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ATT, Cincinnati Bell, buried cables, who’s responsible?

October 2, 2009 in Commentary by MAD | No comments

As most of you know, our In-Laws built a house next to us, on part of our property.

att02

Google hasn’t updated their satellite imagery so you’ll need to bear with me.

The house is done, ready to move into.  The In Laws, hate Time Warner about as much as I hate Cin Bell.  They already have DirecTV but they need internet.  So they ordered up Zoomtown/DSL from Bell.  Easy enough.

The demarcation point for Bell is a phone box in the right hand corner of our yard up by the road, and all of our telecom stuff is buried.

About a month ago they installed a temporary line, which I’ve been mowing around for a few weeks.  Last week they came to burry the cable but they did it wrong.

att03

We still farm most of our 13 acres that are not attached to the house.  It’s currently hay, which we use for our horses.  It is due to be replanted or rotated which likely means a year of corn, a year of beans, then back to hay.  We put the house where it is to keep a much contiguous farm land as we could.

Now enter Cincy Bell or ATT depending on who you want to trust as they are each pointing fingers at each other.

Instead of running the phone line along the road (where utilities go), they decided it would be easier to run up our grass driveway to our barn, and across the field to get to the new house.

Which normally would be fine, provided (a) they asked us if they could do that, and (b) we weren’t still planning to farm that area, which we are.

So now we have this:

att04

In addition, the line going up the grass driveway is also at risk if we get to the point where we want to put in a real driveway, gravel or not.    Where it crosses what will be farmed.  It will definitely be dug up when the soil is turned.

I’ve now spent about 4 hours trying to get this through to the folks at Cincinnati Bell.

I’ve gotten responses like:

- Well the line works, and since it works we’re not going to come out and fix anything because there’s nothing to fix.
- We can move the line but it will be at your expense.
- ATT: that’s not our line or our responsibility, even though we installed it, we’re not the carrier for this line.
- Bell: ATT installed that and screwed it up, you’re going to have to deal with them.

I have half a mind to ‘fix’ it for them, but don’t want my in laws to be out.  I did finally get a phone call today from a customer service rep from Cincinnati Bell.  He promised to look into it (again).

We’ll see.

UPDATE 10/17/2009:

As of now, they have buried a new cable along the path that it was supposed to be buried.  However, they didn’t take up the initial cable.   So we’ll take care of that for them in the spring and and they’ll be on the hook if the equipment gets damaged.

I will say that Tom at Cincy Bell is persistent.  He called me every day to see if it had been moved.  The last time I looked they had not cut their house over to the new line despite the fact that it was installed.

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Stop the whining… Just stop.

March 26, 2009 in Commentary by MAD | No comments

I just listened to ‘The Story’, from March, 24th, 2009. About a temp worker at Microsoft, who was unwilling to accept a 10% pay cut, or rather wasn’t happy about it and started fussing.

He whines about being indistinguishable from an employee, other than the color of his badge. Yet he doesn’t get to partake in off-site team building activities that employees get to partake in. Temp workers get no real benefits from Microsoft. (Duh, that’s why they are temp workers).

How can you be that stupid? He wants temp workers to unite and stand up for their rights. Rights that, well, as temp workers you don’t have.

Here are the facts jack:

  • You’re a temporary worker, i.e. contract worker.
  • Your Job could go away at the snap of a finger. There are a million and one reasons a company like Microsoft uses Temp/Contract workers, the primary reason of course is to control costs.
  • You agreed to be a contract worker.

Now if they are being treated poorly because they are temp workers, that’s different. That’s simply poor management. But they are NOT employees; hence they don’t have the same rights and privileges.

This is a horrible ‘Woe-is-me, I’m entitled to something story’ that is all too common with ‘The Story’. It’s very, very frustrating.

Pay cuts, temporary or otherwise aren’t any fun. Not fun for those taking the cuts, or those who have to implement them. Get over it, 10% less is far more than you’ll get from the unemployment office.

Here is the Seattle Times article on this clown.

