You have got to be fugging kidding me.

I got this in my email. I'm not going to do my usual snarky comments the way I usually do for reasons that will be disclosed at the end. I don't want to spoil the surprise.

From:     Simon Timothy

Reply-To:     simontimothy@voila.fr

Subject:     PLEASE CONTACT MY ATTORNEY FOR MORE DETAILS.

Date:     Fri, 22 Oct 2010 12:20:43 GMT (08:20 EDT)

Hello

I pray that this email reaches you in the best of health. This letter may come to you as a surprise due to the fact that we have not yet met. The message could be strange but it's real and you will realise this if you pay some attention to it. I want to notify you about it at least for the sake of your integrity.

My name is Major Simon timothy, a direct and only remaining member of the wealthy Timothy's family. I am an astronaut with the Burkina Faso Air Force and on loan to the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA).

In 2003 I left earth aboard the Mars Rover, Spirit. Seven months later I arrived on Mars. Prior to departing earth, I deposited the amount of US$ 11,600,000 (Eleven million, six hundred thousand United States dollars) in four safety galvanized boxes in a European financial institution which will be disclosed to you upon your acceptance of my proposal.

Last year, during the course of my research on Mars, I was ambushed by a group of anal-dwelling rebel Martians who inflicted great torturous pain upon my body with anal probes. After a few weeks of enduring the physical pain, they released me. As a direct result of this cruelty, I am now very ill with a ruptured uterus that has defiled all forms of medical treatment and which has been deemed to be inoperable by my Martian surgeons. I am writing this mail to you on a laptop from my hospital bed in the Martian capitol of Zhwrong.

I now have but a few weeks to live and I am far too ill to endure the long and arduous journey back to my Burkina Faso home. Therefore I have decided to donate the bulk of my fortune to a church or charitable organisation that will utilize this money in the manner which I shall impart to you later. In return for your assistance, I shall authorise you to keep 30% of this fund for your trouble and aggravation plus an additional 10% to cover your expenses. 

You should contact my attorney in Ouagadougou immediately with your address and

Telephone number and he will give you his full contact information and guidance so that we can make arrangements as soon as possible.

CONTACT ADDRESS OF THE

ATTORNEY.HON. BARRISTER AKPARA KADIOGO.OFAKPARA

CHAMBERS.TELPHONE:  +22678235021 

FAX: + (226) 50014470

E-MAIL: akparaassociatechambers2@yahoo.com 

SINCERELY YOURS,

MAJOR SIMON TIMOTHY,

NATIONAL AERONAUTICS AND SPACE ADMINISTRATION

ELYSIUM VETERINARY INFIRMARY

ZHWRONG, MARS

NANO

Now the reason that I'm not going to give this my usual snarky comments is the simple fact that I wrote this. Yes, this work of fiction is something I sent out to a 419 scammer as a joke. My wife can attest to this as there is a rough draft of this on the desktop of her computer. Some asshole took my work of sarcastic parody of their poorly written scams and then started sending this out as if someone would would believe this.

Anyone who knows me is well aware of the fact that I love to use terms like "Anal-Dwelling" as a prefix to an insult to people that really honk me off. I refer to many as "Anal-Dwelling Twat Monkeys". I deliberately used the deadly injury of a ruptured uterus because coming from a guy (the name I used was Tenchi Misaki from the Tenchi Muyo Anime) a ruptured uterus was absurd.

Sort of like Larry the Cable Guy and his bit about how a female relative freaked out about a new medicine for testicular cancer that was advertised on the television. Said that she needed to call her doctor to see if she needed like the add told her to. Larry said something to the effect of "You need testiculars first."

Wow! So one of my replies and bits of humor came back and bit me in the ass. I'm amazed, astonished and baffled. Do they not know what a Martian is? Do they not know basic male/female anatomy?

The wife says that I ought to reply and ask them for a cut of the profits since I am the artist. I would do this if it was not for the fact that these people are being hunted by their government, I've seen a video from the BBC showing how they hunt down these people and arrest them. They'll close down a cyber cafe and take all the computer equipment (GAWD I'd love to dumpster dive that evidence locker after the trial is done...think of the beowulf cluster I could have). So I really do not want to attract the attention of the government. If I claim that I wrote this and try (even in jest) to collect money...I could end up in hot water. I'll go pretty far to laugh at their expense...but this is one area where I'll leave them alone. I'll claim the original letter, I'll claim that I wrote it, and I'll claim that they stole it for their nefarious plans.

There are limits to my madness.

Apple

Ok, so I dug my heels and was very narky about spending the cash on Apple branded products. Why spend $150 on a 16gb iPod when I can get other MP3 players for far cheaper? Then we broke down and bought one.

Ok, it was nice and the features were pretty spiffy. So we bought one for Kier as well. All well and good. There are accessories for the iPod and it is nice, light, compact, and rugged. Ok, it was worth it.

So our birthday comes around and we decide to splurge and get the iPhones as our upgrade phones. They were $99 each, but we wanted the nifty apps and other features. Yeah, they were awesome too.

Except mine stopped being awesome. The speaker would stop working so I wouldn't hear the ringtone of an incoming phone call unless I plugged in the headphones (which would play the sounds), jiggled the plug a bit, pressed a few buttons to get sounds to play, sacrifice small mammals to pagan gods, sell off my first born to the gypsies...

...oh wait. I don't have one of those and my wife's firstborn is too old to be sold to the gypsies. Damnit.

So I call apple care support. They give me some silly rigmarole about putting the plug in and out of the headphone jack while the phone is inverted 10 times. That didn't help.

So they told me to take the phone to the Apple Store and get a Genius Bar appointment. The Genius Bar is their help desk and product support. I'll do it and I'll drive to Annapolis...but I'm expecting that this is going to take an hour of begging for them to fix the problem that is intermittent and odds are won't occur when I get there.

So I go there and tell them the problem. They tell me that they want to check for a loose cable. None are found. I'm now thinking that I'm stuck with a lemon of a phone. Great. I'm looking at iPhone speakers that attach to the phone thinking that may be my only option for the next 2 years until they let me upgrade again.

10 minutes later they come out and tell me that there was nothing loose and that my problem may be one of two possibilities. One may be a firmware (software) glitch and that a factory restore could fix the issue. I told him that the Apple Care phone support already had me do that. He then said that well it's obviously hardware and that he is willing to replace the phone right there and then.

Really? 10 minutes to determine that and make sure that the customer is happy? Damn...that...that's good service.

So they come out with a new phone and he asks me if I made a backup of the phone before I came in. I said yes and since I had the laptop with me he showed me how to update the firmware to the most recent and how to restore my settings and apps. DAYUM! Not just good service...Damn Good Service.

So...now we're looking at the iPad. Sure it's going to cost a bit, but the things it offers makes it damn useful to us and we know that while the cost is a bit for something that is essentially a netbook, we know that we'll have good support if anything goes wrong with it.

So in a few short months...I went from an Apple indifferent, to an Apple Supporter.

Yeah, it's pricey, but it is the classic example of you get what you pay for. I paid a quality price and I got a quality product.

You ain't hearing me complaining.