Getting Back to Normal?

When you’re self-employed and go on vacation for a month there’s always a ton of stuff to catch up on when you get home. That’s what I’ve been up to for the last week. Unfortunately mother nature threw me some curve balls mid-week that we a real pain in the butt.

This past Tuesday we had a couple of very fast moving thunderstorms roll through our area. Our power was out for 26 hours. Power outages usually aren’t a big deal because we have a 6500 watt Honda generator to keep the important stuff like freezers running.

Our generator stalled while we were in town filling up the gas cans. (That’s the first time it’s ever stalled.) It’s usually not a big deal but it was Wednesday afternoon and very sunny. With no power to run the solar system’s pumps the water stagnated and overheated the system. A 3/4″ piece of Pex tubing upstairs in the garage burst and sprayed a big mess of glycol solution all over the stuff below it. Glycol is antifreeze, sweet smelling to pets and highly poisonous. So now I had a generator that wouldn’t run, a poisonous mess in the garage and a solar system with no fluid cooking itself to death.

Six very stressful hours later all of that was cleaned up and fixed. Around 8pm Wednesday the power was restored and we tried to get online to check email and stuff only to learn that some of our networking equipment and my desktop computer were damaged by lightning during the storm. My computer was dead and we had no internet access from our notebooks. These things are a big problem when your living is dependent on internet access. More stress ensues.

So I diagnose the internet problems and have to sit on the phone with TDS Telecom’s tech support for about 90 minutes convincing them that the problem is on their end. It’s really frustrating but eventually the tech agrees and says he’ll schedule a service guy to come out “first thing in the morning” the next day, Thursday to replace their network multiplexor, or MUX for short.

To me first thing in the morning means sometime between 8 am and 9 am. I was sitting at home waiting for the call. When 11 am rolls around and I hadn’t heard from them I called to see what was going on. Apparently they didn’t get the service ticket locally and weren’t aware of the problem, the diagnosis or the solution. So I have to go through the whole scenario again with the local folks. It’s beyond really frustrating at this point. I have no patience for stupid people and it only gets worse as I get older.

The local tech that handled the service call wouldn’t accept the diagnosis of the much-smarter Level 2 Network Engineer that diagnosed the problem the night before. Instead of coming directly to our place and checking the MUX the dipshit service guy instead decided to inspect every repeater along the 14 miles of copper line between my house and the phone company. He eventually got to our place and wanted to blame the problem on “the blue wire” at my house because it was something I installed. (He doesn’t know I used to design computer hardware for a living and can certainly handle basic office network wiring.) He hadn’t checked the damaged MUX yet either. He informed me that since the blue wire was not their equipment I would be charged $90/hr for the 3 hours he spent debugging the problem. At this point the problem wasn’t even fixed yet he was content to simply say “Not our problem” and expect me to pay $270 for his “effort”.

Thankfully I was dealing with him over the cellphone since I was in Waterville at the time buying some replacement network equipment. If I was at home he would have found out exactly what I thought of his diagnostic abilities along with my extensive vulgar vocabulary and imposing delivery. (I wonder if he’s ever heard the word “fucktard”?)

I insisted he had no legitimate reason to blame “the blue wire”, he hadn’t put a tester on it, replaced it or even fixed the problem. He hadn’t swapped the blue wire with the beige wire to see if the problem followed the blue wire. I wasn’t about to let him weasel his way out of it that easily. It was simply his gut feeling that the blue wire was the problem. I informed him that “the blue wire” was installed a few years ago and hasn’t been a problem that entire time. He tried to say that maybe lighting damaged it. (I guess I didn’t know lightning has an affinity for blue wires! Idiocy, I swear.) I tried to stay calm and rational while insisting that the Level 2 tech determined the MUX was damaged. It turns out that the Service Tech didn’t bring the replacement MUX with him and he would have to drive back to the office, get the item and drive back to our house. He informed me that if the MUX didn’t fix the problem I would be charged another $90 for the hour he spent driving back and forth when he should have brought the damn thing in the first place. Apparently he was convinced the blue wire was the problem and felt I should be charged extra for making him go fetch the item he should have brought with him in the first place.

Around 5pm Thursday the problem was fixed. It was the MUX. I won’t be getting a bill. Something that should have been fixed around 9 am took all day and far too much stress.

On Friday I dropped my Blackberry in the river. It’s dead. Thankfully I pay for the no-questions-asked insurance on the phone and Verizon will be sending me a new one early next week.

It was not a good technology week. Hopefully next week goes better.