Investment Banking Explained

March 18, 2009 in Commentary, Opinion by MAD | 1 comment

(This is floating around, I didn’t write it)

Young Chuck moved to Texas and bought a donkey from a farmer for $100.
The farmer agreed to deliver the donkey the next day.
The next day the farmer drove up and said, ‘Sorry Chuck, but I have some bad news, the donkey died.’
Chuck replied, ‘Well, then just give me my money back.’
The farmer said, ‘Can’t do that. I went and spent it already.’
Chuck said, ‘OK, then, just bring me the dead donkey.’
The farmer asked, ‘Whatcha gonna do with a dead donkey?
Chuck said, ‘I’m going to raffle him off.’
The farmer said ‘You can’t raffle off a dead donkey!’
Chuck said, ‘Sure I can. I just won’t tell anybody he’s dead.’
A month later, the farmer met up with Chuck and asked, ‘What happened with that dead donkey?’
Chuck said, ‘I raffled him off. I sold 500 tickets at two dollars apiece and made a profit of $898.00.’
The farmer said, ‘Didn’t anyone complain?’
Chuck said, ‘Just the guy who won. So I gave him his two dollars back.’
Chuck now works for AIG where he’s about to get a huge bonus!

Get Off My Land!

March 16, 2009 in Commentary, Homestead by MAD | 3 comments

Man have things changed.  We’re no longer the hip young couple in the old farm house.  We’ve moved on to being the crotchety couple in the farm house (though we have yet to garner the classification of ‘old’).  The old people are what started this.

We have a decent amount of land just outside of Trenton Ohio that surrounds the 3 acres that our house sits on.   On that 13 acres, my in-laws are building a house.   Ask me in 5-10 years if that was a good idea or not.

As a result of this we (they) had to have our property surveyed so that we could get a legal description of the land we’re giving them (or allowing them) to build on.

This has turned up two areas of encroachment.  One we were aware of and one that we were not.

In the front of our property (see drawing), we knew there was a small triangular piece of property that is actually ours.  The previous owners told us about it when we bought the place.   But they had a gentleman’s agreement with the neighbor at the time to allow them to fence a squared off area.   When we moved in they had goats in that small field, and later a cow.

Those neighbors have since moved on, a victim of the mortgage crisis before there was a crisis. (More a victim of common sense than anything but I digress).  The new owner uses the property as rental property.  When we met them we discussed the area in question but it wasn’t a big deal to us.   Now that the land has been surveyed it is a big deal.

It seems if you don’t protect your property, it will be squatted on and you’ll lose it.  By us continuing to permit them to have our land fenced, we’re risking losing it.   20 feet of road frontage is not something we wish to lose so we now we need to enforce the property lines.   As it turns out, the entire west side of the neighbors fence is on our property and will likely need to be removed.

We have an issue at the back of our property as well.

Land

The Delaware Crossing subdivision behind us and to the west is legendary.  It’s been tied up in legal issues from day one.  The builder we believe went bankrupt and the City of Trenton now owns the property.

At the back of our property, there’s a small park for the subdivision.  A couple basketball courts, and play equipment.

The problem is where they ran the walking path, or the access path to get to this park.  It was originally supposed to go between two houses as you can see in the picture.   But apparently the folks who live in those houses didn’t like that.  So the neighbor closest to us suggested they run it along our fence line and his side yard.   The developer agreed.  The only problem was they paid no attention to the property lines.

It looks something like this:

encroachment

The sad part about it, is that they had to tear down some of our fence to make this happen.

So here we go again.  We have to re-establish our boundaries or we risk losing this piece of land.

Our initial thought was to simply lease it to them.   But there is no ‘them’.  The homeowners association in Delaware Crossing is defunct.   The city now maintains the park, well they city and the residents that back up to it somewhat share that burden.

If we fence it, it will block their access.  They won’t be able to get a vehicle back to the part without tearing up our neighbors yard, and even then it will be tight, very tight.

We’ve talked to them and they will likely fence from our fence to their house which will kill all access to the park.

The City is encouraging us to put our fence back.  If people can’t use the park they don’t have to maintain it.

So the question becomes, what kind of fence?  Because what ever we put back there will be vandalized, you can count on that.

