March 7th, 2008 — Uncategorized
Tonight I spent some quality time with Verizon tech support.
It seems they are having capacity issues in my area, because nightly between 5 and 9 the bandwidth is hideous, were talking close to dial-up hideous…
It took an hour of, “No there is nothing wrong with my equipment, your network is having issues” to having to settle for them to send a tech out Monday morning when there wont be an issue, because the days are usually ok. I understand that the network is going to degrade some during peak hours, been doing this network thing for a few years now, but dropping to 10 percent of advertised rate is ridiculous. I am not kidding my 3Meg pipe drops to 300K during this time frame on weeknights, and after 9 it will start ramping back up and usually by 10 were back to full speed. Prior to a couple week ago when this problem started, I had no issue with the 3Meg pipe. I could be doing my thing, my wife doing whatever, and both kids doing the youtube thing while IM’ing with their friends, and there was the occasional hiccup, but normally unnoticeable.
So attempting to call verizon, very long hold times between 5 and 9, go figure 20+ minute hold times, and I really want to talk to them when this issue is happening, I finally get them on the line while this issue is occurring. After dealing with the usual Q&A did you do this and did you do that, and well your modem say it is provisioned for 3mbps, must be YOUR network, or YOUR computer. No it is on your(Verizons) end, laptop goes and hooks to a 5M pipe everyday without issue, well maybe your systems administrator configured you laptop strangely. The systems administrator at work would be me, and that wouldn’t explain why the 5 other machine on my network suddenly have the same issue at the same hours nightly… No I am not running any file sharing services, no I am not currently streaming video, and the only thing hooked up is one laptop, connected directly to the DSL modem, so we have effectively eliminated any of my network, and oh by the way my desktop is connected to the neighbors wireless with less then 20% signal strength and is getting better throughput then the machine directly connected to the DSL modem.
So I finally tell the tech, give me an email address, I’ll send pictures and screenshots, or better yet I’ll fire up iChat via the neighbors link, and you can see exactly what the heck is going on… He finally concedes, and offers the tech, but not sure what that’ll do, because I am convinced that the issue is further up stream then that, and not happening during the day, so the tech is not going to see anything. I’ll be calling Cox (ughh, that whole story in itself) to come out and hook me up with their highspeed, may I’ll do it while I’m dealing with the tech.
Well it is after 10 and guess what I have full bandwidth, as it did the same thing is does every night, but seems to happen a little later on Fridays…
Now we can contrast this “Customer is always wrong, until proven otherwise” attitude, I took my truck to the car wash at the Malbon Bros. Wednesday, and purchased the middle of the pack wash. Thursday walking out to the truck on Thursday I see that essentially the entire middle third of the front end didn’t get washed. I call them up, and the guy on the phone says bring it on down, and they’ll take care of it. I walk in tell the guy that I called, I point to my truck, and he hardly even looks out the window, and hands me a code for their top of the line carwash, and says that I should drive in slower so the initial sprayers can do a better job, and if I still wasn’t happy to bring it back during the day when the detailers are there and they would fix it. That was it, no questions asked… Needless to say I will be back….
February 24th, 2008 — Uncategorized
I am wondering if it is me, or the software…
I am using Movable Type 4.0 to run this site, and I noticed that there was an upgrade MT4.1, that apparently addresses some of the minor issues that I have had with MT4.0, but I am apprehensive to deploy it, because I cant find any documentation at all. Now I am the kind of guy the when I open the box, I take a look at the book and cast it aside, and jump in with both feet knowing that I have a lifeboat in the near vicinity… But looking at the MT4.1 upgrade, I cannot find diddly squat. looking anything up in the Knowledge base take you to MT3.7 related information. I am also not real happy about the notification mechanism, it is not real forth coming about notifying me of things, like users registering (had a few of those, that I was not aware of), and I was unaware of how to set it up so that it doesn’t require a pint of blood and your social, because with MT you don’t set that in the comment settings, you set that in the registration settings, not sure what logic applied on that one.
