Back when high-speed internet was first getting started, my parents wanted to hop on the bandwagon right away and called a technician to come set them up. At the time I was in junior high school and couldn't be there when the tech showed up.

It is important to note that although we were quick in getting high-speed Internet, we didn't have a particularly state-of-the-art machine. It didn't have a cdrom drive, for example, but I assumed the tech would be installing the software from a floppy.

Imagine my horror when I came home and found my mother trying to dig the CD out of our ancient 5 1/4" drive with a key, while the "tech" stood behind her, scratching his head and saying, "I've seriously never seen one of those before. Are you SURE it's not a cdrom drive?"

A friend of mine told me that when he was in junior high school, they got a computer in the classroom free for the students to use during breaks. The first thing many of them would do to was to change the dull Windows 95 wallpaper. The school's IT Manager for some reason thought of this as vandalism, so he frequently fixed it in the only way he knew how -- by reinstalling Windows.

I was almost on the floor laughing when my friend told me about how the IT Manager had come into their classroom one day and told the students, "Will you STOP changing the desktop background? I've had to reinstall Windows every day for the last two weeks now!"

A few weeks ago I was calling around to some local phone companies, looking for DSL. I have cable right now, but I'm extremely unhappy with the pathetic support they give. Anyway, the phone company is one of the main providers of DSL, so I called their number to ask some questions.

* Me: "I want to get more information about the DSL."
* Her: "What would you like to know?"
* Me: "Is the 768K download in bits or bytes? I'm assuming bits."
* Her: "I believe it's in bytes."
* Me: "So you are giving me faster than my cable connection for cheaper? Are you sure its not 768 kilobits, which is about 96 kilobytes?"
* Her: "I'm pretty sure it's 768 kilobytes."
* Me: "Ok, that works. As for the IP address, is it static or dynamic?"
* Her: "It's dymanic."
* Me: "Oh, ok. So how often does it change?"
* Her: "The only time it ever changes is when you go in there and change it."
* Me: "Ummmm, then how would that be dynamic if it never changes?"
* Her: (click)

Ok, so, strike one. The girl in tech support didn't know what she was talking about, so she hung up on me.

I called back, and this time a man answered the phone. I told him the girl was not only clueless but hung up on me, and I am already considering not using them. He said he would try to help.

I asked him the same questions. The download speed is 768 kilobits. The IP address is dynamic and changes every few hours. But he couldn't answer anything else: he didn't know where I would get the DSL modem from, if they are using internal DHCP, how the changing IP address will affect my connectivity and downloads, etc. He finally admitted that at that particular call center, they really don't know much about it. He gave me a number for tech support.

I called that number and a lady answered. She gave me a set of responses that were different still.

I finally wrote in to their customer service and told them that after one person clearly had no clue what she was talking about and hung up on me, a second was guessing and admitted he didn't know, and tech support gave me completely different answers, I will not be using their services. The next day I received a reply. The man who replied basically said he was sorry for such bad service, and please call the following number for support.

It was the number I dialed the first time.

* Customer: "When my computer boots up, all I get is a black screen that says, 'boot2/'."
* Tech Support: "What operating system are you using?"
* Customer: "I'm using Windows 98 and NT 4.0."
* Tech Support: "Ok, I'm the Mac tech. The Windows tech is gone, but I can try to help you."
* Customer: "Ok, what should I do? I've reformatted the hard drive and have fresh installs of both operating systems."
* Tech Support: "Sir, have you put any cheese or mustard in your a drive?"
* Customer: "What? Did you just ask me if I put cheese or mustard in my floppy drive?"
* Tech Support: "Yeah, we've had that happen a lot lately."
* Customer: (staring blankly at roommate, who was laughing uncontrollably on the floor) "I think I'll wait for the PC tech to get back. Thanks for the help." (click)