Totally Wired and Really Worried

If you’re reading this, I have to tell you that you and I helped create this problem. This could happen to you! Last June I finally got tired of my major carrier of both my telephone lines and the Internet. We live in something of a rural area that is serviced by 60-year-old twisted pair wire, and I signed up for high-speed DSL that was marginal at best, and frequently down. My large corporate carrier continued to raise their prices. After some research I decided to bundle all my home services with a single carrier. I was a happy camper from both the service and price of this decision. However – the following somewhat dampened my enthusiast endorsement.

Some weeks back I had some surgery and after returning I noticed some issues with my high-priced, 42-inch high-definition television in the family room. My first reaction was to assume that somehow the surgery, which was lower down than my belly button, which is more info than probably needed, had caused my eyesight to begin to show the signs of years of wear and tear. This TV normally had a relatively sharp and clear picture, and I was able to read the small print, read the menu of my DVR, which I shall not give you the brand name because they’re not sponsoring this blog, and in general, a deterioration of the total picture quality.

I realized that the eyesight issue could not be the case because I was capable of reading a book without my cheaters, and didn’t seem to have any difficulty in seeing other things like the “use by date” on my bottle of Corona and most onrushing cars when I drove.

At that point, I began to suspect that for some reason the TV was about to crash and burn. However, while scanning channels, I noticed that some were clearer than others. Strange! All of a sudden my DVR, which is connected through a computer via a modem provided by my new carrier, who also shall not be named because of not sponsoring this blog, continued to come up with. message that I had no internet connection when attempting to view online streaming meaningless movies from another supplier, which I will not mention because they don’t sponsor this blog ether. Facts are, nobody’s sponsoring this blog, and I don’t blame them. The real reason I’m not mentioning the manufacturers nor service suppliers name is I don’t need a bunch of lawyers calling me!

I went down to my office, which has been referred to as “my man cave,” to check the computer and LAN, which provides signal to the DVR which talks to my online streaming service, both of which I will not name for fear of retribution and as mentioned, a lack of sponsorship. I imagine you don’t need a lesson in technical verbiage, but I just want to show off and let you know that I’m not just another pretty face.

The computer told me that it was online, I checked the LAN, and the little green flashing lights said “we’re okay.”

“Houston we have a problem.” The modem and the master computer are sitting in, naturally, the master bedroom, along with a Wan that is supposed to be wireless, but has never worked anyway, and I won’t tell you manufacturer’s name because they don’t support this blog. I have been trying to buy products made in America, and what I fail to remember is that includes Mexico and Canada, not necessarily the US. The modem which was provided by my new carrier at a cost of seven dollars a month, was sitting there blinking and nodding and telling me that all networks were up and running.

Sometimes having a little technical knowledge is a dangerous thing. Being brilliant at troubleshooting things that go bang in the night, at least with electronics, I did the mandatory recycle on both the modem and the Wan. I then went back down to my “man cave” and recycled all that stuff. If you’re starting to get bored don’t give up, because it’s going to get exciting very soon.

I then went back up assuming that my DVR would recognize that it has a signal and it promptly and in polite terms, told me to “stick that in my ear.” “You have no Internet signal.” I found the number for the customer service support group and got a technical customer assistant executive, or I think that was the title. We talked for a few minutes. I asked if the service was having problems and he promptly told me “No, but what kind of issues are you having?” After a few minutes he decided that what I really needed to do was recycle my DVR. Great! So I did that, watching 10 minutes of funny little cartoon characters, in a screen telling me “just a minute we’re almost there” and the issue of Internet connection went away. Wonderful! As we finished the conversation, the assistant casually mentioned that the DVR had recently received a new software download, which in my past experience has been an unmitigated disaster. It would appear their software quality control function is nonexistent, or they’re smoking some strange stuff.

I’ll shorten this by saying my exuberance was short-lived because for the next four days I was constantly running back and forth between the modem, my man cave, the DVR, and on the telephone because I constantly lost Internet signal, which of course blows up the DVR. Now don’t forget I just got out of the hospital, and saying I was not a happy camper is an understatement. I was on the phone with the DVR customer support, with the Internet service support and with the provider of the streaming movies, all of whom suggested that I called their counterpart because it wasn’t their problem. I finally came to the conclusion that I had some kind of a provider problem. So – there’s a box outside where the main supply cable hooks into the house, and lo and behold the box is open and I can see a bird’s nest in there. Now if you read any of my other blogs, you know that I’ve had a number of experiences with birds and bird-brains.

I kept calling my Internet service provider, most of the time ending up somewhere in Mexico, once in a while in Philippines, and not to mention northern Canada. We wonder where all our jobs went? I finally got a service support tech relatively close to where I live and he ran what is euphemistically called a signal check, stating that the signal was rather poor. He provided me with a glimmer of hope and set up a service call for between 2 and 4 PM the following Monday. Keep in mind I pay a monthly fee to this service provider for guess what – service!