So if you have any ideas or suggestions, post them up we’re all ears.  Of course we want to enforce all of this with as little out of pocket expense as possible.

The Stimulus and us

March 16, 2009 in Commentary by MAD | No comments

No big shocker, the economy is messed up.  Obama and his stimulus package are now a done deal.  Don’t get me wrong, I think Obama is a smart guy, and a smooth talker.  The kind of guy you have to watch out for.

I think this image sums it up best:

obama-hype

So here we are.  The 800 bajillion dollar stimulus package has been passed by the Dems and signed off on by the president.

Here’s what it means to us based upon the info in this article on yahoo news.

First off, the Dishers are not rich.  We’re blessed but far from rich.  We’re technically middle class based upon my income and the fact that my income is our only income.

We still have some debt, but apparently far less than most Americans.   We didn’t buy more house than we could afford, and we pay our mortgage every month on-time.  Yep, even though it’s now worth less.   Not less than we paid for it, but less than it was worth 2 years ago.

Of course we could have bought a much bigger house, borrowed more money than we could afford and taken out a silly balloon or interest only mortgage but I guess we were smarter than that.  Or perhaps maybe not so smart.  We’re not getting bailed out in any way.

It looks like I can count on an extra $13 a week, or $52 a month.   Not sure what I’m supposed to stimulate with that?   I suppose that could subsidize our cable bill.   Though if we were to buckle down and trim expenses that would be the first things to go. 

“The $1,000 child tax credit would be extended to more low-income families that don’t make enough money to pay income taxes, and poor families with three or more children will get an expanded Earned Income Tax Credit”

This makes no sense to me.  We’re not low-income so I guess we don’t get this?  What benefit is a per-child income tax credit if you don’t make enough money to pay taxes to begin with?  Someone please explain this to me.

We’re technically middle-income so we’ll be spared the Alternative minimum tax what ever that is.

We’re not a first time home buyer so…   No benefit for us there.  Why would an $8k tax credit be limited to first time buyers only?  That seems discriminatory to me.

We can get a $1500 tax credit, if we spend a ton of money in an effort to get efficient.   We don’t need a new furnace, and to replace our windows (all 36 of them) even with a $1500 credit is still cost prohibitive.  The cost (over $20k) would buy a LOT of heat and AC.

So needless to say we won’t be stimulating the real estate economy because we’re not first time home buyers.   If you’ve been foreclosed on do you get your first time buyer status back?

We also won’t be stimulating the home improvement industry because $1500 isn’t applicable to us.

If I lose my job I’ll be happy that the first $2400 of unemployment won’t be taxable.

9 months of Cobra subsidy would also come in handy if I were to lose my job.  But why only 9 months?   If I’m still unemployed after 9 months I won’t be able to afford it then even though the Govt will let me keep it longer (up to 18 months?)

If I buy a new car, I get to deduct the sales tax?  Nice.   I’m not buying a new car, and unless you’re independently wealthy, you won’t be buying one either.  This doesn’t apply to used or pre-owned cars.  And it’s not clear if it applies only to the auto-makers they are about to bail out. 

If you want to give me $8k to spend on a car, I’ll happily buy a nice used car for about $10k.   That might stimulate the economy some, but no I’m not going into debt further to buy a new car that will depreciate 30% as soon as I drive it off the lot.

I also really don’t  understand how the Government can loan 43 Billion dollars to a company who’s current Market Capitalization is only 1.3 Billion.

So somehow we’re all supposed to save the economy with our $57 more per month?

I don’t get it.   But rest assured, if you don’t make enough money to pay taxes, you’re getting a tax credit.

Thanks President Obama.

(Note this was drafted a couple weeks ago, and forgotten about)

How to set up your own family web site (Part 3)

January 10, 2009 in Commentary, How-To, IT by MAD | 2 comments

Previously in Part 1, we set up a web-blog at WordPress.com. 

In Part 2, we ventured out and registered a domain name via the registrar Godaddy.com.

In Part 3 we’re going to tie the two together. (Though this functionality with WordPress.com is not FREE)

Our demo blog is:  http://smithfamilyweb.wordpress.com/ It was the best we could find when registering. 

