Don’t you hate it when you click on a button or link on a webpage, and nothing happens, so you click, and click, and click, and then dozens of pages suddenly explode open?
You don’t? Well, la-di-da. Good for you.
Minor Rant #143
We began having Internet connectivity issues in the beginning of May. It was intermittent, and service typically returned in a few minutes.
We were planning a trip, and busy with those details, so I didn’t call it in. On the day before we left, the outage was a few hours in the morning. Logging in at a coffee shop, I sent my ISP, Ashland Home Net (AHN) an email through their support website. They said someone would get in touch with me.
They didn’t.
Returning after our vacation last week, we found our connectivity worse. Calling in meant waiting by the phone for return calls and staying home so they can come by and check our systems. But, last Friday, I called it in.
Yes, they could see that we were online but our signal was very weak. This would need to be called into the city IT.
The City of Ashland supports several local ISPs. They do so through a community-owned entity called Ashland Fiber Network (AFN). The city’s support helps reduce the cost, right, and provides an alternative to the big commercialized entities that dominate the field, like Charter, Century Link, Comcast (which all might now be the same company). I use Ashland Home Net to buy local and help defray that cost.
Friday our connection went out in the morning and returned in the afternoon, apparently on its own. I called AHN for an update before they closed for the day. The agent said a ticket had been opened with the city. The city would call us. They would come by.
They didn’t.
Our connectivity came and went through the evening.
Saturday found another outage that lasted several hours. Support was called. Messages were left. Nothing was heard back.
Sunday…the same.
Monday.
Internet connectivity was good in the morning. I returned from writing and walking at about 2 PM. My wife said the connection had dropped at noon. I called it in. The same agent that I spoke with on Friday told me, yes, a ticket with the city had been opened. The city will be calling me.
The hours passed…
I called them each hour to remind them my net was still down and that I hadn’t heard from the city. We heard back from an Ashland Home Net at 5:40 PM. Yes, a ticket had been opened with the city. Unfortunately, they were closed for the day. Nothing could be done.
Our connection returned at 6:53, and then left a hour hour later.
It came back again at 8:50, but dropped at 10:20, and didn’t come back.
We had a connection the next morning, Tuesday. Since I didn’t hear from Ashland Home Net or the city, I called AHN to see what was going on. The agent said the city was backed up. They would get hold of me, but it would probably be another twenty-four hours.
“Really?” I said. “It’s already been ninety-six hours.”
“What?”
“We opened the ticket on Friday.”
“Your records show that the ticket was opened on Monday.”
“No.” I had my notes and referred to them.
“Oh, you’re right,” the agent said. “Okay, I’ll call the city now, and I’ll call you back.”
He did. “The city is sending someone out now.”
The city did. I saw their truck out there. I saw their agent. He went to the side of our house. I waited for him to come to the door.
He didn’t.
I waited for the city to call.
They didn’t.
Our connection was up and remained up, and it has since then. We’ve never heard anything back from the city or Ashland Home Net.
I’m going to give them a call when I get home today. I want to know what the problem was, or is, if it still exists, and what’s been done, or will be done about it.
Then I think I’ll check out other ISPs.
Just in case. Because right now, I’m not too damn pleased with Ashland Home Net, Ashland Fiber Network, and the City of Ashland.
A Sign
It’s a sign that things aren’t going well, computer-wise, when you try to reach http://www.isitdownrightnow.com to see if a website is having problems, and you can’t reach it because it’s down.
Amazing how frustrating something like the inability to reach one or two sites makes me.
Late at Night
You ever put something on Facebook or other social media late at night, and have a friend immediately respond to it? Then you think, what are they doing on the Internet so late at night? As a sidebar, do you also sometimes wish you and that person were actually sitting beside each other so you can have an actual conversation?
There are some who remain your friends regardless of how long it was since you last saw them, and the distance between your homes. Good to know such people are out there.
Want to introduce me to a few?
Alphabet Issues
Time for a Sunday rant. I have good reason for it. I know; everyone who rants say they have good reasons for their rant. Let me state my case, and then you can decide.
Alphabet Inc. is trying to gaslight me.
Alphabet Inc. was created as a holding company for Google and its multi-tentacled endeavors. Google wants to be everything for us, substitutes for television, Netflix, Amazon, a dominant world force that we can trust. But the delta between what they promise and what’s delivered grows every day.
The three primary Google products I use are Gmail, Chrome, and the calendar. (I also sometimes use Google search, but it’s so damn commercialized, delivering the same results as different entries, that it’s become better to go with other search engines. They’re not much better, though. *Where have all the good searches gone?*) They’re three products that have been around for enough time for them to stabilize and cross that chasm from being bleeding edge to cash cow. When a product reaches the cash cow stage, it’s expected to be reliable and free from significant bugs.
