Resuming "Normalcy" in Everyday Rants...

Got my van back just after 4pm yesterday. It’s so nice to have my normal vehicle back, even if the driver’s seat does lean me toward the door. The transmission has been completely replaced and drives much better, the brakes were completely replaced so it stops much better, the power mirrors still

Bollocks. The fiberoptic company is on the way to fix my internet. I’ll come back to this later.

Resumed 4-1/2 hours later.

Back to the van. The power mirrors still don’t work, and there’s still a god awful howl from the wheels above 35MPH, but that’s the tires, not the bearings, so I’ll deal with it for now. Oh, and the windshield has a crack in it from the dump truck that didn’t flip the switch to automatically tarp its load letting a rock fly a week before the transmission ate it. But some things can wait. Now I just have to restock all my tools out of my kitchen and back into my van.

The rest of the week was uneventful. Thankfully. The gate job I’d been working on needs yet another part, much to my annoyance. Meh. But work is going. At least I’ve not had to go south of Seattle for a bit. Although, I know one of my commercial customers is getting close to quarterly maintenance, and that’s near-ish to the Seattle port.

So, I’m kinda pissed off at my ISP. A few weeks ago, I called in because I’ve not been able to log into my home automation or security cameras when I’m not on my own WiFi. We ended up figuring out that my old modem from the company the current company bought out has ate it, as in they couldn’t even see the modem from their end, which has changed as I used to try and log in and get dumped at the modem’s login page, and now I can’t even get that. I can’t access it at all from my network, or by plugging into it. So I can’t troubleshoot or adjust configuration to try and fix this.

So what was decided was to replace the gizmo in my crawlspace that converts the fiber signal into an electrical signal over a coax cable into the modem with a newer model that supported having a regular network cable run from it to my router, and run the new ethernet cable up to where my router is. They set up the appointment for between 1pm and 5pm last week, and on my way I went. However, the first CSR didn’t put in the right code or something into their system, the appointment was never officially made, and no one showed. So I called Monday last, talked with another CSR who explained it, confirmed everything again, and set the appointment for today.

Today rolls around, I’d not been awake long and didn’t remember about the appointment, till the phone rang. The field tech was just up the street, so I threw some clothes on. When he gets here, I explained everything again (third time) including what had been decided by Customer Service and Tech Support, and he’s already getting an attitude with me. Now mind you, I’ve told every representative I’ve spoken with that my terminal is in the crawlspace under the house, that I’ve cleared the cobwebs, but it’s still dirty. I’m assured that’s not a problem. I lead this guy around the back of the house, and he tells me that because of the pandemic, they’re not going into anyone’s crawspaces or attics. Now, my crawlspace isn’t horrible. Where my terminal is, it’s about 3.5-4 feet tall, and there’s a light in there. I tired to be nice, and explained no one had told me about this. He then starts telling me he can’t replace the terminal because it won’t solve the issue, and tries to sell me on stepping up to some promo package, and continues to argue more aggressively with me. I finally said “That’s enough. Have a nice day.” and closed the crawlspace door.

He left, and I went back in and called the ISP to sort this all out. Come to find out, the tech reported that he couldn’t reach me by phone, and that I wasn’t home, but had left the ticket open as though he was going to come back. The CSR was called Asha (I hope I spelled that right), and she was absolutely awesome. She went back and forth with dispatch trying to figure everything out and get it all sorted. She said there was a chance that someone would be back by today. She also arranged to credit me a month of service for the headache of it all.

No tech came back by, but that’s fine. I’ll call in next week and deal with it. But, I’m not gonna ruin my weekend over this crap.

Time to go stretch out. The cat’s being annoying for attention. Have a good one.

Last updated February 06, 2021