Tech "support"

Greetings all,

Just a disclaimer up front.  This blog is aimed at tech support for one specific company, namely Frontier Communications. 

So here's the situation:  I go to be last night around midnight.  One of the last things I usually do is check my email, just a habit there's never any email worth reading at midnight.  My internet connection works just fine.  I get up around 8, check the email around 10am.  No go.  It just keeps hanging on "connecting".  Ok, no problem I've been through this drill before.  I shut down the computer, power cycle the modem.  Power up the computer - still nothing.  No worries, I'll let it sit for a few hours to see if it will correct itself.

Now the background:  I live in a small town in Iowa.  I use a phone company called Frontier Communications.  I use them because they are the only ones who service my town.  About 5 years ago they installed DSL in the town.  That was good.  Very good.  Every couple of months my serice goes wonky.  I've placed probably 25+ calls to tech support in the past 5 years.  Usually the go down their check list of stuff, have me power cycle the modem, check my settings, fiddle with the anti-virus, fiddle with the firewall, reset my ip address, etc.  I go along with it because, well because you have to.  Why do you have to you ask?  Because before they will put in a repair ticket they must determine that it has absolutely nothing to do with you.  I can accept that - sort of.   In 5 years and all those calls not ONE SINGLE TIME has my setup been the problem.  NOT ONCE.   Every single malfunction has been on their end.  Now keep that in mind as we go on with our story.

Today:  Around 3pm I call tech support.  After about a 4 minute wait I get a tsg(tech support guy) on the phone.  I will say one thing for Frontier, because they are a relatively small operation their support people are all located in American and speak english as a native language.  So I explain to the tsg whats happening.  I explain that I cannot connect.  I explain that I've already restarted the computer and power cycled the modem.  Whereby he promptly tells me to power cycle my modem.  Ahem...so I do it.  It doesn't work.  I explain to him that I've already run ping checks using the cmd prompt and I'm getting 100% packet loss.  He tells me to ping yahoo.com.  I do it and report back that I have 100% packet loss.  Now he gets serious and has me shut down the computer and power cycle the modem while the computer is shut down.  I began to weep softly to myself.  Of course this has no effect what-so-ever.  He then has me perform a series of 'tricks', shutting down my anti-virus, turning off my firewalls, etc.  All the while I am explaining to him that in 5 years this problem, which has happened before mind you, has never been my fault.  I ask him to put in a repair ticket so the ground techs can go and reboot or kick or whatever the fuck it is they do to the main station in town here to fix the problem - as they have done in every single instance in the past *5* years!!! He says he's tried putting in the ticket and they denied him.  Hah.  Finally he has me ping yahoo.com again.  I get 0% packet loss.  At which point he declares that I *am* connected to the internet and therefor it is a brower problem.  He says I should contact my computer manufacturer and ask them to help solve this situation. 

Not so fast eager McBeaver I say to him.  I just so happen to have brought my work laptop home with me this weekend.  If it is a browser problem then I should be able to connect with my laptop and surf the net just fine.  Hm...one sec...nope.  Laptop won't connect to any websites either.   Guess its not a browser problem after all.  Well says tsg 'I've already asked for a repair ticket and been denied - is there anything else I can do for you?"  "Nope' I reply and hang up.

Call back 10 minutes later and get a new tsg.  Explain the situation to him.  Tell him I was just on the phone with other tsg and that I thought, based on 5 years(did I mention 5 years) of experience with this type of problem, that a repair ticket needed to be issued, that calling it a browser problem was just dumb.  He says...hm...hold on a minute they just sent out a problem report stating that your area is having browser difficulties.  I tell him, yeah thats probably my last call.  Then he says no...I show that you have been having intermitant dsl outages all day, to a point where they are now about 2 minutes apart.  I tell him yeah, thats what I told the other guy when a minute after my 0% packet loss I was back up to 100% loss.  He says...hm...they just issued a full dsl outage report for your area and have entered a repair ticket to go fix the problem.   I say "great, I'll check back in a few hours. Thanks for the help".

