Stupid Cable

So Friday morning, I noticed that my console into Amazon was slow. I did a couple of speed tests and found my upload speed was horrible, somewhere around 10kbps. Almost unusable.

Called the cable company, after 20m and talking with the agent. Hangup. Great. Have to start over with someone new. 

Decided to try the "chat" feature. Couldn't make it work. Tried it in Microsoft's Edge browser instead of Chrome. Worked awesome. Worked with an agent for some more time. Eventually, I'm standing in the corner where the cable modem is, he wants me to reboot everything, including my computer. OK, but I'll lose the chat. He makes me reboot anyway.

So after everything restarts, chat is now off for the day. I have to call again.

Get a hold of an agent. Same song and dance. I get annoyed and don't want to do that. He remotely reboots modem. Says speed from his end is fine. I ask what kind of test he's running because depending on the path, you can get a false success. He doesn't understand, I've gone off script.

Finally set up an appointment for a tech. I want to make sure I cancel because when someone else complains or some other test is run, a piece of their equipment will reboot and everything will be fine. "That isn't what happens." Yeah, sure. I work in IT. I know how it works.

Decide to check up on my modem. It reached End of Life two years ago. It is probably still fine, but if that is the case, the cable company will still blame it. Get Ellie to order me a new one. *cough* expensive. (My kids have prime. I don't.)

We suffer with crappy internet all weekend. My kids, used to gaming, are all kinds of ticked off.

Sunday morning. 9am. Internet is gone. Not just slow. Gone. Great. New modem is scheduled to arrive at 11am. Amazing. 

10:45. Internet is back on. Full speed. F'ing thing happened just like I expected. They rebooted their equipment and it is fine now.

11am. New modem arrives. Now have a debate on if I need this expensive modem just so I can stay where I'm at. Tracy convinces me to replace our old modem.

9am Monday, replace the modem.

Technology sucks. Especially when you understand it.

Also, next time they try to convince you that a rented modem is better than your own, they lie. They control the entire thing and it is their protocol. They do all the updates and configuration.

A Weird Way I Learn

 I watch train videos. I mean, like cameras set up in the cab of trains and record the train's going down the track. I really have no reason to do such a thing but I do see some interesting things. I think it calms me in a way. I mean, in my cube at work I had three monitors and one of them was running a train video off Youtube, unless I needed it for coding purposes. I would get the random person walk by and notice it and ask me what it was. (Hmmm, maybe I used it for a conversation starter too.) Back in 2019, I was riding the rails across Russia, doing the whole Trans-Siberian Railroad. Dang, I learned a lot from that. Anyway, this is another story.

So lately, I've been riding the railroad in Southern France. I don't know why that struck me as interesting but there I was, noticing what that part of that country was like. It was gorgeous. So anyway, I'm tooling around and if I see anything interesting, I go to maps and see if I can find it. In the early part of the video of this particular train ride, I noticed water along the side of the tracks. I figured it was a canal of some sort, as I've done plenty of bike rides along canals here in Illinois. I didn't think too much of it. It didn't even spike interest for me to look it up on the map or even the history. 

BTW, later in that train ride it goes on the high-speed rail section to Paris. 320 kph! That is impressive. I also looked up the TVG network and how they connect to cities, as at that speed, you don't go through city centers. Dang impressive what they did there.

Anyway, along comes a couple videos from The Tim Traveler. I love this guy. ,He seeks out strange little facts about places and I enjoy his work. This time, he talked about a canal, in Southern France. Hey, I've seen one of those. This was about a canal that had a large number of locks in an area and a guy wanting to see if he could make that an easier transition. 

Here it is on Google Maps.

While it took me a bit to understand what this was, I was also fascinated that the canal that I saw in the train video was part of a system that connected the Atlantic to the Mediterranean. Fascinating, I didn't know anything like that existed. I don't think it is in use now, but wow, 

A little while later, he posted another one of these beasts.

Here that one is on Google Maps.

I think it is kind of ingenious. Making a moving canal to take boats up a slope. And the second video explains it better. 

I learned a lot about France by paying attention to some online people and checking things out on a map. I don't think I'll ever get there in my lifetime, but I do feel smarter by watching these things.

Some more weirdness: