One of the many, many ways in which a bank or financial institution prevents you from accessing your own money is the old debit-card switcheroo. They put that expiration date on the card four years out, and they they always mail you a new card in a blank envelope and perform the "service" of cancelling your old card for you. Has this happened to you? One day, all of the sudden, everything you pay for by automatic withdrawal just stops working. This happened to me a year and a half ago, with my ISP.

My house currently has 9 residents. Over the past two years, with the three apartments turning over, I'd estimate that about 30 people have lived there, so we get their mail plus mail for 10 more or so from years ago. None of these 40 people, apparently, have ever heard of the USPS's mail forwarding service. We don't have individual mailboxes, so you can imagine the huge pile, mostly junk mail, that comes to our foyer table every day. It's understandable how we could miss an envelope marked only with our address, or at least put that envelope in the junk-to-be-perused pile instead of the open-right-away pile.

At any rate, one day my internet service shut off, late at night, because my debit card had been graciously cancelled for me by my wonderful and customer-service-oriented financial institution, the fuckers. At the time I was using chicago.net, because I always go for the ISP that registered the domain for the city, knowing that they'll be the oldest company on the block and thus likely to be staffed by geeks instead of perky customer service reps. There's nothing I hate more than calling an ISP to ask questions and getting some 3-days-of-training call center CSR who probably has pictures instead of words on their computer keyboard. It's always the same:

Me: "I'm interested in upgrading my 28.8 kilobaud Internet connection to a 1.5 Mega bit fibre-optic T1 line. Will you be able to provide an IP router that's compatible with my token ring ethernet LAN configuration?"

CSR (response A): "Uhhh... I have to get my supervisor."
CSR (response B): "Can I have some money now?"

So the geeks at chicago.net were always helpful, if not always cheerful. But when my service was disconnected, they were closed. I was heavily addicted to an online RPG at the time, and so I needed access NOW. I flipped through the yellow pages and for some reason chose "Moore Internet".

11pm, I call and wake up Bill Moore at his home. "I need access and I need it now, I have my credit card in my hand, can you help me?" I desperately pleaded.

"Ayuh," said a half-asleep Bill, and I started to hear keys clacking. He hooked me up, and I got my fix. In the next year and a half or so, there were only two service interruptions, and he was always willing to bullshit about the virus that had taken him out or whatever problems they were having. I would wholeheartedly recommend that if you want a dial-up ISP in the greater Chicago area, call Moore Internet.

But, alas, like grains through the hourglass, these are the technologies of our lives. Our house has four computers now, and though the airport will share the line, we need a bigger pipe like a hippie with a fat sack. I switched to cable-modem today, and disconnected with Bill.

To call him, I had to look him up online. Yahoo pulled up two results for "Moore Internet": "Moore Internet" and "Moore's Machine Shop", both with the same address. For a year and a half, I've been getting my dialup service from a machine shop. And it was the best service I ever had.

So if you've been dicked around by HyperMegaGlobalNet.com, maybe you're looking in the wrong place. It took a machinist to get it right for me. Now, I've gotta do something about those chode-enthusiasts over at the bank. I think I'm going to start keeping my money down at the auto-body shop.