printf("Hello World\n");
printf("Hello World\n");
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So, as a continuation of my last post about how much I hate AT&T… the line tech finally come on site when they said he would. He apparently found a bad ring ground at the neighborhood’s equipment. He replaced it and my ringtone is now nice and clear and I consistently test at 6Mbps…. yay.
Well that lasted for a month or so. Now I’m down again. I replaced my modem entirely after the last occurrence of problems so that I could be better “supported”…. yes I put supported in quotes, because AT&T’s “support” is a joke to begin with. Now that I’m down again, the modem is giving some pretty good indicators as to why: “Could not find an ATM circuit.” Cute.
I call in and an automated message tells me that they’re “working to resolve a network outage in my area. The estimated resolution time is 12am.” I called at 3:30am. So, 3 1/2 hours have passed since their estimated resolution time. I know that this is an “estimate”, but seriously… 3 1/2 hours off? Some estimate, they might as well have simply said “We’ll be down for a while. In the mean time, play boardgames and jerk it to Playboy like the good ol’ days.”
I pressed zero and got to a support tech… we’ll call him “Albert” (real name was probably something closer to Habeeb Mohammednirishnikahnapali). I told him that I’m aware there’s a network outage, but the estimated time was midnight, it is now 3:30…. is my issue related to something else? He went through the motions like a good little AT&T drone…. ran the line test and attempted to get more information about the outage for me. He came back with the results of the line test: Line is good, but my area is still affected by an outage. And unfortunately the NEW estimated resolution time is “Monday.”
MONDAY!?!?! What the hell! I’ve been down since Thursday! I guess it will be pretty difficult to do things like pay my bills, turn in my school work, and perform my job functions. This is terrific. I should sue for lost wages or something… if any lawyers out there are planning to issue a class action lawsuit against AT&T, count me in. I don’t care what its for, count me in. I want to hit AT&T where it hurts. They only thing they value is money and I’d love to get mine back.
Luckily for me, I have T-Mobile cell phone service (because I dropped Cingular before the AT&T buy-out). I also have a Google Android phone with a tiny app called PdaNet. I’m forced to use the 2G internet connection that I have through my cell phone in order to do any online stuff. At least I have something, but I still can’t do any work-related stuff over this connection. I need a broadband connection for that.
Anyway, I’ll be calling AT&T and asking for a credit. I will only be paying AT MOST 87% of my bill if I am indeed down until Monday. I’m sick of paying for a full month of service, when I’m actually only getting about 20 days or so. This is a great way to start off the month of October… 4 day outage without a single notice to their customers.
Please somebody save me.
Almost forgot to mention. My site got black-listed last week because it got hacked AGAIN! Even after I ran a virus scan, changed my passwords, changed my security questions, EVERYTHING… I get boned by a trojan or something which stole my account information and distributed malware via my website. I think I’ve narrowed it down to FileZilla. I sort of made the mistake of storing account passwords in FileZilla. I think someone must have gotten a hold of the configuration data. Anyway, no more stored FTP sites.
Because this, Google put my site on their shit-list. Which is apparently used by a large amount of web filters and things of that nature. So my site traffic had dropped drastically last week. Hopefully people have checked back and realized I’ve cleaned the threat. I got Google to remove my site from their shitlist so it shouldn’t be flagged anymore.
Again, I will re-iterate: I am a PC… and I got hacked… 3 times now.
I need to vent for a moment, about how much I hate AT&T and how I’m frustrated that there’s nothing I can do about it.
About a month ago, I decided to save myself some money and cut off my home phone line. I wanted to keep my DSL line so I switched to AT&T’s DSL Direct—DSL without home phone service. At the time I wanted to switch, I had 3MB DSL. I did the math and found that if I cut out my home phone service and upgrade my speed to 6MB DSL, I’d still save some money. So I had them upgrade my speed to 6MB as well as cutting off my home phone service.
I was told at that time that it will take up to 48 hours for the new speed to take effect and that after 48 hours I should power-cycle my modem. So I followed their instructions.
So after the 48 hour wait and the power-cycling of the modem, I still didn’t have my 6MB speed. I called them up and said I’m being billed for 6MB DSL now but I’m still only getting 3MB. As it turns out, the lady who took my call initially when I cut the home phone service off had done something wrong and now their billing didn’t sync up with my class of service. This service call took care of that and I had my 6MB almost immediately.
Then just yesterday, the 1 month anniversary of upgrading my speed (new billing cycle), my modem dropped back down to 3MB. After digging around on their site for 20 minutes trying to find a way to contact them, I decided to try to handle this problem via online chat with a customer support rep.
