Δαφνη Ευτυχια Αρθουρος

From the Quotation of the day mailing list, 2006-10-16:

"If people have a position on something and you try to argue them into changing it, you're going to strengthen that position. If you want to change people's ideas, you shouldn't try to convince them intellectually. What you need to do is get them into a situation where they'll have to act on ideas, not argue about them." -- Myles Horton

(submitted to the mailing list by Jeannette Cezanne)

I promised details on the network outage I suffered a few days ago. Here's what I started to write then but didn't have time to finish.

I just got a network hardware upgrade: a new cinderblock. Uh, yeah, there's some backstory to explain that:

( background, leading up to Thursday's storm )

The wind on the antenna had ripped the mounting bolts right out of the cinderbloock. The tech said he'd never seen anything like it. He used longer bolts that go through two cinderblocks this time. He also said I'm the only customer who has needed two service calls, and that it's probably because I'm so much higher up than a lot of other parts of town, so my house gets extra wind that other customers are shielded from by geography. I guess I get to be the extreme antenna-mount test platform. The antenna is a flat square, but it's not very large -- I would have expected that kind of result to require a bit more sail area -- but as I said, the wind was dramatically loud, more fierce than I can recall in the time I've lived in Baltimore. And although I've now needed two service calls to realign the antenna, I'll concede that the only times it's happened have been on days with newsworthy winds, not typical thunderstorm winds. (But it does suggest that I'll be cut off if a hurricane hits Baltimore, which would be a drag.)

( pros and cons of this ISP, mostly pro )

It's worth noting that the rapid response for service calls, a whole order of magnitude (or in some cases two) faster than the phone company, is something I'm seeing as a customer of their cheapest service, not some "gotta keep the huge corporate client happy" special treatment. I'm sure that some of this is simply due to being a much smaller company than Verizon and having fewer customers to support, but even taking that into consideration, it still speaks well of their attitude toward customer service. I haven't even heard the phrase "next business day" in response to a call for service, even late on a Friday; just "as soon as we can get someone out there". (I haven't had to call on a Saturday or Sunday yet, so I don't know whether they'd send someone out during a weekend or not.)

And there's this attitude thing, where my getting the advertised speed most of the time wasn't considered good enough -- before the first wind-related service call, there was a service call at their request because they weren't happy with the signal strength they were seeing from my house and decided to point me at a different antenna they'd just added on their tower (actually the roof of one of the tall buildings downtown). They seem to be interested in making the technology work As It's Supposed To, not just "enough to get by".

Although having had two outages caused by extreme wind is annoying, on the whole I'd have to call my experience with this ISP quite positive.

So while the main reason for writing this entry was to comment on the dramatic effect of last week's winds -- I'm still shaking my head over the fact that it ripped the bolts right out of the cinderblock -- I guess it's turned into a testimonial from a satisfied customer. If you can see downtown Baltimore from your roof (I think it's the Legg Mason building you need to be able to see, but I'm not certain whether I've remembered correctly -- and they may have other antenna sites I don't know about) and are shopping for an Internet connection, consider Believe Wireless.