On Tuesday Comcast took our office internet offline all day so they could “upgrade our user experience”. Yesterday and today the internet connection has been up and down pretty randomly– it’ll work fine for 20 minutes, then die for 5, then be up for 10, then down for 7,…
Good times. At least we can play some foosball while we wait for it to come back.
Finally, this afternoon I’d had enough of this so I called Comcast. I got transferred to the business department, which was stupendously unhelpful, and finally hopped over to the technical support department. There I spoke with a very nice lady who offered such helpful advice as:
Comcast Lady: Did you unplug your modem and plug it back in?
Me: Yes. Twice.
Comcast Lady: Did you clear your Temporary Internet Files in Internet Explorer?
Me: I don’t use Internet Explorer.
Comcast Lady: What about your browser cookies? Did you clear those?
Me: Again, this isn’t a browser thing. I don’t have internet access.
Comcast Lady: But is Internet Explorer having trouble connecting?
Me: Please understand me. I’m not using Internet Explorer, or even Windows. I’m trying to connect to remote servers with SSH, or ping, or anything at all. And it’s failing.
Comcast Lady: Perhaps you should unplug your modem again.
Me: Yes. Thank you. I’m sure that’ll take care of it.
I finally just gave up, and resigned myself to the fact that the Comcast-powered internet is going to be a dog today.