For those Charter customers who want to find out what your service will be like when you have a problem, here is my account of my 7 day outage. The final fix took 5 minutes once it was in the proper hands. 7 days to perform a 5 minute fix, and it was not for lack of letting them know about my problem:)
I called Charter (888-590-4694) on 11/29/2001 to find out how the transition was going. They gave me another phone number for the transition (888-843-0785) and I talked to Doug at that number the next day. Doug was completely unwilling to provide me with any information and told me he was only taking down names and numbers. I left my name and number and he told me someone would call me back with in 3 days. It is now 12/23 and I have not heard anything back from that phone call.
On 12/6 my service went down at 4:21pm. I was unable to ping my gateway (24.11.143.139) or DHCP server (24.0.0.70). Renewing DHCP got no response. At 4:29pm the modem reset itself and started getting an invalid and incomplete DHCP response (IP Address: 192.168.100.11, DHCP Server: 192.168.100.1, no DNS, no gateway).
I called 888-590-4694 and they said that I needed to call a technical support number in California and gave me the 888-852-2235 phone number. I talked to Shari at that number and she said that she was in Southern California and had no access to the information in Northern California. She told me I needed to call the local office and gave me the 831-724-1038 number (I live in Capitola, CA).
I called that number and talked to Stewuart. Stewuard gave me the http://chartersupport.com/ URL (not that I could access it at the time) and walked me through a few things on my computer to doulbe check things. Then told me that my modem was missing from the database and needed to be reprovisioned. I needed to go into my local office:
Charter Office
475 Airport Blvd.
Watsonville, CA 95076
He could not give me a phone number for that office.
I called the 866-837-3620 number and requested information for the Watsonville area.
The status number stated that they would be providing service to my area in the next 90 days.
I called 831-724-1038 and talked to Carrie. She said there was no phone number for the local office. She gave me a closer local office.
706 Capitola Ave. Suite G
Capitola, CA 95010
M-Th 8:30-5:30
F,S 9:30-5:30
Carrie said that I needed to bring my modem into the Capitola office, and either get a new one
or get it reprovisioned. The local office was closed for the day, so I had to go the next day.
I went to the local office in Capitola on 12/7. I am not sure I can classify it as an office, only one person, Eileen, works there. She was rude to the customer in front of me and from talking to him he said they were double billing him. Eileen told him it wasn't her job to help him. When I talked to Eileen about my problem she told me that she had no idea why anyone would refer me to her. She said that she did not know anything about cable modems and did not have any to replace mine with. Eileen scheduled a trouble call for them to come out on Monday, 12/10/2001 between 8:00am and 10:00am. She said that 80% of the customers in the database were moved over and about 20% were lost. I was one of the customers lost.
When I got home I called 1-866-413-9096 and talked to Bradley, after waiting on hold for approximately 50 minutes (It was entirely Christmas music. I think that whoever decides to choose Christmas music for people waiting on hold for an hour should be forced to listen to the music they hate the most for an hour). Bradley told me that the URL to set-up e-mail addresses was http://update.charter.net/, and that the cost for the service was the same. Customers can check their mail at http://mail.charter.net/. He gave me the pop server of pop.charter.net and the smtp server of smtp.charter.net. Bradley gave me the new username and password that I should have received in the mail. As of 12/23 I still have not received anything from Charter in the mail other than ads for their service sent out in bulk --- including a bill, and I have notified them of this. Bradley told me that they were having a DHCP issue in my area and that it would be fixed by the next morning. He opened Ticket #: st0685004 and told me that he would call me the next morning to make sure that I was back up. As of 12/23 I have not heard back from Bradley.
On 12/8 I still had not heard from Bradley by the afternoon and I was still down. I called 866-413-9096 and they hung up on me after being on hold for 56 minutes (at least I finished reading the book I was reading). I had to do things that day and decided it was not a good day to call Charter.
On 12/9 I was still down. I called 866-413-9096 and when I tried option 2 for technical support I got a busy signal and it hung up on me. I called back and did not choose any option, then got a busy signal and hung up on. I called again and chose 1 to set up e-mail/passwords/web. This got me through to Shari: she did not know anything technical. All, she could do is take down my contact information and have someone
call me. I am now quite familiar with that routine at Charter. She also gave me a 1-866-413-9097 number, stating that it was
the number for technical support in my area.
I called 1-866-413-9097. This number seemed more like customer support at first, but I got a technical support person, Chad. I gave Chad the ticket number, st0685004, and he reviewed it. He said that it was currently being worked on by Tier-3. When I asked when it was last updated, he paused and told me 12/7. I asked him if Tier-3 worked on weekends, and put me on hold to go ask. He told me that they do. He walked me through some tests on my machine and had me connect to the diagnostic Web server on my modem (the IP was the IP of the DHCP server responding):
http://192.168.100.1/
and
http://192.168.100.1/config.html
Signal to Noise: should be >25
Upstream: 22 to 56
Downstream: -15 to +15On 12/10 no one showed between:00am and 10:00am as Eileen had scheduled the trouble ticket. I actually stayed home until 1:30pm and came back at 2:45. Charter came by at 2:39pm, but the
guy was still in the parking lot. He wouldn't give me contact information for the trouble call
group. He said that since my modem lights were on, he could not do anything. He said that people did not show up for work today, and it was him and one other guy covering the trouble calls. He could not get the guy who handles the software side to come out until tomorrow. He said he would have the guy call me tonight and schedule to come out tomorrow.
He did leave a message at 2:40pm and said to call them if I have further problems, but he
did not leave a phone number to call him back at. I did not have any phone number the trouble
call group. I now have the caller id from the number he called me from: (408) 422-9168.
I called 1-866-413-9097 and talked with Doug. Doug had me go to the Web page for my modem again. Under the Signal Page, Downstream: Network Access Control Object: OFF. According to Doug if this is OFF the modem is not authorized. Doug resubmitted the ticket and thought that my modem was not authorized. He said to give them a call
if I have not heard from them in a day or so.
On 12/11 I still had not heard back from the tech's co-worker who was supposed to call me back the night before. It seems very few people at Charter call back when they say they will.
I called 408-422-9168 and talked with the tech. He said that he talked to his co-worker that morning and that his co-worker would be comming out that morning. As of 12/23 no other tech actually showed up. I must be on some list of people not to show up on.
