Bonus Number Four: Learn how to spell “do.”

When I was in Lesser Northeast Key Midwestern Swing State City Just 20 Minutes South of Greater Northeast Key Midwestern Swing State City, I had AT&T’s U-Verse product, which delivered internet and television over a copper pair. It’s almost exactly like DSL, except instead of running copper to the CO (and limiting bandwidth by distance), it runs copper to a very nearby junction box (called a Video Ready Access Device or VRAD) and fiber from the VRAD to the CO. This lets them offer much more bandwidth so they can send TV signals along with it. It was a wonderful service with competitive pricing. I never had problems with it. (I had switched to them after my earlier travails with Roadrunner through Time Warner Cable.)

I had to give up the U-Verse when I moved out. Now I’m in an older neighborhood–the house was built in the 20s–that doesn’t have U-Verse service yet, so we’re stuck with cable. And guess who the local franchisee is? Time Warner Cable. I’ve been fighting with them to improve our service ever since. Last night was particularly bad, and in frustration I tweeted:

Qwertz0

(Qwertz)

Getting really sick of 60% packet loss between 9pm and midnight. Useless internet service. Been complaining to TWC since Aug. @twcablehelp

On 12-5-2010 01:06:18 from web

TWCableHelp

(TWCableHelp)

@Qwertz0 Could you send us pings/tracerts regarding this? We’d like to see what we can do. TWCable.Help@twcable.com ^BH

On 12-5-2010 10:10:14 from TweetDeck in reply to Qwertz

Dear Time Warner Cable Peopleguys,

BH, via @TWCableHelp on Twitter, asked me to send you tracerts concerning the packet loss problem I have been having since August 2009 and haven’t been able to resolve.

My tweet last night
@TWCableHelp’s response this morning

I have attached three files. The first, [omitted] is a PingPlotter Pro dataset containing full tracert data from me to Google since 4/21/10 (excluding some small gaps when the software wasn’t running). It contains ping times for each hop, packet loss, and jitter. You can display it and explore it using PingPlotter Pro. If you don’t have PingPlotter Pro, you can download a free 30 day trial at www.pingplotter.com. I recommend this, as it will give you the best picture of what is going on here on our end of things.

The other two are screen captures from PingPlotter showing the data.

The first, [omitted], shows the current* state of the route above and the last seven days on the graph (the red humps indicate packet loss over the route). (Here, “current” means “average of the route data from 10:37:57am to 10:40:12am EDT this morning,” which is when I took the screenshot.)

The second, [omitted] is another screenshot, this time showing data from last night (10:12:57pm EDT). As you can see, utterly unacceptable levels of packet loss.

Here are the symptoms:

In the evenings, we experience problems with our internet service AND our television service. On the TV side of things, HD channels will block up, audio will drop out, and the screen will go blank. (Since the guide upgrade a few months ago these have happened more frequently, and the blank screens have been replaced with a “please wait” message.) This happens unpredictably and usually on higher-numbered HD channels only. Usually there are no problems with non-HD channels or local HD channels. The guide is extremely sluggish in the evening, and changing channels can take up to 45 seconds in some cases. On the internet side of things, the internet is useless between about 9pm and midnight for anything other than loading simple web pages (very, very slowly). We cannot do anything more intensive than that. Downloading email is a chore. Videos on YouTube, Hulu, &c, will not load. Most distressing, I get disconnected from World of Warcraft, which I am usually only able to play in the evenings due to work, and then cannot play for long due to the high packet loss. (World of Warcraft is not a high-bandwidth application. It relies on data being reliably and quickly delivered between server and client, not on cramming large amounts of data down the pipe at once. Latency, as you can see from the dataset, is relatively low, though it does spike during peak hours along with the packet loss. The unreliability of packet delivery to the game server is what causes disconnects resulting in nonplayability. We require better reliability of packet delivery, not more bandwidth or lower latency.) Speed tests (run at Speedtest.net) typically indicate much slower speeds during the late evening hours.

Here is what we have tried to do about it:

The problems started up last August (August 2009). We had a technician out who replaced the drop from the pole to the house. That mitigated, but did not resolve, the problems. They were manageable until the beginning of 2010, when they became much worse. In the past few months we have had technicians out on at least 5 separate occasions. They have verified that there is no problem inside our house, or with the drop from the house to the pole. (I have stopped dealing with the national support desk because they are completely unhelpful. I have been dealing directly with the local maintenance office for the past month. I will not call national support desk ever again unless it is to close the account. I can only tolerate being told to power-cycle my modem so many times.) On the last tech visit (which came with two technicians, instead of the usual one), we were told that the problem is area-wide and caused by saturation of our node’s bandwidth, probably caused by all the college kids halfway across town, who are, inexplicably, on the same node. They looked at the graphs and could see the node bandwidth capping out at night. They said they would look into moving us to another node, or making a hardware upgrade somewhere, but I haven’t heard anything from them since, and my calls are now going unreturned.

