I am not afraid of the person who sells guns. I am not even afraid of the person who buys guns. I am afraid of the person who just wants to borrow a gun.

Definitions from Wikipedia: Humility is a quality or characteristic ascribed to a person who is considered to be humble. Humiliation is to reduce to a lower position in one’s own eyes or others’ eyes….

There is nothing like having your arse handed to you by an 8 year old while playing Halo 3. Now imagine your wife/girlfriend is watching. This is when you display HUMILITY.

Now when said 8 year old tells you that “maybe you should put your XBOX 360 on eBay to pay for some Halo lessons” while fragging you from god knows where, that’s HUMILIATION.

Last but not least, Halo has a new feature where you can share videos and snapshots of your most infamous and demoralizing kills. I would consider this the 2007 way of TAR & FEATHERING.

……this didn’t happen to me, it happened to a guy I know.

Open letter to ATT U-verse tech support (or anyone alse who will listen):

Let me start by explaining how I came to choose U-verse. I was a customer of DirecTV for television services and Road Runner for internet services. When Comcast took over for Road Runner in the Houston area I immediately wanted to switch to another provider. Comcast had the worst customer service I had ever experienced. I was also a happy DirecTV customer but there were a few problems headed my way. I used (3) of the TiVo branded HD (DirecTivo) DVR’s and they currently only support 10 HD channels. DirecTV recently started broadcasting on a new satellite that uses different HD compression that isn’t compatible with the DirecTivo HD DVR’s I had. They offered an upgrade program to non Tivo branded DVR’s that were way out of my price range. $200 x 3 DVR’s is a little steep. I started looking for other alternatives and ATT looked like they could fix all my needs with their current U-verse offering. The price is right and IPTV is right up my alley since I am a network engineer for a top medical school. I am always on the “bleeding edge” of technology so I am willing to deal with growing pains as ATT tries to stretch into the television services market. I currently have cat5 cables deployed to all (3) locations. The cables have been tested with a Fluke DTX 1800 and have passed spec. Having said that, I have multiple issues with your services.

1) My TV and IP services go out every day, multiple times a day. When I say go out I mean from freezing screens to total service loss. Every time I call technical support (see issue number 2) I get a different response or no response at all. I have been told the there was a problem with the power supply in the DSLAM. I have been told it’s weather related. I have also been given no explanation at all because the technician thinks it will be over my head. I am waiting for someone to use the “sun spots” excuse because I know it’s coming.

2) The ATT 2020 number that is on front of the DVR is not very helpful. If you call it after hours or on weekends you have to know the secret codes to get to technical support. It will tell me my phone number and ask me if that is the phone number on my account. If I say “yes” (which it is) it will tell me all offices are closed and hang up on me. If I say “no” it will go through a couple of more prompts and still hang up on me. I have to say “don’t have a phone” to get to a point where I can ask for U-verse technical support. The reason you are not getting complaints on the menu is because no one can get through. Here is an example transcript of how ridiculous this is.

2a)Technical support training needs some help. Last night a level 1 tech asked me to unplug my Motorola boxes so he can send an “electrical signal down the wire” which I am assuming was a ping but what do I know. I asked him if I needed to unplug the cat5 or the power. He had no idea what a cat5 cable was. I explained to him what it was and he said “Oh you mean the ethernet (pronounced ‘e-ther-net not the correct way of ee-ther-net) cable”. I think your helpdesk needs more training of common network terms and definitions if you guys are going to be offering network services.

3)The DVR doesn’t work when the network is down. This is the most ridiculous rule I have ever seen. My service goes down all the time so recording the shows I want to watch is kind of hit and miss anyway. But when you add the fact that I can’t watch what I have already recorded when there is no service is even more ludicrous.

4)”You can only watch one HD channel at a time”. This is crazy. I know it’s a compression and bandwidth issue but you guys need to get this resolved asap.