I called 1-866-413-9097 and talked with James. I gave James the ticket number, st0685004, and he reviewed it. He put me on hold to test my modem.
James asked me if I have talked to 1-888-590-4694; I said that I started off with that group and they never called me back.
I had James transfer me to his supervisor, Howie. I talked with Howie and he is based at the Louisville Call Center. Howie was one of the better people I worked with at Charter. He actually called me back every day to update me on how he was working on my ticket and the phone number and names of those people he had talked to if I wanted to check up on it myself. He ended up not being the one to resolve the issue, but I am confident that he would have eventually and was on top of it.
On 12/12, I called 831-724-1038 and talked with Heidi. Heidi is based in Vancouver, WA and said that the call center for my area is based in Vancouver, WA. I told her a lot about my problem. I mentioned I had a ticket open with the Louisville Call Center. She had information about the billing call I made and about the trouble call Eileen made for the 10th. She did not seem interested in looking the ticket number up. After talking to her about my problems, she started working with her supervisor, James. She entered another trouble ticket for 12/17, but we both agreed that that was too long to be down and that was unacceptable with me. I asked her to transfer me to her supervisor, James.
She ended up transferring me to the escalation team and I talked with Carol. Carol said that she was going to try and get ahold of someone at the Santa Cruz office. This is the first I had
heard of the Santa Cruz office. She ended up talking with Dave, from the Gilroy office. Carol said "he runs the Internet."
I know that is not true, so I will assume she meant for that office. Carol said that Dave is going to call me sometime today. I told her that I did not really want to stay home all day waiting for a phone call if no one was going to be out that day. I asked to speak to her supervisor, but she quickly responded that her suprvisor was not available. I asked who her supervisor was and when her supervisor would be in. Her supervisor's name is Charlotte and comes in at 10:00am, she responded.
I called back (866-731-5420) at 10:06 and spoke with Tamra. Tamra looked over my ticket and put me on hold for Charlotte. She came back and said that Charlotte does not come in until noon. Tamra told me that she was going to put me on hold and get me to one of the supervisors. She transferred me to another number that put me on hold.
Apparently Tamra transferred me to the escalation team (not a supervisor). I spoke with Jeremy. Jeremy gave Dave a call to see if he could have Dave call me back immediately. Jeremy came back and said that Dave would call me back sometime that day. I can not seem to get across to Charter that I do not want to sit around all day waiting for a phone call. If where I wanted to go got cell phone reception I would give them my cell phone.
At 11:25am, Dave called back to make sure I was up. Yeah! Dave fixed my problem. He had reentered my modem into the database. It worked, my ordeal with Charter was over.
If only Charter could have given me a phone number for someone who actually could fix my problem.
I am in a different boat than you. I received an e-mail from them on the 16th that said I would be transitioned over to their Pipeline service. However, they did not specify any timeline. They said that they wanted to do everything they could for their customers to maintain network connections. If they really meant that, they would pay @Home and negotiate a new contract.
I gave Charter High-Speed tech support (888-590-4694) a call and they referred me to another number (888-843-0785) dealing with this issue, but it was not currently with in the business hours of the new number when I called. When I called the second number the next day, the guy I talked to (Doug) was less than helpful. He said that all they are doing is taking down names and contact information and would get back to me in the next three days. It's been 2 days and I am waiting to hear back from them.
I do not believe that I have received very good support from Charter. I really would like to know how they wish to keep me happy and from changing ISPs.
I looked over the AUP for the Pipeline service and was not too impressed. @Home's AUP is a ton better. The Pipeline AUP basically says that they will terminate your account if you post or send any messages that are profane or obscene. I guess if I send a sexual joke to a friend thats grounds for termination of my account. One is not allowed to use any identity other than their own, or offer any information about yourself that is not true. I guess using dszd0g instead of my real name on Slashdot is grounds for termination of my account. Older women who jokingly claim to be 21 would also be grounds for termination. I think Charter really needs to revise their AUP.
I received the following e-mail from Charter earlier this month. I am sure Charter would be quite happy for @Home not to kill its connection. However, from what I have read Charter is not paying @Home. Its seems to have to do with the stockholders trying to renegotiate contracts and not being happy with AT&Ts offer. Those cable providers that are paying their bills are not being cut off. @Home apparently is being forced to cut off those cable companies that are not paying them. Makes sense to me.
Charter, if you want to make us customers happy, pay @Home and keep our connection up. I plan on giving Charter a call tomorrow and inquiring their opinion is of what is going on. I doubt I will get a good answer, but I personally like @Home. Pipeline seems to be aligned with Earthlink and AOL. @Home sounds better. @Home has been entirely reliable for me. Much better than the Pacbell DSL I had before, which I had cron jobs running keeping track of network connectivity with mrtg so I could get credit for the days worth of outages a month.
Dear Charter@Home® Customer:
@Home, the network provider through which Charter Communications® delivers
your high-speed
Internet access to you and other Charter customers, has filed for bankruptcy.
@Home recently
asked the Bankruptcy Court for permission to terminate Charter's contracts
effective
November 30, 2001. If the Court grants @Home's request, your Charter@Home
service would no
longer be available.
We are actively working with @Home to prevent the termination of your account
on November 30.
However, if @Home continues to insist upon terminating its contract with
Charter, we are
committed to minimizing the inconvenience that its action would cause you and
other Charter
customers.
To that end, we are diligently working so that we may be able to offer Charter Pipeline
high-speed Internet access service to you in the event @Home disconnects its
service. Charter
is aggressively pursuing every reasonable option possible to guarantee the
delivery of high quality Internet access service to you. However, if @Home's service is
discontinued on November 30, 2001, there is likely to be a gap in time from the date of the
@Home shutdown until the date Charter will be able to provide Charter Pipeline in your area. Please let me assure you that we are working around the clock to do everything in our power to minimize any service interruption. Once we are ready to deliver Charter Pipeline to you, we expect to have
a web site or a CD ROM available through which you may download the software necessary to begin
service.
We want to make it clear that we are not encouraging you to end your @Home
relationship. As long as @Home continues to provide uninterrupted services to you, we
believe you are being well served. However, we want to do whatever we can to keep you on-line.
