HOW WAS YOUR DAY

[nosimpleway]

"wordlessly", as though the Board of Directors for big companies like that aren't all made of the same people serving roles for each company

[Friday]

The most common way prices get fixed is by the CEOs literally meeting on golf courses and deciding it over a handshake. There's no binding paperwork or way to get caught or prove that it happened. We know this because people who have been within earshot have been telling it to the FBI and such for decades.

Oil, Pharma, whatever. The list goes on. Price fixing is rampant. The myth of "competition in Capitalism forces prices to lower, ending up in a situation best for consumer" is just that. It may have been true at one time, in certain markets, perhaps. Now, people ration their insulin and die.

The big fear that people had of Capitalism was monopolies. They're still bad, but companies figured out that you don't need them to set your own prices. You just need handshakes on a golf course.

[Mongrel]

ISP stuff continues and oh what fun.

The second phone co. tech came yesterday, did line tests, again established that the physical integrity of the cable is not an issue. Offered to try a port change upstream today.

Before the port change today, a dude from the ISP calls us (which in itself was interesting because our ISP doesn't normally DO outbound calls at all) saying they can still see noise and significant signal attenuation on their end (remember, the phone co. keeps saying the line is dedicated and physically sound, and I do believe this is correct). He did a lot of vague evasive babbling when asked about upstream issues, but essentially confirmed that yeah that's problem.

ISP dork then offered to switch us to their cable-based service (more expensive, fuck you), or to downgrade us to 6mb down/1mb up (we're at 15/1) - so basically an ultimatum of "Crap service or upgrade". For now I held my temper and told him that we're not even done the tech support stuff, so let's wait on that, eh?

Then I called the phone co., who did the port change today. Sadly that didn't fix things, so this is where it starts to get INTERESTING.

Here's a few things we've learned along the way over the past two days.

- First off we thought we only even HAD 10/1, but apparently sometime several years ago (farther back than 2019) we were upgraded because they ceased offering 10/1. The ISP says this means they have no way of manually switching us to be on 10/1, rather than 6/1 or 15/1
- Our cable has a bit of a longer distance to the exchange than some. Nothing horrible, but this means it's effectively rated to roughly 12/1. Awkward. Overloading that will theoretically give you some signal loss.
- We know that at various times in the troubleshooting process we've been manually downgraded to 10/1 and even 6/1, but in the confusion I'm not sure if anyone has laid this out in plain terms to the ISP.
- Our own load on the cable during regular use is only about 64% capacity. While the ISP said they saw noise, etc. this was earlier in the day so we didn't see any ill effects.

So I think it's clear that fooling with our capacity will not solve the issue anyway. Again, for 16-18 hours a day our internet connection actually works perfectly fine! and since OUR usage does not change throughout the day (except when we're asleep obv), then 2/3rd load is probably our natural usage rate, which is well within what the cable can handle, regardless of any theoretical maximum our plan allows.

Which begs the question: If it's a completely dedicated line, and the ISP has now admitted exists somewhere upstream of the local exchange, why does everybody like to pretend upstream capacity isn't the issue when it clearly has been all along?

Someone doesn't want to fix their shit and that someone is probably our ISP.

[Mongrel]

So, uh, back in November a guy was murdered in the house directly behind my folks. I mean, it's awful but even up here it happens.

In that case, the story basically had basically gone "Mostly harmless stoner guy marries his dealer. They spend a few years dealing together out of their suburban home, then she wants a divorce and he gets mad. The errand kids the wife runs in the next town over come and do a home invasion and shoot the guy, but don't touch her. They're caught in less than 2 days. The End?" Apart from the interesting possibility of there being a potential domestic element it was a pretty ordinary suburban killing.

Oh and one funny detail was that the next-door neighbour to the victim (so, kitty-corner to my folks), who was also a stoner and who hung around a ton with the guy who was killed, decided it would be brilliant to threaten my mom for saying anything to the cops, when obv the cops asked EVERYONE in the neighbourhood for a statement. Sure, her being her, she was was all like "I ALWAYS SAID THAT WAS A DRUG HOUSE" (I heard pointless complaints from my mom about that neighbour for a decade), but in a SHOCKING TWIST almost all of the other neighbours said the same thing (lol suburbia).

The threat itself was hilarious. My mom was checking the mail and this guy rolls on by like he's all GANGSTA and not some ropey, bleary-eyed dipshit and blabs "You shouldn't have said anything... you put yourself in the LINE OF FIRE!", to the point where even my terminally paranoid, living-avatar-of-all-the-earth's-anxiety mom was like "lol ok moron" and just told the cops. So oh look now you're being investigated too, dumbass, and now if anything happens to her, guess what?

To be clear, nothing bad came of that, no harm has come to my folks. But today a guy just died of a heart attack right in front of my folks house. He was renting a room down the street, so no one knew he lived in the neighbourhood at first and people were confused and nervous about what happened, but after the paramedics came they explained he was probably dead before he even hit the pavement. Quick, I guess, but pretty awful for whoever his family is because he was only in his 50's.

Anyway, now even my dad's all WTF IS THIS SHIT. You got a dying behind the house last month, and a guy dying in front of the house this month! Obviously makes them feel like someone's making rangefinding shots.

My aunt just riffed on the classic "Could've been worse." "How?!" Could've been me!" which is probably the best response, really.

[Mongrel]

Calling people who would be in a call centre but who work from home can get really funny sometimes. Today I talked to a guy from the phone company (yes, THE SAGA CONTINUES), who had a rooster crowing sound effect playing in the background every 10-20 seconds.

I can only imagine he's got a kid with a noisy toy? I can see other people being annoyed, but I just thought it was funny as hell that this guy was going over my account with COCK A DOODLE DOO running constantly somewhere else in his home. I just hope the poor guy's not susceptible to headaches!