I like the program, and I think it has a lot of potential, but has some of the worst documentation I have seen, and yes I do understand that I paid a grand total of zero dollars for this software etc… But the thing is they also have a paid version, and there is no way I am going to plop down cash with that big shadow looming, or I wonder if it is the $149.00 installation service that is being pushed here…
So now I am considering going back to WordPress or something else, because I have been real busy, and have not had the time to embrace, what looks like it could be a cool piece of software…
I guess I’ll think about it for a bit…
p.s. if anyone has done the MT4.01 to MT4.1 upgrade, let me know if you have any tips… Thanks…
February 23rd, 2008 — Uncategorized
I had the realization the other night, after buying a new non-technical book, that bookstores don’t give out bookmarks anymore.
I can’t remember when the last time I got a bookmark with a book, since I moved to Virginia, but I do remember San Diego Technical Books (SDTB), the old downtown store was one of my favorite bookstores of all time, and they had the best bookmarks. The bookmarks at SDTB were perfect, the right size, the right thickness, everything was just right about them.
Now you go to a bookstore and they don’t give you a bookmark, but I also didn’t ask, but I’m sure that the would have offered to sell me. So my guess is that some MBA somewhere came up with an amazing plan to save the bookstores big $’s by cutting out bookmarks, and I guess that tenth of a cent per bookmark really adds up over a year to a few grand…
I don’t remember exactly when I stopped getting bookmarks, but I sure do miss them, especially the SDTB bookmarks….
February 11th, 2008 — media
So the Virginia Primary is tomorrow, and I am already over the 2008 presidential campaign.
My phone has rang no less then 10 times tonight from unknown callers, who I can only guess were going to tell me how important my vote is, and I need to get out there and vote for whomever, and while I’m at it could I breakout the checkbook and send them money to help stop whomever from ruining the country. Well I didn’t answer the phone, and I don’t even know if I am going to bother voting tomorrow, yes I am experiencing voter apathy.
I did the math a while ago, on the 2 states the media says are so important to the future of this country, Iowa and New Hampshire, because if you don’t do well there forget about it. The 2 states in question contain about 1% of the population, and an even lower percentage of eligible voters, and I could care less about how these people vote. I think the system in this country needs to be revamped.
- Have all the primary’s on one day, like the First Tuesday after the first Monday in June. No campaigning until lets say the first Monday in April, you cant even declare prior to that date, the FCC would require media outlets to not take any advertising until that date,violation would result in revocation of their license.
- Anyone holding federal office would be required to resign upon declaration of their candidacy, if your so sure of yourself, lets see you risk your job for something you believe in, and I don’t think you really have the country’s best interest or my tax dollar in mind if you are out there trying to get your mug on TV.
- End Political rally’s, talk about something that should be left in the past as an history lesson, they only waste time money and energy (Not very green).
- No more phone calls, if I am stupid enough that my mind can be changed from a phone call, I shouldn’t be allowed to vote in the first place.
- No more mailers, another big waste of resources, all that paper, that just gets thrown away.
- No more conventions, another relic of the past,
- I’m also thinking to balance things out First place is President, Second is Vice President, and Third is Secretary of State, and everyone only gets one vote, so choose wisely. Would make for some interesting cabinet meetings.
- If you can’t figure out how to poke a hole in a piece of paper, then you are too stupid to vote.
Thats about it.
January 28th, 2008 — Uncategorized
Man what a racket, $300.00 a month for internet access, or at least that’s what you’d pay if you stayed at some of the nicer hotels around, and relied on their Internet access.
Even though I don’t travel all that much anymore, I make a couple of trips a month and stay in hotels of various star count, and it seems that the higher the star count, or the better the neighborhood, the more you pay for various amenities, like Internet access.
I have stayed at several hotels in the Philadelphia area over the past couple of months, and I never really noticed the charges that hotels put on their Internet service. I usually just fire up the v740 broadband modem, and bypass all the silly sign on crap that hotels require even when the access is free.
This last trip I was messing around with the iPod Touch and wanted to go WiFi when I got to the login screen for the wireless, and noticed that the access charge was $9.95 per day, and I really have never done the math before, but that comes to $300 per month, and I was kind of shocked. T1′s don’t even cost that much anymore. I guess the real pisser is that when you stay at the hotel down by the stadium, that same Internet access is free.
Whats my point, none really, but I guess $300 a month for Internet is nothing, when you’re looking at paying over $1000 per month to park