So we’re finally switching our ISP from Comcrap.
Between the appallingly bad customer service, the increasingly slow connection speeds, the frequent outages, and their throttling/blocking of peer-to-peer traffic, not to mention the premium rates they charge for this shoddy service, I’ve been ready to kick them to the curb for ages. But we’ve been holding off because 1. We wanted to ensure that the ISP we switch to will have broadband speeds comparable to what we’re getting now (easier and easier to achieve as our connection speeds continued to decay to near-dial-up slowness) 2. We were hoping to take advantage of a juicy “switch to us!” incentive deal and 3. It’s a ginormous pain to change email addresses, and we’ve wanted to gradually migrate away from our ISP email accounts.
The stars aligned, the cosmos gave its nod of approval, and lo, our new ISP destiny is now. Or rather, the end of this month.
Ergo, anyone who’s still using my old Comcast email address, it’s going to be deactivated in a week. Please update your address books accordingly and send all future emails to either my eugiefoster.com domain email or my gmail address.
Writing Stuff
I’m absolutely loving my new 4×10 work hours. Not only am I pleased as punch to have an extra day off each week, but I’m also tickled to have the extra hours per day at work. I can get so much more done! I’ve written more this week than I have since session ended, which means this is the most productive I’ve been all year.
New Words:
• It’s hard to say. There was a lot of cutting, furious typing, and then more cutting. But I’ve got a handle on the WiP (the Russian folktale) where before I was vaguely unsatisfied with it. It’s currently at 6,250 words, and I anticipate hitting zero draft today or tomorrow. Huzzah.
Received/Published:
• Fan mail from school children in China (!) for “The Tax Collector’s Cow” in the June, 2006, Spider, forwarded along to me by the good folks of Carus Publishing. Utterly squee-some. I love getting fan mail, of course, but I especially love hearing from my young readers.
• Contrib. copy of The WisCon Chronicles, Vol. 2: Provocative essays on feminism, race, revolution, and the future. velourmane invited me to contribute my thoughts on dealing with racist and sexist material in writers workshops for this project last year, which of course I was delighted to do, and I’d completely forgotten about it. I also didn’t realize (or had totally forgotten) that it would be a gorgeous trade paperback and that I’d be getting a contrib. copy. Receiving an unexpected contrib. copy is like finding candy, a special surprise treat.
• Note from the folks at Aberrant Dreams asking me if they could buy audio rights for “Nobodies and Somebodies” (which they published in Summer, 2006, in issue #8) for a new audio venture they’re putting together. Of course I said “yes.” A sale out of the blue is even better than found candy!
I loved 4x10s when I got to work them years ago. The only thing I really noticed about the longer days was that I was able to stick with projects longer. And a three day weekend every week is incredible for errands and things like repairman visits. Lucky you!
We would like to switch from Comcast, too. It will take a while because of where we live, but it will happen. We are already cutting off the cable TV. Can’t see paying them $55 a month to surf the channels and complain nothing is on every night.
Hey, excellent news all around.
I’ve been using a personal domain email separate from my ISP for the same reasons. I recently switched things over so all of my domain email goes to my gmail account, and my gmail account is set up so that anything I send from there looks like it came from my personal domain. I’ve been really pleased with the results so far, and I only have one place to look for email now.
Yeah, I’ve been trying to get all my email going mostly to my domain address with gmail as my “safety” backup. For a while, when my domain email was flaking out (and freaking me out mightily), I tried switching everything to gmail—via forwards, etc.—but then discovered that some servers blocked gmail, and more emails from gmail weren’t getting through than from my domain address. Gah!
Obviously, I had angered the gods of email.
I ended up reverting back to using my domain as my primary. Just want my @#$&* emails to get through! *whine*
But it’s Comcastic!
I am legally not allowed to say bad things about Comcast as I work for one of their competitors.
I will say though, that Comcast made us pull our commercials where 80% of people who tried our “slower” DSL service found that they had better speeds than Comcast’s “blazing fast” cable modems. This was after a 3 year legal battle where they had completely pulled our commercials off the air ( or the cable in this case ).
OTOH, they’ve reduced prices in my area for digital cable, so what I was paying $24.99 for, I’m getting for $15.99, plus 8 more channels.
But no way in hell am I using a cable modem.
WisCon Chronicles sound fascinating. I went to Amazon to order, but it’s not available yet. Will get a copy ASAP.
Please, please, please, please, do not under any circumstances switch your ISP to Earthlink.
Really? We’re not switching to Earthlink, but I hadn’t heard they were evil, too.
We signed up for their DSL in late Feb after a decade of no complaints with dial up. Right NOW I am paying their 29.99 per month high speed plus their 7.99 per month home networking and I haven’t had wireless access since April 8. I’ve only had the DSL working for about two weeks. They have lied to me, kept me on hold for hours, HUNG UP ON ME, and made me fight and cuss and scream at them to give me tech support and replace their equipment. And they are NOT letting me out of my contract w/o termination fees, and they are NOT refunding any of my money for services I paid for but haven’t recieved.
I refer to them as Earthfuckinglink.
If you’re switching to BS/ATT around here, you’ll notice a couple of things:
– speed may appear slower than CC because of the fact that CC gives you a high bandwidth burst at first before slowing down. Overall speed on ATT will vary by time of day but is usually about a third slower than advertised (occasionally faster than advertised).
– ATT customer support has slidden into the bowels of Hades since the merger but the guys fixing things on the poles are still great. Last guy gave me his cell number to call instead of tech support. Up-time is six-sigma but if something breaks expect a couple of days for repair. Some of the hardware dates from the 80s and even the the DSLAMs that provide internet seem to need replacing every 3-4 years.
– those shiny new boxes on Nesbitt Ferry mean that U-Verse is coming with double our speed, better reliability and digital TV from ATT. May be a year away.
Let me know if you have any questions. I made the switch 3 years ago and am expectantly waiting to get U-Verse and cut my cable.
Thanks for the heads up about AT&T’s customer service. I’m still thinking they’ll be better than Comcast’s. Although, glargh, I’d hate to be wrong.
And actually, we’re switching to AT&T’s U-Verse, not their DSL. AT&T is laying the fiber optics in the John’s Creek area now, so your wait to switch might be much shorter than you thought!
Also, that “high bandwidth burst” which Comcast is supposed to provide on downloads? A myth. We’ve never gotten that benefit.
Congrats on the “found candy” – or better, “found money” 🙂 Lyn
I listened to your story Caesar’s Ghost on Pseudopod yesterday. It actually made me cry! But, in a good way. Really good story. Thanks for selling things to the pods. 🙂
Thanks, Abbie! I’m delighted you liked it. That story’s got a special place in my heart; I wrote it after our last ferret, Templar, died.