April Fools 2k

Stupid stuff to do when you are communicating with a support person working for your Internet Service Provider. Always a hit.

Written by Axel "Cosmo" Sjøstedt and Peder Kristoffersen
Published 3rd April 2000

At every opportunity tell your ISP's staff that your son, daughter, neighbor or friend is an Internet expert. Therefore your settings must be right.
When receiving tech support proceed as long as possible without admitting that your operating system is a Mac not a PC.
If Tech Support tells you to "hit any key." You say "which one is that?"
If your ISP say's "tilde" you say "oh, you mean the squiggly line." This is interchangeable with the @ ( "at" symbol ), call it the "curly A".
Instead of saying "URL" pretend URL is a word and pronounce it "Earl."
Use a 9600 baud modem and 4 megs of RAM, enough said.
Ask your ISP to install your software then arrive at their office carrying your monitor instead of your computer.
Whenever possible correspond with your ISP through email. I can not stress this enough you must always use UPPERCASE!
Make up your own computer terms then act surprised when the ISP staff doesn't understand your terms. Some examples are "modium" (number of modems), "earl" (see above), "Andorra" (as opposed to Eudora), "Outthere Fast" (Outlook Express), and "the typing thing" (IRC).
Use email addresses in place of web site addresses, then complain that the site doesn't exist.
Call your ISP with the following complaint. "When I signed on for this thing you never mentioned anything about cookies!"