You can go there now and see that it’s functional and looks something like this:

BlogPhase1

But it clearly is a WordPress blog at WordPress.com. That’s not necessarily bad, but it’s limited and not very portable.  What if we need or want email? What if we already have a domain or find something we like better after we’ve registered this blog?

In Part 2, we registered the domain: smith-blog.com

It currently goes no where, and if you hit it, it points to a parked landing page at GoDaddy that looks something like this:

BlogPhase2

But we’re going to fix that.   We’re going to make the following url’s:

www.smith-blog.com and simply smith-blog.com open our new WordPress.com Blog.

To do that you need to change the DNS (Domain Name Service) Records for your domain.   If you registered your domain with GoDaddy as we showed in Part 2 you’ll be able to follow right along.

Log Into GoDaddy with the username and password you set up when you registered your domain.

Locate your domain in the Domain Manager, it should look something like this:

DomainManager

Click the domain to open up the settings for this domain.   From here we’ll be able to adjust all kinds of attributes for the domain and it it should look like:

DomainManager2

Most of the attributes are beyond the scope of this series of articles.

Needless to say, having your domain ‘locked’ is a good thing.

What we’re going to work with here is the information on the right.    From the Name servers on down:

DomainManager3

Our domain is currently registered with GoDaddy.   We are also going to continue to use their Name Servers since they are free and perform fairly well. 

They also have a pretty nifty, easy to use, admin tool to administer the DNS records.

But what is the DNS stuff anyway?

Put in simple terms, DNS tells people where to go. 

When you type in www.google.com, your computer asks a Name Server where do I go for www.google.com?  This name server is probably local, probably at your internet service provider.   If it doesn’t know, it will track down the authoritative name server for google.com and ask it, just where do I go to get to www.google.com.  The Authoritative Name Server will give it the answer and it will tell your computer.  It will also keep that information incase someone else asks.  The it won’t have to track down the Authoritative Name Server again.   At least not as long as the TTL value for the information it got from the Name Server.    The TTL value is like the expiration date on Milk.  When information expires, your name server will delete it.  It’s bad, or at least no longer good, possibly.  

So for my current domain, the Authoritative Name servers are:

NS27.DOMAINCONTROL.COM and NS28.DOMAINCONTROL.COM (there should always be at least 2 servers)

Click the Total DNS Control and MX Records link.

You’ll now the get DNS Manager interface which should look something like this:

DNS1

If you recall, our domain wasn’t pointed anywhere, or rather it was pointed to a parked page.   That’s what 68.178.232.100 is, a GoDaddy Host for parking domains.  If you click the link you’ll probably get a ‘Sorry page’.

You’ll notice that your only host is @ and it points there.   The @ is essentially a wildcard.  For anything or ?.yourdomain.com go to that IP address, the 68.178.232.100.

Below that you’ll have CNAMES (Aliases) which are a little more specific. 

In the above example  www points to our wildcard @.  So anyone asking about www.yourdomain.com will get sent to the wildcard address. 

Fair enough?

Look at the mobilemail cname.   GoDaddy has that pointed at one of their mobilemail servers mobilemail-v01.blah blah blah.

That’s not important to us, if you won’t use their mobile mail product you could click the X and delete that record.

NOTE about DNS: DNS changes take time to propagate.  Remember my simple description about how it works and the TTL values?  This means that when you change something, all the other servers around the world who’ve asked for this information won’t ask for it again and get the new information until that other information ‘expires’.   If your TTL value is too high, like a week, then there are servers out there that may not get the updated information for up-to a week.  Even with short TTL values, there are servers that ignore these values because they don’t want to go asking all the time.  They are lazy.   Be extra-careful when making DNS changes.  Make sure you make them right the first time.   You don’t want to wait a couple hours to find out you didn’t do it right.

Add or Edit a cname to point to your WordPress blog.

We’re going to add a cname so that http://blog.smith-blog.com takes people to our blog on WordPress.com

We’re using blog, but you can use ‘www’ or what ever you like.

