Comcast vs our Internet. Round 22

Most of what I write has a clear positive message. I do not enjoy complaining just as I know others do not enjoy hearing complaints, so I tend to do as little of it as possible. As a word of warning, I am looking for the lesson in this story, what I can learn from it. So, I apologize in advance, if there is nothing positive for you to take away from it. Also it is a bit long and I just didn't feel like splitting it up. So, here it is.

A few months ago, back in January, I wrote about what a wonderful internet provider Comcast is (http://lnk.to/oFc0m) . Since January, we have paid them over $1500 and our internet still does not work properly.

When we call in and talk to the tier 1 representatives, most of them have no idea what we are talking about. What they are trained to deal with is people who have no internet signal at all. We get asked to do things like make sure the cable modem has power and that all of our cables are connected properly. When we inform them that the problem isn't whether or not we can connect to the internet, that the problem has something to do with lost packets, high ping times and signal degradation they start drooling and jiberring like their brains have been totally blown and are now oozing slowly out their earholes.

Each time, they want to walk us through this inane and completely useless set of steps that is designed to discover why you have no signal at all. Then once we finally get it through their heads that we do in fact have a signal, just that it is a crappy one, then they move on to asking whether or not we have a wired or a wireless network set up. When we tell them that our network is wireless, but that for testing purposes we have set up one computer that is hard wired and that it is getting the same results they latch on to the wireless portion of the conversation and then claim that they can't help us troubleshoot because our network is wireless which they do not support. We could just lie to them and say its wired. But, then we would be lying.

Through a combination of threatening to terminate our service and requests to speak to management we eventually move past that part and get to the part where they offer to send out a technician. And that is where the "fun" begins.

There isn't always someone available here to meet up with the Comcast technician. Sometimes one of us needs to come home early from work or even take time off just to be here when the technician gets here. And about half of the time, the appointment is not kept due to the technician not showing up. When we remember to complain about it, after the fact, Comcast is good about crediting our account for the missed appointment.

But all of that isn't what bothers me about this. What bothers me is when I originally blogged about this back in January, we had been having this intermittent issue with our internet service for several months. We are still having exactly the same issue. Many, many, many steps have been taken. But all have been shots in the dark.

See Comcast has this one major issue that a lot of other companies have, especially larger corporations. The problem isn't that they hire idiots or that they fail to train their employees properly. While both of these are contributing factors. It is that they do not have a centralized database that all of their employees can access.

They do have a database and when we call in some of the reps we have gotten on the phone have been able to look up notes from past calls but others have not. And something a lot of people don't realize is that the technicians that Comcast sends out do not work directly for Comcast. They are licensed contractors and have no access at all to any information about what has been going on in the past.

And THAT is what makes me mad. Whenever a technician comes out to our house, we are starting a fresh round of troubleshooting as if nothing has ever been done. They know that we have been having problems for awhile and each one wants us to see them as the super hero that fixes our problem. Each one of them has a different knowledge base and believes that different things will cause the issue that we have.

Sometimes it is declared that a new modem will fix things but they don't carry them on their truck. So an appointment has to be made to get a new modem. And then either that appointment gets cancelled without our knowledge or the appointment is kept, but a different technician comes out that knows nothing about the replacement modem we are supposed to be getting.
Then this new guy asks us what the problem is and we get to start all over.

We have actually had the cable modem replaced twice. We have run our system both with a router and without. We have used five different splitters, two of which came from Comcast( two others which "Comcast" technicians suggested but weren't supported by Comcast and one we bought from Radio Shack). Comcast technicians have twice run a completely new line from the box at the back of the house into our house, drilling a hole through our wall each time. They have run a new line from the pole to the box in the back of our house. We have been told that hooked up but unused coaxial cables for cable TV can interfere with the signal. All of our coax cables have been capped except for the main one we actually use to watch TV.

Every component inside our network has been changed, many of them more than once. Our internal network works flawlessly. We can see and interact with other computers on our network even when our internet service is down. We can have in-house Skype calls at times when there is "no internet".

It is my personal opinion that these are all just shots in the dark. Nobody actually working directly for Comcast knows or at the very least is willing to admit that they know what is causing our problems.

