01-VII-2001.
Seen this too many times.
Found a nonexistent (i.e. unreadable) image titled "adelphia reliable connection.jpg", made this date around 21:50. I remember I had several of those. Of course, it was a sunday, because those network timeouts would happen on weekends. Adelphia just never bothered to add more routers and whatnot - some devices were needed to handle the throughput - so the speed was okay on workdays, and then gradually started falling on evenings and specially friday evenings. By saturday night it would become nearly unusable, and by sunday morning there would be timeouts. Each timeout, on my windows 98 (or was it a W2k already then?) would draw a little dialog, because the modem was not a RJ11 thing, it was an USB device. By sunday afternoon, if I wasn't there to click close every one of them, there'd be dozens. Few times I counted more than forty, and this file was a screenshot of that.
Found a copy of it in the third, or fourth email I sent to them the next day. Here's how it looked.
In the first email, I said
This is my desktop. This is not only today, it's happening four days in a row. While I was loading this picture into the message, it happened twice more. The modem is behaving very eratically, loses connection several dozen times a day, and the most common state it takes is several LEDs blinking at the same time. At least the rhythm is steady. I don't know if I'll be able to send this message today, because I can't even get to drill down the few links on (oh here it happened again, all five blinking at the same time... seems back to normal now) your web site to fill in the "report a problem" form. I've only found this address in an email where you contacted me from an automated response message (header quoted below) - there was no way to find this address on your website, the "email us" link on the "Technical Assistance Center" page leads to the "Technical Assistance Center / Contact us...", and there's no mailto: link on that page, only silly forms where one has to type everything online, including the name and email address... one would expect that you heard of email, and that you already know who's writing by polling the IP or some other response (modem ID?).
By and large, I wouldn't mind if it worked, but it doesn't. On the local problems page, the last and only entry for Virginia is dated 6/15, and the problem with the email passwords not working seems to have vanished - but I stll don't have the ability to read mail from gradivs7@adelphia.net, either because the protocol still doesn't work, or because I never knew the exact password. I told the lady when I signed in to use my name for the password and that I'd change it when I get online, but then I never managed to check which spelling did she use - my name or username, with the 7 attached or without.
I've also filled one technical support form, in case I don't manage to get this sent (it went offline fourth time while I wrote this), and, guys, get your act together or I'm going DSL - and you don't have DSL in this area, but someone else does.
Best regards and my wishes you get this straight ASAP
This was circulating the web last week:
Top Ten Reasons Why Beer Is Better Than Jesus
10. No one will kill you for not drinking beer.
9. Beer doesn't tell you how to have sex.
8. Beer has never caused a major war.
7. They don't force beer on minors who can't think for themselves.
6. When you have beer, you don't knock on people's doors trying to give it away.
5. Nobody's ever been burned at the stake, hanged, or tortured to death over his brand of beer.
4. You don't have to wait 2,000+ years for a second beer.
3. There are laws saying that beer labels can't lie to you.
2. You can prove you have a beer.
1. If you have devoted your life to beer, there are groups to help you stop.
The sunset was on 4th, shot from our front door or kitchen window. Even the little Agfa was capable of such feats. (... 272 words...)
Nina decided to put her machine in order. It's been more than a year, dirt accumulated, so well... wash the keyboard too. Luckily, the keys were detachable and the operation was fully successful. I remember cases when reassembling took hours until it would work, or when it ended with a purchase of a new keyboard.
The sticker on the desk is a cheat sheet for most frequently used linux commands. She bought a book, and we got her an official distro of Redhat, she installed it and it worked. Her machine was actually rather weak, I wasn't generous with the money for it, and regretted that as soon when I saw what it was, but linux squeezed lots of power from it.
(the table turned later, nowadays she's on windowses and I'm on linux)
Mentions: Agfa, Nevena Sredljević (Nina), in serbian