We celebrate the restoration of my home internet connection. We shall not discuss the amount of time spent convincing Qwest that the problem was, in fact, on their end.
I’m logged in at the library
StandardSkimming through my LJ and checking emails. I didn’t make the trip to Best Buy to swap modems because guess what?? When I got home from work, the supposedly-broken modem was working!
I know. You’re shocked.
Unfortunately, it wasn’t working working. It took ten minutes and multiple tries before Thunderbird could download an email or newsgroup post. Yet another call to Qwest got me a conversation with someone who was willing to admit that they’d been having outages in my area for the last 48 hours. The engineers said it would be fixed in 8-12 hours.
This morning, I still didn’t have internet. This morning, I called tech support again. The helpdesk guy told me that the problem was fixed, but of course it wasn’t. He went consulted with the engineers again and reported that the server had failed again.
You know what? I wasn’t angry. He’d told me the truth, instead of a lie that cost me 90+ dollars and wasted several hours of my time. If the first person I spoke with had told me the truth, I would have been much happier than I am now.
Current plan: See if they can get this fixed by Monday morning. Then hook up my old modem again. If it still works, return new modem and use the 2hr commute time wisely (if possible).
Here is my sad face
StandardI must go home to an internet-less apartment. It will be beer, books, and maybe a DVD.
God! How do people live this way?!?!
In which I reveal my ignorance, part two
StandardWho knew jaywalking as a pedestrian norm was safer than a norm of crossing at the crosswalk?
I’ll admit that it pings my skepticism meter (along the lines of “Volvos are dangerous because people feel safe in them and drive like idiots”) but I still hmm over it.
Seen via this article about the punching incident earlier this week, when the Seattle police officer used “the punching technique” when a bystander objected to a jaywalking arrest.
Amazing coincidences!
StandardSo, Wednesday after work I discovered I couldn’t connect to the internet at home. This was annoying, because I have writer-type crap that needs doing, but hey, it happens. I called Qwest tech support and after nearly an hour and a half I was told they’d traced the problem to my modem. I was entering the username and password correctly to connect to the ISP, but the modem wasn’t retaining the info (or something). They could access my modem, but I couldn’t get the internet.
Obviously the solution was to buy a new one, which I did. It wasted an hour and a half (notice the trend) of my evening, but I went out and bought a new Qwest-compatible wireless modem. ($90!)
When I brought it home to install it, guess what? Same. Exact. Problem.
After another long call to tech support (you know how long it took) the guy informed me that, by amazing coincidence, my brand new modem had the exact same problem as my old one. AMAZING! Go back to Best Buy, I was told, and exchange it for another one. And see if you can get them to test it right there in the store.
And… fine. I don’t believe them, but fine. I’m not going after work today (because I have a life[1]) but I will be going first thing tomorrow. So long, most productive writing time of the week! I will have to reschedule you, because I have to fix my fucking internet connection.
And if this doesn’t work, Qwest is out. I’d hate to lose the email address I’ve had for years but I may not have a choice. The main problem is that I don’t have any other really good options. The cable ISP in my area is Comcast, and those bastards are the ones pursuing the lawsuit against the FCC about packet-slowing. To hell with them. What other choices do I have?
::Shakes fist at corporate tech support::
Best Buy provides the email address for the manager of the store I’ll be visiting tomorrow. I’m going to drop him a line to let him know what’s going on and why I’ll be there. I’m sure Gary Mylie will be overjoyed.
[1] Not really
In which I reveal my ignorance, part one
StandardI will shamelessly reveal my ignorance here, because everyone is ignorant about different things, yes? First, I want to link to Oil spill crisis as opportunity, a rather detailed post that covers a lot of ground, including a much friendlier analysis of Obama’s “War on the Oil Spill” speech than my own, a clip of Rahm Emmanuel that I can’t watch, and a really awesome graph (I mean REALLY AWESOME) that shows what our energy sources are and what they go to.
But I want to comment on this:
Someday when battery technologies improve, the fuel and power worlds will blend in the U.S., and there will be strong and direct economic relationships between the production of electric power and the use of oil.
