The Raging Tech

Verizon DSL Struggles: Part II

I have a technician scheduled for Friday morning who should hopefully be end-of-the-line for my DSL struggles, for now. A new modem arrived day before yesterday and I got it hooked up after work promptly. I logged in, set it up, and configured my wireless. I checked the status page, and the SNR (Signal-to-Noise Ratio) was still at 5.8 for upload. 6 is what manufacturers rate minimum just to get a sync. Below that, definitely should all the time experience problems. Not sure why Verizon tech’s line tests never pick that up. The modem reports attenuation is fine, but the SNR is terrible. Same with the new modem, using only cords and cables that came in the modem package and my wall jack.

So, there’s an issue with the line. Hopefully I can convince the tech that and he’ll do what needs to be done. I was told on the phone by a Tier 3 tech that they can run a line directly to the jack you intend to use the DSL modem from, and this usually eliminates the majority of signal issues.

Flickr Twitter Integration

Eating at Cheddar’s

Originally uploaded by David Myers

I’m actually blogging this from Flickr right now, but wanted to let everyone know that Flickr has a great service called Flickr2Twitter. It lets you tweet your Flickr photos from both Flickr’s website or mobile using a specially formulated email address.

To activate it, under Account Settings, go to Extend Flickr and choose to add a blog (must be logged in). For the blog service type, choose Twitter. Then you’ll be asked to authorize Flickr on Twitter’s website. Always check to make sure the site you’re being directed to is really Twitter by examining the URL in the address bar. Otherwise you could be tricked into a phishing scam.

Is it time to say goodbye to TwitPic? Maybe. Flickr tweets the subject line of your message from your mobile posts to the special email address (note that it’s different from your normal posting address) and appends a flic.kr URL to your photo at the end. Or, you can choose to blog any photo on Flickr and when choosing which blog, select Twitter and it will tweet it instead.

This Frog Kicks Your Bull’s Ass

Even if you get a healthy amount of sleep every day, everyone has those afternoons when you need a little jolt to keep you going. Some people exercise, some eat a low- or no-fat snack, some binge on sugar, others on caffeine. Then there are the segment of people who love their energy drinks! There’s nothing wrong with having an energy drink, but of course, everything in moderation. The major downside to drinking your everyday average energy drink is that’s all you really get – energy. And then you crash, and hard. Not to mention all the sugar, and even for all the sugar they taste like raw piss.

A new challenger has entered the arena!

BluFrog Energy is “insanely healthy energy” – basically, the Limu vitamin supplement turned into a lean, mean, energy drink. It also has the tasty flavor of pears and mangos, not urine. Instead of a “monster” amount of sugar, it boasts a meager 17g of natural sugars. The Limu product has lots of documented health benefits as well. And don’t tell anyone, but if you mix it with Vodka (insiders call this the “Blu Bomb”) it’s quite delicious.

I was thankful to receive some Blu Frog with my Postie Pack from IZEA at St. Patrick’s Day. Not because I had never tried it, but because it was free! I had purchased a case of 24 directly from Blu Frog’s web site a while back and loved it, I just couldn’t afford the autoshipment option. But if I could, you bet I would have started one. The neat thing is, once you get setup with a 2-case monthly autoshipment, you can start earning commisions sharing Blu Frog with other people.

Right now, over at ItsABluWorld.com, you can enter to win several different amazing prize packages. I’m hoping to win the Happy Blu-Year prize package – a trip for two to New York for New Year’s Eve to watch the big ball drop that includes airfare, transportation, hotel stay, and a helicopter ride over NYC! That’d be pretty awesome, and I’ve always wanted to experience New Year’s Eve in Times Square.

Verizon DSL Struggles Again

I really like the functional service level of my DSL. When it’s not working right though, it’s irritating as can be. I’ve had intermittant problems with them since I moved into this house last June. It may not make any technical sense, but apparently every time the weather changes, my internet stops working right at home. For this season, it seems like during the day the uplink is almost non-functional and download works great. Then as the weather cools down at night I completely lose service until I reboot a few times.

I’ve called Verizon technical support enough times I know all the basic troubleshooting steps, and I do them before calling. I’ve been instructed now by a “Tier 3″ technical support person to just ignore whatever “Tier 1″ wants and just ask straightaway for Tier 3. If they want to do the basic troubleshooting stuff, I just get fed up until they transfer me. I hate to be that way, but it’s the game you have to play since Verizon is too ignorant to open an American, English-as-a-first-language call center. They have one for business users, but consumer accounts have to speak to “Paul” or “Anna” in the Phillipines, Mexico, or Brazil.

