Cut Off
Posted on April 12, 2006 Posted by John Scalzi 28 Comments
Someone at Sprint apparently thought it would be an excellent idea to cut the phone cable to my entire neighborhood; as a result, my phone and DSL service is down (I’m writing this from Bradford’s library, in case you’re wondering). The phone/DSL are likely to be down until sometime tomorrow, so don’t expect to see much of me (or if you’ve sent me e-mail, expect a response) until sometime tomorrow at the earliest.
In the meantime, consider this an open thread. Chat amongst yourselves. See you tomorrow. Hopefully.
28 Comments on “Cut Off”
Cut Off
Posted on April 12, 2006 Posted by John Scalzi 24 Comments
Someone at Sprint apparently thought it would be an excellent idea to cut the phone cable to my entire neighborhood; as a result, my phone and DSL service is down (I’m writing this from Bradford’s library, in case you’re wondering). The phone/DSL are likely to be down until sometime tomorrow, so don’t expect to see much of me (or if you’ve sent me e-mail, expect a response) until sometime tomorrow at the earliest.
In the meantime, consider this an open thread. Chat amongst yourselves. See you tomorrow. Hopefully.
24 Comments on “Cut Off”
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Oh gee thanks Steve. Just when I’d started to calm down about…Snakes on a mutha*&$%#@ Plane!
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D’oh! DOOPID Sprint!
(quoting my 3 year old)
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It might not be completely Sprint’s fault.
It’s prime cable-cutting season this time of the year. Farmers ploughing their fields, or repositioning fence posts; road contractors with brand new backhoe operators; home oweners replacing that smashed mailbox with a post that will be INVULNERABLE to snow thrown by the plow…
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Bradford has a library? Who knew?
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Hey I at Burger King to make use of their Wi Fi connect. Whatever works
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Yeah we know the feeling John. When Shelley and I moved into our new house we had no internet for 12 days! *sigh
When are you and the girls gonna come to Cali to visit?
M -
I’ll take some tea….(above comment). Random comment: I live two blocks from the library in Waikiki.
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Really bites when you can’t even fall back on a modem (remember those?)
The city of Houston is, like others, considering the idea of city-wide Wi-Fi. There are obvously a lot of issues to consider, but I feel calmly certain that “single point of failure” won’t be one of them.
This is being planned by the same people who ordered a mandatory evacuation during a hurricane without once, ever, I swear to you, thinking that maybe somebody needed to tell the gas stations to stay open and not evacuate along with everybody else.
These are the folks planning the WiFi implementation.
How cool will it be when it’s not just a few houses in your neighborhood, but over half the city that’s cut off from the net for who knows how long? (The kind of hardware needed to handle a network of 4 million people is not cheap, or readily replacable at your local CompUSA.)
Meantime, the economic effects are such that you can bet there won’t be any alternatives in place any more.
Our court system is moving more and more towards networked submission of documents. (Slowly, now, we still can’t get the Federal District court to accept things on CD-ROM instead of 3.5″ floppies, but I’m confident that by the end of the decade…) But filing deadlines have always been extremely strict and with no excuses permitted.
That’s also true for things like bids on contracts and notifications of acceptance and whatnot: if you miss the deadline, you’re, well, dead. What happens when the minor network outages we all know and love start to have extremely serious legal and financial consequences?
(I dunno about y’all, but of all public utilities my network connection is by far the least reliable. )
I’m anticipating this in the same sense that I’m anticipating the coming hurricane season. So it may be that some day soon you’ll look back on a purely local outage for a day or so, with positive nostalgia.
(Hmm, I bet that doesn’t make you feel any better. I just suck at cheering people up.)
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By the way, have you guys heard the news about the Tor Webscriptions deal that John blogged about falling through?
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Lets drink Snakes on a Plane cocktails!!
A highball glass with cranberry juice, a two shots of vodka, a splash of rum and two gummi snakes!
MMmm Snakes on a M****rf**king Plane!
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Man, we suck at open thread.
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I don’t think they cut the cable on purpose. Remember the great philosopher Lazarus Long, wno said “Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity.”
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Wasn’t that also a Bush campaign slogan?
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I live in the boonies where a high-speed connection is unavailable. I am currenlty on dial-up. Some sympathy for my plight would be much appreciated.
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I live in the boonies where a high-speed connection is unavailable.
Have you looked into DirecTV’s Internet service? I’m sure there would be latency issues, but it would have to be better than dial-up…
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I enter my phone number into the DirecTV’s internet service page …wait…searching…wait…SERVICE IS UNAVAILABLE IN YOUR AREA. UGHH!
Apparently the Black Cloud that hangs over my current dwelling in Ohio is impenetrable by all forms of convenient internet.
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I was actually referring to DirecWay, which is now HughesNet. It uses your dial-up connection to request content but delivers it through the satellite dish.
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John H,
I investigated HughesNet when it first came out, and yes it worked exactly as you described at that time, but they stated that in the future it would work bidirectionally through the satellite. That was years ago. I would think that by now it should work strickly by satellite. Is it even an option?
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quoting David:
>Peter: Not to have a coherent thread or anything, but what about the Webscriptions deal?According to the Baen guy who runs Webscriptions, Tor’s corporate parent Holtzbrinck has pulled the plug on the deal.
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I want to read your web site but there is way too much man! It’s too intimidating to see how much to scroll. I don’t have this much time.
As a web designer, I suggest that you break up the long pages into subject titles that take the reader to another page. That way, the reader can read the stuff that appeals to them and not have to go through everything or nothing as the case may be.