As we learn more about @Home's plans, we will let you know. Please watch your mail and check
your email for timely updates on the status of your Charter @Home account. Please know that Charter Communications is committed to doing whatever we can to serve your high speed data needs now and in the future.
Thank you your patience and thank you for being a Charter customer.
Truly Yours,
Marwan Fawaz
Vice President, Operations
Northwest Region
CHARTER COMMUNICATIONS, INC.
"260 were on airliner, six to nine missing on ground; 265 bodies recovered"
Re:Time for some highly unpopular opinion...
on
Handling the Loads
·
· Score: 2, Informative
I find it humorous that some people actually believe our foreign policy is based on helping others.
I am not saying that the US does not help other countries. We quite often come to the support of our allies and troubled nations.
However, one can not ignore the horrors we commit. The 150,000 deaths we are responsible for in Guatemala. Supporting De Beers and the diamond cartel and the slavery and thousands of deaths involved there. The whole cold war and how the USSR and the US used entire other nations as pawns in the war against each other. Our intelligence leaking information to US companies and helping to eliminate foreign competition.
There are a number of books on these subjects. A couple good reads are "The Good Citizen" and "Corporate Media and the Threat to Democracy."
A lot of Americans seem to believe that others get pissed off at us just because we are doing well. What people are pissed off at us for are the horrid things we do that aren't covered by American media.
I have no idea why I said Algoria. You are correct in that it is Angola. Yes, Castro helped out Angola along with the USSR. The Soviet Union provided the Marxist Popular Liberation Movement of Angola (MPLA) with finances and Cuba supplied troops.
The USSR and Cuba were very close during the cold war. Castro in general is a hero to the people of Cuba but the US makes him out as an abuser of the people because he is not on good terms with the US.
I really do not think most people learn this stuff in school. It should be taught more.
I really do not know why I am replying because it was obvious attempt at a flame instead of a polite correction.
I do not know about Microsoft killing people. However, if you look at corporations in general. There are much worse companies out there. De Beers, who is the olipology of the "blood" or "conflict" diamond industry has a death toll of almost half a million people through their actions in Sierra Leone, Algoria, and Zaire/Democratic Republic of Congo. De Beers is 1000 times worse of a company than Microsoft. I would buy 100 Microsoft products before I ever bought a diamond. Most people don't even know who De Beers is though let alone how the diamond industry works.
Shell has a death toll of thousands (maybe its up to tens of thousands by now) from the mercenaries they use in Nigeria.
One is fooling themselves if they think the US government is going to stop these companies. The US government helps them! The CIA was involved with De Beers in DRC, and Algoria. The Nigerian army helped Shell do the massacring.
[Going a little off topic here]
The entire US foreign policy is about protecting our economic interests. The Capitalism vs. Communism thing was just a guise. Example: In Guatemala the US destroyed a functioning democratic government because they were not working with the US's economic interests and installed a dictator who uses death squads to enforce his rule. The death toll in Guatemala is over 175,000.
The Gulf war coverage here was totally BS. Saddam had helped the US with the Iran conflict and was one of the CIA contacts in the middle east. Bush Sr. was on good terms with Saddam from back in his CIA days and talked with him regularly. Saddam had contacted Bush about a oil plant he wanted in Kuwait. Bush sent a message to Saddam to go ahead and take it. For one reason or another Saddam chose to interpret the message as go ahead and take Kuwait. That was bad for US economic interests. There's the gulf war for you.
I trust slashdot a little more to be less Corporate biased, however, it is still owned by VA Linux. What we really need is public media (television/radio) where it is illegal for money to come from corporations or large individual donations. Where they are required to show some news that they have come up with themselves. Where do we pay for this? A 1% tax on advertising. A 1% tax on advertising would produce over a billion dollar budget for public media. Then maybe we would actually get some decent television and a news media that does not rewrite history.
I can provide a long list of articles and books on these subjects for anyone interested.
That benchmark looks too good to me. I'm not sure I buy it. The Athlon 1GHz gets 2792 for its ALU. The dual T-Bird 1.53GHz processors get 8576. 2792 * 1.53 * 2 = 8543.52. Now the 1GHz I believe is an original Athlon and not a T-Bird. Also the 1.53 GHz processors are running at a 133 Mhz DDR FSB while the 1GHz is running at 100 Mhz DDR FSB. Between the increase in FSB and Athlon vs. T-Bird I would think that might by it an extra 10% performance at equivalent clock speeds. 2792 * 1.1 * 1.53 * 2 = 9397.872. 9397.872 *.75 = 7048.404.
However, there is always overhead when running multiprocessor systems even with good multiprocessor archetectures like the EV6. Generally I expect to get 1.5 the performance with two processors compared to one. Anything much above the 7048 above doesn't sound right to me.
I don't like the fact that you will only have access to a select list of websites. It probably will come down to "you can visit our sponsor's websites..." I would assume that the high bandwidth of the web would be expensive in this case so they might restrict access to those sites giving them money. I guess it just makes web browsing pointless, but e-mail would still be useful.
This seems to be the post I agree with the most. I still disagree about the second of the 2 *'s. I agree that migrating your personal belongings home might not be a bad idea. However, generally any documents or programs done at a company are the property of the company and I have witnessed lawsuits when an ex-boss sees a program an employee wrote under him up on that employee's new webpage.
Someone else mentioned the "look at all these other offers I am getting" technique. From what I have seen this technique generally does not work. I have known people to get fired or demoted for using it.
I got the e-mail from egghead. It really surprised me since I had never purchased from them. I had an account with onsale, but hadn't trusted their security and gave their site a bogus credit card number and sent them an e-mail about their issues.
From talking to egghead it appears my bogus credit card number was stolen:) From the person I talked to on the phone their credit card numbers are "double encrypted." I thought it slightly rude to ask exactly what it meant. It could be double DES for all I know:>
I love my Ricochet on my laptop. It is affordable , convenient, and reliable. I currently am cellphone less since I can't find a cell phone provider with reception in my new apt (Santa Cruz, CA). I've tried Verizon, Sprint, Pacbell, SC Cellular One, Cellular One. It's not worth it if people can't always get ahold of me on my cellphone. However, my richochet gets reception in my apt and everywhere else in this area. I haven't had my Ricochet for too long but I couldn't be happier with it. It has been more reliable than most ISPs I've used.