Seriously, wtf? I mean I know tsg's have to deal with people who don't know enough to turn on the power sometimes, but you've got my entire trouble history right in front of your face on screen and you know damn well it shows the problem has NEVER been on my end of things. 

The irritating thing is this took up an hour of my Sunday and I know in 2  months I'll have to go through the same thing again.  I suppose I should just be thankful for having dsl in this tiny town though eh? Heh.

On the plus side, while the net was down I got some laundry done and played several hours worth of Puzzle Quest from xbl arcade.  A most enjoyable game.

Posted by Raider30 @ 8:23 pm EDT | Permalink | 1 Comments

Still no fancy blog avatar....

Greetings all,

Been a good long while since I blogged and who knows when it'll happen again so get your fix now.  No charge.

Couple of things today.   Number one - its cold, damn cold here in Iowa.  It's a balmy -3 degrees right now and expected to possibly reach -17 later tonight.  Seriously, thats not even fun.  It just sucks.  My boy got a new sled for Christmas and hasn't had a chance to use it because all the 'global warming' has prevented a good solid snowfall and now that we finally have 2-4 inches its too cold to let him go out for more than a few minutes and face it, that just stinks.  Global warming my eye.

Second and probably the most ironic and amusing thing I've seen since I was in Rome this summer and saw the Ministry of Infrastructure building covered in scaffolding and all torn to heck, was this:  I'm in Target today and I walk down the xbox360 isle and lo and behold there is the store model 360 flashing the Red Rings of Death.   Seriously, how funny is that?  Problems with the 360?  What problems?  Heh.


Posted by Raider30 @ 9:55 pm EDT | Permalink | 2 Comments

On Sheep, Wolves and Sheepdogs....

Greetings all,

The following blog will be long but I truly hope people will take the time to read what is written below.  It is an essay by Lt. Col. Dave Grossman.  It is something I believe everyone should read and think about - especially those in the military and law enforcement communities.   Most important are the last few sentences,  please think carefully on what they say.   Comments, concerns and questions are welcome.  - Beau aka Raider30

**************************************

ON SHEEP, WOLVES, AND SHEEPDOGS
By LTC(RET) Dave Grossman, RANGER,
Ph.D., author of "On Killing."

"Honor never grows old, and honor rejoices the heart of age. It does so because honor is, finally, about defending those noble and worthy things that deserve defending, even if it comes at a high cost. In our time, that may mean social disapproval, public scorn, hardship, persecution, or as always, even death itself. The question remains: What is worth defending? What is worth dying for? What is worth living for?"

- William J. Bennett
- in a lecture to the United States Naval Academy November 24, 1997


One Vietnam veteran, an old retired colonel, once said this to me: "Most of the people in our society are sheep. They are kind, gentle, productive creatures who can only hurt one another by accident." This is true. Remember, the murder rate is six per 100,000 per year, and the aggravated assault rate is four per 1,000 per year. What this means is that the vast majority of Americans are not inclined to hurt one another.

Some estimates say that two million Americans are victims of violent crimes every year, a tragic, staggering number, perhaps an all-time record rate of violent crime. But there are almost 300 million Americans, which means that the odds of being a victim of violent crime is considerably less than one in a hundred on any given year. Furthermore, since many violent crimes are committed by repeat offenders, the actual number of violent citizens is considerably less than two million.

Thus there is a paradox, and we must grasp both ends of the situation: We may well be in the most violent times in history, but violence is still remarkably rare. This is because most citizens are kind, decent people who are not capable of hurting each other, except by accident or under extreme provocation. They are sheep.

I mean nothing negative by calling them sheep. To me, it is like the pretty, blue robin's egg. Inside it is soft and gooey but someday it will grow into something wonderful. But the egg cannot survive without its hard blue shell.

Police officers, soldiers, and other warriors are like that shell, And someday the civilization they protect will grow into something wonderful. For now, though, they need warriors to protect them from the predators.

