This is customer service.

When I was in high school, a junior in high school to be exact, I purchased a copy of Chiara's zMUD, or Zugg's Mud Client, a client program you use to play several (thousands) of online text-based (no graphics) MMO's. For a little more on MUDs and clients, look here.

I'd paid full price for it, in an era where stealing software was still pretty chic. It's also probably the first purchase I'd made online, and definitely the first purchase I made for downloadable software. I told myself it was a good investment because, among other things, since I'd actually purchased a serial key, I could be a bit more free with the number of PCs I had the program installed on. I could keep it on my mom's and my own, and if I ever moved, I wouldn't have to worry about losing the disc and my whole purchase. Since I'd purchased a license key for a program with a free 30-day downloadable trial, as long as I kept the key I could always redownload it in the future, plug my key in, and instantly have a full copy again.

That was seven years ago. I kept 3-4 email addresses at that time, one of which was tied to my mom's long-defunct ISP dial-up account, and two others so old I can't remember them or log in at all. :) Ah, the perils of a long history on the Internet.

On a whim, for a long shot, I went to zuggsoft.com; it was still there, and they've got a brand-new client for Vista (cMUD, check it out). Just for the heck of it, knowing there'd be no way I'd get a response (it had been far too long, you see), I submitted a support incident to the customer service department. I gave them all the old email addresses I could think of, my old billing address, and I knew that I'd surely get some kind of canned response back, something like "I'm sorry, but we can't help you without a valid email address and password".

Three days later, Chiara himself emailed me.

"I found you!"

Thanks, guys. Thank you so, so very much. This means so much to me, and I'm going to tell everyone. :)

Verizon Wireless's voicemail is down. Completely.

I'm not sure when it went down, but it's sure as hell down right now. Tried it from my phone and my wife's, and tried calling *86, my own number, my wife's, as soon as you would run into the normal voicemail interface, you get a fast busy signal.

Tried calling customer service, but apparently they don't have 24-hour customer service anymore either. Funny, hadn't noticed that till now.

So, folks, You Heard It Here First. Verizon's voicemail is down, and there's nobody you can talk to about it till the morning. Hope no one important calls tonight!