If you make changes to your site, let me know and I’ll come back for a visit. If not, then that’s cool, your choice.
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Well, I like my site the way it is, so it will stay this way.
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Online Education http://www.online-education-master-degree.com/
Sounds like Time Warner Cable, who didn’t think the line getting ripped out of the building by a furniture truck was anything that couldn’t wait for a few days. (I screamed lawyer. It was during my dispute with my publisher, so I was in a litigious mood already.)
They also didn’t think it necessary to raise the line going into the building higher so that, maybe, ya know, like, trucks wouldn’t rip it down anymore?
And my broadband has been worthless ever since.
Aye, err… anybody want a tea?
Snakes on a plane!
Oh gee thanks Steve. Just when I’d started to calm down about…Snakes on a mutha*&$%#@ Plane!
D’oh! DOOPID Sprint!
(quoting my 3 year old)
Chris, yes, please, tea. Maybe then I’ll…
Snakes on a Plane!!!
It might not be completely Sprint’s fault.
It’s prime cable-cutting season this time of the year. Farmers ploughing their fields, or repositioning fence posts; road contractors with brand new backhoe operators; home oweners replacing that smashed mailbox with a post that will be INVULNERABLE to snow thrown by the plow…
Bradford has a library? Who knew?
Hey I at Burger King to make use of their Wi Fi connect. Whatever works
I think the Whatever needs a theme song.
I nominate “This is my United States of Whatever” by Liam Lynch.
Yeah we know the feeling John. When Shelley and I moved into our new house we had no internet for 12 days! *sigh
When are you and the girls gonna come to Cali to visit?
M
I’ll take some tea….(above comment). Random comment: I live two blocks from the library in Waikiki.
Really bites when you can’t even fall back on a modem (remember those?)
The city of Houston is, like others, considering the idea of city-wide Wi-Fi. There are obvously a lot of issues to consider, but I feel calmly certain that “single point of failure” won’t be one of them.
This is being planned by the same people who ordered a mandatory evacuation during a hurricane without once, ever, I swear to you, thinking that maybe somebody needed to tell the gas stations to stay open and not evacuate along with everybody else.
These are the folks planning the WiFi implementation.
How cool will it be when it’s not just a few houses in your neighborhood, but over half the city that’s cut off from the net for who knows how long? (The kind of hardware needed to handle a network of 4 million people is not cheap, or readily replacable at your local CompUSA.)
Meantime, the economic effects are such that you can bet there won’t be any alternatives in place any more.
Our court system is moving more and more towards networked submission of documents. (Slowly, now, we still can’t get the Federal District court to accept things on CD-ROM instead of 3.5″ floppies, but I’m confident that by the end of the decade…) But filing deadlines have always been extremely strict and with no excuses permitted.
That’s also true for things like bids on contracts and notifications of acceptance and whatnot: if you miss the deadline, you’re, well, dead. What happens when the minor network outages we all know and love start to have extremely serious legal and financial consequences?
(I dunno about y’all, but of all public utilities my network connection is by far the least reliable. )
I’m anticipating this in the same sense that I’m anticipating the coming hurricane season. So it may be that some day soon you’ll look back on a purely local outage for a day or so, with positive nostalgia.
(Hmm, I bet that doesn’t make you feel any better. I just suck at cheering people up.)
By the way, have you guys heard the news about the Tor Webscriptions deal that John blogged about falling through?
Lets drink Snakes on a Plane cocktails!!
A highball glass with cranberry juice, a two shots of vodka, a splash of rum and two gummi snakes!
MMmm Snakes on a M****rf**king Plane!
Man, we suck at open thread.
I don’t think they cut the cable on purpose. Remember the great philosopher Lazarus Long, wno said “Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity.”
Wasn’t that also a Bush campaign slogan?
I live in the boonies where a high-speed connection is unavailable. I am currenlty on dial-up. Some sympathy for my plight would be much appreciated.
I live in the boonies where a high-speed connection is unavailable.
Have you looked into DirecTV’s Internet service? I’m sure there would be latency issues, but it would have to be better than dial-up…
I enter my phone number into the DirecTV’s internet service page …wait…searching…wait…SERVICE IS UNAVAILABLE IN YOUR AREA. UGHH!
Apparently the Black Cloud that hangs over my current dwelling in Ohio is impenetrable by all forms of convenient internet.
I was actually referring to DirecWay, which is now HughesNet. It uses your dial-up connection to request content but delivers it through the satellite dish.
John H,
I investigated HughesNet when it first came out, and yes it worked exactly as you described at that time, but they stated that in the future it would work bidirectionally through the satellite. That was years ago. I would think that by now it should work strickly by satellite. Is it even an option?
I did check on the satellite alternative two years ago when I lived in the boonies. It was still just too expensive, but it was still better than the radio-based alternative. That sounded interesting until they got to the part about the $5,000 deposit for the equipment.
Peter: Not to have a coherent thread or anything, but what about the Webscriptions deal?
quoting David:
>Peter: Not to have a coherent thread or anything, but what about the Webscriptions deal?
According to the Baen guy who runs Webscriptions, Tor’s corporate parent Holtzbrinck has pulled the plug on the deal.
I want to read your web site but there is way too much man! It’s too intimidating to see how much to scroll. I don’t have this much time.
As a web designer, I suggest that you break up the long pages into subject titles that take the reader to another page. That way, the reader can read the stuff that appeals to them and not have to go through everything or nothing as the case may be.
If you make changes to your site, let me know and I’ll come back for a visit. If not, then that’s cool, your choice.
Well, I like my site the way it is, so it will stay this way.
Online Education http://www.online-education-master-degree.com/