2008 September - Lord Gonchar

Please allow me to introduce myself, I'm a man of wealth and taste.

TV Service Woes Remedied

I believe I left off on Friday evening with the installer promising to return.

Well. He never made it. We had the football game early on Saturday, so I called him when we got home. He was completely on the other side of town and said he’d try to make it again. I explained my patience was running thin and he apologized, but in a way that kind of said, “I’m doing what I can…deal”

So by Saturday evening I’d finally had enough. We called AT&T’s 800 support number. They were extremely polite and as helpful as they could possibly be. It did turn out that the system wasn’t showing us as having those additional boxes. I got pushed to Tier 2 support and spoke with Jesus. (not literally Christ himself, but a hispanic fellow)

Again, great service and as helpful as can be. He confirmed the problem in the system and fixed it, but the boxes still didn’t work. The soonest they could get a tech out was Monday the 29th between 2pm and 4pm.

In total we were on the phone about 3 hours with AT&T support and they did everything they could. I was impressed, but still without TV.

So we lived the rest of Saturday and Sunday without TV except for the big one.

Cut to Monday at 2pm on the nose and the doorbell rings. I open it to find the original installer. I asked if they’d sent him or he came on his own and he was like, “I told you I’d get out here as soon as I could.” I explained that another tech was on his way.

The original dude went through all the processes again. Doubled checked connections. Ran tests. Tried things three times. Finally the other tech showed up and they’re both running in and out of the house all around looking at cables and wires, hooking up different gadgets, taking readings.

Finally after an hour of this, they walk in an inform me that the only thing it can be is a bad RG (residential gateway). For the uninformed the RG is the centerpiece of the whole system. The line in feeds to it and from there everything (TV, internet, phone) feeds off of it. Kind of a router for your home. This didn’t make much sense to me as the big TV and the internet have worked fins since day 1, but they swapped it out.

As soon as it booted and the bug TV was up again, we went upstairs and booted the other TV’s. A few minutes later and…

…everything was working.

The original dude just looked at me with a look that clearly said, “Motherfucker!” without saying a word. All of this time and hassle and all it was was a bad RG. It was as simple as swapping out one piece and connecting 3 cables and everything worked.

So the story has a happy ending.

After a week of kinda-service I have to say I can’t think of a thing that really bothers me about the service. My TV looks awesome, the channel selection is much better than Time Warner, my internet is just as fast down and three times faster up (nice for uploading pics to coasterimage) and the kids now have converter boxes and get the whole range of channels instead of the basics like we did with TW. On top of all of this, the monthly bill will be less than it used to be.

Now I can finish watching the Steelers suck it in crisp HD.

2-2-1

2-2-1

This week we traveled almost an hour and a half to play an away game. It was literally one of the most exciting football games I’ve ever watched – on any level. It made no difference that these are 6, 7 and 8 year old kids. It was a nail-biter and the energy around the field was high and intense.

After a slow start we systematically came back to tie it and eventually take the lead (30-24) with 4 minutes left to play. We weren’t able to hold them and the game tied at 30-30 and we had 1:17 to score and couldn’t quite pull it off.

A tie.

Somehow it felt right though. Both teams played so hard and the up-and-down, back-and-forth nature of the game with two very evenly matched teams playing some pretty physical football (my son has the bruises to prove it) made it just seem right. For either team to lose that one would have been heartbreaking. You had to be there…it was electric…really. A good time.

September 28th, 2008 - fun - the kids

TV Service Woes

We’ve lived lots of places and dealt with lots of service providers with results running the gamut from awesome to acceptable to downright shit. When we moved to Dayton we just signed up with Time Warner and all was well – a little pricey, but fine.

Last Summer we got our HDTV and were less than impressed with Time Warner’s lineup. Not many HD offerings and some glaring omissions – like NBC in HD. Still we stuck with it mostly out of convenience and partially because of the standard promises of more to come. So over the past 15 months we see channels being dropped and replaced with ridiculous shit no one watches, still no more HD, not a lot to like, more price increases – but still we stick with them.

Then a week or two ago news break on how Time Warner and WDTN (our local NBC affiliate) can’t come to an agreement on a contract renewal and that on October 2nd we’d be potentially losing NBC too. Now I know this is unlikely (I’m not sure TW is dumb enough to let their customers go without NBC. But then again, they let us go without a basic network HD signal, so maybe they are that stupid…we’ll see.)

