Changes in Latitudes
When last I graced this page with the “written” word, we still had our broadband pipe to the international playground and information sharing venue called the Internet. We lost that on the 23rd of November, at the very end of a couple prior weeks of frenzied packing and “pre-moving” activities. Things really got going (downhill) on Thanksgiving Day; which was our official day to take possession of the premisis. My back is still protesting the indignity of it all, and I’m currently sporting a shoulder which will, thanks to a sofa-related incident, never be what it once was. :::SIGH::: My Dad warned me about things like this.
Apropos Connectivity:
Let me tell you, folks, that Verizon is a stellar broadband provider in the Southern California vicinity. They really are. They are, however, quite like an eccentric uncle, not without their quirks and irritating traits. The foremost of these being, whenever there is a change to be made in the service, you will probably experience the greatest delay and inconvenience in getting yourself re-connected–because of Verizon’s internal policies. Residential moves are an utter nightmare!
Having performed all the duties requisite of your typical DataComm Professional and Network Administrator, I fully understand what is required to bring a residential DSL cable pair up to snuff. Given the time-frame involved in this move, pre-provisioning of the copper was possible; allowing for the convenience of a near-instant switch-over when we shifted from one residence to another. Indeed, given CO and ‘B’-Box access, I could have provisioned the line myself, and had the service up and running in a single day! Alas, alack (and all that drivel), this was not to be the case for us. We were given a SRD (Service Ready Date) of 07 December, 2005; and had “DSL Tone” at 09:21 on the 15th of December, 2005.
Verizon stumbled, fell, broke an arm, got up and repeated the prat-fall a number of times–all to my very conspicuous lack of amusement–until they finally got it right.
SO…Will we keep Verizon OnLine as our ISP? Of course!
We’ve actually had very few outages over the long-haul, and it looks like they [VOL] have no qualms about carrying our TCP/IP overhead without surcharge. They’ve doubled our upstream bandwidth, and given us two months of free service for our move-related “issues”. Their sales staff didn’t lie to me, while the Ferengi employed by Charter Communications did nothing but. We also aren’t on a 24-dot subnet, which puts us clear of the hordes of PFY wannabees who are cutting their teeth on the use of NMAP as a port scanning tool. Aside to Carl Cohn: Ditch Road Runner and go with SBC, Okay?
However, the Number One reason we will stick with Verizon is that Mike, the Slackware 10 using Level-Three Supervisor, understands and appreciates geek-speak and lucid fault isolation techniques; and keeps his word. He solves problems, or sees that the right team solves them to our satisfaction.
Verizon People:
We, the customer, only care about our pipe to the Internet. Your policies and documentation procedures; while understandable and worthwhile goals; are poorly-crafted and cause maximum interruption to us, your customers (the ones whose dollars you covet). Three years ago, getting a DSL line up and running was a cakewalk with you folks (you cut our SRD timeline in half); however, the situation is markedly different as of this year. You have added too many unnecessary layers of policy and procedure. As pennance, you need to fix us up with about eight thousand feet of single-mode fiber optic (POF or multi-mode won’t do) with “Epoxy & Polish” terminations…and no bandwidth cap.
Our needs are simple needs.
At any rate, once we finally had the “last mile” of copper squared-away, and good synchronization was evident, the home-school network was to be brought up incrementally. This means that the house was criss-crossed with a rat’s nest of CAT5e and CAT6 cable, and I’m still finding RJ-45 connectors from that bag I dropped a couple of weeks ago–they scatter like cockroaches when they hit tile floor! Some of the cables are now in the wall, and some will be soon; and the isolated ground circuts are on hold for a while. Everyone has “their computer” hooked-up, repaired as necessary, re-configured, and waiting for me to get the print and file servers re-built and online.
Hey! They have Internet access, which is what they really wanted, so the rest can wait until my back heals up a bit. MY workstation was, due to the clammoring of family members, deemed the lowest priority computer to get back online; which was finally accomplished at sometime after 01:00 this morning.
Moving along…
Having looked at the website stats, it appears that this paltry offering has become very popular in my absence. There is work to be done–mostly organizational. There is also the matter of picking up where I left off on content production. Something akin to cleaning-up after a train derailment half-a-mile away from its station of origin. It will, as all good things do, take time.
In looking at eMail: Yikers! I have an enormous amount of incoming correspondence; yet, thankfully, almost no SPAM (I love multiple email filter layers!); to wade through and answer.
CAliVA folks: Patience please. Almost everything during this move went wrong, and I’ve only just today gotten email sorted-out. I’m over-worked, un-paid, and losing my sanity incrementally. (Pun intended.)
To bring the CAliVA folks up to speed, here are the latest screen-shots from the OLS:
I finally have the email addys sorted-out for my son’s high school instructors and coordinator, and have sent you all emails inquiring as to progress. Unfortunately, what I’m being told (on this side of the keyboard, that is) is a far better story than the one told by the OLS progress reports to be had online. To minimize confusion, it might be best if I’m in the CC:-loop in any teacher-student communications.
I’m back to work with the daughters on their 3rd and 5th grade coursework (as well as running new phonelines for the rest of the house. (It never ends!)
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