So on Monday at around two o’clock I started watching for their white truck in anticipation that I would no longer have to run around resetting a bunch of electronics stuff in order to watch TV, or for that matter get on the Internet. Naturally, four o’clock came and went! No service rep in sight! I got on the phone and called my service provider and got a computer telling me that they had tried calling me three times to confirm the appointment, and that I wasn’t home. What I said to this computer is not something I’m going to repeat here, and if they do their usual bit of “this call is being recorded for quality assurance and training purposes,” they got a real ear full. I placed another call and ended up in Mexico again and said I do not understand what is going on because as I’m sitting here cooling my heels, there has been no phone call. After a little discussion, it came to light that the number they were calling was wrong damn number, which I find absolutely amazing since they also provide the phone service! We should reset for another tech call two days later.  And — Oh! By the way, the problem had continued, and frankly was getting worse.

To try to be of assistance I wrote down all the symptoms to help facilitate a proper solution to this problem. I had run some speed checks and quality checks on the service provider’s website, all of which indicated poor signal quality. I included this information. The tech showed up at the appointed time, climbed a pole, and checked the signal there as well as at the input to the master computer. He did not clean out the bird’s nest, and after he left my consideration was he may have thought that they were some of his relatives. He said, “There’s nothing wrong.” I showed him my list, he glanced at it and said “There’s nothing wrong.” I took him down to the TV area and showed him what the DVR said, and the lousy picture quality. He stood there for a couple seconds and then said “There’s nothing wrong.” I suggested he look at my list because it appeared to me as though this was some kind of an intermittent or random failure. He looked at my list ever so briefly and said “There’s nothing wrong.”  As a compromise, he changed out the modem and left.

I was a happy camper for about three hours and then the whole problem started over again, same damn situation. I called customer support again, back to Mexico and rescheduled another tech visit. However, this time I specifically stated I didn’t want the same guy for the simple reason that the scope of his technical expertise was covered in a single sentence, “There’s nothing wrong.”

Guess who showed up at the door two days later with another modem in his hot little hands. This time he did a little more in the way of troubleshooting, and was having his office run through a series of checks and guess what he said about the signal, “There’s nothing wrong.”

Then, all of a sudden while he was on his little cell phone, he said “I just saw your WAN fail.” At first I thought this was an obscene comment. I sat there and believed every word, and asked if he would order a new one and he promptly told me that this was not their equipment. I found this rather strange, since it was part of the original deal to change carriers and they brought the WAN with them and set it up when they did the original installation.

His comment was extremely pedantic. “We don’t do that anymore. It’s your problem! Our only responsibility is to that connection,” he said as he pointed to the back of modem with cable which is the primary connection for the whole system. Now I’m remembering what this Internet provider told me when they convinced me to do a full switchover from my previous carrier, who had demonstrated that they were no longer in love with me. I won’t say who they are either, because they don’t support this blog. By now this guy was adamant and got a little carried away because I had questions that he could not answer with anything other than “there’s nothing wrong.”

Once again he changed the modem out, but told me the WAN was defective and I needed to replace it. By now my confidence level in this guy’s competency was zero. Clearly, his attitude was that what I was telling him was of no consequence, and I’m sure he told his supervision “There’s nothing wrong, and this guy is an idiot.” He left in a huff with a rather sarcastic “have a nice day.”

Two hours later my whole system went down, but this time it took out the telephones as well. What I didn’t know was while this stuff was going on, I was losing my telephone service. New clue! This points to the modem, “but that can’t be,” exclaimed Dr. Watson, “he’s changed out the modem twice.” Okay – Sherlock, the game’s afoot.

My first suspicion was that good ole “there’s nothing wrong” guy went back and pulled the plug on the whole system. This is getting rather Machiavellian or perhaps I was getting paranoid. Fortunately, I had my cell phone and dialed the service number, went to Mexico again and after 20 minutes, was put through to someone in the continental United States. I finally got her to agree to telephone the local area supervisor in a nearby city and have him call me, but I cautioned her that the phones were down. She took my cell phone number and about two hours later, the supervisor called and he made arrangements to come out the next day, naturally between two and four. By now I had been in Mexico so often I thought I was probably qualified for citizenship and would not be able to get back into the US without a visa.

By this time, the phones came back up but the rest of the system was still having Internet hiccups. I did a backflip into a vodka martini and watched old movies on one of the cable channels whose name I will not mention because they don’t sponsor this blog.

Now, this one is not over, and as Winston Churchill said after the Battle of Britain “this is not the beginning of the end, but is likely the end of the beginning.” You remember Winston Churchill? They named some cigarettes after him. Further, as Winnie said about possible invasion “we shall fight them on the beaches, we shall fight them in the hills, we shall fight in the streets, we will fight to our deaths and we will never, never, never give up” or some stupid thing to that effect.

There is much more to the story, but I need to go find out if I’m still on the Internet, and take a backflip into a vodka martini. Just joking!