5)Processing power of the DVR is minimal at best. If you are recording something in HD and 3 SD sources at the same time the response time is very, very slow. It is almost unusable.

Here are some things I am happy with and I feel ATT does well.

1)The install technician was awesome and very proficient. So was the repair crew that replaced my phone line at the install.

2)Video on demand is very cool (I just wish you guys offered movies in HD)

3)The SD picture on my older TV is outstanding. I have never seen better.

4)The internet sustained download and upload speeds are way above what I expected.

5)The features coming down the pipe like the “whole home DVR”, USB mass storage and access to pictures are exciting.

In summary I do like the technology but I feel someone needs to address my issues or I will no longer be an ATT customer. I have talked to other customers in my service area and they are experiencing the same problems………Resetting the modem does not fix this!

Terri and I went to Chain-O-Lakes in June with the Listi clan. I can remember asking Terri on the way to the resort where her wedding ring was and if she was going to be single for the weekend because she didn’t have it on. She replied that she did not want to lose it out in the country. Well guess who returned minus one men’s platinum wedding band…… Needless to say both Terri and I were devastated. This was the ring I was married to the love of my life with; it really meant something to me. Terri even had “My heart and soul to you” inscribed on the inside. We figured I must have lost it in the swim lake by digging my fingers into the sand or when I went off of the water slide. It was a very sad time but eventually we moved on.

The next weekend Cooley, Cooley v2.0, Terri and I went back to Chain-O-Lakes with metal detectors to scan the bottom of the swim lake. I had worked from 7 in the morning to 5 am the next morning. The Cooleys and Terri picked me up from Baylor at 5:30 am and we headed out to the lake. We got there, got our gear together, got in the water and it started raining. Perfect. I did find buried treasure though; 19 cents, 7 bottle caps, 2 bread ties and 1 nail but no ring. We gave it a go for about 5 hours and then finally gave up and drove on home. We all looked and smelled like wet rats. Cooley v2.0 enjoyed it (he’s five).

The week after we returned from our August vacation I had to get some birthday shopping for Terri done. She wanted a charm for her bracelet from James Avery. While I was there I noticed the men’s wedding bands. I tried a few on and eventually decided on one and purchased it. I was going to use it as a placeholder until I saved enough money to purchase another platinum band exactly like the one I had.

I mentioned in a previous post I passed the ONT exam on Friday September 14th. That weekend Cooley and I had made plans to lay some more of the wood floors in my house. We were going to start on Saturday but Terri and I had to have the master bedroom cleaned out before then. When I returned from taking the exam on Friday Terri and I began clearing the room. We moved all of the furniture out minus the water bed. Waterbed? Yeah we have a waterbed. That sounds so seventies, like a custom van. It’s not one of the old school ones though. It looks like a real mattress with a pillow top that zips off. Inside are two bladders filled with water. There is no hard frame. Anyway, we started taking the bedding off and then we pulled the pillow top off. Next I drained the bladders and removed them. After that I removed the bottom part of the mattress. Now all that is left is the box spring and the dust ruffle (I had to ask Terri what this was called because man-code dictates that I shouldn’t know). We stood there and talked for a few minutes about life and what not while we were taking a break. I looked over at something on the floor and a glint of metal caught my eye. There was my wedding ring sitting at the foot of the bed on top of the dust ruffle and box springs. We couldn’t believe it. I figured that Terri changed the sheets when we got home from vacation and had me tuck them under. Since I had lost so much weight the ring slipped right off my finger and stayed there until it was rediscovered. I was so excited and Terri began to cry. My manliness wouldn’t allow me to though…..

What a wonderful day.

BTW The floors look awesome. I’ll post some before and after pics when we are finished.

On September 14th I took the ONT exam and passed at instructor level. It was a pretty tough exam. I saw a ton of questions that were not in the study material. The last test I need to take to get the CCNP certification is the ISCW but with my recent purchase of Halo 3, study time may be hard to come by for a while.