Note: The ability for WordPress to work with an external domain is an ‘upgrade’ to WordPress.com.  That means it costs money.  $10 per year to be exact which in my opinion is a bit steep.   But it is what it is.

The cost is also $10 per domain, so choose your redirect wisely.

In your domain manager, click the ‘Add new Cname Record’ button:

AddCName 

We’re going to fill it out like this:

blogdot

We’re going to set the TTL to be pretty short (1/2 hour).

The result after adding will look like this:

AddCName2

We’ve done the DNS part, which can take a few hours to actually work.

GoDaddy’s DNS servers don’t seem to update very quickly and this stuff takes time to propagate.  If you run into trouble with the next step, the Servers probably haven’t updated.  In my case I made the changes late at night then performed the next step the following morning.

For clarity: we chose: blog.smith-blog.com which seems kind of redundant, but you could have easily changed the www to point to your WordPress Blog or anything else you think is easy to type and remember.

Adding the Domain redirect to Wordpress.com

Log into your WordPress.com Blog, and go to the Dashboard.

On the lower left (with the current version, 2.7) you should find Domains under the settings:

WPDomains Click Domains…

You now have the opportunity to add the redirect we or cname that we added:

WPDomains2

At this point WordPress will check the DNS and make sure it’s working.  They will also prompt you for payment ($10) for one year to redirect this. 

If you elect to give them the $ you’ll be good to go.

The end result will look like:

WPDomains3

Now, clicking the following link: http://blog.smith-blog.com/ will take you to your WordPress.com blog (if DNS has propagated and you didn’t mess anything up).

So you should get:

BlogPhase1

Instead of the GoDaddy Landing page.

In part (4) we’ll talk about email, specifically tying Google Apps for domain to your domain.   This gives you gmail for your domain as well as isolated Google Docs, Calendar, and a few other features.

How to set up your own family web site (Part 2)

January 7, 2009 in Commentary, How-To, IT by MAD | No comments

Earlier in (Part 1) I showed you the quick and dirty way to get started.  I still encourage you to play with one of those free hosts to get a feel for using a blog publishing system.

(Part 2) deals with how to get your own Vanity name web site and the steps to get that set up.

The first thing you need to do is find an available domain name.

I recommend GoDaddy.com as your registrar.  The site is a tad overwhelming though.   What matters is right in the middle here:

Findadomain01

For the purpose of this how-to, let’s say our family is the Smiths.

Possible domains are:

smiths.com
thesmiths.com
thesmithfamily.com

(though all of these are likely taken).

Back in the good old days, you’d use .com for commercial entities, .org for organizations (non-corporate entities).  These days just about anything will do. 

Start your search with smith

Findadomain02

GoDaddy will let you know if it’s available, in any incarnation (.com, .org, .net, etc).  In this case smith.com is NOT available:

Findadomain03

But since GoDaddy is in the business of selling you a domain registration they’ll suggest other possible domains you *might* like:

Findadomain04

Note: Those highlighted in *pink* are currently registered but for sale.  Avoid these.  In the lower yellow highlighted box (all $9.99 each) are available.  How much you want to spend for a domain is entirely up to you.

I don’t like any of these so I’m going to keep searching and try another couple combinations.

After a bunch of searches I’ve decided that “smith-blog.com” is available and is the best I’m going to be able to get in this day and age.

(other domains were available but I’ve avoided .tv, .cc, .me and .net domains)

So the next step is to register it.   The minimum registration commitment is 1 year, but I suggest you go ahead and register it for 2-3 years. 

WARNING GoDaddy will try to get you to protect your domain, and encourage you to register any and all other incarnations (.org, .net, etc.)  You’re not a corporate entity so it’s not necessary.  If you really think someone will snatch up smith-blog.com and start up a porn site or something else that you’re against, then you might consider grabbing a few extra domains. 

All along the GoDaddy check out process, you’ll be encouraged to upgrade an add-on all kinds of services, like privacy, add-on email, smart-start web services and all that jazz.  All of it is Optional.  

I don’t have a lot of respect for GoDaddy hosting, but for a quick and dirty website there is nothing wrong with it.

