Why I Hate AT&T

And I do, I really, really, really hate them.

We left for Ohio last Friday in something of a rush. After returning home Sunday afternoon, the DSL modem/router glared its evil red middle eye upon us. In addition, the land line was intolerably static-y. Like to the point where you'd never be able to hear someone, should someone actually call us.

Also, let me point out that me without internet is a scary, scary thing. I am online constantly. It doesn't matter if I'm processing photos in Photoshop or reading a book ... the internet is my constant companion in the background. Without the ability to check IM or email or Twitter ... my brain begins to shut down, cut off from the world.

So I went to an undisclosed location, logged into the internet and attempted to file a trouble report. But AT&T wants you to do so from your home line. Ummm. Can't. Can't hear on the landline. Can't get internet. I dinked around on their wretched help site which kept sending me back to a page which was supposed to help diagnose my DSL ... assuming that I was doing this from my DSL. Umm, if your DSL is DOWN and NOT WORKING, then your stupid ass web page won't help! Good lord.

I finally found a "generic question" form which let me post our landline & DSL problems. I told them I could pick up email between 8 and 5, but to PLEASE call my cell number after 5 eastern time, because I could NOT get internet after 5 because THEIR damn DSL service was DOWN.

They emailed me at 5:15 p.m., so of course, I didn't get the email until Tuesday. Grr. All it said was we'll send a tech out by the ninth at 8 p.m. Wednesday there was a message on the answering machine which said we'll be there between 8 and 5 on the 9th. Way to leave it until the last minute, AT&T. I emailed them back and reiterated that the tech was to call me on my cell if he needed access to the house and I would be there within 15 minutes. (They thought the problem was outside the house, but I wanted this FIXED.)

Oddly enough, after attempting to use the landline Thursday night (someone called the house), the DSL miraculously started working. WOOHOO! Of course, the landline was still screwed up and needed repair and I wanted to make sure that the line was properly fixed so the DSL stayed up and running.

I eventually got a cell call Friday that I thought might be AT&T, but when I picked up, the person on the other end was speaking in Spanish. And it was a recording. Definitely not an AT&T technician telling me he needed access to the house. I get ready to leave for home after work and called the other half.

"You're gonna be pissed," she announces. "The DSL is out again and I've been home since 2. I can see that someone pulled into the driveway, what with all this snow, and they walked around the house to the back. So I guess they were here. But they didn't leave a note or anything."

The entire way home I began plotting my call to AT&T. It began with "Let me talk to your supervisor because I doubt they pay you enough to deal with me right now." It rapidly went downhill from there. A week without internet at home does not do good things to me.

I get home, picked up the landline - the static wasn't completely gone, but it was somewhat better. Hmm. I turned around, walked back to the living room (that's like three steps from the phone line) and went to glare at the eVile red glowing eye on the...

Three green lights.

WOOHOO! The internet was back.

A few hours later, in the middle of attempting to fix the mess I'd made of the blog configuration and database, it went out again. I called AT&T.

Have you ever seen The IT Crowd? Practically the first words out of the Help Desk woman's mouth were: "Have you tried turning it on and off again?" Grrrrr. Yes, that didn't help. It's been out for a week. The phone line is effed up as well and is probably screwing up the signal. It came up Thursday for no apparent reason, but went out during the day Friday.

In the course of her going through the questions they have to ask according to their scripts but which I had already dealt with (is it within 5 feet of your DISH receiver? No, the DISH receiver is in the basement. So that's more than 5 feet away from the DSL modem? YES! The receiver is in the BASEMENT, which is FAR away from here. - yes I was a bit testy.), the damn green light came back on.

So of course, after I say that, she says, Our tests indicate you are getting a weak DSL signal now.

Here's the deal. I don't pay an exorbitant monthly fee for a service that is giving me a weak signal. I want the damn thing to WORK. The lady hems and haws around for a while and finally says "I'll put a trouble ticket in and the techs will run a remote test tonight."

Of course it was working then. Of course they want to close out the ticket.

So, I'm attempting to download a copy of my blog's database (something I do not do often enough, stupid me), and at 185 mb of a 200mb DB, the DSL goes out again. Download is destroyed. Crap, crap, crap.

Thinking I might sense a pattern now, I pick up the landline and call my cell phone. Sure enough, within about 10-15 minutes of making that 15 second call, the DSL is up again. Intriguing issue.

I start the download again and go to bed. Upon getting up? No middle light (at least it wasn't red again). Luckily the DSL crapped out AFTER the download was done, so I do have a good backup of the db. (Of course, I now know that it's a corrupted db and that's why the blog was screwed up, so I have to delete it anyway ... but that's another long story). I call my cell phone again. Other half points out the internet is still down and tell her to wait about 10-15 minutes.

What do you know? The internet comes back up within that time frame. It appears that using the landline somehow "activates" the line enough that the DSL picks up a signal again. I have no idea why or if that's what's really happening. Maybe it's a coincidence, I don't know.

At any rate, I'm going out today to pick up a cheap wired phone to see if perhaps the cordless phone is somehow sending out interference now. (It's worked fine for the last 5 or 6 years since we've lived here. Maybe it's just degraded, who knows?)

