Weird shit has been happening with the electronics around here. A few mornings ago, long before the sun would have come up here daylight savings or no, the doorbell went off and off and off. Discussing it with my mom this morning (I trotted out my logic, as I had heard it start in bathroom, looked out window, nobody there, and ran down, stopped it by pushing the button, too, I assume, unfreeze it) she claimed it had also happened an hour earlier and she had heard banging too. Her theory is drunken college students, which can explain anything here. The hour earlier and banging were details she had forgotten. Her hearing makes everything sound different. I think it was wiring, in part because a student would have knocked and in part because the door was unlocked, another a student would have tried. Oh, one expects the students to be drunk and mistake the house, not rob you.
Yesterday weird shit started happening with my network. On chrome I was getting the ERR_CONNECTION_RESET message. I’d never seen it before. For those who have already opened browser windows to check, I not only did all those things; from the uncomplicated disable anti-virus and firewall, to the more complicated set of CMD prompt fixes up to and including the wlan report. I also went into my router settings, unplugged and restarted, all that shit. By the time I was ready to break glass or chew on tinfoil I took the most drastic measure. I called Comcast.
Now I know y’all have calling Comcast horror stories, me too, but not with tech support, just with the TV end of the business. Last time I talked to them was in Oregon and the word fuck was used often and with zeal. Um, outgoing, I called them fuckity fuck fucks, incoming they called me something worse; sir. Oh, heh. So, I call, and first get a machine, I push buttons and when I think I’m done the machine tries selling me WWE pay-per-view, twice. So I start off my conversation with real person with an implied fuck RE the machine. He apologizes. I said I might have the wrong guy I need tech support. He verifies the account, address and SS. I explain how it’s all in my deceased fathers name and how two and a half years ago, still in shock, I asked them to change it and they insisted I come down with death certificate. He asked me my name. I said Haredawg, shit, FB made me use my real name so fuck it, Harry, assuming he’d know I had the same last name as my father. He called me Sir Harry. I did my best to sound like an heir to the crown.
Anyhow this son of a bitch gives me a promo for faster internet chopping 31 bucks off bill and has the gall to say if in twelve months I fail to re-promo the cost goes back to what I’m paying. I remember yelling at vendors about how I get punished for be a loyal customer but new criminals get a promo and how their competition would give me a promo. It’s a threat I was willing to carry through on but nine times out of ten someone would get a manager and give me the promo. This son of a bitch gave me a promo I didn’t even know about and I didn’t even have to tell him I’d been thinking about Dish network.
So I get my discount and get sent to tech support. They are very good and very scary, they can ping and reset your modem and do all sorts of shit remotely, firewall or encryption be damned. She couldn’t figure it out anyhow, she had me clear chrome cache, which, um, was too simple for me to remember. She had me try Edge, which worked on some sites but not others and is besides the point as my phone is an android and needs network on chrome and can’t get any sites. It brought me some satisfaction that she was as confused as I. Then she said something I kind of suspected from when the cable was installed, but hadn’t run into issues, she said, basically that the signal was degraded and might be in the cable.
The cliché surly with full butt crack panorama when he bent over seriously jerry rigged the cable muttered fuckity fuck under his breath. So I agreed to have a tech come out. He’ll be here this afternoon during a two hour window. I have no idea whether it will cost me anything. I also want to give him fair warning for his own safety and as a passive complaint about previous guy. Previous guy tossed cable over roof of backdoor porch (it’s falling down, well, no, but the guy who is supposed to fix it has been a ghost, he propped it up with steel beams) drilled a hole in the attic and ran the naked cable behind the couch. Um, I spent two hours clearing that path again in case cable needs to be replaced. Part of that is on me, I want my desktop hardwired into wireless and modem hard wired into wireless. The desktop is in the attic.
I almost ran to best buy this morning. I’m typing now because best buy will open in two minutes. I was going to, and might still, replace router and modem. Reasons not to; 1) The equipment works on the many sites I can get too 2) although it’s four years old there are no moving parts and it’s still capable of handling the speed and 802.11 modes my equipment works on. 3) I don’t want changes made until the problem is worked out. But, I also don’t want to rent equipment from Comcast, it’s a bitch to return. Granted, in the short term its cheaper to do.
So it’s weird, like a ringing bell I can’t figure out for sure what the deal is. Unlike a ringing bell I know computers. If I don’t post again for a while it’s either because I can’t get on or because I don’t feel like it.
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