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It's the Magical Internet Sniper

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  • It's the Magical Internet Sniper

    You've probably never heard of the Magical Internet Sniper. I know him quite well. Whenever he gets bored of somehow managing to headshot me from all the way across Well while I am standing behind a building, he scampers off into the ether of the web to take aim at random emails and faxes.

    Unfortunately, I still haven't figured out where to acquire a Magical Internet Spy to deal with Magical Internet Sniper, which means that sometimes he takes things out.

    Which means I get to have this conversation three times a day.

    Customer: "Did you get that thing (photo, email, fax) I sent?"
    Me: *checks* "Doesn't look like it."
    Customer: "BUT I SENT IT!"

    Seriously, please don't be so offended. I'm not calling you a liar. I'm not implying you are a fool who can't dial a series of buttons correctly. I am merely stating fact: I do not have the thing.

    Magical Internet Sniper has ensured that both our computers, the fax machine, yea, the very internet itself, is not a perfect tranquility. He hides in the datastreams, picking out bits at random to stick to the wall via well-timed arrow, and ensures that net utopia will never be. I know not why this creature exists, and yet he does. He is simply a force of nature that also throws pee for no reasonable explanation.

    When we suffer his attack, do not fret. He does in fact have a weakness of spending long periods of time choosing exactly the right nest from which to launch his attacks. When I tell you that I do not have the thing, all that is required of you is that you try to send it again. By the time Magical Internet Sniper has re-situated himself, your data should have managed to escape harm and be safely on the control point that is my end of the internet.

    It is the rule of the game. Respawn until you get it right.
    "Maybe the problem just went away...maybe it was the magical sniper fairy that comes and gives silenced hollow point rounds to people who don't eat their vegetables."

  • #2
    I seem to be less susceptible to the Magical Internet Sniper than I am the Magical Internet Heavy.

    I lose a bunch of random stuff at once. No rhyme or reason.
    "If your day is filled with firefighting, you need to start taking the matches away from the toddlers…” - HM

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    • #3
      Just blame the NSA, their buffers overflowed & your file got lost.
      This was one of those times where my mouth says "have a nice day" but my brain says "go step on a Lego". - RegisterAce
      I can't make something magically appear to fulfill all your hopes and dreams. Believe me, if I could I'd be the first person I'd help. - Trixie

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      • #4
        Sorry for the ignorance, but with many email services can't you get confirmation when an email has been read/received? If so then chalk the lost info to the all devouring void, and resend?

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        • #5
          Yep -- but, it needs to be both enabled on the originating end, and not blocked by the receiving end, in order to function.
          "For a musician, the SNES sound engine is like using Crayola Crayons. Nobuo Uematsu used Crayola Crayons to paint the Sistine Chapel." - Jeremy Jahns (re: "Dancing Mad")
          "The difference between an amateur and a master is that the master has failed way more times." - JoCat
          "Thinking is difficult, therefore let the herd pronounce judgment!" ~ Carl Jung
          "There's burning bridges, and then there's the lake just to fill it with gasoline." - Wiccy, reddit
          "Retail is a cruel master, and could very well be the most educational time of many people's lives, in its own twisted way." - me
          "Love keeps her in the air when she oughta fall down...tell you she's hurtin' 'fore she keens...makes her a home." - Capt. Malcolm Reynolds, "Serenity" (2005)
          Acts of Gord – Read it, Learn it, Love it!
          "Our psychic powers only work if the customer has a mind to read." - me

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          • #6
            Quoth Yes I am watching you View Post
            Sorry for the ignorance, but with many email services can't you get confirmation when an email has been read/received? If so then chalk the lost info to the all devouring void, and resend?
            Yeah, you can, but not everybody uses it or maybe not every email system has it. I have this quirk about it. I hate that thing. When I get email that asks if I want to send notification saying I opened it, I always check No. But then, at work I always respond to emails, so at that point it's obvious that I received it.
            When you start at zero, everything's progress.

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            • #7
              I have this happens to me wayyyy too often.

              Customer INSISTS they sent their photos to me for printing, and yet I have none. These two examples stand out (and both end the same way).

              Customer 1: I sent the photos!!!!
              Me: Under what name?
              Customer 1: XYZ
              Me: ( Checking all of our photo orders that have been printed, as well as the computer, which shows pending orders.) I'm sorry, I don't see anything under that name. Is there another name it could be under?
              Customer 1: NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO What am I supposed to do? I NEEEEEEEED them!!
              Me: I'm sorry, ma'am. Sometimes internet orders just don't get here. Did you get a confirmation email?
              Customer 1: no
              Me: If I had received your order, you would have gotten a confirmation email. Please resend the order.
              Customer 1: But I SENT them!
              Me: Ma'am, I cannot give you photos I do not have (yes, I actually said this, she was pissing me off)
              Customer 1: ARRRRRRRRRRGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHH and leaves.