It ain’t so with Chrome and Gmail.
I use the Inbox app to manage my Gmail. I write “manage” because that’s what they use to describe it. Inbox manages my mail as well as a toddler manages the bath water. Emails that have been read and deleted consistently haunt my inbox as unread, causing the frustration and irritation of wading through the past several days worth of mail along with today’s deliveries.
This is where the gaslighting comes in. Gaslighting is an old expression about conning people and confusing them about reality. “Didn’t I already do that?” they ask in old movies.
The villian laughs. “No, dear, you said you were going to. Honestly, were is your mind, my precious?”
That’s how it is with Gmail. “Didn’t I already read that?” I ask myself as I peruse the Inbox. “Oh, God, I thought I answered that yesterday.” I certainly meant to answer it. Where is my head?
Well, hell, it’s not my head, it’s Alphabet Inc. and their Gmail product. I have read, answered, and deleted these emails. Alphabet is just putting them back in.
Thinking it might be Inbox instead, I used Gmail without Inbox, as an experiment.
Nope; same results.
Don’t get me started on what’s going on with Chrome. It is very effective for administering my daily dose of first world blues and frustration, and is a wonderful impediment to having a good mood as I surf the net.
I would switch from Gmail, but our email addresses have their tentacles in every aspect of our lives. Extricating ourselves is a long and complicated process. It’s getting as involved as doing taxes in America or determining if it’s a catch in the NFL.
Click
Don’t you hate it when you click on an internet link to read an article or post elsewhere, and there is no sign of said article or post on that page, or it’s there, but buried in a blizzard of ads, buttons, splash pages, and noise?
Yeah, WTF?
Not Helpful
Don’t you love it when peruse a webpage for information, and then see a link for “More Information,” and click on it, only to find the link opens a page with the same information, but in a different format, and nothing “more”?
Yeah. Grrr, not helpful.
Error
Don’t you love it when you click on the link, and it takes you to a page that tells you, “That link no longer exists. You need to update your bookmarks.”?
Ahem. I didn’t click on it from a bookmark, fools.
Don’t know why that makes me so irrationally irritated.
Bitter Modern Blues
My dependencies sicken me.
Here I am, deploring the deplorable state of the net as it drifts in and out of connectivity.
The first thing that jumps to mind is, WTF? Then, of course, I ask myself, is it me? Is it my system? Everything is checked and reset.
But problems continue. It started last Friday and has gone on and on. Finally, Monday, I checked downdetector.com and other sites. They verified, yep, we got problems. You can see the spikes.
Yesterday, the same.
More of it today.
Naturally, the Internet corollary to Murphy’s law specifies 1), your net connection will drop at the ideal time to curtail your momentum, and 2), just when you think it’s all fixed, it will leap up and bite you in the ass one more time.
Because of the commerce implications of outages, you probably won’t know what’s going on for a while. Connectivity, latency and response times equal sales and advertising revenue. Amazon owned up to its error last week because it was human error, something that is less likely to scare off customers than hardware and systems failures where they’re scrambling to figure out what the hell has gone wrong.
Happy Birthday!
Happy birthday, ARPANET. Without you, we would be lacking the Internet.
Some will whisper, this is an anniversary, not a birthday. Maybe they’ll make such a remark on the Internet.
Few realize how long people worked on ARPANET and its principles and processes and what its success actually represents. Like Philo Farnsworth and other inventors, their work is used but rarely remembered and celebrated. Most ARPANET and early Internet pioneers worked in teams. They’re remembered but no celebrated but they had some nifty ideas. Their accomplishments helped drive Internet development. Without them, we’d not have bloggers sharing opinions, dreams, hopes, frustrations and cat photos and videos, and complaining about government, politics, manners and movies. WordPress would probably be a lot smaller and less successful.
Where would Amazon and eBay be without the Internet? What would Facebook be without an Internet?
Seriously, take a moment to imagine a Facebook without an Internet and the web.
I need not add the rhetorical amendment asking where the rest of us would be and what we would be doing, but I kinda did.
Going back to my early Internet and computer learning reminds me minicomputers once roamed the electronic frontier. Remember the Burroughs Corporation?
Sure, some remember. Some also remember the Nash Rambler.
Such is the case with inventors, engineers and their work. Their ingenuity shapes our lives but we remember few of them. As always, the winners shape the marketing we refer to as history.
Ah, it’s all ancient history, way back, like a long time ago. Here we are, on the Internet, clicking, scrolling, and googling away the morning.
Happy New Year.
Michael Seidel, writer 