Multiple technicians have come out and told us that they have received nearly identical complaints from some of our neighbors. We have been told multiple times, in person, that Comcast is aware of issues with their infrastructure in our area. I think the Comcast technicians know exactly what is wrong but are contractually obligated not to tell us because it would make Comcast look bad. They know that they can't fix the problem for us and aren't allowed to tell us that. So they make up some story that will let them leave as soon as possible and make it some other person's problem

Most recently we were told by a technician, at our house, that our neighbors had improperly set up their service and that as a result their signal was spiking and "slicing" across ours and causing signal degradation and loss of signal altogether at times. Another appointment was set to have an installer come out to their house and fix the problem. Comcast cancelled that appointment without telling us or providing a reason for it. Then when we called in to find out about it nobody seemed to know what we were talking about. A technician came out today and ran a new line from the box to our house. Yay another hole in our walls.

Surprise! It didn't fix things. It seemed to work fine for about ten minutes, just long enough for the cable installer to be gone. Then we started having trouble again. They are sending someone out again in another two days. We asked for billing so we could talk about getting a credit and billing suggested we wait until the trouble is fixed so they can give us the proper credit. Does anyone in their right mind believe they are going to credit us for the last 9 months or so that we have paid for a service that hasn't worked as described?

I don't believe in complaining without having a solution. But in this case there doesn't seem to be an easy solution. Comcast offers the best consumer service in our area. AT&T is a distant second. We would go with satellite but it has its own problems that are just as bad if not worse.

Perhaps there is a provider that offers high speed internet for businesses that we could convince to work with us. We are currently paying around three thousand dollars a year. That has to fall in line with what some of the business providers are charging for similar service. The only other thing I can think of at the moment is finding out what would be involved in becoming our own ISP. I am looking for other viable solutions.

A message for the world. In the beginning there was chaos.

At first I was unaware of having any control over my life. I was aimlessly travelling along the rocky rapids of life being slammed from one sharp circumstance into another. If random chance brought me something good, well then that was great, but if it didn't then boo-hoo life was being mean to me.

But one day, I awoke to the truth. That I could and did in fact control nearly everthing that happened to me. I learned that I could avoid the sharp outcroppings of rock in the river of life and that I could safely navigate wherever I wanted to go. Life doesn't have to be random and chaotic and scary. It can be controlled,calm,peaceful and still fun. It is my intention to bring the lessons that I have learned to the world. To bring more light and hope and success to all of those around me.

Much positive change has been wrought in the lives of those closest to me as a direct result of my sharing these very same things with them. For a long time I dreamed of sharing my successes with others in my community and one by one changing the whole community for the better. For various reasons it has come to my attention that it would be a much better idea to share my viewpoint on the internet. More people overall can be affected this way. And instead of having a tight cluster of change in one local place there can be seeds of it planted all over the world.

So, I will be posting my viewpoints on life and the lessons I have learned. If what I say has resonance with you, if it vibrates on the same frequency as you do, if you agree with what I say, please please, share it with others that you think could get something positive out of it. And if you disagree or are bothered or offended in any way by what I say, please just ignore it. If this is the case my message is not for you.

That's the wonderful thing about the internet we can tune in to whatever we want and tune out from what we do not want.

Are you responsible for what happens in your life? Pt1

The following actually occurred this past Friday afternoon. Names have been changed to letters for anonymity.

Comcast sent out a technician to troubleshoot the internet problems that we have been having. As part of his troubleshooting he needed to test all of the coaxial cables for line noise. We all live together in a big house, but all have separate schedules. Sometimes we do not know who is home or awake or what their general status is.

One of the rooms the technician needed to get into was behind a closed door. He asked if it was alright to go in and check the line in that room. This sequence of events is what happened as a result.

Person A asked person B if person C was home. Person B said they did not know. Person A asked person B to check. Person B checked the door to person C's room, found it unlocked, opened it looked in and said person C was sleeping. Person A replied that was not useful information and that something more would need to be done. Person B then went over to the sleeping person C and woke them up.

Person C was understandably upset, one about being woken up in general, and even more upset at being woken up by person B standing next to their bed and calling their name. Person C felt that their privacy was being invaded due to the fact that person B did not even bother to knock before coming into their room.

Not surprisingly, an argument started, it was minor and not very heated. But, still, it was enough that the Comcast guy did not get to test the line that day.

Person C blamed person B for the circumstance. Person B claimed to just be following directions and blamed Person A. Person A admitted responsibility for the situation. But who was really responsible for the end result of the Comcast representative not testing the line? Was it person A, B,C, or was it the Comcast tech?