You know you are a geek when:
You pick up the phone and dial an IP address...
I always thought that one was supposed to be a joke even though I've done it before when calling a computer room I dialed the IP of the server for the room. Maybe it won't be a joke anymore... Seems like a waste of IP addresses to me though until we completely switch to IPv6. Then it shouldn't matter if we waste them or not.
More on the topic of Slashdot and less on the topic of this post. Did you guys know that TSR (and now probably WOTC) owned a registered trademark on the word "dragon." A friend of mine was sued by TSR for using the word in his publishing business having nothing to do with D&D or any other TSR product. Apparently there domain for the word is the publishing and gaming businesses. The word has existed for centuries before TSR ever existed, but apparently they believe they own the word.
I also did see D&D Friday night. I played D&D many years ago. Lately I've been more into Shadowrun. I do agree that the movie was fairly inconsistent with the game rules. However, D&D rules have always just been DM advice. The world used in the movie is not the typical D&D world. So the DM over the movie could have modified some of the rules some like any good DM should to fit their world.
The two other people I went with thought it was one of the worst movies they had seen lately. I really didn't think it was that bad. I keep seeing images of the dragon CG in my head from the movie. I guess they could have just taken those clips and it would have probably made more people happy. I thought there were a few good jokes in the movie. The ending was just fairly random, ominous, and didn't really make for a good ending in my opinion.
That is generally a really bad idea. What a judge says doesn't in practice work like the rest of the law. One generally doesn't want to try to find loop holes in what he says. IANAL, but my understanding is if a judge feels someone is trying to get around something he told them to do intentionally he will bring them into court and slam them down hard.
If one wants to win a case pissing off the judge is not the way to go about it.
This still does not solve one of the problems with any system that requires the user to have physical access. I have seen devices that you plug in between your motherboard and keyboard that capture all input and can replay it. Someone could easily do the same with this device. I really doubt there is a good encryption algorithm that is enbedded in the mouse and encrypts the bioreading between the mouse and the software.
All someone needs to do is create a device that records the input from the mouse and can replay it. Then you can replay any fingerprint of anyone who has used the device since the capture hardware was installed.
Most good biometric devices check life signs (i.e. pulse and warmth). For example even if you cut off the hand of the person who had the correct thumb print it wouldn't work. This generally makes the people in high security installations feel a little more comfortable that someone isn't going to come along when they are off duty and cut off their hand. I would hope that this device includes some such features.
In the second Mindcraft benchmark I thought that Redhat was invited to configure the Redhat machine. Here is the press release from Mindcraft on it. I realize the press release is biased. Mindcraft felt that this would show that if the machine was configured poorly it wasn't their fault. Now if Redhat can't configure their own box I don't think anyone other than Redhat is to blame. According to this page even Linus had his hand in providing tweaks in the open benchmark.
I really think that the Mindcraft benchmark gave us Linux folks a big poke in the behind to fix some things. If anything, the more recent studies that come more in the favor of Linux show that the Linux community has taken the Mindcraft benchmark seriously. A lot of work has gone into making sure that Linux doesn't look that bad in a similar benchmark again.
Yes, but mp3s are not just for geeks anymore. If only geeks were using mp3s I doubt the RIAA would be throwing a temper tantrum.
The geek market is not large enough to justify the number of consumer mp3 players that are comming out. A lot of companies are trying to produce consumer products that leech onto the mp3 craziness and make some money. To me it seems like a lot of high management is asking their engineers to come up with an mp3 product and the engineers are trying to come up with something. It really does not seem like too many of these products are well thought out.
I am still waiting for a home CD changer/jukebox that has either a network jack or a phone line to obtain access to the CDDB. Currently all the CD jukeboxes I have seen require that you enter in all the names of the CDs and tracks. This just does not make sense for a 500 CD changer. Provide a phone number for the device to call and download the info for all the CDs even if it is on the other side of the country I would rather pay 2 bucks for the phone call while it is downloading the info then have to type in all the information. Even better have a serial port and software that allows one to download the CDDB info and modify the info on ones computer.
With loads of companies switching to slogans with the word "inovate" I really would like to see more inovation from them.
For most software I prefer paperless manuals. It is quite useful to be able to search. The exception is for compilers. I want both online and a paper referene manual. The online is especially useful if their are code snippets that can be cut and pasted. A good paper reference manual with lots of examples can not be replaced.
For hardware, anything other than a paper manual is annoying. When I have my computer open, I do not want to have to turn my computer back on to look something up. Well, usually I use one of my other machines, but sometimes all of my machines are in use. I find if hardware comes with only a paperless manual I always print it out. I find it annoying when I have to do something that the manufacturer should have provided.
I think I will never buy an AOpen motherboard for one reason that they do not come with a printed manual.
Cisco may be a monopoly by market share. But they've done so pissing a lot less people off than Microsoft.
Cisco is open with how their product works. Cisco products generally works with their competitions products and when it doesn't it's because their competitor's products are broken. Quite a few companies I've worked at have tried to replace Ciscos with competitors products and most have failed. Cisco has a nice product line overall. Carefull, ocassionally they buy a competitor and sell a product under there name that does not hold up to my opinion of Cisco quality.
The number one reason I've seen competitors products fail is that they don't do buffering nearly as well as Ciscos. Ciscos have nice buffers.
Though, if you've seen the code for Cisco IOS you begin to think it's a miracle that it works at all! Although, I could say that about the code I've seen for many high quality products (let's push all the registers onto the stack. Again, and oh heh, why not one more time in a different order. Function call. Let's pull off the stack, how many times, in what order? - That wasn't from Ciscos.)
Cisco is a big company but it is rare to find people pissed off at them. Overall the people I've known who work there are also quite happy with the company. I guess they have to be, otherwise more people would be successful at stealing Cisco employees which are in high demand. Cisco overall does a good job of training its employees.
