Few people seem to like Comcast, and I was only on that list for a short time.  Compared to dial-up, Comcast was great.  But then we started having problems that are non-stop.  They’re the only high-speed service provider available in our area, so we’re stuck with them unless we want to go back to dail-up.  Verizon Fios is on the way, but they don’t think it’ll be available in our area until mid-2009.

Anyways, back to the ranting.  A few months ago, Comcast came to our house because we were having issues with the Cable modem we were borrowing.  They set us up with a netGear modem/router.  The guy asked us for the details and we told him what we wanted the network name to be and the WPA key to be.  He put it in, but he misspelled the WPA key (”I” before “E” except after “C” unless it sounds like an “a”)….  He also didn’t inform us of the routers username or password.  Other than that it was good, until the router started acting up.  The power cord is messed up, and it kept dropping connections.  So we contacted them, and they came and it was always “working” when they came.  Well of course it was, clearly we like to force our connection to drop for hours.  If we say it randomly drops, a 15 minute visit isn’t quite long enough to examine if we were being honest or not.

So today, someone else came to replace that router/modem and fix our phone thing (which is also from Comcast, we save money this way, but lack support).  The phone randomly breaks on us, and like some of the previous visits, if we can’t produce the symptoms and if the guy doesn’t see anything wrong, then we’re probably just crazy.  So he shrugged that off.  The modem was acting up when he came, and they said they’d replace it because it was 5th time we’ve called and complained about it and my dad said we’d like it to be replaced and it shouldn’t be much of a problem for them.  So they did replace it.  This guy didn’t ask us what we wanted the network name to be or what the WPA key should be.  Instead he thought our last name would do (which he misspelled), and the WPA key was a random string (good I guess, but we usually set it to a strange and random sentence like “TheAliensWantMyLargeBrain” or something).  So he told us he needed to setup our laptops and stuff.  This time I watched him do it so I could find out what the router/modems password was.  Shockingly, it was the default one (which it wasn’t on the one they gave us before), so now I can check the configuration when there’s problems or check to see if the firmware needs to be updated (which fixed a lot of problems on our router at school).

So yeah, I think they’re lazy, or at least where I live they are.  Sure they tend to get the job done, but it’s only when you start to nag them.  They need to hire people who have more patience and who know how to spell.  They should also hire people who are sociable and understanding.  Just because I look young doesn’t mean I’m stupid.  He was trying to tweak my computer’s settings in order to insert the WPA key.  I was sort-of shocked because what he was doing was messing up my laptop (undo-able of course), but he wasn’t experienced in Linux or Unix.  Also, my mac has been having some issues with it’s Air Port card thing, so whenever I connect to a new network, I have to restart my computer.  I told the guy that, and he said “You don’t have to restart it.  It should work unless you messed up the settings.”  Thanks Comcast Support, I’ve only had the laptop for the past year or so and I’ve only been experiencing this problem since my Leopard Upgrade, and clearly since it’s been happening over and over I must be wrong in telling you this.  So the guy was like “Don’t restart it, let me see it.”  So after trying again and again, I said “Maybe there’s an application running in the background” (creative, aren’t I?).  He said, “Yeah, there’s probably an application preventing the laptop from accessing the network, so the computer might have to be restarted.”  So I restart my computer, and wow, it connected.