After you log in or create your GoDaddy account, you can bypass most of these offers:

Findadomain05

In the end my one-year domain registration looks like this:

Findadomain06

Again, I encourage you to register for more than one year.  I simply don’t need to invest more than $10 to teach anyone how to do this :)

Once this is complete I’ll show you how to set up this domain to point to one of the vanity blog sites we talked about in (Part 1) then set up a cheap hosting solution at a 3rd party host.

to be continued…

How to set up your own family web site (Part 1)

January 7, 2009 in Commentary, How-To, IT by MAD | 3 comments

I get comments all the time from people who like our site and wish they had the knowledge to create one.

It’s really not that hard.  Especially if you use a publishing platform like WordPress.  I recently offered to help a buddy set up their site, but figured since I was going to write instructions for him I’d also publish them for the benefit of others.

There are a million ways to do this and and it can be confusing.  I don’t claim that what I’m about to share is the ‘best’ way or the ‘only’ way.   But it is an option.

The Quick and Easy Way

Basically dishers.com is a blog.  It has some static web site qualities, but it’s basically a blog.   Blogs are FREE and easy.  If you’re not so concerned with having your own vanity domain name there are plenty of options here.  In fact I encourage you to set up a blog with one of the free services and play with it regardless of the route you take.

The top two places (IMHO) are:

(1) WordPress.com – They currently have over 5 million blogs.  It’s fairly quick, easy, and a basic account is free.   You might even be able to get something like “myfamilyname.wordpress.com”.   Then again you might not.

(2) Blogger.com – I have no idea how many blogs they have or host.  Blogger is now owned by Google and that’s a good thing.  Again a good cheap/free blog, that IMHO is not as feature rich or as flexible as Wordpress but it’s a good place to start.

So with either of these two services you can set up a blog for free, with very little effort.  All you need is an email address for registration.

—

Poke around these two sites and see if they meet your needs.  For quick and dirty web based publishing they can’t be beat.   Neither provides you with a lot of storage though more is always available for a small fee.  

You’ll need to link in other services if you want to do heavy multi-media sharing or share a lot of photos.

For photo sharing:

I personally like Picasa, which is part of your Google Account.  You do have a Google account don’t you? 

Other popular photo sharing services like Flickr, webshots, or smugmug may also be used.

But what if you don’t want your site to be:  myfamily.someotherservice.com

What if you want to own myrfamily.com site.  You want it to look like you really know what you’re doing and amaze all your friends and family.

We’ll get to that in the next post (Step 2)

TimeWarner/RR is dysfunctional (In case you didn’t know)

December 30, 2008 in Commentary, Opinion by MAD | No comments

I’ve generally been a fan of TimeWarner / RoadRunner.  It’s always been a good value for speed/performance vs. Price paid.   In the past they’ve always seemed to be better service wise than say Zoomtown.

Now bear in mind, we kind of live out in the sticks in never land Trenton, OH, in between Middletuckey and Hamiltuckey.

When we moved out there (10 years ago), RR wasn’t an option, nor was Zoomtown, so we survived with Dual ISDN, which wasn’t cheap, but got the job done.

About 6 years ago, RR became available when TimeWarner purchased out local cable provider.   We’ve had reasonable service since, er at least uptill last year or so.  

We’re out in a pretty flat area, and lighting strikes near us are not uncommon.  We’ve gone through four or five cable modems in the last 2 years.

In the last 6 months it’s gotten pretty bad.   Our cable, specifically our RR was very intermittent.  The proverbial crap hit the fan around the 12th of this month when our RoadRunner went out again.

A call to tech support yielded the standard troubleshooting that we always do before we call them.  Reboot the router, unplug and reset the modem, etc, all to no avail.

Of course they couldn’t get a tech out for a couple days (like 3).   So we again played TimeWarner Courier and swapped out our cable modem.  But this cable modem couldn’t be provisioned.  They couldn’t even see it.

So we accepted the appointment for 3 days later. 

Later that evening, it magically started working.  (hurray!).  When they called two days later to verify our appointment, nothing was wrong, so we canceled.