Slashdot Mirror
For those Charter customers who want to find out what your service will be like when you have a problem, here is my account of my 7 day outage. The final fix took 5 minutes once it was in the proper hands. 7 days to perform a 5 minute fix, and it was not for lack of letting them know about my problem :)
:00am and 10:00am as Eileen had scheduled the trouble ticket. I actually stayed home until 1:30pm and came back at 2:45. Charter came by at 2:39pm, but the
I called Charter (888-590-4694) on 11/29/2001 to find out how the transition was going. They gave me another phone number for the transition (888-843-0785) and I talked to Doug at that number the next day. Doug was completely unwilling to provide me with any information and told me he was only taking down names and numbers. I left my name and number and he told me someone would call me back with in 3 days. It is now 12/23 and I have not heard anything back from that phone call.
On 12/6 my service went down at 4:21pm. I was unable to ping my gateway (24.11.143.139) or DHCP server (24.0.0.70). Renewing DHCP got no response. At 4:29pm the modem reset itself and started getting an invalid and incomplete DHCP response (IP Address: 192.168.100.11, DHCP Server: 192.168.100.1, no DNS, no gateway).
I called 888-590-4694 and they said that I needed to call a technical support number in California and gave me the 888-852-2235 phone number. I talked to Shari at that number and she said that she was in Southern California and had no access to the information in Northern California. She told me I needed to call the local office and gave me the 831-724-1038 number (I live in Capitola, CA).
I called that number and talked to Stewuart. Stewuard gave me the http://chartersupport.com/ URL (not that I could access it at the time) and walked me through a few things on my computer to doulbe check things. Then told me that my modem was missing from the database and needed to be reprovisioned. I needed to go into my local office:
Charter Office
475 Airport Blvd.
Watsonville, CA 95076
He could not give me a phone number for that office.
I called the 866-837-3620 number and requested information for the Watsonville area.
The status number stated that they would be providing service to my area in the next 90 days.
I called 831-724-1038 and talked to Carrie. She said there was no phone number for the local office. She gave me a closer local office.
706 Capitola Ave. Suite G
Capitola, CA 95010
M-Th 8:30-5:30
F,S 9:30-5:30
Carrie said that I needed to bring my modem into the Capitola office, and either get a new one
or get it reprovisioned. The local office was closed for the day, so I had to go the next day.
I went to the local office in Capitola on 12/7. I am not sure I can classify it as an office, only one person, Eileen, works there. She was rude to the customer in front of me and from talking to him he said they were double billing him. Eileen told him it wasn't her job to help him. When I talked to Eileen about my problem she told me that she had no idea why anyone would refer me to her. She said that she did not know anything about cable modems and did not have any to replace mine with. Eileen scheduled a trouble call for them to come out on Monday, 12/10/2001 between 8:00am and 10:00am. She said that 80% of the customers in the database were moved over and about 20% were lost. I was one of the customers lost.
When I got home I called 1-866-413-9096 and talked to Bradley, after waiting on hold for approximately 50 minutes (It was entirely Christmas music. I think that whoever decides to choose Christmas music for people waiting on hold for an hour should be forced to listen to the music they hate the most for an hour). Bradley told me that the URL to set-up e-mail addresses was http://update.charter.net/, and that the cost for the service was the same. Customers can check their mail at http://mail.charter.net/. He gave me the pop server of pop.charter.net and the smtp server of smtp.charter.net. Bradley gave me the new username and password that I should have received in the mail. As of 12/23 I still have not received anything from Charter in the mail other than ads for their service sent out in bulk --- including a bill, and I have notified them of this. Bradley told me that they were having a DHCP issue in my area and that it would be fixed by the next morning. He opened Ticket #: st0685004 and told me that he would call me the next morning to make sure that I was back up. As of 12/23 I have not heard back from Bradley.
On 12/8 I still had not heard from Bradley by the afternoon and I was still down. I called 866-413-9096 and they hung up on me after being on hold for 56 minutes (at least I finished reading the book I was reading). I had to do things that day and decided it was not a good day to call Charter.
On 12/9 I was still down. I called 866-413-9096 and when I tried option 2 for technical support I got a busy signal and it hung up on me. I called back and did not choose any option, then got a busy signal and hung up on. I called again and chose 1 to set up e-mail/passwords/web. This got me through to Shari: she did not know anything technical. All, she could do is take down my contact information and have someone
call me. I am now quite familiar with that routine at Charter. She also gave me a 1-866-413-9097 number, stating that it was
the number for technical support in my area.
I called 1-866-413-9097. This number seemed more like customer support at first, but I got a technical support person, Chad. I gave Chad the ticket number, st0685004, and he reviewed it. He said that it was currently being worked on by Tier-3. When I asked when it was last updated, he paused and told me 12/7. I asked him if Tier-3 worked on weekends, and put me on hold to go ask. He told me that they do. He walked me through some tests on my machine and had me connect to the diagnostic Web server on my modem (the IP was the IP of the DHCP server responding):
http://192.168.100.1/
and
http://192.168.100.1/config.html
Signal to Noise: should be >25
Upstream: 22 to 56
Downstream: -15 to +15On 12/10 no one showed between
guy was still in the parking lot. He wouldn't give me contact information for the trouble call
group. He said that since my modem lights were on, he could not do anything. He said that people did not show up for work today, and it was him and one other guy covering the trouble calls. He could not get the guy who handles the software side to come out until tomorrow. He said he would have the guy call me tonight and schedule to come out tomorrow.
He did leave a message at 2:40pm and said to call them if I have further problems, but he
did not leave a phone number to call him back at. I did not have any phone number the trouble
call group. I now have the caller id from the number he called me from: (408) 422-9168.
I called 1-866-413-9097 and talked with Doug. Doug had me go to the Web page for my modem again. Under the Signal Page, Downstream: Network Access Control Object: OFF. According to Doug if this is OFF the modem is not authorized. Doug resubmitted the ticket and thought that my modem was not authorized. He said to give them a call
if I have not heard from them in a day or so.
On 12/11 I still had not heard back from the tech's co-worker who was supposed to call me back the night before. It seems very few people at Charter call back when they say they will.
I called 408-422-9168 and talked with the tech. He said that he talked to his co-worker that morning and that his co-worker would be comming out that morning. As of 12/23 no other tech actually showed up. I must be on some list of people not to show up on.
I called 1-866-413-9097 and talked with James. I gave James the ticket number, st0685004, and he reviewed it. He put me on hold to test my modem.