[Mongrel]

Oh, also we got our boosters today. Yay!

Moderna this time, so we get to mix it up a bit. Hopefully our reaction will still be as mild as it was last time.

Of course with how contagious Omicron is, there's a non-insignificant chance we'll catch it from being on transit or the big (albeit well-separated) crowd at the community centre, but uh, whatcha gonna do, right?

[Mongrel]

I'm quite enjoying the fact that, for the past two weeks or longer, the decision of "Do I boycott Kellogg's or not?" has been completely taken out of my hands by virtue of the shelves at all the grocery stores' being completely barren of Kellogg's products.

Hmmmm whyever could that be? Must be one of them supply chain disruptions they keep mentioning on the news.

[Mongrel]

Just finished switching our internet to Bell.

Latency to the ISP is now 1 ms.

1 ms

:O

[Büge]

goddamn it. I'm sorry we stuck with Acanac all those years.

[Mongrel]

Ah, it does cost a little more, but like... $3 a month (Acanac would have come to $47/month for this year). Bell Fibre used to cost a *lot* more! I think the cheapest Fibre plan being $50 a month only dates to just before Covid, maybe even after.

I did have to go through a comic rigamarole to do the sign up though. OH MAN.

See, on an existing account, if you sign up for Bell's Fibre service you MUST transfer your phone line (if you have one) to fibre as well. Now I get the reasons for this - not having to maintain the copper lines as much, putting a significant speedbump in the way of customers getting DSL with a discount carrier if they want to leave Bell, etc. Technically this is a service downgrade (since you can no longer use your phone if the power's out) but not one I really cared about or which affects us. No big deal, right?

But the thing is, the copper line phone service only costs $33/month and when they switch it to use the fibre-optic cabling the minimum price RISES to $50/month. So... service gets (technically) worse but price goes way up?!

Wat Da Fuck

So I called 'em up and said, hey, come on, and got stuck in the most inane but hilarious Catch-22: If I signed up on my existing service, they just could not krangle Bell's system into making up for that increase, even though we're on record as a 15-year customer. BUT if I tried to sign up as a new customer, which would leave our phone service separate and unaffected, they can't offer me any loyalty deals - which is important 'cos the basic Fibre 15 is capped at 100 Gb/month... (pfffff usage caps on a fibre optic line, come the fuck on... Canadian telcos...).

I ended up just opening a new separate account for the internet, and then next month I'll call in and have it merged with our older phone account, and then THAT way I'll have both services, and then I can get a loyalty deal to get the service upgraded for free to the Fibre 50 which has no cap (at minimum... might get some other stuff if I squeeze haha). It's comically dumb but at least there's SOME kinda workaround and dealing with a cap for one month is basically no problem at all.

It's funny as hell because there was a period of a week solid where different sales divisions were calling me to make me offers and I was actually quite eager to listen to them, but they kept throwing shit I didn't need and no one could just give me the damn Fibre 15 with a higher cap - not even a bare 10-20 Gb more - or otherwise solve the problem!

So I said fuck it to all that and I figured I'd just call in and give the sales commission to whichever random entry-level sales agent happened to pick up on Feb 1st. Only when I called them to get the new account, they couldn't deduct the installation charge even though it's free if you do it online! It was so stupid - I was perfectly happy for the woman I spoke to to get a sales commission, but I don't want to pay it directly out of my pocket on top of my service! Had to hang up and go do it on the Bell website. Goddamn! If you have a sales force LET THEM SELL instead of undercutting them with your own self-serve. I gave them both barrels on that when the online widget asked me afterwards to rate my signup "experience".

Bell is pants-on-head stupid sometimes. But the service is good at least, and they're not half as intentionally evil as Rogers.

[Mongrel]

Oh and Acanac did try to offer me a rate of $20/month to stay which would have been nutty good... if the service actually *functioned*.

[Silversong]

you MUST transfer your phone line (if you have one)

...you have a phone line?

Why do you have a phone line?

Not even my 80 year old mother has had a phone line for the past 10 years. I didn't even know residences had those anymore.

[Grath]

I have a phone line because my fiber internet + TV were cheaper if I bundled in a phone line. I've never hooked up a phone to it.

[Thad]

You have cable TV?

[Mongrel]

you MUST transfer your phone line (if you have one)

...you have a phone line?

Why do you have a phone line?

Not even my 80 year old mother has had a phone line for the past 10 years. I didn't even know residences had those anymore.

These days it basically amounts to "Loads cheaper than a second cellphone."

Also, up until yesterday it was how we received our DSL.

You have cable TV?

Nah. I haven't bothered with broadcast TV of any sort since I moved out of my parents house 23 years ago. Everyone always tries to sell us that, of course.

And my cellphone is with a different telco, who gave me an insane deal, so not switching that anytime soon.

EDIT: Oh you were just needling Grath.

[Grath]

You have cable TV?

My mom likes having some of the options that aren't available readily on cord cutting services.

[nosimpleway]

Took my daughter to the park, we found a tennis ball on one of the courts, and tossed it back and forth a while in a game of Silent Tennis.

Silent Tennis is like regular tennis but without all the racket.

(Of course I love my daughter, but in tennis? Love means nothing.)

[Yoji]

NSW spots his opening and rockets the ball across the court, embedding it in the back fence with what onlookers swore was a thunderclap. Kiddo looks back and forth with saucer eyes.

"I expect you to do the same to me when you are strong enough."

[nosimpleway]

At the Children's Museum near a music exhibit, it's kinda crowded. "Watch and see how many people look up from what they're doing."
I play the first four notes of Megalovania on a keyboard. About a dozen tweens and teens look around.

[Mongrel]

Look at this guy casting 'detect evil' IRL.