Northern Virginia Roll Call

IDGAF

 

But it never finishes?!

 

Pretty much the reason I've bailed out on all social media. Pretty convinced that stuff is outright evil:

Twitter: Bot heaven, vast majority of the accounts are automated. Only good for publicly berating a company for poor service and forcing a response
Facebook: How to make everyone an enemy with your opinion. Also, F Mark Zuckerberg and him marketing people as a commodity
Instagram: Unrealistic version of people's lives. Getting the occasional picture of a friend's family (only good I've seen) doesn't offset the TONS of extra crap
Snapchat: WTF??? I've only been doing software user interface design for 34 years, what do I know, but DAMN, that thing is a mess
Reddit: OK, I actually like Reddit but it requires really narrowing down your feeds and avoiding the comment areas at all costs

Hell, only reason I'm active on TW is because A) I've met more than a few of the folks in this thread and like them so it's essentially a chat session and B) TW is hands down the best resource for figuring out what's up/wrong/needs to be done on my Tacoma.

 

I agree with this completely

 

Whatever happened to the "Do Not Call List"? Seems like I get more crap everyday.... and now on my cell! Wish someone would come up with a way to strike back at these guys!!!

 

X2

 

Idk I’ve won like 10 free cruises, all I had to give was my name, address and SS number. Gonna be a fun summer!!

 

It's a HUGE problem. Virtual numbers are easily purchased, cheap and often done off-shore so they are beyond the reach of US law enforcement (not that anyone is even trying to solve this problem). The latest technique is to buy a phone number with a prefix that's local to a well known mobile provider. My carrier is AT&T and most of the phones in our family have numbers that start close to this: 703-365-XXXX. As a result we get a lot of calls from something close to the same area code / prefix as ours.

Scammers are buying those numbers and setting bots loose on them, trying to get people to answer because they see an unknown inbound number that's pretty close to theirs and figure "it's probably safe...". Lots of the "I'm with Microsoft and we found that your computer has a virus. I'll help you remove it..." calls come from stuff like that, generally targeting non-tech people. Other bot farms are used to scam people with crappy marketing schemes, etc.

We really just need a managed directory for phone numbers again that ensures accountability for who owns a phone number. This USED to be the old caller ID system but the phone companies have pretty much abandoned it.

 

I just LOVE this call...

Hello, Mr. Young, I'm calling to inform you that you have been selected (for whatever) because you stayed in one of our resorts...

I have NEVER stayed in a resort in my entire 60 years. They hate it when I insist they tell me what resort. I like to keep them on the line for about 10 minutes, simply repeating "tell me what resort, tell me when I stayed at your resort, tell me where the resort is". Over and over and over...

 

Yeah they are pretty ridiculous. My coworker gets a call on his office phone from this girl Amanda who sounds awfully suspicious like she’s a robot or something haha

 

OK Don, you really need to watch this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UXVJ4JQ3SUw

 

Ringing as I read this LOL!

 

Depending on my mood, I tend to drag it out, too. My favorite is to freak out and learn that I've won: "I'VE NEVER WON ANYTHING IN MY ENTIRE LIFE! OH MY GOD OH MY GOD!"

 

I am going to make a for sale thread in the BST forum shortly, but wanted to throw it out there for anyone interested local first.
I have this set up for sale: https://www.theretrofitsource.com/complete-retrofit-kits/projectors/bi-xenon-morimoto-mini-h1-7-0.html?preselect=50325,54404,51657. Retails for $160 + shipping; I am asking $125. Morimoto Mini H1 Projectors 7.0, Mini Turbine shrouds and 5500k H1 Bulbs. Everything is BNIB. Also have the retro rubber to finish the job - $20.

 

OMG, I should not have gone down this rabbit hole but this is hilarious. Guy built bots he transfers his incoming marketing calls to and it's pure comedy gold:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=17&v=JODjtsQOC3Y

 

Buy one of these and blast their drums back in time.... they wont call back any time soon! I love blasting the Microsoft scammers after I fuck with them for awhile...

 

the trick is to talk really really quiet for the first minute or two of the call (so the operator has to turn his volume to max to be able to hear you)

THEN

air horn.

 

Love it. I may be ordering...

 

Bill I may need some lift time as I am going to be installing some train horns soon....

 

Cancel and restart may be pressed sometimes...

I never had any of those accounts, except for tw obviously. Always hated that (anti)social networking crap.