To make matters worse, I called from work on Friday because I have terrible cell signal at my house (it’s Verizon Wireless, go figure) and blessed out a Tier 1 agent until I got retention, who got me a Tier 3 person, who scheduled a new modem and ran a 24 hour line test. The next day, Saturday, I got a phone call that I missed. My voicemail said it was Verizon tech support and I should call them back if I’m still having the same problem. I called, they had closed my ticket because I didn’t immediately answer their call. I cried BS on that and the tech opened a new ticket referencing the old one. I asked for him to send me to Tier 3, and instead he kept me on hold for about 15 minutes (taking their required two-minute check-in to tell me to continue to hold) while he spoke with a “Network Specialist” and finally figured out I wasn’t just pulling his leg about having a signal problem.

Tier 1/2 techs run a line test, and apparently it’s not nearly as detailed or comprehensive as the next level’s line test, because he said I had a “good connection” and should be fine, but I was still having the issue. I said “Look, I didn’t just call you for $#!ts and giggles, I’m not bull$#!tting you here. Your test seems inaccurate, because it’s definitely having uplink problems.” Finally he came back from hold to say they were having technical difficulties with the line test with the Network Specialist, and then they did discover a problem. I got tired of waiting and just asked if there was anything else they’d need for me today, and they finally acquiesced they didn’t really need me to wait on hold while they resubmitted my request to the central office.

Today I got a phone call that I answered right away. I’m so nervous about answering unknown numbers from outside my area code. It was Verizon, sounded like probably a Tier 3, he was at least a non-accented english speaker. We confirmed an 8am – 12 noon time on Friday when I’m off work for a tech to come out. My modem should be in Monday or Tuesday and maybe that will resolve the issue.

However, I’ve inspected my modem’s status page, and what I see is that my attenuation is fine, SNR (signal-to-noise ratio) for download is fine, but SNR for upload is 5 (not sure what the unit is, maybe dB?) – which I looked up and that is supposed to cause sync issues and connectivity problems, which is exactly what I’m seeing. I’m going to try moving the DSL modem to another room and a shorter phone cable to see if that fixes anything.

Anyone else pissed off by the random outages, signal issues, service issues, and the really ridiculous foreign call centers? You shouldn’t have to learn another language or play some sort of game to get real technical support and timely customer service. Also, remember when you’re a business and you upset one customer, that customer goes and tells at least 5 other friends. Well what happens when that customer is a blogger? Hundreds of people find out just how much you suck. Fight back, friends.

Music Fiend? Check out EMI Artists Online

Today I was out surfing the tubes, realized it’s been a while since I’ve updated my blog. I had written last with renewed enthusiasm for getting back into the regular habit of writing, and human laziness / a busy schedule kept me from sticking to that. I’ve also had a lot of personal developments in my life recently. For example, Mom got married! Exactly one year and a week after Dad passed, I threw a bachelor party for my new “bonus dad” Chris and then Saturday, June 13th, Chris and my mom got married.

So I found out, a great deal of popular artists I like are part of the EMI group. There are these big representative groups, most a little friendlier than the RIAA, that most radio stations pay royalties to once or twice a year so that they can play just about any artist’s songs without worrying about being sued. These groups usually take a cut and then make sure the artists interests are protected and they get royalties. Also, they get promoted. So, if you wanted a pretty nifty resource to learn stuff about artists or find more artists you’ve never heard about – EMI has a new web site that showcases their artists. It currently has auto-playing samples of their music – some of which is uncensored, so you might want to keep the volume down if you’re at work or have kids.

The home page has a neat CoverFlow-esque album cover viewer, and I was very pleased to see artists like Jet represented there.

The “Discover” Tab of the website is supposed to let you search for artists and find similar EMI music to what you searched for and build your “perfect playlist.” This actually worked pretty well as long as I stuck to fairly popular bands. I didn’t get any results from “Flobots” but “Hollywood Undead” found me EMI artist From First to Last. The only complaint I have is that I had to go to another website it linked to in order to hear the artists’ music if they didn’t have a sample on the EMI site. Jet seemed to be there and addable to the playlist, but for the new band I had to go to 7Digital through a new tab. 7digital is the online music store EMI’s site seems to be connected to where you can hear and buy the recommended artists’ music.

