Those In Sandy's Path

[deangreenhoe]

Originally Posted by Ned

They sound real "mom and pop."

More like one Pop and about 35 kids. I swear, the average age of their employees in all departments is about 15. At least it seems that way. Jeesh. At the risk of sounding ageist, in my experience a lot of the super young generation entering the work force has a far more relaxed service ethic than I do.

I partially blame it on the fact that they really don't have any competition for broadband in a lot of their territory since the cable companies don't service areas as sparsely populated as ours (just in the larger towns and small cities) and no digital or fiber optic phone lines for those options. They operate as wireless broadband through a radio link to towers installed every few miles across a good chunk of central Michigan.

And unless you are a pre-existing customer, you can't contract for their service since they are at subscriber capacity. They could give a rip if you get disgusted and cancel your service because they have huge waiting lists of people wanting in. A couple of years ago they received a rural services government grant in the amount of $29 million to expand their service capacity and upgrade their system to full WiMax but at this point you can only upgrade to that technology if you have a student living at your address. (That's part of the grant terms, affordable broadband for students.)

Just part of the fun of living in the boonies. It's quite frustrating since I work two home-based jobs that both require reliable and reasonably fast internet access so when I lose my connection, I'm off the clock and losing money by the hour. (Temporarily unemployed, so to speak.) I can't afford to report a service disruption on Thursday morning and wait until mid-day Monday to have someone finally respond to my repeated service requests. That was the time frame the last time I had a problem, that being their equipment failure, and I was pretty hot and bothered about it.

[tdew]

Power and heat came back late last night. It feels like quite a luxury to have both again. Schools are still closed - at least through tomorrow because of downed trees and electric wires tangled in them. Gasoline is in short supply because either the stations still don't have power, so it can't be pumped - or they are sold out and haven't gotten new deliveries. This should get better in the next few days as power resumes - and we're using the old odd / even gas up system (remember 1979?) I haven't tried to get gas, as I haven't been going anywhere and did fill up before the storm came.

Now that I've got the internet back, the hard part is seeing the awful pictures and reading the terrible stories of the NJ shore towns and coastal areas of NYC. It sure puts your own problems into perspective.
I wish everyone who is complaining would just realize that there are others with worse problems and try to be patient.

[Ned]

Happy you're back safe.

Originally Posted by tdew

Power and heat came back late last night. It feels like quite a luxury to have both again. Schools are still closed - at least through tomorrow because of downed trees and electric wires tangled in them. Gasoline is in short supply because either the stations still don't have power, so it can't be pumped - or they are sold out and haven't gotten new deliveries. This should get better in the next few days as power resumes - and we're using the old odd / even gas up system (remember 1979?) I haven't tried to get gas, as I haven't been going anywhere and did fill up before the storm came.

Now that I've got the internet back, the hard part is seeing the awful pictures and reading the terrible stories of the NJ shore towns and coastal areas of NYC. It sure puts your own problems into perspective.
I wish everyone who is complaining would just realize that there are others with worse problems and try to be patient.