LukPac.org

10.29.2007

We went to the corn maze a week ago Sunday. Other than Erin getting stung by a yellowjacket on her lip, it was nice.

I spent the better part of yesterday cleaning the dining room. There was a lot of stuff that over time had found its way to the closest horizontal surface. Most of that has finally found a home. Maybe one of these years I'll finish working on the walls in there so they can be painted.

TDS is quite unbelievable. Repair came out (again!) last week and didn't find anything wrong with the line. I called them up to check on the status of things, only to find they (repair) had closed their ticket. I asked to speak to a supervisor since it seemed like repair and DSL just kept going back and forth and nothing was ever getting resolved. They heard me out, talked to somebody on the DSL side, and indicated the issue would be escalated.

That was the 24th. Over the weekend I just kind of kept my eye on things and waited. I finally called back this morning to see where things stood. "That ticket has been closed, although I don't see a reason why." After explaining the issue *again* and being put on hold, the guy indicated he had re-opened the ticket and escalated it again. You'll excuse me if my hopes are less than high.

[9:26 AM] post a comment

10.14.2007

Busy day today. I spent most of it cleaning the basement. All of the photos are "after", so there really isn't a point of reference, but the storage room was a disaster (you could barely walk in), and the rest of the basement was just generally dirty and filled with clutter. I still have a ways to go, but today was a good start. Let's just see how long they stay this way.

Nothing on the TDS front today...

[10:52 PM] post a comment

10.12.2007

TDS follow-up: repair called and indicated they moved the line to a test port for monitoring purposes. I said that was fine, but indicated I was concerned because they had just done that and they closed the ticket anyway. Well, it turns out they had planned to move it to a test port, but never actually did.

The connection seems better than it did before, but it is still pretty wonky. We'll see where this goes...

[8:35 PM] post a comment

10.09.2007

First off, for those who haven't seen them, I posted some photos of the Badgers/Citadel game and of the house when the previous owners still lived here.

Lately I've been working on the kitchen counter. Many of the kitchen cabinets were kind of thrown together, and the counter is no exception, being comprised of oak floor boards. It looks nice enough, but wood boards with cracks between them aren't exactly the most sanitary work surface. As such, I sanded down to bare wood, cleaned out most of the gunk from the gaps, filled them with putty and have been re-staining. I have to touch up some of the trim some more, after which I'll cover the top with Mirror Coat. Hopefully that should provide a nice solid (and sanitary) surface.

TDS has been on my nerves again lately. A few weeks ago I opened a ticket regarding DSL stability. Basically, things connect up fine, but over time the connection seems to degrade to the point where either it resets itself or it has to be reset. On the initial call I explained this in detail and noted that the same thing happened with different two modems, one of which was only a month old. The tech asked me if I lived on Bewick Dr. Odd, since we've been in the new house for over a year and a half, and TDS has been here countless times. I explained that no, that isn't the correct address, but later that night, I got the first call:

TDS: How old is your modem? We don't see it in our records, and sometimes modems go bad.
Me: As I stated when I opened the ticket, I've tried two modems, one of which is a month old.
TDS: Oh ok, we'll dispatch someone!

Things were fine until the next day. After being out late, I came home to two messages on the machine that went something like this:

TDS: Hi, we need to verify your service address. If you could call us back and let us know...

Umm, yeah. So I called them back and told them that yes, the service is in the same place it has been since 2005. Not long after that, a tech came out, to which I again explained the situation. She gave me (another) new modem and said they would move the connection to a test port to monitor it. That lasted for a few days, after which I hadn't heard anything.

Yesterday, I called repair and asked what was going on. "Oh, they checked your line and found that everything was fine, it must be your inside wiring. We closed the ticket." I explained everything again, pointing out that was almost surely not the case, and that the matter was not resolved. "Oh, well, since the ticket has been closed, we can't do any more. You'll have to talk to the DSL help desk again." A call to DSL revealed that they too had closed their ticket, again without informing me. They made some adjustments which (surprise!) didn't help. Got home, called them back, spent close to a half hour on hold while the front-line person was conferring with second or third level, only to be told "we'll be sending this back to repair".

Does anybody there really know what is going on?

[4:03 PM] post a comment