In the course of writing this post? DSL went out, I used the landline ... it came back. After I get a new phone and make sure the cordless is not the issue, hopefully I'll be able to keep the DSL up long enough to file an update to the trouble ticket at AT&T and let them know what I think of their "fix" this week ... and crappy service.

By the way, if you're a Help Desk employee somewhere, don't ask me to give you a good survey review about your service calling yourself excellent ... that's kinda presumptuous. The woman who read her script with me was good, a little attached to her script, but good. Until she ended the phone call with "God Bless." Umm, you do not know my faith belief so let's not get a bit ahead of ourselves, okay?
(I don't know why that always bugs me, but it does.)

So, anyhow, I'm kinda back online. And apparently the blog is fixed now.

Phew!

Posted by Red Monkey at 8:57 AM | Comments (45) | Blog | Never Underestimate the Power of Human Stupidity | Stumble

December 16, 2008

MS Recommends Using Another Browser

(Well, duh. I've been saying THAT for years. Nice of you to jump on the bandwagon, Microsloth.)

Mention Internet Explorer to any web designer and watch that person begin ranting, gnashing their teeth and wailing.

There's nothing worse than fine-tuning the code of a website to match your design ... only to realize that YET AGAIN, the non-compliant Internet Explorer has totally bolloxed the whole thing up. Works fine in Firefox. Looks sharp in Opera and Konquerer and Safari. You're a frigging genius of the ether ...

... and it looks like pants in every version of Internet Explorer. And we're not talking some Red Monkey Jeans hip pants that all the cool kids are spending $300 a pop to look just as cool as everyone else kind of pants. No. We're talking hideous 1970s plaid pants from Herb Tarlek at WKRP kind of pants.

And. Every. Single. Version. of. IE. Has. A. Different. Problem.

Every. Single. One.

It's enough to make me go utterly stark-raving mad.

So the fact that today the BBC has an article wherein apparently Microsoft has discovered a security flaw so bad they have not yet released one of their crappy-ass half-complete updates, makes me laugh.

Instead, Microsoft suggests that you download and use another browser.

Lemme tell you something. Once you download Firefox, just keep using it. Please. Don't go back to IE. Import all of your bookmarks and preferences and passwords and all that good stuff.

And then just delete IE from your computer and never use it again. Please. PLEASE? I'm begging you. Do it for the children. Do it for the good of standards-compliant browsers around the world.

Do it before I go bald trying to write a new stylesheet for EVERY SINGLE VERSION of IE instead of writing just one stylesheet that works for all browsers the way Los Interwebz intended.

Posted by Red Monkey at 4:43 AM | Comments (4) | Blog | Design | Never Underestimate the Power of Human Stupidity | Stumble

December 9, 2008

Interesting Times

Tracy complained. Frequently. At least that's my recollection. She would go up to the teachers and complain about seating arrangements. Or a particular student being noisy. And the teacher would "take care of it."

I would go up to the teacher and complain and be told to "deal with it."

Hrm.

When I queried various teachers over the years about this phenomenon which seemed so vastly unfair to my little elementary school self, I was told things like:

"You're stronger than so-and-so."
"I put Chris next to you because you listen to him - and that keeps him quiet. He doesn't act up when he sits next to you."
"You're smart enough to do your work correctly even when you can't hear my lesson."

And, of course, So-and-so complains all the time - I do what she asks to shut her up.

In other words, the squeaky wheel gets the grease.

So, I tried to be assertive and squeak. I was told to quit being a brat.

Hrm.

It has always seemed to me that there were kids, adults, co-workers who nearly always got their way ... and those who pretty much never did. And then the rest of us, of course, fell somewhere in between.

I found out years later that one of the kids who used to squeak enough to deserve an entire factory of WD-40 devoted to him, was given leeway because of "his family life." His mom was an alcoholic.

Interesting. Out of a group of four in elementary school, at least three of us had an alcoholic parent and I didn't see great exceptions made for us. Well, for some of us.

What scares me a great deal about the way the current economic bailouts are going is that I'm seeing the same damn pattern. I see businesses and individuals who made stupid decisions, who should have known better, who shouldn't have done such risky things ... getting bailed out.

And folks and businesses who tried to be responsible and do the right thing ... be passed over.

Of course, we're so screwed at this point that I certainly do not have the ability to filter through all of the information and make any kind of decision over who should and who should not be bailed out. After all, if the big three auto makers finally collapse, this country is going to be in a LOT of pain for quite a while. But maybe it needs to happen if the damn CEOs can't pare down their lifestyles. I don't know. Maybe someone else will come in and buy up one of those companies and be able to fix things with reasonable wages for all.

I do know that a lot of what's going on economically right has a hell of a lot to do with greed and wanting to avoid consequences. "Sure, let's extend credit aggressively. The more we extend, the more money we'll make off interest because you know these dumbasses will spend more than they can really afford. And then we'll up their interest rate AND their limit so they can buy more. They'll be paying us interest forever and we'll have a steady stream of income."