This encounter with support started off OK. She got my account information and verified that I’m supposed to be getting 6MB. She directed me to a speed test website that they could use to verify the validity of my claim of only getting 3MB. I ran the speed test and it came back with 1.5Mb down and 153Kb up. I relayed this information to the support agent and she said that this is indeed way below the allowable speed for my account. I said that this number didn’t jive with what I had been getting previously (just 10min prior) at Speakeasy’s speed test website. So I told her I’d run the test again real quick. This time it came back with 2.9Mb and 163Kb.
After relaying this information to the support rep, she said that this could be a problem with the line and that I needed to call in to talk to a support person live so that we could schedule a service call. I then said “So you mean you will no longer be handling my case?” to which she replied “I assure you that we will get your problem resolved if you call in.” Then I was in the middle of typing “So is there a ticket number or anything that I need to give them?” when she ended the chat session. I said out-loud “You bitch.”
After cooling off for an hour or so I followed her instructions and called in. I had to re-explain my entire problem to Eddie, a support rep. He didn’t quite understand what I was telling him at first, so I re-iterated “This is happening every billing period. My speed gets dropped back to 3MB. I’ve called in before and they’ve taken care of it.” Then he understood what I was saying. But because I never had a support ticket, I had to go through the whole rigmarole of doing the speed test and all that jazz. Then after I again proved that I wasn’t getting the speed that I was supposed to be receiving, Eddie tried to call the “Digital Services Department.” After about 10min he came back on the phone and said he wasn’t able to get ahold of them. Then I said “Is there a number I can try them on?” He said yes and gave me the same number I used to get ahold of him. I told him that can’t be right because that’s what led me to him. Then he realized he made a mistake and gave me another number. I thanked him and we ended the call.
I spent the next hour doing my own thing for a while, taking a break from the hold music and broken English that is AT&T support. Then I tried to call this number Eddie gave me. This number was not a support number, it was the number for “Electronic Payment Claims Center”, and was closed until Monday morning.
So I’ll be going through this same bullshit again in a few hours when I start this entire process all over again. I need to chill right now.
Q: “But Cale, why don’t you switch to cable?”
A: Because I can’t. There isn’t a cable provider in the subdivision where I live and there isn’t any cable infrastructure near me. I am in an area of town that isn’t incorporated, technically not within city limits—though this is one of the more busy areas of town. I’ve tried Charter and I’ve tried Comcast, both of which tell me they don’t serve my area.
Q: “Ok, what about using Clear?”
A: Yes, Atlanta has Clear (WiMax provider) which I WOULD use if they offered home internet service in my area. Where I live, they only offer Clear as a mobile broadband. Plus, have you talked to their customer support? They’re just as bad as AT&T! They don’t know their elbows from their assholes. I looked into getting Clear last month, this led me to a few questions which I decided to talk to a customer service agent about.
Q: “Alright, well that’s a punch in a crotch. What about FiOS?”
A: I’d LOVE to get FiOS. But again, I can’t. Verizon has no infrastructure where I live and can’t support even home phone service where I’m at.
Q: “Holy hell! Ok, what about satellite internet?”
A: LOL. Internet from outter-space… yeah right. 1MB is the highest speed I can find, and its more expensive.
Q: “What the hell! Where do you live?”
A: A seemingly under-developed area of un-incorporated Lawrenceville, GA which I have dubbed “Little Mexico”.
I will keep this short, because my thumbs will get sore from ranting.
I am currently forced to resort to my G1 for posting because my laptop got infected with several trojans and a couple of root kits.
These infections led to my websites being attacked with malware injection. So needless to say, I am a bit pissed. However, trying to find the light side in all of this, I feel like I am important enough for someone to want to do this to me. That is probably a delusion, but it is sort of fun to think like there is a virtual ‘hit’ out on me.
Anyway, I will post more later after my laptop rebuilds.
I am a PC, and I got hacked.
This has got to be one of the worst albums I’ve heard in a long time. I’ve NEVER deleted an album the second after I’m done listening to it, but I definitely do so with this one. I even still have Earshot – Letting Go even though I don’t listen to it. I don’t know how this album got 4 1/2 stars out of 5 on iTunes–absolutely horrible.
For some reason, I felt like checking out Serj’s solo album (even though its been out for a while) after listening to a few System of a Down songs. I’m a metal head, with a little bit of industrial, techno, and alternative mixed in but my roots have always been metal (of the Metallica, Pantera, BLS, Diecast, Acid Bath, and Rapture variety). So naturally, I’ve heard quite a bit of SOAD and happen to like a good bit of their music. Some of it is a little too ‘wacky’ for me, but I figured maybe there’d be a few pretty kickass songs on Serj’s album. I couldn’t have been more wrong. So wrong, that I feel like blogging about my blunder.
So I’m spreading the word. If you love metal, and like your ears (because if you’re a metal head, you _can’t_ LOVE your ears), do NOT download this album.