sprocket i/o

Cave Salamander. Bloomington, 23oct2003

Most of my life has been centered around my work recently, hence the dull entries. What have I been up to otherwise?

Well .. schoolwork, but that’s not exciting.

I managed to go to a nearby cave that goes by the name of Trapdoor. Our little group did some late night sneaking about, with Dallas behind the camera. She captured the photograph of the beautiful little Cave Salamnder (Eurycea lucifuga) you see on the right. Tonight I’m going to go ahead and visit Buckner’s Cave for some exercise.

SBC Yahoo, a cooperative between our local phone company and Yahoo!, did me wrong. Two weeks ago I subscribed online for their Deluxe ADSL service, which just has more bandwidth than the basic service. They let me schedule my install date online, and sent me back an e-mail saying “Thanks for ordering, yadda yadda yadda”. The install date I scheduled was on Friday.

On Friday I got concerned because I didn’t get any scheduled install time or anything, so I called them to see when it was planning on being installed. The first thing she told me was there isn’t anything for them to do inside my apartment, so I shouldn’t have to worry about the install time. The second thing she told me was that she has no record of my order being in the system. HUH?

I noticed that the order receipt they e-mailed me came with no tracking number to follow up on. So I got bounced around on the phone between SBC’s billing, ordering, and service departments. They apologized for losing my order, and eventually I found out why.

They then offered to go ahead and put in an order for me. I asked for the Deluxe service again, and it was then that I found out what happened to my old order. The Deluxe service is not available in my area. So, they messed up twice: The online website didn’t tell me it wasn’t available, and they failed to inform me afterwards that my order had been cancelled. They apologized more, and then when I asked how long it would take to get ADSL installed in my house, they said another two weeks.

So, while you could say it was my fault for not following up earlier to find out an installation time, in my eyes, they screwed up a 3rd time. After losing my order, they wouldn’t put me ahead of the line to make me happy. When you mess up someone’s order at a restaurant, the cooks make sure to make you happy first: You’ve been waiting the longest for your meal. SBC Yahoo didn’t see it my way, so I cancelled my order with them.

I was told about a local company, Kiva Networking, that offered ADSL as well. They also gave discounts for IU staff and students, and all around looked good. I called them up, and they would see what they could do for me. They warned me that my house was in an area with marginal ADSL, and of course: it still goes through our phone company, SBC, so it’ll most likely take two weeks. Suck.

We’ll see how they are, otherwise I’ll fall back onto Insight Broadband.

On a more positive note, I’m still riding my bike to work every day. It’s beginning to get chilly outside (39′F right now), and