Matt called me today and asked if I noticed if my service was running faster. Apparently he tried switching UBR (Universal Broadband Router) ports for either my house or neighborhood. That’s in fact what the switching I was talking about yesterday was. I also got a couple of e-mails this morning (to a different address) saying that my e-mail wasn’t working (this from friends). I sent an e-mail to myself and never got it bounced but one person did forward me the bounce message that he had gotten. It looked as if the DNS may have been down for a bit. I would guess that it’s back up.

The newspaper article was good except for the fact that it made it sound like as soon as more T1’s were installed the system would be OK. That’s good for the majority, but not my neighborhood. And what about the off chance that a new neighborhood goes up with same problem my neighborhood has been having. I’m fairly certain that now with the new T1’s in place the publicity is over. Hopefully the network team that is coming this Monday can take care of my issues.

I also got an e-mail saying that until further notice my e-mail account was free. I hope this didn’t just start. I’m due a free month and I don’t want it to start until this is fixed! We’ll see when I get my next credit card bill.

Around 8:00 I check my e-mail and find hate mail regarding this site. E-mail saying that I’m stupid for not just switching and that I must like the attention of being on TV and in the newspapers. There was some other things in there like, I don’t live with a girl, but my mother, and I don’t live in a house, I live in a trailer. I’m not sure if that guy was from Madison or not as his e-mail was @usa.net which undoubtedly is a fake e-mail account. I began to think about that. Why don’t I just switch instead making web pages and calling TV/Newspapers. The answer came to me pretty simply.

1. Switch to what, ISDN and end up paying over $80/month for 15k/sec?
2. Switch to a dial up account? Why do that, I already have dialup speed for free through Bresnan.
3. Go DSL? This is the only real alternative but I don’t know If my area is eligible. I’ve heard it can take up to 7 weeks to get installed. If cable works up to it’s prime, it’s supposed to be faster the DSL.

So now the question becomes, why would I not complain? I signed up for a service that promised this excessive speed, I have friends that provide testimony of the speeds that can be achieved. I might be taking this too far but as a consumer, it’s my duty to make sure that the corporations are delivering to me what I am paying for. I think it’s a sad sad state when someone would call me stupid for trying to get my point across rather then switching. That is pretty much the definition of laziness and it is what allows companies to spread around defective services and products. So you better thank your lucky stars that we are in a country that I can put up an opinionated web site like that, because if I weren’t allowed to do that, you wouldn’t be able to send me your opinions on my trailer and mom!.