Off The Walt

I’ve blogged & podcasted before about Earthlink downgrading my service to 384k down/ 64k up. Lovely.

Since I need to uploaded several hundred megs of podcasts each month, I need a good solid upstream and preferably a downstream, so I finally called Comcast. What a waste of my time! The rate seemed pretty good and cable television was bundled with it, so I specified that no technician would enter my home, that I could perform the installs. The friendly and patient rep I spoke to initially assured no tech would enter my home, he could just hand me the box and I could do it myself.

Why? Firstly, I don’t like anyone in my home for any reason aside from my wife or children. I don’t like anything moved and don’t want to have to answer questions about what something is. I especially don’t want anything stolen and have heard bad stories about this sort of thing happening in my area.

I’ve been a computer tech for more than 22 years and have built infrastructure buildouts for entire floors here in Downtown Fort Lauderdale where there were thousands of connections. I think I can handle a cable box with a phone call to tell them to flip a switch when I get my stuff connected. I already owned my own cable modem, so I just needed the cable box to connect to the back of the television. We don’t watch TV all that much, but I do like to veg out to documentries on Discovery, etc., so we went for both.

When I made the appointment for connection at the pole, I asked for the latest possible time, she told me it’d be around 7pm. My wife and I would be home by then and I figured it was the perfect time. I got a phone call around 4:45pm on that day and an apparently upset woman, without announcing who she was with, asked me, "You home?" Clearly not my wife, I asked who she was. As if distracted, she repeated the question slowly and much louder suggesting I was 4 years old, "ARE….YOU….HOME?"

I repeated my question to her in the same method she used…VERY…SLOWLY….AND…..LOUDLY. Did I ever mention I hate getting phone calls at work? Anyway, she finally revealed she was with Comcast. Well, to be precise, she revealed she was with "Comcass". Maybe there was a shortage of "T"s? I was clearly wasting her time. I told her I would be home shortly and the tech could start working on it, I’d hand him the agreed upon check and receive the install box with the cable box in it.

She told me this was not an acceptable arrangement. Well, precision dictates I quote her, "*sucking of teeth, really long* Mmmm, mmmmm. That ain’t gonna happen, Baby." I asked her to elaborate and she let out an enormous sigh, I clearly should have known better. She informed me that the tech must come into my home and personally install the equipment. I explained my technical knowledge, but my protest fell on deaf ears. Either I was going to be home in 2 minutes (not happening) and letting the guy in, or I wasn’t getting cable. Since neither was going to happen, I cited time to get there and promised to call back, ever so politely.

I don’t even remember getting a "Thank you," but I do remember getting hung up on in mid-sentence. My turn to sigh.

I called back Saturday to reschedule and explained my technical skill and told the girl on the other end of the phone that I’d just take the box and go with it from there. She told me it was policy to have a tech do it. I politely explained I could tech the technician a few things and she kept citing "policy". I hate "policy". It’s just an excuse, rarely born from logic.

I politely thanked her for her time and signed up for AT&T DSL. It’s 1/2 the speed Comcast… errr… Comcass was offering and with no subsctiption television (yet… they were testing in my area for it!), but I’ll take it. Amazingly enough, I’m allowed to install it myself, in fact, they prefer it! What a great combination!

I’ll be talking about this on my podcast next weekend. How amazing it is when you have a couple thousand listeners and have some influence, eh? I don’t think I’ll ever have Comcass service wherever I am. I’d rather get satellite for subscription television and use DSL. Sure, it’s a little more pricey, but I’ll deal. I wonder what sort of feedback I’ll get from the podcast net weekend… we’ll find out soon!

Update 2008-09-14:
In the past week, I got phone calls from Comcast Corporate Customer Service and also discussed the situation on one of my podcasts , Kore News. Once the corporate folk got hold of my problem, things went much smoother, but I still didn’t end up getting Comcast service. The two main reasons why are simply the 250 gig bandwidth cap is unreasonable and they were trying to lock me into a 12-month deal for a decent rate, then were going to jack the price up 250% once I had forgotten to renegotiate the rate, etc.