James asked me if I have talked to 1-888-590-4694; I said that I started off with that group and they never called me back.
I had James transfer me to his supervisor, Howie. I talked with Howie and he is based at the Louisville Call Center. Howie was one of the better people I worked with at Charter. He actually called me back every day to update me on how he was working on my ticket and the phone number and names of those people he had talked to if I wanted to check up on it myself. He ended up not being the one to resolve the issue, but I am confident that he would have eventually and was on top of it.
On 12/12, I called 831-724-1038 and talked with Heidi. Heidi is based in Vancouver, WA and said that the call center for my area is based in Vancouver, WA. I told her a lot about my problem. I mentioned I had a ticket open with the Louisville Call Center. She had information about the billing call I made and about the trouble call Eileen made for the 10th. She did not seem interested in looking the ticket number up. After talking to her about my problems, she started working with her supervisor, James. She entered another trouble ticket for 12/17, but we both agreed that that was too long to be down and that was unacceptable with me. I asked her to transfer me to her supervisor, James.
She ended up transferring me to the escalation team and I talked with Carol. Carol said that she was going to try and get ahold of someone at the Santa Cruz office. This is the first I had
heard of the Santa Cruz office. She ended up talking with Dave, from the Gilroy office. Carol said "he runs the Internet."
I know that is not true, so I will assume she meant for that office. Carol said that Dave is going to call me sometime today. I told her that I did not really want to stay home all day waiting for a phone call if no one was going to be out that day. I asked to speak to her supervisor, but she quickly responded that her suprvisor was not available. I asked who her supervisor was and when her supervisor would be in. Her supervisor's name is Charlotte and comes in at 10:00am, she responded.
I called back (866-731-5420) at 10:06 and spoke with Tamra. Tamra looked over my ticket and put me on hold for Charlotte. She came back and said that Charlotte does not come in until noon. Tamra told me that she was going to put me on hold and get me to one of the supervisors. She transferred me to another number that put me on hold.
Apparently Tamra transferred me to the escalation team (not a supervisor). I spoke with Jeremy. Jeremy gave Dave a call to see if he could have Dave call me back immediately. Jeremy came back and said that Dave would call me back sometime that day. I can not seem to get across to Charter that I do not want to sit around all day waiting for a phone call. If where I wanted to go got cell phone reception I would give them my cell phone.
At 11:25am, Dave called back to make sure I was up. Yeah! Dave fixed my problem. He had reentered my modem into the database. It worked, my ordeal with Charter was over.
If only Charter could have given me a phone number for someone who actually could fix my problem.
Right click, and select "View Image."
It is not very hard with Netscape/Mozilla.
I am in a different boat than you. I received an e-mail from them on the 16th that said I would be transitioned over to their Pipeline service. However, they did not specify any timeline. They said that they wanted to do everything they could for their customers to maintain network connections. If they really meant that, they would pay @Home and negotiate a new contract.
I gave Charter High-Speed tech support (888-590-4694) a call and they referred me to another number (888-843-0785) dealing with this issue, but it was not currently with in the business hours of the new number when I called. When I called the second number the next day, the guy I talked to (Doug) was less than helpful. He said that all they are doing is taking down names and contact information and would get back to me in the next three days. It's been 2 days and I am waiting to hear back from them.
I do not believe that I have received very good support from Charter. I really would like to know how they wish to keep me happy and from changing ISPs.
I looked over the AUP for the Pipeline service and was not too impressed. @Home's AUP is a ton better. The Pipeline AUP basically says that they will terminate your account if you post or send any messages that are profane or obscene. I guess if I send a sexual joke to a friend thats grounds for termination of my account. One is not allowed to use any identity other than their own, or offer any information about yourself that is not true. I guess using dszd0g instead of my real name on Slashdot is grounds for termination of my account. Older women who jokingly claim to be 21 would also be grounds for termination. I think Charter really needs to revise their AUP.
Actually, last time I tried that under Irix.
We were getting rid of a bunch of Irix systems and wanted to have a little fun in the process.
I do not recall the exact error message, but basically it filled a buffer building the list of files and seg faulted. It did not delete a single file.
I have not tried it under a better version of UN*X than Irix. It would probably work under Linux.
BTW, what do you guys think of my new signature?
I received the following e-mail from Charter earlier this month. I am sure Charter would be quite happy for @Home not to kill its connection. However, from what I have read Charter is not paying @Home. Its seems to have to do with the stockholders trying to renegotiate contracts and not being happy with AT&Ts offer. Those cable providers that are paying their bills are not being cut off. @Home apparently is being forced to cut off those cable companies that are not paying them. Makes sense to me.
Charter, if you want to make us customers happy, pay @Home and keep our connection up. I plan on giving Charter a call tomorrow and inquiring their opinion is of what is going on. I doubt I will get a good answer, but I personally like @Home. Pipeline seems to be aligned with Earthlink and AOL. @Home sounds better. @Home has been entirely reliable for me. Much better than the Pacbell DSL I had before, which I had cron jobs running keeping track of network connectivity with mrtg so I could get credit for the days worth of outages a month.
Dear Charter@Home® Customer:
@Home, the network provider through which Charter Communications® delivers your high-speed Internet access to you and other Charter customers, has filed for bankruptcy. @Home recently asked the Bankruptcy Court for permission to terminate Charter's contracts effective November 30, 2001. If the Court grants @Home's request, your Charter@Home service would no longer be available.
We are actively working with @Home to prevent the termination of your account on November 30. However, if @Home continues to insist upon terminating its contract with Charter, we are committed to minimizing the inconvenience that its action would cause you and other Charter customers.
To that end, we are diligently working so that we may be able to offer Charter Pipeline high-speed Internet access service to you in the event @Home disconnects its service. Charter is aggressively pursuing every reasonable option possible to guarantee the delivery of high quality Internet access service to you. However, if @Home's service is discontinued on November 30, 2001, there is likely to be a gap in time from the date of the @Home shutdown until the date Charter will be able to provide Charter Pipeline in your area. Please let me assure you that we are working around the clock to do everything in our power to minimize any service interruption. Once we are ready to deliver Charter Pipeline to you, we expect to have a web site or a CD ROM available through which you may download the software necessary to begin service.