His point is that Obama is using the oil spill (caused by the extraction of a fossil fuel used mainly for transportation) as a basis to regulate coal and natural gas, too, which are used for very different purposes.
And this is something I’ve thought a lot about, too. Once we have a sensible (unlike, say, flywheels) way to store a lot of energy inside a moving vehicle, people will be able to charge their vehicles at home/work, and we’ll be powering our transportation sector (or at least, large portions of it) off the grid.
The grid, of course, can get energy from hydro power, solar, wind, tides, whatever. It doesn’t have to be coal, for instance.
However, my understanding is that the real problem here is the battery (makes sad face). There is no great new battery tech breakthroughs, are there? Most of the advances (to take one prominent example) made in powering portable devices is in LEDs and other ways to reduce power usage, not storage.
But maybe I’m wrong. Have there been big advances in battery technology? As far as I can tell, the barium-titanate powders never panned out. Am I missing something or is this a pipe dream?
But be sure to check out that graph.
Randomness for 6/17
StandardI sure am posting a lot of these lately.
2) How to clean oil off a pelican.
3) How to tell a completely believable story.
4) How to make crappy Hollywood movies.
5) How to plot a novel, Glenn Beck style
This doesn’t work
StandardThis is one of those complaining posts, because sometimes shit just doesn’t work out. There will be one positive note included at the end, just so you don’t think everything in my life is petty annoyance. People who hate to read griping should skip to the end.
First: My modem at home has died. I emailed a link to myself from work at 5pm. When I got home at six, the email was there, but I couldn’t connect with the web. After more than an hour with tech support, they decided that I just need to buy a new modem.
I’m counting that time as my “cleaning” time for yesterday. Grrr. Today I need to take a bus clear across town to buy a replacement. Maybe that will be my… I don’t know. Maybe I can’t follow my guidelines today.
Second, after a night of leg cramps and nightmares, I completely overslept. I hate oversleeping, especially on day-job days, because that’s my writing time. So not only was I nearly an hour late for work, but I have written nothing today.
Third, (just to bury the lede) I may be losing my day job. It’s not an ideal job, but I need to be part time on these particular days, or I can’t work here. The company is “reorganizing” (iow, trying to drive out a union for a different dept) by combining all its call centers into one. I will go from being employed by a non-profit to a state employee, which means I’ll be doing the same job, but starting over as a new employee.
That means: new benefits, six-month probation, loss of accrued sick time, an end to my retirement plan, new bosses, new office, new co-workers, etc. Will I still be part-time? Will I keep my same shift? That “hasn’t been decided yet.” They still have to “examine the work flow.”
Did I leave my wife alone in upstate NY to deal with all this family crap because I didn’t want to lose a job I was going to lose in two months anyway? Shit.
Anyway, here’s the upbeat news. I’ve received permission to post Chapters 2 and 3 of GAME OF CAGES online. Chapter 1 is already here, of course, but the next two won’t go onto the internet until closer to completion date (especially considering the work I have to do to get them ready).
Quote of the day
StandardFive Thousand Gulf Oil Spills. That’s the rate that people are releasing carbon to the atmosphere from fossil fuel combustion and deforestation today. I know, it’s apples and oranges; carbon in the form of oil is more immediately toxic to the environment than it is as CO2 (although CO2 may be more damaging on geologic time scales). But think of it — five thousand spills like in the Gulf of Mexico, all going at once, each releasing 40,000 barrels a day, every day for decades and centuries on end. We are burning a lot of carbon!
Randomness for 6/16
Standard1) Mary Jane Watson, master of the obvious. Now THIS is writing!
2) Thomas Kinkade, if Thomas Kinkade was cool.
3) I know I’m behind the times linking to this, but damn! This is cool.
4) Look upon the face of evil.
5) Night Of The Killer Lamp: 23 Ridiculous Horror-Movie Adversaries
6) The Stockholm Library. It’s a rare library that gives me vertigo. There’s this one and the main downtown library in Seattle. Brrrr.
7) Star Wars, now with more pants.