AT&T’s DSL package should be here this week, I’ll be much better very soon. I uploaded 4 episodes for my podcast group today and have been uploading since 6am this morning, no exaturation. It’s now 7pm. I’ll be glad to get this stuff up faster in the future!

Good work on the customer service Comcast. I am truely impressed with the level of customer service after my mention in my blog , but it’s too bad it had to go that far. I’ve already gotten a few comments from listeners telling me about them being tired of this, too, and switching themselves. I’m glad. Comcast will need to get its things together or wither away. It would have been nice to see what the service was like, but I’m not going to get tricked into a promo rate.

Walt Snider is a Computer Technician and Webmaster in South Florida that operates Kore New Media , the fourth largest podcast group in the world, Florida’s largest podcast group. More about Walt Snider can found at www.WaltSnider.com or on his blog at www.OffTheWalt.com . His podcasting group, Kore New Media , can be found at www.KoreNewMedia.com .

I thought this was an amusing anecdote that happened in my household this morning that is exemplry of male/female communication, or lack thereof.

Note that this is NOT a shot at my wife. I utterly adore her and don’t make fun of her, but this example is standard of the type I find between men and women.

Last night we had a power interruption. The power in this area is flaky and it’s to be expected at least once ever two weeks, it’s just the norm. This means all the major electronics are connected to a UPS to ensure their not going boom.

The A/C is not exactly something you can plug into a UPS though. Every time the power goes out, the A/C stops cooling but still blows air. You have to reset the fuses of which there are 4 located in different places of the house. I ran through a reset and it didn’t seem to do anything for the cool, so I reset everything doubly again and told my beautiful wife to let it run through the night in case the coils were frozen (the normal air blows past the coils and gets cool, then comes out your vents) so they could thaw.

Geez that’s a long setup!

So this morning I woke up freezing. I asked My Honey if she turned the A/C back on (even though it was obvious, she likes it when I ask those silly questions) and she said, "Yeah, I worked on it a bit."

I asked, "How did you work on it?"

She replied, "Yeah, I worked on it and pushed some buttons."

I asked, "What exactly did you work on?"

She looked at me matter-of-factly, "I turned it on."

I was slightly confused for a moment, then finished, "…and the buttons?"

I got a scowl and she said in an even tone, "I used the ‘ON’ button!"

Yup. She worked on it a bit. And guys are the ones that get yelled at for not communicating what we’re stupposed to!

I’ve had a rough couple weeks, technologically-speaking.

I’ve had numerous problems with my main production computer… when I play any kind of large video or animation, it just locks and the screen turns black. The audio keeps playing for about 2 minutes, oddly. So yes, I reinstalled the drivers. I even swapped video cards with my wife. The old one from my system (nVidia) works fine in her system and hers, now in mine (ATI) still gives me the same issue, so I know it’s not video. I suppose it could be RAM, Motherboard or Processor, but that’s all it could be. I downloaded memtest and I’ll try to run the machine through that overnight or tomorrow or something, to rule that out.

I told my wife I was buying a new machine soon… this one is like 4 months old and I’m running out of patience.

So anyway, Earthlink.

I’ve had Earthlink for more than 4 years here. I set it up at my mother’s house maybe 6 years ago. Never a problem until the past 3 weeks or so. Somewhat at random, seemingly triggered by continous amounts of file transfer/download, the connection stalls, yielding nothing, the ACT light stays unlit. You actually have to turn it off and on 2-5 times to get the connection back.