Less than 48 hours later, it rained like hell and guess what?  Our Roadrunner quit working.  “ding ding ding”…   Houston we have a problem.  So we called tech support, repeated all the troubleshooting steps, tried like hell to explain to them that; hey, when it rains our road runner stops working but no one would listen.

We accepted the appointment for 3 days down the road.  Magically less than 24 hours later, things dried up (or more likely froze) and viola, we had working Road Runner.  But we decided to keep the appointment.  We were told that 3-4 days is pretty standard, if we needed faster service than that we should have RoadRunner Business which is same-day service.

So, I ordered that, what the heck, it’s faster and gives me a static IP.  Paying an extra $30 a month seems like a lot but when you consider all the BS we have to go through every time we call, that is money well spent in my opinion.

While waiting for the appointment on the 19th it became more clear that the wetter it is outside, the worse our roadrunner (and cable) service was.

When the tech finally arrived on the 19th, he declared all of our inside wiring ‘crap’.   He also said the tap on the pole was bad, but he fixed that, and sealed it up with silicone.  He ran a new temporary wire from the pole to our house and said someone would be out to burry a new wire in the next couple days.   Funny though, we still had no service.   I asked him what the deal was.  He said “Your inside wiring is bad and I’m not an inside guy.  I also can’t spend any more time here, when you get the new cable buried your troubles will be over”.  The guys should be here tomorrow, they work on Saturday and Sunday.

Of course the weekend came and went and nobody showed up.  During the week of Christmas we had Road Runner for a few hours here and there when things were dry or frozen.   Which unfortunately wasn’t very often.

On Saturday the 27th the guys finally showed up to burry the cable, and burry it they did.

But when they left, we were in worse shape than before.  Not only no RoadRunner, but not Cable TV either.   Nice…  The cable wire bury guys said they’d get someone out today, but then reneged and said Tuesday was the best they could do.

A call to TimeWarner resulted in yet another appointment, no sooner than Tuesday the 30th, which was the standing appointment for having our inside wiring redone.

On top of that, RoadRunner Business could not be installed while there was a repair order in effect for our address.

We tried, to explain to the folks at RoadRunner, that:

A:  It does NOT rain in our house.   We clearly have a moisture issue, or an issue farther down the line.

B: We at least had cable, until they buried the new cable, now we have nothing.  Rewiring the inside of our house will not fix any of this.

They would not listen, so we waited patiently for Tuesday (today).

Of course the first guy shows up to do what?  Rewire the inside of the house.  We quickly re-diverted him outside.  Check the signal AT the house.

Of course this was bad, so we traced it back to the pole and the tap.  He allegedly re-did the tap and we now had cable, but no RoadRunner.  Those signals were not present at the tap.   He now needed to call a linesman.

The line guy showed up a couple hours later.  What did he fine?  A tap that had been struck by lighting, had water in it and was bad.  He replaced that and we were good to go.   This should have been done two weeks ago, but no…

We now are waiting for our RR business installation.   Which I’m less convinced it worth it.  But if it helps us avoid this two week run-around in the future, it will be money well spent.

WebHostingBuzz

December 28, 2008 in Commentary, Opinion by MAD | No comments

My love affair with cheap host: http://www.webhostingbuzz.com/ is quickly coming to an end.

When I initially started using them I had some pretty signficant up-time issues.   They agreed to move me to a different server.  The same one that a buddy of mine is using for his blog that has worked out well.   During my outages, his site was always still up.

Then out of the blue, on Christmas Eve no less, they decided to move me.

Since I control the dns of all my domains externaly (not with them) all my stuff broke.

If you want:

  • A webhost that will move your stuff without notifying you.
  • A webhost that will let you chat online with pre-sales support but not post sales support.
  • 12 hour ticket turn around, only to have to go through everything again to get your stuff fixed.

Use: http://www.webhostingbuzz.com/

All of this is exacerbated of course by the fact that my broadband is non-existant, so that already puts me in a bad mood.

Granted the hosting is somewhat cheap, but it should be a little more reliable than it’s been.  Especially when my recent issue was self inflicted by them.  A little notice would have been nice.   For the price of hosting, I somewhat expect an issue per-year.  But they are running well above that now.

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