"Then there are the wolves," the old war veteran said, "and the wolves feed on the sheep without mercy." Do you believe there are wolves out there who will feed on the flock without mercy? You better believe it. There are evil men in this world and they are capable of evil deeds. The moment you forget that or pretend it is not so, you become a sheep. There is no safety in denial.

"Then there are sheepdogs," he went on, "and I'm a sheepdog. I live to protect the flock and confront the wolf."

If you have no capacity for violence then you are a healthy productive citizen, a sheep. If you have a capacity for violence and no empathy for your fellow citizens, then you have defined an aggressive sociopath, a wolf.

But what if you have a capacity for violence, and a deep love for your fellow citizens? What do you have then? A sheepdog, a warrior, someone who is walking the hero's path. Someone who can walk into the heart of darkness, into the universal human phobia, and walk out unscathed.

Let me expand on this old soldier's excellent model of the sheep, wolves, and sheepdogs. We know that the sheep live in denial, that is what makes them sheep. They do not want to believe that there is evil in the world. They can accept the fact that fires can happen, which is why they want fire extinguishers, fire sprinklers, fire alarms and fire exits throughout their kids' schools.

But many of them are outraged at the idea of putting an armed police officer in their kid's school. Our children are thousands of times more likely to be killed or seriously injured by school violence than fire, but the sheep's only response to the possibility of violence is denial. The idea of someone coming to kill or harm their child is just too hard, and so they chose the path of denial. The sheep generally do not like the sheepdog. He looks a lot like the wolf. He has fangs and the capacity for violence. The difference, though, is that the sheepdog must not, can not and will not ever harm the sheep. Any sheep dog who intentionally harms the lowliest little lamb will be punished and removed. The world cannot work any other way, at least not in a representative democracy or a republic such as ours.

Still, the sheepdog disturbs the sheep. He is a constant reminder that there are wolves in the land. They would prefer that he didn't tell them where to go, or give them traffic tickets, or stand at the ready in our airports, in camouflage fatigues, holding an M-16. The sheep would much rather have the sheepdog cash in his fangs, spray paint himself white, and go, "Baa." Until the wolf shows up. Then the entire flock tries desperately to hide behind one lonely sheepdog.

The students, the victims, at Columbine High School were big, tough high school students, and under ordinary circumstances they would not have had the time of day for a police officer. They were not bad kids; they just had nothing to say to a cop. When the school was under attack, however, and SWAT teams were clearing the rooms and hallways, the officers had to physically peel those clinging, sobbing kids off of them. This is how the little lambs feel about their sheepdog when the wolf is at the door.

Look at what happened after September 11, 2001 when the wolf pounded hard on the door. Remember how America, more than ever before, felt differently about their law enforcement officers and military personnel? Remember how many times you heard the word hero?

Understand that there is nothing morally superior about being a sheepdog; it is just what you choose to be. Also understand that a sheepdog is a funny critter: He is always sniffing around out on the perimeter, checking the breeze, barking at things that go bump in the night, and yearning for a righteous battle. That is, the young sheepdogs yearn for a righteous battle. The old sheepdogs are a little older and wiser, but they move to the sound of the guns when needed, right along with the young ones.

Here is how the sheep and the sheepdog think differently. The sheep pretend the wolf will never come, but the sheepdog lives for that day. After the attacks on September 11, 2001, most of the sheep, that is, most citizens in America said, "Thank God I wasn't on one of those planes." The sheepdogs, the warriors, said, "Dear God, I wish I could have been on one of those planes. Maybe I could have made a difference." When you are truly transformed into a warrior and have truly invested yourself into warriorhood, you want to be there. You want to be able to make a difference.

There is nothing morally superior about the sheepdog, the warrior, but he does have one real advantage. Only one. And that is that he is able to survive and thrive in an environment that destroys 98 percent of the population.

