Soapbox

I’m going on Day 3 without internet at home. Day 5 of intermittent internet at home.

It all started a couple of weeks ago when we had the big Midwest hurricane (as they called it on the weather channel) where we had high winds and gales in the Great Lakes Area. At our house, we had no problems with power, internet or anything else. (other then the massive pile of leaves that got blown out of the trees). Apparently, charter’s lines in the area took some damage and some “noise” on them. This week, they started replacing lines and generally fixing things up. That’s all fine and dandy. I don’t mind it going in and out while they are actively working on things.

Then, on Tuesday morning, they were working in front of our house. Then the guy left. My internet was out at that time. I figured he just went to lunch and would be back to finish the job and get things going. I woke up Tuesday afternoon (Remember I work nights) and figured I would have to power cycle my modem and router. I did that and it didn’t come up. So, I called Charter to report the outage. When you call the support number, you get this automated “troubleshooter” which I’m sure works some of the time. The thing only told me to do what I just did. It took me 10 min. to get to talk to a real person. Then this real person (Likely in india or china) proceeded to treat me like an idiot and asked me to do everything the automated system did. (Very frustrating when you KNOW it’s something they were doing outside the house and not my modem.) I told the person that they were working outside when it went out for good and I’m sure it’s something out there. They said they would send someone out in the morning. The earliest appointment was between 11 and 1. Like I said above, I work nights so I try to get to bed by 11 but I said, ok, send someone.

At 1:15pm the guy still hadn’t shown up. I called the number again and got the automated thing. It took 3 calls to get ahold of a person again. They said the tech was 15 min. out.. (ARGH!!) Anyway the guy shows up and he’s a contractor for Charter and not a company employee. Normally that wouldn’t be a problem, but this guy also wouldn’t listen to me when I said everything worked until they were working on the lines outside the day before.. He didn’t care, he went by his little script and replaced the modem, all the lines and splitters in the house. (A complete waste of time and money). Then he decided that the modem was bad (!!!!WTF!!!!?). He had just replaced it. Then he calls his supervisor and they said that I needed to hook my computer up to the modem directly instead of though my router. Then, I asked why is the “ready” light flashing. The supervisor, over the phone, said, “ Gee, it’s not locking up, it must be something out at the tap”. JUST WHAT I’VE BEEN SAYING FOR 2 DAYS!!!! So the tech left (without fixing anything) because he can’t get into the tap (or the lines out by the road) because he’s a contractor and not an employee.

The maddening thing about it is not that the cable internet is out, but the employees, contractors and outsourced people at charter that won’t listen. I could have saved them lots of time and money. A couple of people at charter got in contact with me via twitter because I have been tweeting about it. They seem to be OK but it’s still out.

I’m very thankful that I have the Droid phone and am able to get online a little bit with it.

Another thing that Charter needs to know is that when a customer is having problem, it’s not the time to upsell them! Every time I got a real person on the phone they wanted me to sign up for Charter Telephone and HD TV. I told them if I were to sign up for that stuff, it would be out now too.. WTF???

So, until I get some connectivity, my podcasting will be slow. I can upload from the laptop or at work I suppose, but it makes it a lot harder to research and all that.

Anyway, I needed to vent a bit.

IF I had another way to get high speed internet at home, I would dump charter. The only alternative around here is AT&T DSL which is way slower then what I have when Charter works.

Enough of that..

-Mike

****UPDATE 11:30am 11/11/10…

After spending 2+ hours on the phone, I still don’t know if they will come over and check their lines.. Seems the tech from yesterday didn’t put the work order in and they wanted to start over by checking all the crap they checked yesterday. I think, but I’m not sure, they will check whatever they need to OUTSIDE my house today sometime. I’m calling AT&T to see if they have high enough speed DSL for me. VERY poor Customer service so far.

****UPDATE 11:17 11/12/10

They got it working by doing what I wanted them to do 3 days ago.. They fixed whatever it was out at the road that was wrong. So now I have internet at home again and all is well.. I still think that charter’s customer service is not what it should be. Lets hope it goes for another 5 years without problems like it did last time.