We want to make it clear that we are not encouraging you to end your @Home relationship. As long as @Home continues to provide uninterrupted services to you, we believe you are being well served. However, we want to do whatever we can to keep you on-line.
As we learn more about @Home's plans, we will let you know. Please watch your mail and check your email for timely updates on the status of your Charter @Home account. Please know that Charter Communications is committed to doing whatever we can to serve your high speed data needs now and in the future.
Thank you your patience and thank you for being a Charter customer.
Truly Yours,
Marwan Fawaz
Vice President, Operations
Northwest Region
CHARTER COMMUNICATIONS, INC.
Their Web site stated that they would be at Comdex. Has anyone here actually tried the product?
I like the CNN summary:
"260 were on airliner, six to nine missing on ground; 265 bodies recovered"
I find it humorous that some people actually believe our foreign policy is based on helping others.
I am not saying that the US does not help other countries. We quite often come to the support of our allies and troubled nations.
However, one can not ignore the horrors we commit. The 150,000 deaths we are responsible for in Guatemala. Supporting De Beers and the diamond cartel and the slavery and thousands of deaths involved there. The whole cold war and how the USSR and the US used entire other nations as pawns in the war against each other. Our intelligence leaking information to US companies and helping to eliminate foreign competition.
There are a number of books on these subjects. A couple good reads are "The Good Citizen" and "Corporate Media and the Threat to Democracy."
A lot of Americans seem to believe that others get pissed off at us just because we are doing well. What people are pissed off at us for are the horrid things we do that aren't covered by American media.
I have no idea why I said Algoria. You are correct in that it is Angola. Yes, Castro helped out Angola along with the USSR. The Soviet Union provided the Marxist Popular Liberation Movement of Angola (MPLA) with finances and Cuba supplied troops.
The USSR and Cuba were very close during the cold war. Castro in general is a hero to the people of Cuba but the US makes him out as an abuser of the people because he is not on good terms with the US.
I really do not think most people learn this stuff in school. It should be taught more.
I really do not know why I am replying because it was obvious attempt at a flame instead of a polite correction.
I do not know about Microsoft killing people. However, if you look at corporations in general. There are much worse companies out there. De Beers, who is the olipology of the "blood" or "conflict" diamond industry has a death toll of almost half a million people through their actions in Sierra Leone, Algoria, and Zaire/Democratic Republic of Congo. De Beers is 1000 times worse of a company than Microsoft. I would buy 100 Microsoft products before I ever bought a diamond. Most people don't even know who De Beers is though let alone how the diamond industry works.
Shell has a death toll of thousands (maybe its up to tens of thousands by now) from the mercenaries they use in Nigeria.
One is fooling themselves if they think the US government is going to stop these companies. The US government helps them! The CIA was involved with De Beers in DRC, and Algoria. The Nigerian army helped Shell do the massacring.
[Going a little off topic here]
The entire US foreign policy is about protecting our economic interests. The Capitalism vs. Communism thing was just a guise. Example: In Guatemala the US destroyed a functioning democratic government because they were not working with the US's economic interests and installed a dictator who uses death squads to enforce his rule. The death toll in Guatemala is over 175,000.
The Gulf war coverage here was totally BS. Saddam had helped the US with the Iran conflict and was one of the CIA contacts in the middle east. Bush Sr. was on good terms with Saddam from back in his CIA days and talked with him regularly. Saddam had contacted Bush about a oil plant he wanted in Kuwait. Bush sent a message to Saddam to go ahead and take it. For one reason or another Saddam chose to interpret the message as go ahead and take Kuwait. That was bad for US economic interests. There's the gulf war for you.
I trust slashdot a little more to be less Corporate biased, however, it is still owned by VA Linux. What we really need is public media (television/radio) where it is illegal for money to come from corporations or large individual donations. Where they are required to show some news that they have come up with themselves. Where do we pay for this? A 1% tax on advertising. A 1% tax on advertising would produce over a billion dollar budget for public media. Then maybe we would actually get some decent television and a news media that does not rewrite history.
I can provide a long list of articles and books on these subjects for anyone interested.
That benchmark looks too good to me. I'm not sure I buy it. The Athlon 1GHz gets 2792 for its ALU. The dual T-Bird 1.53GHz processors get 8576. 2792 * 1.53 * 2 = 8543.52. Now the 1GHz I believe is an original Athlon and not a T-Bird. Also the 1.53 GHz processors are running at a 133 Mhz DDR FSB while the 1GHz is running at 100 Mhz DDR FSB. Between the increase in FSB and Athlon vs. T-Bird I would think that might by it an extra 10% performance at equivalent clock speeds. 2792 * 1.1 * 1.53 * 2 = 9397.872. 9397.872 * .75 = 7048.404.
However, there is always overhead when running multiprocessor systems even with good multiprocessor archetectures like the EV6. Generally I expect to get 1.5 the performance with two processors compared to one. Anything much above the 7048 above doesn't sound right to me.
Anyone have any explanations?
I don't like the fact that you will only have access to a select list of websites. It probably will come down to "you can visit our sponsor's websites..." I would assume that the high bandwidth of the web would be expensive in this case so they might restrict access to those sites giving them money. I guess it just makes web browsing pointless, but e-mail would still be useful.
This seems to be the post I agree with the most. I still disagree about the second of the 2 *'s. I agree that migrating your personal belongings home might not be a bad idea. However, generally any documents or programs done at a company are the property of the company and I have witnessed lawsuits when an ex-boss sees a program an employee wrote under him up on that employee's new webpage.
Someone else mentioned the "look at all these other offers I am getting" technique. From what I have seen this technique generally does not work. I have known people to get fired or demoted for using it.
I got the e-mail from egghead. It really surprised me since I had never purchased from them. I had an account with onsale, but hadn't trusted their security and gave their site a bogus credit card number and sent them an e-mail about their issues.
:) From the person I talked to on the phone their credit card numbers are "double encrypted." I thought it slightly rude to ask exactly what it meant. It could be double DES for all I know :>
From talking to egghead it appears my bogus credit card number was stolen
I love my Ricochet on my laptop. It is affordable , convenient, and reliable. I currently am cellphone less since I can't find a cell phone provider with reception in my new apt (Santa Cruz, CA). I've tried Verizon, Sprint, Pacbell, SC Cellular One, Cellular One. It's not worth it if people can't always get ahold of me on my cellphone. However, my richochet gets reception in my apt and everywhere else in this area. I haven't had my Ricochet for too long but I couldn't be happier with it. It has been more reliable than most ISPs I've used.