There was research conducted a few years ago with individuals convicted of violent crimes. These cons were in prison for serious, predatory crimes of violence: assaults, murders and killing law enforcement officers. The vast majority said that they specifically targeted victims by body language: Slumped walk, passive behavior and lack of awareness. They chose their victims like big cats do in Africa, when they select one out of the herd that is least able to protect itself.

Some people may be destined to be sheep and others might be genetically primed to be wolves or sheepdogs. But I believe that most people can choose which one they want to be, and I'm proud to say that more and more Americans are choosing to become sheepdogs.

Seven months after the attack on September 11, 2001, Todd Beamer was honored in his hometown of Cranbury, New Jersey. Todd, as you recall, was the man on Flight 93 over Pennsylvania who called on his cell phone to alert an operator from United Airlines about the hijacking. When he learned of the other three passenger planes that had been used as weapons, Todd dropped his phone and uttered the words, "Let's roll," which authorities believe was a signal to the other passengers to confront the terrorist hijackers. In one hour, a transformation occurred among the passengers - athletes, business people and parents. -- from sheep to sheepdogs and together they fought the wolves, ultimately saving an unknown number of lives on the ground.


"There is no safety for honest men except by believing all possible evil of evil men."

- Edmund Burke

Here is the point I like to emphasize, especially to the thousands of police officers and soldiers I speak to each year. In nature the sheep, real sheep, are born as sheep. Sheepdogs are born that way, and so are wolves. They didn't have a choice. But you are not a critter. As a human being, you can be whatever you want to be. It is a conscious, moral decision.

If you want to be a sheep, then you can be a sheep and that is okay, but you must understand the price you pay. When the wolf comes, you and your loved ones are going to die if there is not a sheepdog there to protect you. If you want to be a wolf, you can be one, but the sheepdogs are going to hunt you down and you will never have rest, safety, trust or love. But if you want to be a sheepdog and walk the warrior's path, then you must make a conscious and moral decision every day to dedicate, equip and prepare yourself to thrive in that toxic, corrosive moment when the wolf comes knocking at the door.

For example, many officers carry their weapons in church. They are well concealed in ankle holsters, shoulder holsters or inside-the-belt holsters tucked into the small of their backs. Anytime you go to some form of religious service, there is a very good chance that a police officer in your congregation is carrying. You will never know if there is such an individual in your place of worship, until the wolf appears to massacre you and your loved ones.

I was training a group of police officers in Texas, and during the break, one officer asked his friend if he carried his weapon in church. The other cop replied, "I will never be caught without my gun in church." I asked why he felt so strongly about this, and he told me about a cop he knew who was at a church massacre in Ft. Worth, Texas in 1999. In that incident, a mentally deranged individual came into the church and opened fire, gunning down fourteen people. He said that officer believed he could have saved every life that day if he had been carrying his gun. His own son was shot, and all he could do was throw himself on the boy's body and wait to die. That cop looked me in the eye and said, "Do you have any idea how hard it would be to live with yourself after that?"

Some individuals would be horrified if they knew this police officer was carrying a weapon in church. They might call him paranoid and would probably scorn him. Yet these same individuals would be enraged and would call for "heads to roll" if they found out that the airbags in their cars were defective, or that the fire extinguisher and fire sprinklers in their kids' school did not work. They can accept the fact that fires and traffic accidents can happen and that there must be safeguards against them. Their only response to the wolf, though, is denial, and all too often their response to the sheepdog is scorn and disdain. But the sheepdog quietly asks himself, "Do you have any idea how hard it would be to live with yourself if your loved ones were attacked and killed, and you had to stand there helplessly because you were unprepared for that day?"

It is denial that turns people into sheep. Sheep are psychologically destroyed by combat because their only defense is denial, which is counterproductive and destructive, resulting in fear, helplessness and horror when the wolf shows up. Denial kills you twice. It kills you once, at your moment of truth when you are not physically prepared: you didn't bring your gun, you didn't train. Your only defense was wishful thinking. Hope is not a strategy. Denial kills you a second time because even if you do physically survive, you are psychologically shattered by your fear, helplessness and horror at your moment of truth.