It's actually a trick question. The correct answer is, it is everyone's responsibility. A,B,C, the Comcast tech, every person that observed what happened and even those that did not. The whole world is responsible for everything that happens, everywhere, if they could have taken an action that would have made things different, no matter how indirect or not connected that action might be.

Person A could have stopped Person B from entering Person C's room without knocking. Person B could have used common sense and not entered without knocking, Person C could have locked their door before going to sleep, or could have been awake or not home. The guy from Comcast could have found another way to test the line that did not involve going into that room.

Comcast, in general, is responsible for the trouble that we are having with our internet because if they did not exist we would not have their service and thus we could not have an issue with our Comcast internet service. AT&T is responsible for this circumstance as well, because if they provided a better service we would use it. It was our choice to go with the internet service provided by Comcast. But it is every other company out there's choice not to provide better internet than Comcast does.

One might say well what about all the Chinese and Indian people out there that are half a world away from you? They aren't responsible for this are they? Actually, yes they are. Any one of them could invent the next new bit of technology that makes internet usage through coaxial cable obsolete. Every man woman and child, everywhere, that has failed to do so is responsible for the problems that we have with the internet in our home. If there were no planet Earth we would not have the exact problem we have here and now with our internet. Therefore everyone that has not blown up the Earth has contributed to us still having trouble with our Comcast based internet service.

Am I suggesting that anyone should destroy our planet? No, not, even slightly. I am just using it as an example to say that anyone and everyone could change our circumstance and that everyone that does not, is responsible for the circumstance continuing to exist

A person can take the victim stance and blame everyone else but the fact of the matter is that they are responsible for what happens in their lives even if they choose to ignore or deny it. Also, there is no such thing as partial responsibility. Persons A,B,C and the Comcast tech are not each 25% responsible for what happened. They are each jointly and severally 100% responsible for the outcome because any one of them could have taken an action to change the outcome and none of them did.

Comcast provides the fastest most reliable internet service in our area, which sucks.

Our home is a veritable hot spot of internet usage. Sometimes we are downloading a game on our desktops while playing another game on our laptops and using our phones to check movie times or to map out a route to someplace new.

Between streaming movies and videos from one computer to another within our network, torrenting movies, music and games from the internet, playing online games on our computers and Playstation4, checking email,  and just general web browsing we use the internet for just about everything.

We are loyal Comcast customers. But not because we have any real choice. Satellite internet has way too much latency for serious gamers. And AT&T, Comcast's only real competition in the area has much slower service. When AT&T offered 20MB service Comcast offered 50. With AT&T recently offering 50 Comcast upgraded all their 50MB customers to their new 105MB service.

And it really is blazing fast. Sorta. Sometimes. With a wired connection the speeds are often close to 100MB. There are two problems with that statement. One is the word often. It isn't consistent. It's good say maybe 30% of the time. They don't promise any specific speed, just up to 105MB. And two who wants to be stuck in one place all the time? Wireless is the way of the future. They will not guarantee and in fact will not troubleshoot wireless speeds at all.

In fairness Comcast almost never has an outage in our area. They have better than 99% up time. That means they average less than 14 minutes of downtime every day. When they do have an outage it's usually fixed within an hour or less. And there's probably about one every other month or so.

But, we have been having a problem for over a year now that they have failed to be able to do anything about. We have an intermittent issue. It comes and goes. When it shows up we get lag in whatever games, streaming or web browsing that we are doing and we start losing about a third or more of the packets being sent out. It seems to be more of an issue with the upload speed at the time than download speed, but often both are affected.

We have switched out every physical component in our network and we still have this issue. New routers, new cable modems, new splitters, new video cards, you name it we've swapped it. It happens on every one of the over a dozen computers in the house. So it is not a specific setting on a specific computer that is causing the issue. And the same computers do not have this issue when connected to other networks. It is only with the signal we are getting from Comcast that there is an issue.

Each time they promise to send out a technician and each time they do, eventually. About two out of every three of the appointments that we make get cancelled for no specific reason, without them saying a word to us about it being cancelled. We only find out about it after setting time aside to be home for the technician who never ends up showing up. The best part, is Comcast even calls us to tell us that the technician will be coming by shortly on the day of the appointment, and then he or she never does.

Then when we call in to find out why the tech never showed up and what we need to do in order to get one to come out, invariably the rep on the phone asks us to hold while they find out if there will be a charge for sending a technician out to our home.

