Why didn’t this exist years ago?
If you’ve ever been stuck on hold with a company in their IVR phone tree hell, listening to a muzak remake of an Aaron Neville song, contemplating acts of arson, then this company is for you. FastCustomer is a free browser app and 99 cent iPhone and Android app (a one-time expense) which lets you choose any of over 1000 companies you want to contact, asks you the usual phone tree options, then waits on hold on your behalf and calls your phone to connect the call when a human being finally picks up on the company’s end. FastCustomer’s computers have already waited on hold 44,447 minutes since the company launched last month. If the computers rise up against us, we’re blaming the Aaron Neville hold music for driving them over the edge.
Worst. Honeymoon. Ever.
Swedish newlyweds Stefan and Erika Svanstrom and their baby girl left on a long honeymoon trip around the world in December. Shortly afterward they were stranded in Germany by one of Europe’s worst snowstorms. The next stops on their trip coincided with five more disasters. They were in Cairns for a cyclone, in Brisbane during a flood, narrowly avoided brushfires in Perth, landed in New Zealand right after the earthquake, then stopped by the next destination which was, you guessed it, Tokyo. They arrived just in time for the earthquake and tsunami. Now the family is back home in Stockholm. To any of our readers who are in the Stockholm area: RUNNNNN! SPRINGAAAA! RUUUUNNN! The accursed ones are upon you!
“Naked gunman battles SWAT-Bot” Great headline? Or greatest?
Meanwhile in Florida, something strange happened. We know, we know. Something strange in Florida? How is this possible? But it did. A man in West Melbourne called relatives and said he was going to commit suicide and would “shoot anyone he could”. Police surrounded his home and sent in a $65,000 SWAT robot with a camera, rather than endanger an officer or make it easier for the man to commit suicide by cop. The man, not wearing clothes, approached the robot and shot it four times with an AK-47. He then got dressed and turned himself in. Let’s not rush to judgement here. Maybe the SWAT bot was blasting Aaron Neville hold music? We’d shoot it too if that were the case.
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- “Tired of Waiting On Hold? This Startup Will Do It For You.” Sold! (Mashable, picture via The Itty Bitty Kitty Committee)
- Newlyweds’ honeymoon beset by six separate natural disasters. (BrisbaneTimes via Arbroath)
- Naked man with an AK-47 versus a SWAT robot, who ya got? (Gizmodo, video at NBC-2)
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- A 75-year-old woman in the country of Georgia who was digging up copper wiring to sell as scrap succeeded in also knocking out internet access to Armenia for up to five hours. Georgia provides 90% of Armenia’s internet service, so her copper theft left Armenian internet providers scrambling to restore service. Due to her age, police haven’t yet charged her with a crime. Nick Swardson was right; you can just steal things all the time when you’re old. (TheGuardian, picture via Arbroath)
- A man in Nebraska has been arrested for stealing $20 in quarters from laundry machines by sucking the change out with a vacuum cleaner. He probably did more than $20 in damage to the vacuum with that plan. This guy’s decision making process really sucks. (KETV)
- A 29-year-old man in the U.S. state of Georgia has plead guilty to drunkenly tattooing the initials “DB” on his 3-year-old son, whose initials are not even D.B. He says it stands for “Daddy’s Boy”, but I’m sure the boy’s classmates will think of much more interesting nicknames to call him which start with “D” and “B”. I take back what I said about the vacuum cleaner man. This guy’s decision making process really sucks. (NYDailyNews)
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- According to this infographic, if everyone who could be working from home did so instead of driving to work, we could reduce our dependence on Persian Gulf oil imports by an estimated 37%. That’s nothing compared to how much money we save on clothes by telecommuting in our underwear. (Picture via MadisonMcNugget)
- StumbleUpon has just reached an important milestone: their users are now generating one billion stumbles per month. Only half of those are probably just pictures of cats. (TheNextWeb)
- Last year CEO pay jumped an average of 27% while the average worker earned just 2.1% more, barely keeping pace with inflation. Can we still afford to eat cake? (GOOD)
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