              About an hour later, phone call from Customer 1 .....
              Customer 1: I was in there a little while ago, my name is XYZ.
              Me: Yes, I remember you.
              Customer 1: The photos "might" be under name ABC.
              Me: ABC? Oh yes, I have those, they were printed this morning.


              PAWNAGE!


              The second got a little less whiny and a LOT more aggressive.

              Customer 2 sends his aunt (an elderly lady) in to pick up his pictures.
              Customer 2: I'm picking up pictures for my nephew.
              Me: Okay, under what name?
              Customer 2: DEF
              Me: (Again checking the printed orders and the computer showing pending orders). I'm sorry, I don't have an order under that name. Is there another name it could be under?
              Customer 2: No, I don't think so.
              Me: (Again explains how sometimes Internet orders don't get here and apologizes)
              Customer 2: It's not your fault. It's okay,he can resend it, right?
              Me: Yes

              She leaves. About 10 minutes later, the phone rings - and it's the nephew. I'll spare you the cussing and screaming, just suffice it to say that he was NOT happy. He said "So I just paid for photos that I'm not gonna get??" I start to explain that all he has to do is resend the order, I will make sure he is not charged twice, and besides your credit card isn't charged until you actually pick up the photos. He hangs up on me mid-sentence.

              Another 10 minutes go by. Phone rings again. It's him again. "I just resent the order. Is it there?" Again, I'll spare you the cussing. I assure him it is and proceed to print the order.

              About 15 minutes later, the aunt comes back in. Meanwhile, when I printed the "resent" order, I realize that I have actually printed that order before. So I go back through the printed orders and see that I did .... but it was under the name of JKL.

              So, I bring both orders up to the aunt and tell her that *nephew* had sent the first order in under the name of JKL, but told her to ask for the order under the name of DEF. She's cool, takes both orders, pays for them, and is on her merry way.

              Total price of DEF's order? 31 cents (Yes, THIRTY-ONE CENTS)

              God, I hate people!

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              • #8
                This thread reminds me of Peter Hippopotamus from Harvey Birdman:
                http://video.adultswim.com/harvey-bi...-timeline.html

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                • #9
                  Quoth Yes I am watching you View Post
                  Sorry for the ignorance, but with many email services can't you get confirmation when an email has been read/received? If so then chalk the lost info to the all devouring void, and resend?
                  Most folks *deliberately* disable that "feature" because while it was useful back in the 1970s and 1980s, in the modern internet with all the spammers, it's a major liability.

                  Some spammers use it. And if you have it enabled, then when you open that message, they get notified that they have have an actual *live* address. which is quite valuable and will get sold to other spammers.

                  Also, contrary to popular belief, email is *not* instantaneous. You send it to your email server. That server *may* send it directly to the recipient's server.

                  More likely, your server sends it to a higher level server at your provider, that sends it to a high level server at the recipients provider. Which sends it to a lower level server which sends it to them.

                  At *any* of these steps, the mail can get held up by anything from connection troubles to a server going down after receiving the message but before sending it on. In which case, it will be "stuck" until that server comes back up. Or the connection issue is resolved.

                  I date back to the days where you had to explicitly route emails. That is, you'd have an address like ...!tektronix!reed!percival!leonard
                  (send it to tektronix (a "well-known server" back then) and tektronix would send it to reed, whivch would send it to percival (a friend's Xenix box which would place it in user "leonard"'s mail inbox).

                  So other folks would have to reverse their "address" (say ...!hp!bogus!fubar!george) resulting in an "address" of: fubar!bogus!hp!tektronix!reed!percival!leonard

                  It usually took several *days* for an email to get to its destination.

                  When the domain naming system came in, things actually got *worse* for a while, because you could no longer route around known down servers. You had to depend on the various servers along the way to know what not to route thru.

                  Nowadays, things *usually* work fast. Continuous IP connections (rather than uucp connections that only happened a few times a day over slow modems) mean that stuff doesn't hang around on servers long. But downed servers and mistaken routing tables can till cause mail to hang up somewhere.

                  It's just that people don't realize anymore that mail *can* get hung up or lost.

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                  • #10
                    wow that was beautifully written!
                    Ne auderis delere orbem rigidum meum! - Don't you dare erase my hard disk!

                    This is Tech Support, not Customer Service.
                    What's the difference?
                    We're allowed to tell you "no".

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                    • #11
                      I onetime had an email come in that was sent 6 months earlier. Things do get hung up in "customs" sometimes.
                      I might be crazy, but I'm not Insane.

                      What? You don't play with flamethrowers on the weekends? You are strange.

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