Always have a Plan B
Posted by Doug Fri, 27 Jan 2006 14:34:37 GMT
I work from home now pretty much full time. Tuesday night my Time Warner cable service failed. There was a significant outage in Cincinnati at that time (according to their recorded message) and so I assumed I was part of that. Wednesday morning, I was still without service. I called and they said there were no active outages at that time. When could they get someone out to fix it? Friday morning between 11:00am and 3:00pm!
So on my second week of telecommuting to my new job I had to call up my boss and say, “Sorry, I’m out.” I felt kind of stupid when he asked if I had a backup plan. My cable service (and Road Runner in particular) had been so rock solid for several years I hadn’t actually thought about a backup Internet connection.
So, per his request I’m getting Sprint’s DSL service on 2/6. Yes, Sprint is my local telco. No, I’m not very excited about that. However, ordering this DSL service has been a positive experience. They actually had earlier times for my activation, but I’m out of town next week. Their prices are pretty good: $19.95 for 1.5M down and 256K up. If that was my primary connection, I wouldn’t be happy with those speeds, but this is strictly backup.
The other positive thing. The customer service rep asked me what operating system I ran on my computer. I told her Linux because my firewall and fileserver runs Linux even though all my desktops are Macs. The exciting part is she didn’t freak out when I said Linux! In fact, Linux is officially a supported Operating System.
Oh, and before I give Time Warner a bad name, they were able to get my service back up that same day. I called several times on Wednesday and finally got someone who told me a technician would try to squeeze me in during his appointed rounds. Turns out he was there at 2 and fixed my service in a few minutes. I wasn’t there, so I don’t actually know what was wrong though.
