I Am Jack's Tech Support Curse
First off, I suppose that it's impossible to completely avoid the subject of the Virginia Tech killings if you bother to blog your feelings, even occasionally. Allow me to say that events of this magnitude strike me as oddly uncommentable. You're either saying the obvious, using the issue for a personal agenda, or working preventatively ... which tends to get tangled up in that second part. Examples:

1) "This is a great tragedy and I'm sorry it happened." Obvious. Who says anything else? Who's GLAD that random people were gunned down for being in the wrong place at the wrong time? Does random sympathy from a random guy on the net really help anyone in Blacksburg/Christiansburg? Personally, I don't see where sympathy ever accomplishes anything - but I realize that that is a personality quirk.

2) "This horrific event just shows that our gun control sucks" or "This is a great tragedy - and it's amazing that we react so strongly to this while when more people are killed every day in Iraq." Both examples of spin. Give it some time before using the event to champion your pet political cause, folks.

3) "Terrible events like this make us wonder about our public areas and what can be done to address increasing incidents of violence/suicide." Preventive, and looking to accomplish something. Useful, if it didn't inevitably devolve into things like gun control, privacy rights, and complex excercises in civil engineering.

But enough of that. This is a great tragedy and I'm sorry it happened, however nonproductive and obvious that is. On to more amusing pastures.

I've been documenting network issues within my apartment complex for a few reasons. (1) I do actually work there, and I want to make sure that network suckitude doesn't get in the way of my being able to accomplish things. (2) My complex charges a mandatory fee for network service in each apartment, and I want to be able to clearly show what network issues exist and why they are bad if I decide to get a cable modem and contest the network service fee.

First step - inform the office on the off chance that they're actually going to be useful. The first lady I spoke to gave me a look like I was speaking Martian as soon as I dropped the first technical detail. I tried NOT to use technical terms and explain generally - but she pretty much asked for it. She hurriedly pushed me onto another guy who realized that I was speaking over his head also, but had the wherewithal to USE my skills. He gave me the account information for the complex, and suggested I talk with Time Warner directly to see if I could figure out what our issue was.

I had a sneaking suspicion that I KNEW what the issue was, but I agreed because that's a pretty forward-thinking thing to do for an office dude.

So I call up Time Warner and manage to speak Tech-Supportese in the appropriate way. You know - the particular dialect that says "I realize I have to go through the front line stupid questions, but I assure you that I know what I'm doing and have taken care of checking the obvious stuff ... there really IS a problem here". The TW tech guy (Eddie, who was swell to deal with) quickly gathered some basic information and told me he'd put me through to engineers for a higher level ticket.

Next up was Ari - who was also pretty swell to deal with from a tech support perspective. He quickly realized that I was technologically savvy and had me run some internal network tests while he ran the same externally. The bottleneck was clearly at the uplink from our complex, and indicated that we were maxxing the connection. It's what I had figured, really, but it's nice to get confirmation.

So now I have to ways to go. Ari said that TW was contacting the leasing office to inform them that residents were experiencing > 10% packet loss at prime time due to network flooding, and that TW would, of course, propose a solution. I can wait on that, but my hopes are not high. I can also get my own connection and challenge the mandatory network fee based on the fact that I (literally) proved that the service is not adequate. What to do? I hate dealing with red tape, but I likes my intarweb ... especially when this issue screws with my ability to game online.

The important part here is that I was given our complex's account information so I could do tech support. Ha.