Aiee

[filkertom]

Modem got fried by the storm last night. It also got water in my foyer. All this in a ten-minute window. Sheesh. The biggest inconvenience, though, was simply dealing with AT&T. SBC at least had their shit together. AT&T is just shit.

So, how's your tech day going?

Comments

[ericcoleman]

Our modem got all fussy last night, but seemed to be ok this morning. We'll see what happens when I get home tonight

[darthparadox.livejournal.com]

I'm on call for my team. Gotten paged thrice so far today. Luckily, all of the problems have been transient so far.

Live support for a complex software system is a pain in the ass.

[glitchphil.livejournal.com]

I'm editing wedding videos!!!1

*headdesk*

[unclelumpy.livejournal.com]

Right about now my only tech concern is that my air conditioning doesn't send me to the poorhouse.

[scifantasy.livejournal.com]

Because Adobe hasn't released Flash Player 9 for Linux yet, and the Sci-Fi Channel's Eureka and Battlestar Galactica webisodes both require it, I installed Wine (http://www.winehq.com), Windows-edition Firefox, and Windows-edition Flash Player. Amazingly, it works without a hitch.

This weekend (which, thanks to government scheduling, starts tonight), I think I'm going to put a router back into my home networking setup. I don't need it, strictly speaking, since the only thing I have that's Net-active is my computer, but it's probably a generally good policy to have one on hand. I'll need to get a Wireless Access Point, or maybe just a wireless router (one of the Linksys ones which has open-sourced uberfirmware), at some point.

Though, twice in the last week my modem has unexpectedly cut out for a few hours. I just leave it alone and it reactivates, but it's weird...

[stormgren.livejournal.com]

If you own a windows computer, you need a router when on broadband.

If nothing else than for the firewalling.

[scifantasy.livejournal.com]

Well, I run Gentoo Linux, so I don't need it for that, at least.

[tnatj.livejournal.com]

Oh, dear!

Did I tell you that this week I saw a station selling regular gas for 307⁹?

[darthparadox.livejournal.com]

307⁹, me lads, 307⁹,
Which you'll agree is quite a fee for just some gasoline!
You'll barely have the cash for rice, in very little time,
When paying such a hefty price as 307⁹, me lads, 307⁹.

[lapislaz.livejournal.com]

Not bad really - have discovered Foxmarks, which will make things much easier with the laptop. Web sites are updating, all's right with the world.

As long as the A/C holds out, we be OK.

[shockwave77598.livejournal.com]

5 inches of rain yesterday, main computer hard drive died, backups may be 2 months old, my PDA battery just bit the big one and my synth is lost in shipping.

It's just peachy... meaning it's the pits.

[sdelmonte]

Today has been much better than yesterday. I finally managed to get my filespace usage on the network under my max, thus letting me save files again. And I managed to manhandle some very large TIFFs so that I could make them JPEGs and e-mail them. Funny how sometimes all you need to do is change CDs.

Pretty good...

[lizard-sf.livejournal.com]

Got a new update to the code I'm trying to build an application around. This version actually *works*, which is a "feature" not included in any previous release...

In other news, it's kind of interesting to juxtapose this article: http://www.cnn.com/2006/HEALTH/07/26/health.sun.reut/index.html against this song: http://www.tomsmithonline.com/lyrics/ho_death.htm . The way I figure it, if the sun is gone, everyone benefits! Vampires! People with pale skin! Lightbulb manufacturers!

[trdsf.livejournal.com]

I work in a broadband ISP call center. Are you really sure you want to ask that question?

[isolde-deely.livejournal.com]

lol. I understand completely. I work for Charter, as their tech support. The saddest thing is that they don't even have service here.

[sunfell.livejournal.com]

Fixed 3 microphones, a headset, and a balky phone in one of the committee rooms.

Ran a power supply and network cable to a member.

Fixed a computer in the members private lounge.

Installed 4 new computers for staff.

Set up a senator's new Mobile PC interface on his laptop.

Answered several user questions about desktop programs.

Had lunch.

[jeffreycornish.livejournal.com]

The trip 60miles to the north to upgrade our backup webserver ended up with us figureing we had a bum cooling fan and possibly some bad drives or even a bad SCSI controller card. However we were able to boot into rescue mode and push all of our mission critical email files to our main server and config the DNS to point to it. whew. Now I have the ugly thing sitting in our server closet while we prep to diagnose the point of failure, fix that, flatten the RAID array, stick in some additional drives, rebuild the array as a raid 6 array, and then install the latest version of Deadrat Enterprise 1701-D.

That and the big boss of the company is buying everyone lunch for the whole week.

Thank Ghu (or is that Roscoe) for Primarys that can take over for the backup (heh)

[stormgren.livejournal.com]

SBC at least had their shit together. AT&T is just shit

SBC never had their shit together.

It's the same call centers, it's the same dipshit phone drones.

Same idiots, different logos.

[beki.livejournal.com]

Umm actually, no. I work for a different telco than those two, but their call centers arent the same. They cant be due to divestiture (anti monopoly) laws.

What happens is that the companies dont really train their call center folks much because if they dont make their quotas for x amount of calls in x period of time, they get let go. Their turnover rate is astronomical.

[stormgren.livejournal.com]

Okay.

I work with LECs and CLECs all over the country. Part of the job.

I'm perfectly aware of the divestiture issues. Since the merger, guess what? Not applicable anymore, and they've been filing clarifications with the FCC like mad to get it squared away.

After the ATT buyout by SBC, SBC assumed the name, you know this, right?

The DSL call centers are the same SBC call centers they always were.

[beki.livejournal.com]

Yeah I know they merged. My understanding (limited though it is) is that certain parts of the business have to be kept separate. I am not sure which departments have to be separated from others. I know that where I work, DSL is separated in all but the customer facing departments (sales) YMMV yadda yadda yadda.

[beki.livejournal.com]

I wrote the backbone for 32 Metropolitan Area Networks (yes, tying in with the Warner brothers post It's a MAAAAN) Had 3 unproductive conference calls with clueless project managers who dont know the product or how it works, sat in on a process call, and dealt with a butt load of calls from the sales units wanting their stuff in so they can make their sales quotas for the month, even though their stuff isnt anywhere near ready to go in. Oh yeah, and I did "normal" switch programming too.. I can't wait for Friday...

[bald-ruminant.livejournal.com]

I'm currently on day 9 or so without a dialtone in the apartment, but at least the DSL is working. I finally managed to get hold of customer service and schedule a repair visit to take place tomorrow afternoon. At 5 of 7 PM today, as I was on my way to a nice Indian cuisine dinner with friends, a tech called to say he'd be coming to check out the problem. I wasn't here, so he did all the external tests that he could. So, the appointment is still on for tomorrow...

[jss]

When you posted (Thu Jul 27), fine. Sat night around 7pm, the network connection between the machine where I read my mail and host my website and the rest of the universe failed, and with its owner overseas it may be quite some time before I have access to personal email (which I was planning on dealing with last night and today). Gr.