08/19/1999 – Blame it on the rain!


The Cap Times called me first thing this morning to get any last minute updates. Aside from my outage on Monday I had no real news to report to him. He gave me a brief outline of the article and he told me the single most important thing I’ve heard to date. He told me that Dave Snodgrass said that there is an equipment problem with my house or my neighborhood that could effect up to 50 people. You guys that e-mail me regularly, this means you too because I can guarantee it’s not my house. What they are actually doing about it is a different story. I don’t know what that story is but I have been trying to get this through to Bresnan and the @home folks since August 2. Here it is 17 days later and I finally get a hint that someone acknowledges what I already knew. I don’t care what they say about you Dave, so far, you’re doing all right by me!

Shawn F sent me e-mail saying that he wanted to come look at my problem in person (he’s from NY) with a team of people. I e-mailed him my number and we talked for a bit. I told him about the 4 others in my neighborhood that were having problems with the system and that I felt that this was definitely an equipment problem but I didn’t know enough about the cable networking to qualify as an kind of reference. He explained to me how the networking system worked and then we both agreed that the problem I have is definitely very strange. So now I wonder, have I gone to far? I’m no journalist, so I don’t know where the line is or even if there is a line. But after talking to Shawn I got the feeling that he wanted this cable modem technology to work and that this project (not my house, but cable networking) was his baby. I can relate to that. People tend to take one thing and work on it until it’s perfect and then keep working on it so that it’s even more perfect. What I’m saying is that my initial impression of Shawn is a very good one. I feel that he wants to get this problem out of the way so he can work on the overall system and go forward.

I got a call from Keith (either an RF tech or coordinator) telling me that the guy who was coming to my house tonight was not an @home technician and could not help me if my service was still slow. He re stated that about five times. I think he was scared I’d never let that tech go if the service didn’t speed up. He also let me know that he had done some switching and with the data people to try and improve my service.

Shawn later e-mailed me and asked me for the names of the people that were also having problems. He wanted to schedule some time for them too. I e-mailed them and had them e-mail Shawn. In turn, they all e-mailed me thinking that this was all a little odd. Indeed it is. Is it pure customer service? Is it that I’ve made a web page been on the news and in the paper and they just want me to shut up? I don’t know. Here is what I do know, I want my service to work. I don’t want excuses or people feeding me shovels full of crap while I try to get answers. Anyway, everyone e-mailed me back confirming appointments for Tuesday. The team that Shawn is putting together is supposed to be at my house on Monday at 4. That will mark three weeks since the service was installed.

I went home and was promptly greeted by an RF tech. A very nice guy too by the way. I wish I remembered his name because he was very personable and very efficient with his side of things. He also pointed out that he was not an @home tech. Keith probably sent out a warning; "This guy might not let you leave if his service doesn’t work". I explained to him where I wanted the jack and off he went. He did a great job and all the while telling that he couldn’t wait for @home to be in his area because it was so fast. He also kept telling me that he couldn’t wait to see the speeds I was going to get when he put in the new jack. I tried to explain to him that my neighborhood is broke. After the new jack got installed I made sure to test the system to make sure that the jack was hooked up. It took a bit for the modem to sync with the network but it did. Then I showed him the performance I was getting. His eyes widened in disbelief. I tried a couple of different sites and he was more then shocked. He told me not to give up on the service as rumor had it a DS3 was coming very shortly etc. He left and my girlfriend said I should put in a good word about him. So here it is: Guy whose name I can’t remember, you’ve probably been the most personable RF tech to show up to my house out of the three that have been there. So thanks a lot!

Around 7 o’clock I was on-line getting news and reading e-mail when my service just dropped connection. Most of the time I’d fly off the handle and call Bresnan and start railing whatever tech I got but instead I waiting. I reset the modem, rebooted my system, got a glass of water etc. I was about to call tech support when it finally came back on. I hope this isn’t a regular occurrence. When I did get back on-line I had an e-mail from Aurora Computers. He had been pointed to my site by a guy a know. He said he would be more then happy to go over all my settings to make sure it wasn’t my PC. Well, guy from Aurora, I’m not going to call you or e-mail you because it’s not my PC. I’ve tried two computers, I’ve reformatted one. I’ve applied the MTU MSS patches, I’ve removed them. I’ve used the @home patch from Quest@home. One thing I can say, It’s definitely not a software issue.


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