Tag Archives: qwest

Some Good News

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I’m sure you all have heard my rants about Qwest before, so I won’t repeat them. Suffice to say that since I’m moving, and I need my DSL up and running ASAP, I started to get the ball rolling three weeks early.

Long story short, it turns out that the problem this time isn’t with Qwest. They are offering very fast and reasonable service to move my existing phone service to our new apartment. The problem is that the apartment they gave us is the one their manager used to live in, and whatever phone company she had hasn’t turned off phone service in the apartment yet, even though she moved out on the first of the month. When told that they needed to turn off service ASAP because another tenant was moving in, they suggested that the new tenant just use the existing phone service for awhile. So the apartment is currently battling with them and calling every day. Currently, service is supposed to be off by Friday. If it’s not off by Tuesday, the apartment manager assured me that they would just give me another unit instead, so that I can get my DSL turned on in time.

So that’s a little frustrating, but at least the people I’m dealing with (Qwest and the apartment managers) are being good about it, it’s this mysterious other phone company that’s causing problems. Of course, I’m not going to start singing Qwest’s praises just yet. All I have so far are promises, which sound good, but this wouldn’t be the first time they’ve lied to me.

So what’s the good news? Turns out we paid Last Month’s Rent when we moved in, so our landlord returned our final rent check and was really nice about it, rather than being a jerk and just cashing it, since we obviously forgot. So we have $750 more than we thought, which will come in handy when my employment runs out.

Oh also, I went to see Resident Evil 2 last night with Eric and Jeff, and it was excellently bad. Loved it. Rocket Launcher Zombies = good.

one confusing mess and much geekery

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Okay, so I just got off the phone with the somewhat helpful girl at Qwest, who is upgrading my DSL from 256/256 to 640/640. The reason I’m getting this upgrade is so that fojar can come live at my house, which has a variety of advantages, including allowing Steve to cancel his phone line (to use his cell) and DSL service, and get rid of the cables that run all over his house.

Now, being the type of guy who tends to map things out in his mind, I’ve already come up with a rough concept of what the networking situation is going to look like in my house after fojar arrives

  • The phone line exits the wall and travels around my desk to plug into the DSL modem, which sits on top of my computer.
    • Aside: the phone line exits the dsl modem and plugs into a DSL filter.
    • The DSL filter plugs into the back of my computer, in the modem I have for receiving faxes.
    • The phone line exits my computer’s modem, and travels around the wall into the caller ID box, sitting on top of a speaker.
    • The caller ID box has a phone cord running into my cordless phone’s base unit.
    • The cordless phone is usually stuffed between the couch cushions.
  • An ethernet cable runs from the DSL modem up the wall to plug into my 5-port switch (which is a fancy type of hub).
  • One ethernet cable runs from the switch back down the wall into my computer, giving it a static IP and leaving it outside of the fojar firewall, meaning I can now netmeeting with Steve!
  • Another ethernet cable runs from the switch across the room, into the back of Fojar, giving it a static IP address so it can continue to serve the world with Pokey and Hatelife.
  • Out of the second network card in fojar comes another ethernet cable, which travels back across the room and plugs into a 5-port hub, which will probably sit on top of the switch, just to be cute.
  • An ethernet cable exits the hub, travels around the doorframe, and up into the moulding in the living room, and travels all the way around the room, and back down around the doorframe into Annie’s office, where it snakes around behind some books to plug into her machine, which will get a shared internet connection from Fojar.
  • Any other computers, such a laptops or my other Windows 2000 computer, will also plug into the hub and gain a net connection through Fojar.

TOTALS

  • 1 DSL Filter
  • 1 5 port switch
  • 3 dirty magazines
  • 1 5 port hub
  • 2 static IP addresses
  • 4 phone cables – over 20 feet total
  • 5 ethernet cables – over 70 feet total

The good news (for scott):My

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The good news (for scott):
My Linux box appears to be working! I had a 6GB drive that windows wouldn’t touch, but Linux installed right onto it!

The good news (for steve):
The cute little toaster computer is working! I’m not sure if he had to reinstall Win2K, but I’m guessing he didn’t have to, since he hasn’t mentioned it.

The bad news (for anyone who didn’t back up their fojar inbox):
The hard drive with the mail on it was unrecoverable. Any mail that was saved outside of the “inbox” folder on fojar was saved, but everyone’s inboxes were wiped. Of course, if you use an email client that stores your mail locally, this didn’t affect you.

The other good news:
My copy of Halo is actually on the way! Turns out Fed Ex couldn’t find my house (huh?) but I gave them a call, and found out the package is actually in Portland somewhere, and hopefully I’ll get it soon!

The other good news (for people who hate Qwest):
Not only is Qwest getting investigated by the government for questionable financial practices, They’re in hot water here in Portland, too! Willamette Week is encouraging everyone to withhold the franchise fee that Qwest passes on to us, since they’re not paying it to the city, so why are we paying it to them? (Note, as tempting as it is to do something mean to Qwest, I’m not going to do this. My Qwest status is tenuious enough as is without me tempting them to shut off my account by not paying a 35 cent fee).

Edit 10/26/2005: We no longer control the fojar domain, so any links pointing there are broken.

Geek News

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<GEEK NEWS>

Oh man. I’ve been through the best and worst ends of computers in the last week. I’ve formatted my computer four times, and Annie’s twice, and I still have to do it one more time because I somehow fried her hard drive.

The bad news was that all the upgrades didn’t always go smoothly, and I had to swap hardware around and check support sites and call Qwest again and again and generally had a miserable time just getting things to work.

The good news is that once I get Annie’s computer working again, we’ll both be up and running with Windows XP (or Microsoft FisherPrice as Steve referred to it) on much faster computers.

Fry’s had a fantastic sale that I caught yesterday, enabling me to upgrade my computer to an AMD Duron 950Mhz with 512MB RAM for $150. That means that Annie got my old components, giving her an Athlon 700 with 256MB RAM.

My system is fully upgraded and looking sharp. I’ll get a new screenshot posted soon.

</GEEK CODE>

And in other news, pretty much nothing is going on in my life outside of making computers work. We did have a fun New Year’s with KT and my brother Sean, though!