Thanks,
Kent

I am over in England and have just obtained my Intermediate Licence thanks, in great part, to your Podclass General Class series. I found the course really helpful. I would go out running in the evening and listen to you and John running over the topics. The overlap between the two courses is very high and any differences are always useful to know. I tried to download the Extra Class but I think it is all switched off in iTunes. Anyway other way to download them? Thanks

Years ago i used to contract for charter, 2 things come into play. 1. MOST contractors have more of a clue than an in house tech. We have worked in house, had the training, built plants etc. Sad thing is.. alot of the people that know their way around a cable system have quit. The cable industry as well as the satellite industry would rather hire some joe shmuck off the streets driving some beat up station wagon blowing smoke for pennies on the dollar than hire someone with the experience. Since i have quit doing both. Got tired of all the political back washing that goes on behind closed doors.

Yeah, I can understand the trouble they have with telling weather or not someone really knows whats going on or not. Charter cable internet has worked great here for the last 5 years as well. The trouble started when they were working on the lines out front. Anyway, it’s working.. Lets see how long it lasts this time

You can actually view graphs of the SNR on the modem via SNMP or sometimes browsing to it. Funny that he used a splitter and not an attenuator.

We’ve got several sites charter recently “installed” and aren’t working properly… it’s been months. It’s … depressing. horribly.

My theory on the “upsell” during troubleshooting: If they can get you to get “Charter Phone” then you’re that much less likely to (be able to) call and report your outages. It’s a customer service cost reduction measure more than anything, and then if they can make money on it, all the better.

Wish I had heard your show when Yang was on it!

Interesting that you have had so much trouble. I’ve had Charter since they bought Bresnan, probably five years ago or so? I’ve had perhaps two or three outages a year, usually resulting from storms, and rarely lasting for more than twenty minutes or so. I can only recall one time when a tech came to the house, and he did have a clue. A few minutes with a level meter convinced him that an outside cable needed to be replaced, but even that if I recall took less than a day.

Once Charter had something munged up in their database and I was offline for a few hours, probably would have been back quicker if I hadn’t been so slow to call them. I was very surprised that something that I would have thought would be hard to figure out was sorted by the tech on the phone so quickly.

I wonder if Charter just doesn’t have the customer base over there and can’t come up with the resources, or if you have a local office that is clueless, or perhaps our local folks are more on the ball than most, or maybe I’ve just been lucky. But certainly your experience has been a lot different than mine.

-Mike

It’s solely about how AT&T handles internal accounting. The service is rock-solid. I just find it completely amusing how difficult it was for them to transfer a service from one account to another. Also how it was a literal circus to reinstate web access to my account post-transfer. Paperwork aside, the product is solid.

Charter has neither going for them.

It was. In the first year I had one outage, which lasted 3 hours — the entire 3 hours that power was out after a transformer down the street blew (and I only know it was a DSL outage because I tried to get online using my laptop and the DSL router powered by a car battery.

The only other outage I had was when I added a phone line to my DSL subscription (which had been on a “dry loop” (no phone number) until then) was a planned outage as they needed to move the DSL connection from one account to another. It was administrative, and expected.

Until Charter learns to behave more like an enterprise-grade ISP, they don’t even fall under the category of “ISP” in my book.

Sure, they’ve got speeds in excess of 40meg now. But what good does that do unless it’s guaranteed rate, and has a better than 85% uptime (they currently don’t…) ? Answer: none.

I’m WAY more happy with my 1.5meg that I know will ALWAYS WORK NO MATTER WHAT than 10-40meg of “well, it might work when you need it” service.

Also, I’m not selling internal organs to pay the bill anymore, either. added bonus!
-jre

The ceremony is set for 6 to 8 p.m. near the Mariners Memorial Lighthouse at Belanger Park, off Belanger Park Drive and Marion.

The event is held in River Rouge because that’s the city where the vessel was built in 1957 and ’58.

Several speakers will give their memories of the ship, including people who helped construct it and relatives of some of the deceased crewmen.

Artifacts and photographs also will be on display.

At 7:10 p.m. — the time the ship sank — a wreath will be tossed into the Detroit River. A bell will be rung 29 times in memory of each person who died.

A plaque presentation and lantern lighting is planned. Refreshments will be provided at the end.

Event organizer Roscoe Clark has a Web site devoted to the vessel, which contains several video clips, photos and new information about the ship, at http://www.ssEdmundFitzgerald.com

Earlier in the day, an Edmund Fitzgerald open house will be held from 3 to 5 p.m. at the River Rouge Historical Museum, 10750 W. Jefferson Ave.
http://www.RiverRougeMuseum.com

For more information on either event, visit the Web site or call Clark at 1-810-519-2148 or Dolores Swekel at 1-313-842-7822.

What facts? Your comments are based off of a topic you have no facts on. Do you even know what a conservative is? Try listening to Rush for a week. Or better yet, listen to the Wilkow Majority. You might learn something. I am sure you are like most people and will bash someone or something without actually having any first hand experience with it. Just following the “main stream”.

Jason R
A True Yooper

Me and my friend were arguing about an concern similar to this! Now I realize that I used to be right. lol! Thanks for your information you article….

Oh and he also has gay affairs with Congressional pages .

Oh and those brown people.

Laporte uses his venue to espouse liberal views (at least ones’s he agrees with, apparently scantily clad marketing is not one of those) as he is entitled, he clearly panders to the audience of the moment. Big surprise, broadcasters pandering. I enjoy listening to him, and can filter out the silly views.