Here is what we want, thought we were paying for, and have discovered we are not getting:

Reliable delivery of packets at all hours. Watchable prime time HD programming.

I expect you will need our account information to look up our service history and see what can be done. I won’t give that out in an email, so you will need to phone me. My cell phone number is [omitted] (the account is not associated with that number). You can call me any time. If by chance I do not pick up, leave a message and I will call you back within an hour. I will expect your call within 24 hours. Before you call, please make sure you have actually read this email and looked at the attachments — I do not enjoy retelling the story to every single person I speak with about this issue. And I do not enjoy being asked to power-cycle my modem or router or restart my computer. The problem is coming from outside the house.

Yours,

Qwertz
Greater Northeast Key Midwestern Swing State City

I got a call back in just a few hours. Let’s see what happens.

Please be advised that, although the Large Hadron Collider will be powered up on Wednesday, no high-energy collisions are scheduled until November.

It really upsets me to see people, including the news media reporting tomorrow’s initial power-up as “the most complex scientific experiment ever undertaken” (from the first link) when in fact it is not.

The claims that the LHC will destroy the world are pure lunacy. But please, all you crazies out there, if you’re going to get all het up about the end of the world, it is very important that you get your dates straight.

Lovies,

~Qwertz

EDIT: To those who subscribe to the feed, I apologize for botching the URLs. I will try to remember the correct syntax in the future.

Click to read it. At the bottom of the page is a tear-off form that I’m supposed to fill out and sign in order to opt out of the program, but my scanner won’t scan legal-size paper, so you don’t get to see it. It’s not all that exciting; you aren’t missing much.

Apparently, before I moved to Lesser Northeast Key Midwestern Swing State City (just 20 minutes South of Greater Northeast Key Midwestern Swing State City), the city residents voted to do this aggregation thinggy to, allegedly, get cheaper electricity. From what I gather, the government picks which electricity generator will sell electricity to the people who are part of the program, and uses the size of the group (and probably a little of its heft as a government bully) to get lower prices out of the chosen utility. Sounds a lot like a fancy way of dressing up an old-fashioned municipal utility monopoly to me.

My current generator is also the company that maintains the lines and delivers the electricity — KMWSS Electric — and I’m happy with the service. Under the new program, KMWSS Electric would still send me a bill for line maintenance and delivery, but the bill would include charges from this new company, PremierPower Solutions, for generation.

The fun thing about this whole nonsense is this: because “the voters” elected, in 2001, to allow this program, I will be bound by the new contract unless I take action to opt out. This is the exact opposite of how contracts are supposed to work. They’re supposed to bind only the parties who agree, not the parties who fail to disagree.

I am disinclined to do this aggregation thing, but I’m also not the sort of person who does a lot of shopping around for lower electricity prices. My initial reaction is to not like the idea on principle. Does anyone have a relevant argument for why I should not opt out of the aggregation program?

1. Explain my position on the death penalty (including my analysis of Kennedy v. Louisiana)
2. Post my analysis of District of Columbia v. Heller
3. Finish my critique of “gay culture”
4. Write a formal review of Gattaca (I can’t believe I haven’t done this yet!)
5. Write big memo for Job #1
6. Write big memo for Job #2
7. Update my resume (Why does this always take so much work?)
8. Apply for Federal judicial clerkship
9. Continue research on Sundae Specials
10. Start research on the impact of gay marriage on the spousal privileges
11. Finish uploading latest Rosebush Watch videos to YouTube!

Gak indeed. I’ll get to it all eventually.

It is a floribunda with deep red–almost maroon–flowers. I’ve been working on it for a few years now, and I prune it when it needs pruning, and I water it every other day, and I feed it and rotate it (it is in a large pot) and clip off dead blooms and whatnot. I care for it, rather like some people care for pets. It is a thing that I am proud of. Proud that I have kept it alive (I have a bad track record with plants); proud that I have been able to transform it from the scraggly little runt I bought at a Home Depot somewhere into a big, beautiful, healthy bush; proud of the time and money and love I’ve put into it. It has been getting ready for its first bloom of the year, which I expected during this first week of June. It had produced more flower buds this year than it ever had in years past. I was really looking forward to it.

This morning, I discovered that some merry prankster had come by and chopped off all the new buds.

Attached image: Rosebush 1

And left the buds strewn all over the porch.

Attached image: Rosebush 2

Thirty-two in total. I collected them and put them in a Ziplock in my freezer. When I find out who did it, I intend to present the rosebuds to that person and ask that they pay for them.

The culprit left four buds uncut, all of which are difficult to find as they are hidden among the foliage.

My leasing office seems to know exactly who did it. Because they have received numerous similar complaints of property damage from other residents. I have no personal knowledge, however, of whodunnit, so I shan’t go about casting aspersions I cannot back up with the photographic evidence.

