My first rant is about Internet service providers. We've tried both Comcast and Qwest, neither of which is great. For almost a year, we've had problems with the hardware provided by Comcast. Our connection fails at least once a month, so we go through the whole restart thing. When it doesn't work, which inevitably happens, we call customer service. We usually spend 30 minutes or more on the phone with them, repeating the same steps we've already taken. Great use of time. . . And guess what? It doesn't work. Unexpectedly the service begins to work again, albeit maddeningly slow. We checked our connection speed at speakeasy and it was abyssmal.
After countless attempts, we decided to buy our own router.
It was fairly expensive, but it has been worth it. Word to the wise - do NOT use equipment the service provider sends. First, it comes a third-party vendor. We've tried to get a new router from them and they've been impossible to deal with. Second, Comcast hasn't been any better. They said they would send us a new, better router at no charge, but it never happened. I can't believe we lasted as long as we did with that piece-of-junk router.
Here's a radical idea: we should collectively force our city and county governments to provide Internet service to residents as a public utility. Crazy, huh? But it's been done before, as in energy and telephone service. Personally, I think we should show Internet service providers that customers run the show, not them.
Thus ends my first rant. Keep an eye out for future rants from "the girl with the negative tattoo" (thank you to NBC's Community for the new moniker).
PS - check out my daughter's music picks in the righthand column - we have affectionately called her "The Diva" since she was 3.
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