When a tech does finally come out they say something that contradicts what the last two or three techs to come out have said. They always want to replace some part that they don't have with them and need to set up another appointment. And then...that tech doesn't show up for the appointment and we get to start the whole dance all over.

It's too bad that Comcast provides the fastest most reliable service in our area. Because at this point if I heard that Hitler and Genghis Khan were alive and well and had teamed up to sell internet service that was as fast and as reliable as Comcast, I'd jump ship and go with whatever it is they were offering.

Social Unification Through Widespread Dissemination of Information pt2

We are about 2/3 done forming a household of like minded people. While it may be a good idea, this gradual growing of a physical community limits the amount, speed and ways in which our tribe can grow.

With the advent of the internet, people of like minds need not live in the same communities, or in fact, even the same countries as one another, in order to share their ideas and thoughts. We need to no longer be limited to physical location, like the Indians were.While most of the tribe may be centered in one area, seeds of growth can pop up all over the world.

 That subject line should have deciphered itself by now.

 If we want to change the world, why not do it on a global as well as a small scale? We can focus our attention primarily at home, but share our philosophies and ideas with other people around the world that want to see the same kind of change that we do. Those that disagree with the ideas can just choose to ignore what we have to say and those that agree can speak up and join the tribe.

 It might take decades using the mindset of the one household at a time type expansion, from our tribe's current center to affect places like Africa, Europe or Asia. But, through the sharing of our thoughts and ideas over the internet, other people can take it upon themselves, right now, to form a local branch of our tribe within their own community.

 I do not currently do a lot (very little ever) of social media type stuff. But some other members of my tribe do. And I plan to start doing more. A major change for me is that I will probably start putting this blog on my Facebook page, so others who know me and have no other way of contacting me can see where my mind and heart are at and so those who do not know me personally can get to know me and my tribe.

We are about empowerment, positivity and personal growth. We have a vision statement that describes what we stand for as individuals and as a community.It is as follows

[We the people of  "Grok the Planet " are committed to changing the world, one soul at a time. Our goals are to constantly continue to grow and improve ourselves emotionally, mentally, spiritually, financially as well as physically and to encourage others to do the same. We will achieve these goals by each one of us being a leader, living in excellence, being impeccable with our word, making no assumptions, taking nothing personally and striving to do our best in all things]

 The idea is to perform positive personal change and to encourage and support others in doing this as well. If these goals and ideals match yours, please join our tribe. I am co-creator, general idea guy, and somewhat spiritual leader for the tribe. To find out more about the ideas and philosophies of Grok the Planet, please, read the rest of my blog. It is chock full of the beliefs and examples of our way of being.

Decide for yourself, if you want to be part of a group that changes the history of the world, by changing the way people interact with one another. If this is your cup of tea, shoot an email over to darkg0d@hotmail.com . Interested parties only please. Flames will be ignored.

See you tomorrow.

Technology. How much is enough?

According to a lot of alcoholics and a famous Ozzy Osbourne song too much is never enough. The idea for healthy successful living is supposed to be everything in moderation. When it comes to food, sugar, salts, protein, carbohydrates, none of them taken in small doses are actually bad for you. In fact, your body needs all of these things. And in moderation even alcohol is healthy and good for you.

The problems come when we focus on one of these things to the exclusion of others. Then we get things like atherosclerosis, diabetes, heart disease, liver poisoning and a host of other issues.

A few decades ago it was believed that we would never need more than 640k of memory for our personal computers. Now anything less than a couple of gigabytes is considered unacceptable. That is an increase of more than one thousand times what we had then.

Computers used to take up enormous rooms all by themselves. Now a complete computer, one that is many times more powerful than those, can fit in the palm of your hand. In fact, telephones used to be big and bulky and the only purpose they could serve was verbal communication. Today cell phones are more compact, have better reception than phones originally did, and they serve many of the same functions that people would previously buy a computer for. You can use them to check your email, record and send pictures and photos, download and play games and browse the internet.

There was a time when Microsoft said that it would never be upgrading to a 32 bit operating system. The current iterations are 64 bits.