Hence a new acquisition.

I shall set up the camera to watch my rosebush from now on.

The office seems to think it is a particular young person who lives a few doors down. If it is indeed this particular young person who is responsible, I should be very, very worried about her sanity. Someone as young as that, able to form the necessary malicious intent to cut of just the buds of my rosebush, and without any prior contact with me, may have the early makings of a sociopath.

Or maybe it is just that young people these days have no concept of property?

My rosebush will recover. But it will take another month before it is able to fully bloom.

I do not often get sick. In fact, in the past 3 years, I have been sick exactly 3 times. Fortunately, they have all come at the least inopportune times — during various breaks. I got sick two Christmases ago, and then again last Christmas, and now I’m sick again during summer break.

All three times have been really insanely awful sinus infections. I’m not the sort of person who gets sinus infections with every cold. No, I only get sinus infections when I get something–we’re talking about foreign bodies here–stuck up my nose.

I don’t go around putting things up there deliberately. Christmas ’07, I sneezed with cheese in my mouth and got a bit of cheese stuck up in the back of my nose. Raging infection. Christmas ’08, it was same show, only with cauliflower. Really awful.

This time, I got it from a book.

I’ve been reading Agatha Christie’s Poirot novels, and checked a few out from the university library. The offending book was The A.B.C. Murders. It had been water-damaged and was quite moldy and dusty. Nonetheless, I stupidly insisted on reading it, as it was the school’s only local copy. Well, I got a fragment of brittle paper, complete with mysterious, unknown, and probably highly dangerous black book mold, stuck up the back of my nose. I must have breathed it in. I felt it immediately and tried to get it out, but no go. Twelve hours later, I’m a pus-filled, mucus-spewing, 101.3-fever-running mess.

I’m returning the book in a bright orange ziplock bag with a biohazard logo on.

Mercifully, it was only up for about 7 minutes, and has now been replaced with a headline that contains neither apostrophes nor plurals.

So Wednesday evening there was a storm. Internets go out. Which is dumb, because cable lines are buried. Oddly enough, the TV didn’t go out. I wait a few hours. I call the cable company. I sit on hold for another two hours. At the 1’45″ mark, the Internets come back. I stay on the line until I get someone so I can complain. I complain. They tell me there was an outage, but it’s fixed now and all will be well.

Thursday. Beautiful weather. Same time as Wednesday, the Internets go out. TV still works. Weird. I wait a few hours. I call the cable company. I sit on hold for another two hours. This time, the Internets don’t come back. I complain. They tell me there’s an outage. I get a service credit (like, $5). Internets come back late that night.

Today. About 2pm. Absolutely gorgeous. Clear skies, 71°F. What am I doing? Yelling at the cable company. Because the Internets are gone again. This time, they’re off for most of the day. The worst part of it is that Call Center Moron doesn’t know anything about the previous outages, doesn’t know anyone who would know about them, doesn’t know anyone (in the whole company!) who would know what is going on, or when it’s going to stop. “We can’t predict outages.” Bullshit. You’re doing something. Three days in a row! This service is total crap and I have no alternatives, and they have no incentive to do better. As if a $5 service credit will make me feel like I’ve won and make me go away.

There was a campaign here in Key Midwestern Swing State to “open the doors to cable competition.” There was a bill. It passed and was signed by our new Governor, Liberal Democrat. Large National Telephone Company was the primary lobbying force behind the bill. The bill abolished all municipal cable franchise agreements.

“How wonderful!” I can hear you exclaim. “Key Midwestern Swing State has taken a great step towards a true laissez-faire cable television market!”

But alas, this is not the case. The bill did away with municipal franchise agreements by creating a State franchise agreement! Instead of local tyrants dictating the terms on which customers may purchase cable television and Internet services, State tyrants will get to do it. And have done it. And have prices dropped? No. Because the bill didn’t actually open the doors to cable competition. It just made it so that the telephone company can get it’s “fair share” of the public pie. Are there new choices? No. The choice is still “cable or DSL,” not “which cable company?” Actually, when the bill was signed, my cable bill went up by four and a half dollars a month. And now the service is getting shitty.

Tyrants are everywhere and they’re not going away. What amazes me most is that people are so confused about what tyranny is that they’ll embrace a bigger tyrant who comes along to “save” them from the petty ones.

My position, if you will, on things homosexual has often been grossly misunderstood. I was once accused of advocating the murder of the gays. Of course that’s silly. I do no such thing. That would be a patently stupid thing for me to advocate. Not to mention a shockingly evil thing. Nonetheless, some unfortunate person once accused me of so advocating, so I figure I should take the time to write down my thinking on the subject, for clarity’s sake. Obviously, you have to read the whole thing to properly understand what I’m thinking here.

Tantalized?