Are you SURE that's not just a really good Turing test?

The Wi-Fi router in this IT pilot fish's home office is kicking him off the Internet every five minutes or so. And after power-cycling the router and checking the configuration and connections, he ventures where every IT professional fears to tread: his ISP's tech support line.

"Then the script began," reports fish. "The support person said, 'Yes sir, I would be more than happy to help you with this issue...'

"As we both waited for her database to kick back a solution to the various keywords she most likely typed in, my patience began to run out."

Fish spends the next ten minutes confirming that he has already tried the standard suggested solutions the support person suggests. Then, getting impatient, fish about the support agent's background in computers.

The response? "Yes sir, well, the issue you are having with the router I would be more than happy to help you with..." Uh oh.

Do you actually understand the technical aspects of my issue or what you're reading off the screen? fish asks.

"Yes sir, I would be more than happy to help you with your router issue if you would just give me one moment please for me to find your solution I can help you resolve the issue..."

And so it goes, one fruitless non-solution after another, until finally the support agent suggests that fish have a tech support specialist make a house call -- at fish's expense, of course.

Let's just forget it, fish says. Thank you for trying, but it's obvious your Google method of troubleshooting isn't doing me any good.

"Yes sir, well, we would love to help you solve your router issue..."

Click.

"After a few more minutes of diagnostics on my own, I realized the issue was a conflict of DHCP-assigned IP addresses with the static IP addresses I had set up for port forwarding," sighs fish. "I reset the list of reserved IP addresses and the issue was resolved.

"I now plan on beginning all of my tech support inquiries by asking the agent if they have any basic knowledge of technology whatsoever. If the response feels like another scripted infinite loop then the next thing they hear will be click."

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