Toasting The Toasters
There are times I swear I've got Pulsifier blood lurking somewhere in my family tree. And if that name holds no relevance for you, then it's a sad, obvious fact that you have yet to read Gaiman & Pratchett's "
Good Omens" and must remedy this by immediately going out, buying the book and reading it before continuing through this little bit of nowhere.
Go on. We'll wait for you.
...
...
...
...See, wasn't that worthwhile now? But yes, I think I've got a built-in, genetic technology scrambler because things really do seem to malfunction around me more that they really should--DVD players, TVs, remote controls, computers and most impressively: cash machines. I've regaled you before about how I managed to break a
Walmart cash machine with a simple
Mariokart Wii purchase. Likewise, you've been briefed about the time I bought a stackload of manga and took out 2 different cash tills at the local
Chapters bookstore.
Behold the latest edition of me frakking up technology!
Yesterday I took Mel out to dinner at the nearby
Montana's restaurant, half because Mel had a craving for barbeque and half because I wanted to cheer Mel up (as she's been a little down with some worrying about her grandmother's health). After an enjoyable dinner, it was time to pay the bill.
I was paying with a credit card, and this particular
Montana's had those new, swanky portable debit/credit card machines that connect to the banks via WiFi. So the waitress swiped my card and I did the usual button-punching "Verify? Tip?" bit. The machine beeped in agreement and displayed the "Connecting" message. Under the impression that all was well, the waitress momentarily scuttled off to help out a few other customers.
Two minutes later, she returned and examined the card machine, which now happily displayed the caption: "Unable to Connect." Perplexed, the waitress looked over to where the WiFi connection port sat. "Well, the light on it's green. Everything should have worked fine," she mused.
So she tried to bring our meal order up again. Only this time, the machine wouldn't even let her get to the main menu. Now even more perplexed, she grabbed a different portable card reader and tried that. Again, this one couldn't even get to the main menu.
Finally she brought one of the floor managers, who gave each reader a swipe with his employee ID card and had both of them print up the meal orders for the night. And guess who's meal was no longer on either of them? This translates to: as far as the computer was concerned, we had paid our bills & our dues, and were free to go...despite that same computer having told me not five minutes prior that my credit card payment had not gone through. Somehow I had become pure Zen and paid my bill by not paying it.
That, or else I subconsciously managed to pull a Jedi Mind Trick on a machine.
In the end the floor manager scratched his head before finally shrugging and saying, "The last thing I want to do is double-bill your account if it did actually go through. But if it didn't...well, I hope you enjoyed your free meal."
Now there will be no real way to find out whether the transaction did indeed go through until I get my bill at the end April. But thanks to my innate ability to frak up computer systems around me, Mel and I might have just scored a free $50 meal.
Hoo-rah!
Now if you'll excuse me, there are sinister things that need doing in sinister fashions. So while Mel spends her night playing
Lego Star Wars for the sole purpose of destroying absolutely everything with her light sabre, I'll be plotting writing exercises for terrible horrible no-good-very-bad fanfiction.
And also reading this:
Labels: everything's better with zombies, the Zen of free meals and frakked machines
posted by Phillip at 8:04 PM