****UPDATE Midnight 11-13-10 Well, the internet is out again here. I talked with support and they said they would call me.. Well they never did. So now I’m out of internet. I guess (but don’t know because they didn’t call me) they are coming on Saturday. That sucks because I have (or had) plans for Saturday that involved internet.. I guess that’s on hold. ARGH!

****UPDATE 1800 11-13-10 It’s back on.. It seems that there was some noise on the line so they came and put a filter in the box out at the road. It was a very effective filter and filtered out the internet. So, instead of figuring out where the noise was coming from, they just did that. The guy tonight (who really does know his stuff) tracked down the noise to a loose connection in the box by the house. SO, now I hope they don’t put the filter back in. We will see..

{ 6 comments }

November 2nd is the general mid-term elections in the USA.

I’m a bit strange when I won’t tell everyone to go vote. In fact, I prefer that you don’t if are not up on what’s going on and who’s running. If you just choose not to vote, that’s your business too.

I did vote. It took me 3 minutes not counting the drive to the polling place and back. I voted for who I thought would do the best job in the office they were running for and it was as simple as that.

I tend to be conservative but I lean towards libertarianism BUT, even though I think the Republicans are going to have some big wins today, I hope they don’t gloat. This election isn’t about giving the GOP the win. It’s more about giving the democrats a loss. They need to loose today to show what happens when they don’t listen to us normal people. They think they know better then we do. I just want to make sure the Republicans that are put in office today DO listen to us. Otherwise, they are going home in 2 years.

Anyway, vote if you want, don’t if you don’t want to. It’s your right not to vote!

Have FUN!
-Mike

{ 0 comments }

Leo Laporte has finally caused me to unsubscribe from his podcasts. Over the years, I’ve been a fan of Leo. I’ve heard some stuff from people that say he’s not the best guy to work with but I discount that as sour grapes by someone who isn’t as successful.

A few months ago, I heard him say on his live stream, that Cali Lewis wasn’t welcome on his shows anymore because she voted for John McCain and Sara Palin. His said he can’t stand “those” types of people and that anyone who would vote for them was mentally ill (or something close to that)

It’s well known that he’s very left leaning but if you listened to his shows, almost none of that came though and his tech info and delivery is top-notch! But that kind of stuff in uncalled for. Cali and Neal are also great people and have a good tech show that is delivered well. Their political beliefs are not part of their show.

The last TWIT (This week in Tech) that I listened to, Leo made it clear that he’s a liberal and that he thinks that conservatives belong in an insane asylum. That’s fine that he believes that and if he was doing a political show, it would be great that he says that, but I think it’s just plain stupid that he would put that in his tech programming. He’s going to alienate half of his audience.

If he’s biased about that on his show, then, what else is he biased about?

How about products he endorses? If say a large domain name and hosting company doesn’t advertise with him, what would he say about them?

The answer:

The last straw happened on a recent “Tech Guy” show which is one of his podcasts along with being his Radio Show on Premiere Networks (the same people that pay Rush Limbaugh ironically). At the beginning of his show, he started ranting about Godaddy.com and Godaddy founder Bob Parsons. His problem (get this) was that there were too many hot women on godaddy’s site and in their ads. HUH? Mr. Liberal doesn’t like to see girls on websites or in TV ads? WTF? He thinks that godaddy is exploiting women.
Well, I can tell you, if he didn’t do it, these women would go find someone else to “exploit” them. Mr. Parsons pays these women very well and they seem very willing to work for Godaddy.

Leo says he will never buy anything at Godaddy.com and he urged his audience not to as well.

Could it be, he used the exploiting women thing as an excuse to blast godaddy.com because they won’t advertise with him? He said they have wanted to advertise and he refused. Maybe so but maybe not. You decide.

I just know that it would be very hard for me to take anything he said about something as unbiased truth about a product, service or anything else after hearing the godaddy thing.

Ever notice no matter what he’s talking about, it’s the best thing ever? His Windows weekly show, he praises Microsoft for about everything. Then on his MacBreak Weekly show he slams Microsoft. On his open source show, he loves linux and puts down commercial software.

In my opinion, the wolf’s sheepskin is developing large tears and I will no longer be a fan. Too bad, because I liked Leo for a long time and will miss his co-hosts. Any suggestions on who to listen to now?

-Mike

{ 23 comments }