Except there's that nagging little detail ... if those "dumbasses" spend more than they can afford, won't they eventually NOT be able to make the payments?

Oh, no problem. They can use a different credit card to pay us.

Yeah. That'll work.

And of course, that's just a tiny piece of the current mess.

We're in a bad situation, no doubt. If we were ... if our government were to let every company take the consequences of their actions in order for them to learn the lessons they need to learn ... I don't think we'd be saying recession. I think we'd be saying the 2000s and 2010s were the time of the GigaDepression. Maybe TerraDepression.

On the personal level, however, it's disheartening at the very least to see these CEOs in their fancy cars and ridiculously expensive clothes asking for government cheese. It's not earning them any popularity with the populous.

And then I hear about the family with the autistic and blind son who had their house rebuilt by Extreme Makeover ... and are now in foreclosure ... Dad worked for the auto industry in Detroit ... laid off ... had to take out either a second mortgage or a new mortgage on the house after being laid off ... after the show had already been through ... after his property taxes went up by $1000.

From the extreme gratitude and hope generated by the show ... to slapped back down to "their place." What right do the masses have to be happy and to hope for a better future? That's for the chosen few.

Not every squeaky wheel gets their own WD-40 factory, it seems.

Too many individuals are slipping through the myriad of cracks opening up in our economy and society. And the cracks are opening up far wider and with more frequency than we can comprehend, much less handle.

And all of this? This is why "May you live in interesting times" is a terrible freaking curse.

Posted by Red Monkey at 6:51 AM | Comments (3) | Never Underestimate the Power of Human Stupidity | Struggles | Stumble

December 2, 2008

Respect Others

Here's what I don't get: in a time of year when so many people are focusing on making others happy ... people do so much harm to each other.

First, I don't get what the freaking problem is with a retail outlet saying, "Happy Holidays" instead of "Merry Christmas." Here's a news flash: Not everyone is a Christian and not every Christian celebrates Christmas in a big consumer-istic fetish kinda way.
By saying "Happy Holidays" someone, retailer or otherwise, is acknowledging that culturally, many people do either mark this time of year in thought ... or mark it with retail bliss. (Umm, I originally typo'd that as retail bills ... whatever works.) It does not assume that every person believes in the exact same thing. It is respectful.

Now, if we're talking about a Christian bookstore, then yeah, I think they can safely assume "Merry Christmas" is respecting their customers.

If you're chatting with a customer and they say something about Christmas or Channukah then you can respect them and respond in kind.

Secondly, again, during a time of year when most of us are supposedly thinking of others ... how in the freaking HELL do you get so focused on "the deal" that you pop the doors off the hinges at a retail store and then trample a clerk???

Seriously? I mean, really. HOW IS THIS THINKING OF OTHERS?

And then lastly ... I noticed several online sites attempting to be respectful with their "Happy Holidays" promotions. All fine and good - a lot of people do enjoy buying for others this time of year and I have no problem with a retail outlet trying to get their fair share of that.

But if you say "Happy Holidays" then umm, I'm just saying that "order by x date to receive by Christmas" is kinda blowing it.

Of course, as a web professional, I know I don't want to give up the site real estate to say "order by X to receive by December 22 or by Y to receive by December 25 or by Z to receive by December 26."

Still ... it's a little tacky. I don't have a good solution, by the way, and if I had to add a date to a website, I'd probably settle on the 25th as well - at least it's a good reference point for everything else.

Posted by Red Monkey at 6:12 PM | Comments (2) | Never Underestimate the Power of Human Stupidity | Stumble

November 13, 2008

Oh. Wow.

Other half's alarms begin going off around 3:10 a.m. Her "Oh Shit" alarm (on MY alarm clock, so 'tis impossible for me to ignore it) goes off at 3:45 a.m.

I leave for work at 7:20 a.m.

Yes. I have four hours between getting up and going to work.

Other half leaves at 4:30 a.m. I can only "nap" in 2 hour segments, which means that I would have to fall asleep instantly the moment she leaves in order to be up in time to get ready for work myself. Except she talks loudly and constantly and narrates everything that is happening (either to me or if i tell her to hush, she talks just as loudly to the dogs - without even realizing what she's doing). Hence, falling back asleep instantly is impossible.

This means I have to go to bed by 7:30 p.m. at the latest in order to get the requisite eight hours of sleep I need to be a functioning human being.

Damn. I forgot how complicated this having a job thing was.

So yeah. I'm exhausted and my body hates me.

I know. Scintillating blog fodder, isn't it? Hmph. Bite me. I'm tired and cranky and I just want some freaking SILENCE and SLEEP.

/me crawls off to bed and contemplates making myself deaf so I can have some peace.

(no, not really. geez. I'm just tired and fussy.)

Posted by Red Monkey at 9:47 PM | Comments (1) | Never Underestimate the Power of Human Stupidity | Stumble

October 27, 2008

Why I Belong In Texas

Yes, we got snow tonight. Snow the weatherfolk SWORE would not stick on the ground because it was too warm outside still.

Posted by Red Monkey at 11:44 PM | Comments (3) | Never Underestimate the Power of Human Stupidity | Stumble