You know you are a geek when:
You pick up the phone and dial an IP address...
I always thought that one was supposed to be a joke even though I've done it before when calling a computer room I dialed the IP of the server for the room. Maybe it won't be a joke anymore... Seems like a waste of IP addresses to me though until we completely switch to IPv6. Then it shouldn't matter if we waste them or not.
More on the topic of Slashdot and less on the topic of this post. Did you guys know that TSR (and now probably WOTC) owned a registered trademark on the word "dragon." A friend of mine was sued by TSR for using the word in his publishing business having nothing to do with D&D or any other TSR product. Apparently there domain for the word is the publishing and gaming businesses. The word has existed for centuries before TSR ever existed, but apparently they believe they own the word.
I also did see D&D Friday night. I played D&D many years ago. Lately I've been more into Shadowrun. I do agree that the movie was fairly inconsistent with the game rules. However, D&D rules have always just been DM advice. The world used in the movie is not the typical D&D world. So the DM over the movie could have modified some of the rules some like any good DM should to fit their world.
The two other people I went with thought it was one of the worst movies they had seen lately. I really didn't think it was that bad. I keep seeing images of the dragon CG in my head from the movie. I guess they could have just taken those clips and it would have probably made more people happy. I thought there were a few good jokes in the movie. The ending was just fairly random, ominous, and didn't really make for a good ending in my opinion.
That is generally a really bad idea. What a judge says doesn't in practice work like the rest of the law. One generally doesn't want to try to find loop holes in what he says. IANAL, but my understanding is if a judge feels someone is trying to get around something he told them to do intentionally he will bring them into court and slam them down hard.
If one wants to win a case pissing off the judge is not the way to go about it.
This still does not solve one of the problems with any system that requires the user to have physical access. I have seen devices that you plug in between your motherboard and keyboard that capture all input and can replay it. Someone could easily do the same with this device. I really doubt there is a good encryption algorithm that is enbedded in the mouse and encrypts the bioreading between the mouse and the software.
All someone needs to do is create a device that records the input from the mouse and can replay it. Then you can replay any fingerprint of anyone who has used the device since the capture hardware was installed.
Most good biometric devices check life signs (i.e. pulse and warmth). For example even if you cut off the hand of the person who had the correct thumb print it wouldn't work. This generally makes the people in high security installations feel a little more comfortable that someone isn't going to come along when they are off duty and cut off their hand. I would hope that this device includes some such features.
In the second Mindcraft benchmark I thought that Redhat was invited to configure the Redhat machine. Here is the press release from Mindcraft on it. I realize the press release is biased. Mindcraft felt that this would show that if the machine was configured poorly it wasn't their fault. Now if Redhat can't configure their own box I don't think anyone other than Redhat is to blame. According to this page even Linus had his hand in providing tweaks in the open benchmark.
I really think that the Mindcraft benchmark gave us Linux folks a big poke in the behind to fix some things. If anything, the more recent studies that come more in the favor of Linux show that the Linux community has taken the Mindcraft benchmark seriously. A lot of work has gone into making sure that Linux doesn't look that bad in a similar benchmark again.
Yes, but mp3s are not just for geeks anymore. If only geeks were using mp3s I doubt the RIAA would be throwing a temper tantrum.
The geek market is not large enough to justify the number of consumer mp3 players that are comming out. A lot of companies are trying to produce consumer products that leech onto the mp3 craziness and make some money. To me it seems like a lot of high management is asking their engineers to come up with an mp3 product and the engineers are trying to come up with something. It really does not seem like too many of these products are well thought out.
I am still waiting for a home CD changer/jukebox that has either a network jack or a phone line to obtain access to the CDDB. Currently all the CD jukeboxes I have seen require that you enter in all the names of the CDs and tracks. This just does not make sense for a 500 CD changer. Provide a phone number for the device to call and download the info for all the CDs even if it is on the other side of the country I would rather pay 2 bucks for the phone call while it is downloading the info then have to type in all the information. Even better have a serial port and software that allows one to download the CDDB info and modify the info on ones computer.
With loads of companies switching to slogans with the word "inovate" I really would like to see more inovation from them.
Speaking of Shadowrun, anyone thinking of "ice"?
This is probably the first step towards black ice.
For most software I prefer paperless manuals. It is quite useful to be able to search. The exception is for compilers. I want both online and a paper referene manual. The online is especially useful if their are code snippets that can be cut and pasted. A good paper reference manual with lots of examples can not be replaced.
For hardware, anything other than a paper manual is annoying. When I have my computer open, I do not want to have to turn my computer back on to look something up. Well, usually I use one of my other machines, but sometimes all of my machines are in use. I find if hardware comes with only a paperless manual I always print it out. I find it annoying when I have to do something that the manufacturer should have provided.
I think I will never buy an AOpen motherboard for one reason that they do not come with a printed manual.
Cisco may be a monopoly by market share. But they've done so pissing a lot less people off than Microsoft.
Cisco is open with how their product works. Cisco products generally works with their competitions products and when it doesn't it's because their competitor's products are broken. Quite a few companies I've worked at have tried to replace Ciscos with competitors products and most have failed. Cisco has a nice product line overall. Carefull, ocassionally they buy a competitor and sell a product under there name that does not hold up to my opinion of Cisco quality.
The number one reason I've seen competitors products fail is that they don't do buffering nearly as well as Ciscos. Ciscos have nice buffers.
Though, if you've seen the code for Cisco IOS you begin to think it's a miracle that it works at all! Although, I could say that about the code I've seen for many high quality products (let's push all the registers onto the stack. Again, and oh heh, why not one more time in a different order. Function call. Let's pull off the stack, how many times, in what order? - That wasn't from Ciscos.)
Cisco is a big company but it is rare to find people pissed off at them. Overall the people I've known who work there are also quite happy with the company. I guess they have to be, otherwise more people would be successful at stealing Cisco employees which are in high demand.
Cisco overall does a good job of training its employees.