My boss is fully committed to all-day meetings this week, my team lead is out on vacation, and we’re full bore, which means I am never getting a break between seeing to my own deliverables through and answering the every-15-minutes (I’m being charitable here) questions from folks who are or who see themselves as my subordinates.
I’ll be sure to let my superiors know about that dynamic when they get back.

Still thinking on the best way to convey that it’s possible to stack up questions/requests and not make the day a continual one of always-more-important interrupts. It was a Valuable Business Lesson I learned one day as a much wee-er Malcolm when my boss freaked out at me at the bank I used to work at after I interrupted him the fifth time one morning for what turned out to be really trivial crap. I’d like to convey the same lesson, but probably not in the same way. I don’t like freaking out at anyone.

Anyhow, on the home front, the router freaked out yesterday but I restarted it a couple times, poked at it and upgraded its firmware to firmware from September 2007. Not exactly indicated by the symptoms but it’s probably a good idea to upgrade it since I’m seeing problems. H mentioned that there was some electrical work in the neighborhood that could have zapped the poor thing. I’ll keep an eye on it and be ready to replace it if need be. It’s about a year and change old.

It seems to be working today. We’ll see how it goes.

VoIP is supposed to be activated today. I’ll keep tabs on that as I can. The number port was supposed to go through today.

This morning, the dedicated hard line through Verizon for the monitored alarm system was installed. I rerouted the phone connections inside the house, did a little testing myself and then tested with the monitoring company. Works fine.

After rerouting every goddamned thing down in the basement, I retested Verizon phone and ADSL and that’s working fine.

The COVAD installer just left. He managed to deal with the line condition issues and got the connection to the Speakeasy ADSL working both at the NID and at the Speakeasy modem’s permanent home (in this house, anyway). I just connected the router and set it to static IP instead of PPPoE and it’s working fine. In fact, this post is the first significant thing done on my new connection with Speakeasy. So woot.

Next steps: (Updated, because I decided to just keep Verizon complete until Speakeasy does the number port for VOIP.)

• See the Speakeasy VOIP and number port through to logical conclusion.
• Cancel Verizon ADSL. Pay whatever cancellation fees necessary, probably send back or pay for their modem they just sent me last month.
• Cancel Verizon phone line for the old number.
• Possibly, if I feel like it, label the various phone line pairs as they are somewhat haphazardly connected in the basement. Additionally, MAYBE, reroute the lines in the house, removing ones that aren’t used.

Trivia about this evening.

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This update is more for my own information/reminder/scheduling, but I’ll put it here anyway.

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This morning I spoke with my alarm company (the local Installation Manager - to find out what kind of phone line I should get as a dedicated phone line for the system - answer: just need a minimal line that only needs to make outgoing calls to toll-free numbers) and with Speakeasy (Tech Support - to find out what the mechanism is for the VOIP phone number port and whether there was any schedule padding I could work on for provisioning a new line for the alarm system - answer: it’s automatic, but takes a few days to 30 days from the install of the DSL line) to figure out the scheduling I needed to work with to make sure the alarm still had a phone number to make calls with.

I had to order a new line right away with Verizon. So I did, this afternoon. Install of the new line (new bill, etc. - I explained I’d be moving soon but didn’t want to the security service to be completely cut off) should be complete on 1/9/2008. I will rewire the various stuff inside my house and handle testing with my alarm company.

Work is very quiet today. I think everyone’s expecting an “early release” but no such thing’s come yet. We’ll see. There was one on Christmas Eve.

I bought lunch for my coworkers. It was cheap and what the hell, it’s the Holidays.

misia and I are both worried about how rough it might get for her while visiting her Mom to help out with her Grandmother’s convalescence from a scheduled surgery, but we’ve both resolved to try to reassure ourselves  that it’ll be okay and not focus on obsessing about the discomfort we somewhat pragmatically think we can expect from the visit (or for my part from supporting her from afar about the visit).

I took Thursday off so I could meet their tech and he could look at my NID, but they did a line test remotely and cancelled the appointment without telling me. So I got to stay home, and stay-at-home all day and burn an extra day of vacation over something that would have been totally avoidable (i.e. if they were going to cancel, they could have let me fucking know).

I’ve ordered Speakeasy.net DSL and VOIP, which is sort of the reverse of my current situation, where Verizon was running DSL on my normal phone lines.

There will be some complication as I negotiate the need for a “hard line” for my monitored alarm system.

But whatever. I was looking for an opportunity to throw money at the problem, and I am so doing.

Speakeasy will probably end up costing $30 or so dollars more per month, but perhaps there will be better connectivity and less heartache if I do need support. We’ll see.

Near as I can figure it, the old modem WAS the bad bit, as well as my wireless access point, which is cutting down transmission rates by half, even though the connections are at 54 Mbps, and using WPA2-PSK encryption (encryption sometimes helps with various kinds of protocols that can encourage link reliability). When I tested at the incoming posts, it was with an (unbeknownst to me) unconfigured new modem that was double-NATting (behaving as a router/firewall on top of my other one) and interfering with connectivity.

Regardless, I plan to start using Speakeasy as soon as possible. I checked with them and they said they’d prefer to wait until the work was completed with my NID before I commenced my order. So all otherwise going decently, I hope to be talking with Speakeasy about a dedicated DSL line on Friday.

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The party went very well, I acquainted new folks with the warm and wonderful feeling of drinking Cachaça cocktails at the party. Also, the tamales rocked the house, though I personally wish, as host, that we’d had some veggie tamales ready at the same time the meat ones were.

Read on for updates on the DSL situation and for info on the venerable sp(l)udger, a tool you may or may not know exists.
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Various updates from the past couple of days:

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I bought a new DSL modem (not a model Verizon supports, by the way, but a lot better as far as advanced diagnostics goes - the Zoom brand, which used to be the Hayes brand, or acquired it somehow, for the geeks out there) and it didn’t make a whit of difference for our household bandwidth.

So I called Verizon last night, and the conversation that unfolded had so many similarities to Eddie Izzard’s Death Star Cantina sketch that I am moved to illustrate it here. It’s a bit out of order, though, so I’ll stick with the Izzard script (transcribed here - 1 pic very mildly NSFW, language NSFW).

End result, though, is that they’re going to exchange my old modem for a new one that they do support, but that if this doesn’t fix it (and odds are damned low) I’m going to move to a dedicated line with Speakeasy.net, probably with a lower bandwidth, but also probably with less stupid. I will however do some more diagnostics inside the house first, and probably also call normal phone repair about a possibly related problem with the entire line I have ADSL on. [Read more →]