Writers’ Workshop: Busy, Busy, Busy…

Writer's Workshop 2 Minutes

I am, if you’ll pardon my French, busier than a one-legged man in an ass-kicking contest. And, trust me, it hasn’t been easy.

I am, once again, a co-host for the annual Blogging From A To Z April Challenge, which started this morning bright and early. The way it works is we start with a word starting with the letter A today and progressing alphabetically on Mondays through Saturdays (taking Sundays off) until we reach Z on April 30. My theme for this year is radio station surveys for the US, Canada, and a few from the rest of the world.

In addition to doing my own blog thang, I’m also writing for the A to Z Challenge blog a few times this month (I do the Tuesday articles and the Saturday article on the 17th) and following up with people doing the Challenge, spreading love, joy, and happiness wherever I go.

In addition, I will try as much as possible to maintain my regular blogging schedule, which as you can probably imagine is hectic enough as it is.

So, naturally, my Internet Service Provider, whose name rhymes with "bombast," has chosen this time to start screwing with me. It started last week when the guy next door, while he was cutting his lawn (as well as the tiny piece of my lawn that’s on his side of my driveway) managed to cut a small piece of the cable that connects my house with the Internet and knocked me off the air. They weren’t able to get to us until Wednesday of last week to repair it, which they did and had everything working well. At least until they started doing "scheduled maintenance" early Thursday morning. That didn’t affect us until early Monday morning, when it went out for good. I checked the app they provide to let me know what’s happening (which was the first hint I got that they were doing scheduled maintenance) and it said that scheduled maintenance would start on March 25 and end "as soon as possible." There’s a picture of the message on a post from yesterday.

Well, I figure it won’t take them long to figure it out, so I wait all day Monday, using as much as possible the hotspot on my phone and reaching the point at which things slow to a crawl. I get halfway through Tuesday and finally contact them through Twitter. They told me they had an issue with the planned maintenance and hadn’t resolved it, and as of 5 PM on Wednesday still haven’t. What’s more, no one can tell me what it is or when they expect to have it fixed.

I was lucky today (Wednesday) in that I was able to find one of their hotspots. They have them all over, but I can usually only reach them from my desktop computer, so I’ve been working there today; I’m sure that, when the wind shifts, I’ll be knocked off the air. But I’d really like to have my usual connection up and running, and am more than a little upset that this has taken so long. It would seem that they could route the traffic through another server, but that might be too much to ask.

Published by John Holton

Internet disc jockey, lover of old TV (especially the commercials), inveterate wise guy.

Published

17 thoughts on “Writers’ Workshop: Busy, Busy, Busy…”

  1. I hope that, by now, all is up and running again, to your satisfaction.

    Prior to Verizon FIOS, we had horrific dealings with “Bombast” and, once an alternative became available, we dropped them like a hot potato. Our final encounter with that provider was their claim that our garage door opener was interfering with the internet connection and…they claimed our door opener also affected airline communications from the few flights who cruised overhead.

    You cannot make this stuff up.

    Stay safe!

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  3. I have to say, internet issues make me a little ragey. They have you offline UNTIL WEDNESDAY?? I hate that it’s come to a place where we are so dependent on wifi, but since we’re not allowed to really do anything else it would be nice if it worked and issues were resolved quickly. I hope it’s working by now at least!

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    1. Actually, it was Friday, because the line they had patched the week before had come loose and they needed to send another technician. Now, it’s fine, steady as a rock…

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  4. I stopped dealing with “Bombast” back when they were under another name. I thought they were moronic THEN, I hate to think what they might be like now. Obviously, their service is still as poor as when I used to use them (this was the late 1990s/early 2000s). My best wishes for a speedy resolution!

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    1. The latest in this debacle: They fixed whatever technical difficulties they were having, but I still can’t get online. They have to send someone out tomorrow….

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    1. You’re welcome. The Internet did get sorted out, but there’s something preventing me from hooking up to it that requires a technician to come out tomorrowq afternoon. I’m using one of their public hotspots for now. How long that’ll last I don’t know, but as long as it does until the guy finishes tomorrow, I’ll be relieved…

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  9. Well that totally sucks! If it went down here I would be in panic mode since I am working from home plus I have no clue how to deal with computer issues.

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    1. This is turning into an odyssey: they got the server working, but my connection is screwed up and they have to come out tomorrow and fix it…

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