In the meantime I’ve been keeping my eye on AT&T U-verse. It looks like a solid service for a decent price using some fun technology and they were slowly getting it rolling in our area.

Cut to last week and things fell into place and we were placing our order with AT&T.

The installer dude showed up right on time this past Wednesday morning. He took a look at our place and the layout of things and was going to need access to the cable box on the side of the building – which was locked by Time Warner. So while he began, I got hold of TW and explained how they sucked and need to get here to open the box for the AT&T guy. After a long fight, they relented and said someone would be out, but they couldn’t guarantee when.

The AT&T dude got the big TV up and running and the internet as well, but couldn’t do any of the upstairs TVs because he was going to backfeed using the coax and needed into the box (locked by TW) to do it. So he hung around a bit and finally bailed for his afternoon appointment and I agreed to call him after TW has come and unlocked the box. He assured me that it’d be just 10 or 15 minutes to get the other TV’s working once we had access.

TW showed up late in the afternoon and I gave him a call and we agreed to finish Thursday morning. Cool.

Thursday morning he shows up, we get everything connected and…

…

…nothing.

He puts a call in to the level 2 support and does the whole thing on speakerphone so I heard it all. Basically the connections were all correct. There was no reason we should be getting service. After a while the support guy notices that no one put into the system that we should have 3 additional boxes. It should just be a matter of entering the info and letting it make it’s way though the system and then booting the set-top boxes. Cool again. The support guy says he’ll take all the necessary step to expidite it and it should be 2 or 3 hours. At that time he’d give the installer dude a ring, who in turn would be back to boot the boxes. After he hung up I informed him that I was more than capable of booting them (read: plugging them in) and the installer dude agreed to give me a call when he got his call…blah blah blah.

So a few hours pass. Nothing. Then a few more. Finally I cal the installer dude. He says he still hasn’t heard anyhting, but surely we’d be good to go. I booted the boxes. Nothing.

The installer dude said he’d get ahold of support and let me know. I never heard anything.

Late last night I said fuck it and tried again. The TV’s in the kids rooms booted, but the lock up after a few seconds and the TV in our room still won’t make a connection. Sigh.

So this morning I call the installer dude. He said he hadn’t heard anything back and was currently on an install. He asked what I had tried and I told him the deal. He seemed even more confused than before. He told me he’d stop by after his installs this evening if he finished early enough or tomorrow at the latest.

And that’s where things stand. I put my patience hat on and understand that shit happens, but it’s been 2 days since my ‘installation’ and I still only have 1 working TV and no real answers as to when or how the issues with the others will be resolved.

My patience hat ony has a few threads left…

The thing is, I really like the service. The picture is as good as or better than Time Warner’s in all cases and since it’s essentially a network, there’s lots of fun things you can do – like watch recorded shows from any TV with 1 DVR and customize weather, sports, stocks and traffic info to display on the TV and access the system from my desktop (or any PC) and set recordings or change things. Entry-level geek stuff that amuses me. I want the service. I like what I’ve seen so far. The channel offerings are superior to TW, the internet cnnection is faster and the price is about 25% less.

I’ll keep y’all updated.

September 26th, 2008 - bitching - geek - home - purchases - TV Tags: at&t u-verse, time warner

Deliberate Gentle Love Master

The Gentleman Deliberate Gentle Love Master

Your are:

The Gentleman

Deliberate Gentle Love Master

Steady & mature. You are The Gentleman.

For anyone looking for an even-keeled, considerate lover, you're their man. You're sophisticated. You know what you want both in a relationship and outside of it. You have a substantial romantic side, and you're experienced enough sexually to handle yourself in that arena, too. Your future relationships will be long-lasting; you're classic "marrying material," a prize in the eyes of many.

It's possible that behind it all, you're a bit of a male slut. Your best friends know that in relationships you're fundamentally sex-driven. You're a safe, reliable guy, who does get laid. In a lot of ways, you're like a well-worn, comfortable pair of socks. Did you ever jack off into one of those? All the time.

Your ideal mate is NOT a nut-job. She is giving and loving, like you, but also experienced.

Link: The Online Dating Persona Test

——————————————————————————

Too true – especially the part about the sock…eerie!

September 24th, 2008 - random

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