In which you simply cannot make this shit up! LOL!

CALLER #1
My caller wanted to “buy bandwidth… enough for, say, a thousand?”

Me: “A thousand what?”
Caller: “You know, people. Computers.”
Me: “What, you want an OC-3 or something?”
Caller: “Yeah, I have a T-i at one place.”
Me: “You mean a T-1?”
Caller: “Yeah, one of those.”
Me: “What do you want to do with it?”
Caller: “Sell wireless in Post Falls.”
Me: “Do you, ah, have any technical experience with wi-fi?”
Caller: “I know people.”
Me: “Ah.”
Caller: “Where’s, like, the demarc? I want to buy a lot.”
Me: “The demarc?”
Caller: “Yeah, where, like, the Internet comes into town. Someone told me it was a few blocks from here. I want to connect to that.”

So, because I’m SUPER AWESOME, I explained that: (1) backbone is owned primarily by telephone companies, and, as much as he wanted to argue with me about it, it was still true that he’d need to contact his local telco to buy “a lot,” (2) in order to sell wireless successfully he’d need to buy a frequency, which often cost millions of dollars, because wireless companies who do not tend to go WAY out of business, (3) wi-fi is not typically delivered through plate glass windows via laser (whatever he meant by that), and (4) he could probably start by putting, say, cable or something into his “thousand unit building” and getting off my phone.

I did give him a sales rep’s number in case he wanted to call back tomorrow during regular business hours, but I don’t know that the gentleman was quite ready to become an ISP just yet.

CALLER #2
The caller after him has been calling every single week for months, and was calling back today for the forth time when I got her.

She contradicted herself nine times in two sentences (can you get online OR NOT? can you surf OR NOT? can you send mail OR NOT? can you receive mail OR NOT? JESUS, LADY, MAKE UP YOUR BLOODY MIND!) and I basically told her that her operating system, Mac OS 9, was retired seven years ago and that no one is going to support it, especially not me.

I love tech support! Love it!

In other news, tomorrow is VUBOQ’s one year unemployment anniversary so I sent him something from his wishlist. You could, too!