I’d like to propose a new Holiday.

     Let’s let February 20th be the new, annual “Quit Trying to Make Fill-In-Your-Name-Here Have a Bad Day Day.”  (e.g. “Quit Trying to Make Mark Steel Have a Bad Day Day”)

     That would be cool.  One day, where nobody’s trying to screw up legal processes, steal from, yell at, scream at, libel, slander, backstab, screw over or generally just act asshats to everyone else in the world.

     Sounds like a cool thing, doesn’t it?

     But man … on a day like that…

     Government, Comcast, and most banks would cease to function.

I haven’t done an Asshat of the Day Award before but given the situation it seems warranted.

At 7:05AM EDT, a Denial of Service attack started from multiple open proxies from across the globe using a brute force password attack against a previously open service. This has been going on for weeks so it’s not a huge surprise that it eventually succeeded. At 7:21AM EDT, our “fan,” known only as “1 hAppY pUppY,” logged into a shell account and edited some critical files.

[ Edit by Mark : WTF?  Pulled out the IP.  See comments! ]

Our brainiac (and I use this term with utmost facetiousness) came from 67.187.xx.xx (Hostname: c-67-187-xx-xx.hsd1.wa.comcast.net, Aliases: c-67-187-xx-xx.hsd1.tx.comcast.net, c-67-187-xx-xx.hsd1.tn.comcast.net).

Thank you, Random, soon-to-be-ex, Comcast Employee.

To try and pass your skill off as a script (“bl0GituD3 d3fAc3R 1.0b5 bY jT”) while making numerous typos is the mark of a true Genius. And leaving the logs, backup files and history was a brilliant move in that we would expect a hacker to cover his tracks. Leaving the “i” instead of changing it to a “1” in “bl0Gitud3” was a truly brilliant, personal touch. You went far to look like a dolt that we might underestimate your “mAd sk1LLz.”

No. I can’t even say that with a straight face.

You’re an Asshat.

Not the brightest bulb on the Christmas tree are you? You’ve only proven yourself to be a disingenuous coward. A brute-force script shows that you have neither skill nor finesse, and far too much time and personal anger on your hands.

Mark said it best the other day.

Some people need to get lives.They should start by getting off the Internet a few hours a day… The real world can be quite … titillating.

I think it should have read:

“Some people need to get laid.”

ON DEMAND!!!!   Yes!

 Every so often I get bored and turn on the boob-tube.  As usual, I am sorely disappointed that I pay SATAN (Comcast blog) a hundred bucks or so a month for 197 channels on which there is not a damn thing to watch.

However, there is a slight redeeming quality to my personal hate of beelzebub.  On-Demand!  Yay!

Now where else will one find such an unlimited supply of good stuff?

My joy stems from the fact that I found TubeTime, and this isn’t the first time I’ve experienced such utter happiness.

Today, I found *sniffle, tear* Fantasy Island, my friends!  How could I possibly  resist?  

Well, what other show can take viewers into the past, into the future, into kinky love affairs? 

But wait! That’s not all, folks!  Your host for the journey is a sexy dude, with orange skin, a white leisure suit, and a midget!

Some freaky crap went on there on Fantasy Island…  Scary, sometime criminal things.  You know how warped folks can be when they are fantasizing. Anyhoo, Mr. Rork, lets these demented people have their freaky fantasy (generally with ill results waiting in the wings), only to step in at the last second and save the day!

At the end of the day, all visitors get a lei and fly off on ZEEEplane. 

Wow.  On-Demand!  You’re my hero.

If not of satan, then a spawn of said demon.
They are almost as bad as Wal-Mart, yet another corporate money-grubber I hate with a purple passion.

I went to pay my monthly Comcast bill online by check, although I didn’t have much money and needed money right away so I went to the check into cash on getwell. Have technology, why not use it. Save a stamp, save a tree.
Well, when I clicked submit, it gave me an error message and number, which I’m glad I wrote down. So, I called and went through an seemingly endless barrage of the same automated questions being asked over and over by an annoying voiced robot. Then, as has been every other time I’ve called Comcast, I was put into the standard holding pattern like an Airbus 300 waiting to land at Los Angeles International Airport.

I was given clearance to land, and began my decent into the always fun world of call center customer service.

I spoke with girl this time who said she didn’t see any pending payments or anything and that I should just make my payment over the phone.

So, I did. With my debit card, which goes immediately. Come to find out 30 minutes later, the internet payment had went through and here is my confirmation.

So, I call them (Comcast) back, I go through the automated answering phone maze again and back into the standard holding pattern like an F16 circling Baghdad, only to talk to a not so pleasant or helpful fellow named Josh. They can’t stop either payment, he says.
“Hello.” Say I, Just reverse the charges on the debit card, pal!!??!!”

To which Josh says repeatedly, “I’m sorry, ma’am. Once payments are through, they are through and there is nothing we can do about it. I spent more than 45 minutes of my valuable time, not to mention all the hold time, fighting with Josh about how all of this is not my fault.
I would have never paid over the phone had I not received an error message up on the clicking of the submit button.

So, I get on my cell phone and call the bank whilst on hold . And, as the useless bloodsuckers they are, can’t stop any payments, as both are technically electronic payments.

Color me screwed. So two payments in the amount of $153.00 are going to be sucked out of my bank account because Comcast’s website sucks on severely proportionate levels

Now I’m on hold with them again, as they always have higher than normal call volume.