One thing I didn’t know that was neat is that several big-name Christian artists are EMI members, and some of their samples play on the EMI web site as well. I’m not as heavy into the Christian music as I used to be in college, but it’s still neat to see they aren’t just stuck in little independent groups not being treated like real artists.

EMI’s web site is also a great place to see a conglomeration of EMI artists news, fairly easily accessible from the site’s home page at the bottom. While the overall design is very snazzy, it also left you wanting more. I guess that’s sort of the intention – I just wish everything wasn’t a partial clip of the audio of songs. I’m not going to spend time building a playlist of 30-45 second samples. But it does make me want to go out and buy some more music – my collection is getting a little stale.

Check out EMI for yourself and let us know what you think in the comments.

In Memory of Dad

My dad passed away last year, a year ago today, in fact. I went yesterday to visit the site on Blue Ridge Parkway where we spread his ashes, spent some time praying, crying, remembering, laughing, and deciding. I remembered I’ll see him again one day.

I was Tweeting a lot of these, and decided they might be better in a blog post so I don’t annoy the Twitter community. Here are some bite-sized memories of Dad that I’ve been thinking about today:

• Dad and I used to sing the Doxology and “Oh, How I Love Jesus” while riding around town in the car. Yeah, I’m a PK (Preacher’s Kid).
• Dad and I made up a nonsense song that we sang every time “The Price is Right” came on TV, before I was old enough for school. It went like this (best I can remember): “Come on down, Carvey Wright / Come on down, front here to, / Come on down, Carvey Wright, / Your seat buckles, too.”
• Nikombo lombusté! - a nonsense phrase of general excitement, much like Huzzah, except Dad made it up.
• Dad used to take me to a run-down lake resort that had cheap admission to their pool / waterslide, it was called Waldo’s Beach.
• Dad used to take me to all the libraries in town. There were three – my favorite was the big headquarters library downtown. It’s where I got my first love of computers using an Apple IIe to play “Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego?” He taught me about getting the library to order books for you, and borrowing music cds and reading the paper for free there. He took me to library events, and sometimes bought me books at the used book sale.
• Dad used to get me all sorts of weird stuff at the Goodwill Store. Parts of sets of encyclopedias (the knowledge is still good, if not somewhat outdated!), old books, toys. I remember an antique schooldesk for my sister to use to play “teacher” and really do a lot of my early education that got me on the path to “academically gifted” in school.
• Dad and I used to go to KFC (Kentucky Fried Chicken) and he’d get a large drink and I’d get a medium and we’d sit and read our library books and drink soda from the fountain until it was time to go get Mom from work. (This, candy, junk food, and genetic disposition *might* be why I have diabetes. Not blaming, just saying I should have probably learned to drink diet soda early on.) At some point, Dad started getting free drinks because the ladies at KFC liked him. Dad was a sweet man and never seemed to not have a lady flirting with him if they knew him.
• I used to make Mom and Dad fight because I would always go to Dad first to ask if I could eat a tv dinner instead of what Mom was making, because I knew he’d let me have my way. She used to make really good food, it’s just that when you’re a kid you’re really picky and want fun kid things to eat, like hotdogs and pizza and french fries and chicken fingers.
• Dad, when he had a job, had a Sams Club membership and he bought me candy in bulk to sell for nickels, dimes, and quarters out in our front yard. We don’t live in a time when that’s really safe anymore, but it was a neat way for me to earn money.
• When Dad was between churches, we’d have church at home. He called it “The Church Without Walls,” and we were non-denominational. He’d read scripture, we’d sing a few songs and pray. Best of all, we could go in our pajamas.
• Dad always wanted to write a book. I kind of wanted to pick up that dream, but I don’t think for now it’s what I really want to do. He lingered and procrastinated at it for too long and it never got done. I think I will consider myself accomplished as a blog writer.
• This kid on my bus gave me a hard time a lot and called me names, hit me in the arm a lot. I told him to stop but he wouldn’t. I wasn’t asking for help, I was just telling my dad about it, but he insisted on going down to the boy’s house and talking to his parents about it. It’s embarassing for a kid to have your dad do that, but I knew he was just looking out for me.
• Dad wore Old Spice, the kind that came in the vanilla off-white colored bottle and had the sailing ship on the front. He also wore musky colognes like Stetson or cowboy-ishly named drugstore brand musks. Sometimes he would put that on and combined with his “natural” scent it’d overwhelm me a little bit as a kid and I’d get a little woozey.
• Dad gave me a razor without the blade when I was 10 so that I could start “shaving,” whenever he did.
• Dad worked for the Postal Service for a little while.
• Dad taught me to duck and cover whenever the Jehovah’s Witnesses / Mormons rang the door bell.
• A daycare center was having a “free trial” day and was giving away free teddy bears, so dad dropped me off there for the day once and I got to play with some kids and eat snacks and I got a free teddy bear. We didn’t go back.
• Dad always had crazy schemes and ideas to try and prompt us to go do something fun or enterprising.
• Dad was always good for a laugh – he’d tickle me, or laugh when I tickled him. He’d tell corny jokes or laugh at mine.