Gavin de Becker puts it like this in Fear Less, his superb post-9/11 book, which should be required reading for anyone trying to come to terms with our current world situation: "...denial can be seductive, but it has an insidious side effect. For all the peace of mind deniers think they get by saying it isn't so, the fall they take when faced with new violence is all the more unsettling." Denial is a save-now-pay-later scheme, a contract written entirely in small print, for in the long run, the denying person knows the truth on some level. And so the warrior must strive to confront denial in all aspects of his life, and prepare himself for the day when evil comes.

If you are warrior who is legally authorized to carry a weapon and you step outside without that weapon, then you become a sheep, pretending that the bad man will not come today. No one can be "on" 24/7, for a lifetime. Everyone needs down time. But if you are authorized to carry a weapon, and you walk outside without it, just take a deep breath, and say this to yourself..."Baa."

This business of being a sheep or a sheep dog is not a yes-no dichotomy. It is not an all-or-nothing, either-or choice. It is a matter of degrees, a continuum. On one end is an abject, head-in-the-sand-sheep and on the other end is the ultimate warrior. Few people exist completely on one end or the other.

Most of us live somewhere in between. Since 9-11 almost everyone in America took a step up that continuum, away from denial. The sheep took a few steps toward accepting and appreciating their warriors, and the warriors started taking their job more seriously. The degree to which you move up that continuum, away from sheephood and denial, is the degree to which you and your loved ones will survive, physically and psychologically at your moment of truth.

*********************************************************

Posted by Raider30 @ 5:41 pm EDT | Permalink | 0 Comments

A response...

Following the link(assuming I can get it to work) is my response to another's blog.  I did leave it in his comments section but as blogs tend to fade off pretty quickly I wanted to make sure those who were interested(because isn't everyone insterested in what I have to say? ) had a chance to read.  Also because honestly if I could cause even one person to think about cops and what they do before offering opinions on them and how they did/did not do their job, then it would be worth it.

I'd also like to say that even though I jump on Styro a bit, I don't think he's a bad guy and should I run across him in a game of Halo 3 I would gladly welcome him onto my team and we could kill some timmies together. 

www.2old2play.com/Blog/NotStyro


Wow. I so do not even know where to begin with your latest Styro. The only reason I'm even going to respond to this is so that people who read your blog will know the correct version of things rather than, what appears to be your obvious misstating of the facts to support your anti-police sentiment. So lets get to it:

" And yes, questionable uses, or abuses, are listed."

Every use of the taser mentioned in the article was within the policy guidelines of the police department. Therefore it is erroneous for you to lable them abuses simply to support your personal opinion.

"Now as some of you may know, I tend to hold very civil rights in very high regard."

You may hold them in high regard but your lack of knowledge about them is appalling. Its unfortunate because you might endanger yourself or someone you care about one day because of this lack of knowledge. I've already covered the complete lack of a right to resist an arrest - even an unlawful one, so I'm not going over that again with you.

"I have long known that one doesn't shoot another in the back or is fleeing/retreating"

Please tell me where you came by this knowledge. The fact is you are totally incorrect with your above statement. I can off the top of my head give you 3 reasons why you could/would shoot someone who is fleeing or retreating.

1) Studies by Dr. Bill Lewinski out of Mankato University in Minnesota(I believe it was Mankato) have shown that often times when a subject has been shot in the back the officer actually made the decision to shoot when the subject was facing the officer. The time delay from the cognizant thought to shoot being made and the physical reaction of pulling the trigger give the subject time to spin around, thus when the trigger is pulled the subject has presented his back to the officer. This same time delay is also what stops the officer from stopping his finger from pulling the trigger. Thus on its face it appears the officer shot a subject in the back intentionally when in reality that is not the case.

2) You are allowed to to shoot a fleeing subject if you have probable cause to believe that subject poses a significant threat of physical injury or death to the officer or others.