After talking to the Indian support dozens of times, they started downgrading my service slower and slower trying to see if there was too much data up/down the pipe. Mind you, I don’t bittorrent unless it’s a linux distro or something… nothing nefarious. Most of the drop outs are when I’m playing Guild Wars/Magic Online or something like that… I just bought a GPS… the maps update is 2+ gigs. I get about 150 megs and the connection stalls/resets. Understand I’ve got a downstream of 384k now, down from 6 megs (burst). I try to be patient, but sometimes I think things were easier when we used to fight over who would get on the monkey bars first.

Well the downgrade to smoke signal-speed DSL didn’t work. I still get interrupted connections and upon further complaining to Earthlink, they finally told me there was nothign they could do for me and refused further support. I never yelled or was nasty. I know they’re just doing their jobs. I got a supervisor and told me they reached the extent of their support. They have officially refused me support. Refused. REFUSED! They cannot fix my service that I pay ~$50 for and because they ran out of bullet points, they simply refuse support to me?

I’m not trying to be a creedist, but I rarely find acceptable customer service outside of America. I’ve gotten Aussies in the past, they were usually quite good. It’s rare I speak to those down under, though.

So I have the option of spending money on something hardly better than dialup or going to cable. So many complain about Comcast and I’m about to accept it like a hot cheerleader on a Friday night.

I went to high school with some Seminoles, perhaps I should ask them how to make smoke signals.

Anyone that reads my blog probably knows that I’m a freelancer/contractor and I survive by what jobs I can line up. I got a one-week contract with Ericsson and have to pick guys up in Miami (South Beach to be specific) and drive them around testing cellular phone towers against new software that you’ll see in your Sony Ericsson cell phones in 6-12 months. I like it when Ericsson calls. Easy work with cool people.

Tri-Rail is a passenger train in South Florida which heads from MIA (Miami International Airport) in Miami, past FLL (Fort Lauderdale International Airport)in Fort Lauderdale and travels past Boca Raton and up to Magnolia Park. [system map ]

Instead of driving a couple hours from Pompano Beach (North end of Fort Lauderdale) to Miami when I do work in Miami, I take the train out of conveience. The problem… schedule is a four-letter word.

Yesterday morning, I had to pick up the guys at 11am. I actually got to them around 12:30pm. Mind you, I was at the train station at ~7:30am. A typical run takes 52 minutes from where I get on and where the line ends… So far, either yesterday or today, it’s taken a minimum of 90 minutes.

On yesterday morning’s 3-hour trip I sat down with Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card. I probably burned through 150+ pages! Then I sketched some websites I’m thinking about designing, then I started taking pictures of the other passengers, this lead to conversations and I still had a freaking hour to spare! So why the delay? The signals weren’t working… ya know, the long rectangles that block your path so the train can pass?

So instead of training a group of emergency response guys that already work for RTA (RTA runs Tri-Rail… hey, you can rearrange RTA to spell RAT!)  to signal cars to stop with flags or manually lower and lift the gates (via hydraulics or magnets or whatever), we sat on the tracks and talked… someone in my car was making some odd smells, too… I didn’t know Taco Bell opened that early!

I’m really disgusted at the lack of initiative on RTA’s part to make the passage a seamless ride. Writing them a letter will accomplish little IMO, but I think I’ll send them my resume and apply for the position of Emergency Response Manager and offer how I can start a training program for the employees to prevent these sort of things in the future. I think I’ll also send them a bill for the time I lost today.

This makes me not want to handle work in Miami… I can’t get down there reliably and quickly anymore. As it is, I’m walking out the door at 6am tomorrow to make sure I am not late tomorrow. It’s nuts that I have to plan like this, yet it’s better than sitting in gridlock for 4 hours in transit to Miami each morning, nevermind the return home!

I’m glad I bought the next two books from the Ender’s Game set… I think I’ll finish #1 tomorrow. It’s better than I remember as a kid… I can’t wait to get into #2. I wonder if I should bring it tomorrow… better… who knows what’ll happen. Maybe I should bring an easel and paints, too. I wonder if a sleeping bag would be out of the question.