I have less of these good memories to share after Dad got really bad off and went into the nursing home, but we still share some good memories from then, too. I’d poke him and go “poke” and he’d say “poke” back. We’d go through and practice our pirate phrases. I’d call him a “poophead” and tell him I was going to go push his wheelchair into traffic and he’d just laugh and laugh. I’d call him “retarded chicken” and then go “bock bock, bah-DUNH” and it’d make him laugh really hard. He always would smile at Mom and just stare at her. I made a recording for Mom of Dad singing “You are my Sunshine,” and gave it to her for Christmas.

There’s more, but I think this is good for now. Rest in Peace with Jesus, Dad. I’ll see you again one day.

Neat Stuff at Work

So I’ve been working on a few projects at work lately, here’s the brief rundown:

• Knowledgebase Project – Three years ago I installed MediaWiki on a desktop under my desk and used it to establish a sort of internal knowledgebase for the Help Desk to use to store all of our documentation; these were things like How-Tos, processes, product keys, priority matrix, key roles and responsibilities list, and training material. Each employee had their own page to keep up with projects they were working on. That whole system went away when we picked up a new product called Cherwell that was supposed to include a knowledgebase. It does, but it sucks, essentially. It doesn’t have features we need to do what we want with the knowledgebase. So the internal wiki I made got imported into this thing, and now the wiki is gone. Our newish Web Director found out about the old wiki, and prompted me to propose a project to create a new one that would have internal and external purposes – both IT personnel technical information and more public how-tos and troubleshooting content. This is my major project over the summer. Right now I’m building a rubric to measure the technology solution against so we can pick a good product for our KB.
• COB Entrance Exam / Remediation Course – I currently admin the Dell Online Learning Management System (LMS) that has all these cool online videos and labs that you can do to learn various skills, primarily software and some soft skills. I’ve been meeting with one of the professors charged with developing an entrance skills assessment test and remediation course for students wishing to enter the College of Business. What we’ve come up with is a testing solution in our online courseware that regular classes use (Blackboard) that links into the Dell system and the students who score low have to do remedial studies in the training system, higher scores do the upper-level lessons only, and perfect scores end up not doing the remediation at all. There is then a post-test in the Blackboard system and they get a final grade for the class. Apparently the big hang-up here is whether or not the money is there and that resources are being paid for – it’s a bunch of red tape with how the class takes place and how it is categorized.
• Computer Skills Workshops – We started doing these things with our boss called “one-on-one” meetings, where we can come and gripe if we need to or pitch ideas or talk about important issues, but primarily it’s our time and then any remaining time the boss can talk to us. During mine, I griped briefly, but then started brainstorming an idea for beginner level “Intro to” type workshops where we can teach faculty, staff, and students computing basics to catch them up in their skills. These would be like “Intro to Computing” where you learn about the parts of the computer (monitor, keyboard, mouse, printer, tower, etc.) and how to use them. Another would be Intro to Microsoft Office, then maybe one about the internet, another about social networking sites and the workplace, another about copyright issues, another one about how to avoid spyware and viruses. It’s all very rough right now, but so far the director is for it and my team seems on board with it. We’re going to have a stricter registration / attendance policy so that if we have less than a minimum of sign-ups within the 48 hours before the class, we cancel the class and reschedule with those who actually signed up. That way we aren’t wasting our time sitting around for 20 minutes waiting on people who didn’t sign up to show.

So that’s a lot of stuff to keep me busy for the summer at work. I hope I can get it all done – it’ll look great on a resume and hopefully prove I’m valued at a lot higher than what I’m currently being paid. Then when this silly hiring freeze is over maybe I can move into a higher position and paycheck. I’m not starving by any means, but it’d be nice to pay off more debt and get a major step or two of my house renovation complete.