3) Retreating subjects: If the subject draws a gun, fires at you, and then retreats backwards to a position of cover - by your reasoning an officer would be unable to return fire because the offender was moving AWAY from them. Ridiculous.

"In a home invasion/burglary situation you will be arrested as well as any suspect (should s/he survive). "

You are again incorrect. If someone invades your home - in most states you are allowed to defend yourself from harm. Please note I did not say you were allowed to use deadly force to protect PROPERTY. In fact you are not. However, you may use deadly force to protect your person. In Des Moines, IA last year an elderly woman fired a shotgun blast through her window that lead to a fire escape at a person who was attempting to break into her apartment. The subject was later found a short distance away dead. The woman was not charged. Rightly so.

"I could go into how dishonorable and cowardly it appears to fire at someone that is retreating or fleeing. I hope those officers were soundly chastised by their commanders & fellow officers."

Again you fail to look at the alternatives and what tool in the police toolbox will safely allow the officers to take a subject into custody with the least amount of damage done to the subject AND the officer. I find it cowardly and dishonorable to lob insults at a group of people who day in and day out put themselves in harms way to protect those who can't/won't protect themselves, while you sit and do nothing to further educate yourself on the realities of what they go through daily.

"The other controversial issue was shocking the pregnant woman...So he reached in to the car to pull her out and then shocked her when she started to defend herself."

Why do you misrepresent what actually happened in this case? Oh, I know why - so that you can present your side of things in a manner skewed towards supporting your misdirected dislike of the field of policing.

Christ, even the article you linked to clearly states that the subject only let the officer know she was pregnant **AFTER** she was tased. Why would you lead your readers to conclude that the officer intentionally tased a pregnant woman? Why wouldn't you tell your readers what really happened?

What really happened is this:
"Officer initiated traffic stop when susp failed to stop for stop sign.Susp refused to stop vehicle. Officer was finally able to make contact with susp & she began yelling & swearing at officer. Refused to produce D.L. & related paperwork. Susp refused to comply with officer's orders. Susp continued to refuse swearing & yelling. Susp then placed under arrest; refused to exit vehicle, offcr physically removed susp from behind the wheel. Susp began to resist officer, hitting him, pulling away & screaming. Officer deployed taser, def was warned at least twice that she would be tasered. After she was tasered she adv officer she was pregnant. Susp was medically cleared at BGMC."

Quite a bit different than your version Styro. I would plead with you to open your mind to your bias's and please try to educate yourself with the knowledge and resources that are out there.

@Dastard: I'm unaware of states that allow you to shoot someone fleeing from your property, having commited a property crime against you. Generally speaking, as I mentioned above you are not allowed to protect your property with leathal force. Nor are police officers, again generally speaking, allowed to shoot, with a firearm, a fleeing felon. For a more complete view of the "fleeing felon' rule google: Tennessee v. Garner.

Posted by Raider30 @ 9:46 pm EDT | Permalink | 5 Comments

Taser

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20071008/us_nm/weapons_stun_dc

Sorry I don't know how to embed the link so you just have to click on it.  But I saw this and immediately thought of the conversation a few weeks ago regarding the use of the taser.  As I said then, the use of the taser is a safe and less tramautic use of force when compared to alternate options. 

The guy from Amnesty International is a dolt.  I'm not usually a name caller, but it frustrates me to to no end when people refuse to recognize the reality of life when its right in front of them.   His complaint is that the taser was used often against people who were unarmed.  No shit?  Really?  What he fails to mention is that the alternatives(ie. soft techniques - wrestling around with a subject trying to subdue them and hard techniques - strikes) would likely have caused the subject and possibly the officers MORE damage to their body.  Not to mention putting both officer and subject in more danger.  The fact that he ignores this line of reasoning in favor of sticking to his opinion that tasers are bad just shows that he's not interested in whats best for people, he's more interested in believing in his disconnected from reality view of the world.

Posted by Raider30 @ 7:44 am EDT | Permalink | 2 Comments