise gift and I finally sat down today to start playing with it!

Much to my chagrin I found that when I entered my IP/Port info from the Live365 site into VirtualDJ’s Broadcast config it would say that it was connected and broadcasting but when I’d try to stream the station Live365 would say that there was no broadcast. *grrr* I tried everything, blocking ports, unblocking ports, telling the ports their mother was a wilder beast and their father smelled of elderberries, etc etc. NOTHING was making it work.

I sat down and had a good long think about it and decided to try ONE last thing before I wrote it off as useless and went slinking back to crappy Winamp. I logged into Live365 and went to My Profile (little grey tabs in the main window). In that window in the third box down was my Live365 Broadcast Format (“Your Broadcast’s Format”).

The format on mine was set at 64kbps/44kHz/stereo mp3PRO. So, I go back to my VirtualDJ and change my bitrate which was set at 96kbps per everyones advice to 64kbps and tried for the last time to broadcast using my shiny new toy…

TOTALLY FREAKIN’ WORKED!! So if you’re having the same problem just check what format your Live365 broadcast is set at then adjust your VirtualDJ bitrate accordingly and give it another try :) I hope this helps someone – good luck!

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