At first people used to have to physically travel to a location to obtain data about a thing. Then we learned to write letters to the people that knew the information and wait for replies. Following that we came up with the brilliant idea of storing groups of documents in single buildings called libraries. Now, we have the most fantastic idea ever for storing and sharing data. The internet. With this amazing tool we can find data about nearly any topic we can imagine, from anywhere that has an online connection, which is practically, everywhere

Computers didn't used to have hard drives because what could you possibly need to store? The first computers with hard drives had kilobytes of storage. Terabytes are common storage units today. The sum total of knowledge accumulated on different forms of media around the world was estimated, in 2007, to be about 295 exabytes. It goes, gigabyte, terabyte,petabyte, then exabyte. So an exabyte is about a billion gigabytes of data or a million terabytes.

 We've gone from bytes to terabytes in a few short decades. It might be just a couple of more before we get to exabytes. So... once we have expanded our data storage to the point where we can hold about 300 million terabytes of data on one drive, are we done?

Of course not. Then there will be some new and even more spectacular goal like micronizing it or direct neural interfacing to make all that data available to us without the need for bulky hardware. There is always some new frontier to cross when it comes to technology, some way to make it faster, stronger, smarter, or somehow just plain better.

The sad fact of the matter is that in nearly every case, we have yet to realize the full potential of the technology we already have, before the next big thing comes out to make it even "better".

And every year as the new devices come out we devour them with an avarice and appetite that is truly frightening. We lose nearly all sense of humanity and care for our neighbor and gain some kind of mad lust in our frantic rush to go get the new shiny thing. A practical feeding frenzy over the new I-phone or the latest game. 

And that's not all. There's internet addiction..An inability to relate to people or real world circumstances due to too much time spent online. Cancers related to too much cell phone usage. Accidents caused by digital media distracting drivers and many other problems and diseases that come from relying too much on today's technology.

If you are one of those people that thinks too much tech is never enough, maybe you have a problem and should look into some lower tech ways to live and enjoy life. Go outside once in awhile. Meet real people. I am not saying get rid of the electronic goodies, just realize that life can still be good without them.

In my normal life I tend to avoid using the same keyword over and over. In fact, I usually go out of my way to use a different word instead of a keyword each time I want to express a similar concept. So using keywords on the internet takes a bit of conscious effort from me.I am in something of a silly mood today so I decided i'd play around with keyword density.

To both quote and mangle a meme: I heard you liked keywords, so I decided to keyword a keyword into your keyword so you can

keyword

your keyword

while you keyword.

Keyword?

But what is the key word about keywords? How much is too much? After doing a bit of quick research it seems that about 1-4% keyword density is the suggested amount. Some people say that more than 1% of your text containing your keyword seems like spam and others say less then 4% of your text containing the keyword is simply not enough. There will likely be a much larger amount of keywords in this keyword article than 4% . I want to use enough keywords to flood the keyword density tool. A truly ridiculous amount of keywords goes into this keyword post about keywords.

But with all the keywords in existence why should any one suggested use of a keyword be any better or worse than any other keyword? Keywords are just keywords right? Shouldn't the right amount of keywords in your work be exactly however many uses of the keyword it takes to get your point across, with not one keyword more or one keyword less? Keywords are found everywhere on the internet. No matter where you look there is always a keyword or three. Keywords are THE keywords that people use to get your attention and to hopefully help search engines find your web page. Without keywords, many of the top visited sites on the web would be on the 10th page or lower in searches. Keywords are king. Often, keywords alone will determine whether a site succeeds or fails.  So finding the best keywords for your page is very important. Use the wrong keywords and nobody will find ever find you. Use the right keywords and your work will be at the top of the heap.

What if I used the keyword keyword too many times?  What if my keyword density is too high and my keyword post with all it's many keywords and uses of the word keyword is seen by a spider as spam? If I have used the keyword keyword too many times and my keyword post is seen as spam, then I suppose my keyword post with all it's keywords will not be indexed. Then my keyword filled post will join many other keyword clogged pages at the very bottom of the internet. This post with all it's keywords will circle the drain for awhile, but due to having such a high keyword density, the keywords will band together and literally clog the drain. The keywords in this post and the keywords in the posts written by others that surround it at the bottom will fill up the nooks and crannies in the drain at the bottom of the keyword ocean and prevent it from emptying. Our forgotten pages full of keywords will be the foundation that keeps the rest of the keyword ocean from going down the drain entirely.

I think that is just about enough keywords. If you haven't gotten the keyword about keywords by now, you are never going to get the keyword. Join me next time for another exciting adventure,one with decidedly less keywords.