Subj : USB locking up - foll To : Ky Moffet From : Barry Martin Date : Fri Sep 18 2020 14:06:00 Hi Ky! > Not-totally-unexpected follow-up to this portion: > > KM> Did I gripe about CenturyLink yet? they changed my loop -- it got > So latter portion of the morning. I'm up here in the Computer Room with > Autumn. Not too much for her to do up here but it's different, she's > somewhat interested in the computers and projects; the Computer Desk has > a shelf that pulls out which she uses to draw. I notice the phone is > off-hook; figure a phone call is being made downstairs while Autumn is > occupied up here. KM> Who is Autumn?? Our six year old granddaughter. > Eventually getting to be lunchtime so we go downstairs. "You were on > the phone?" "No, why?" Quick check: phones are on the hook. Oh-oh! I > have an 'indoor demarc' which I created decades ago so if there was a > problem with the phones could disconnect and plug in the 'emergency > phone'. Plug that in - dead. Not even dead air. KM> Well, that's not promising! Nope. Wasn't all that unexpected, just verifed it was outside. BTW, in the past have found one simply doesn't unplug the house and then plug the emergency phone right away: one needs to wait about a minute for the phone system to reset. > Call the landline from my cell phone: busy. So the outside line probably > shorted out. It had drooped from when we had the derecho (big wind > storm) last month. Was going to call and have fixed. So I'm thinking > the phone line outside stretched a little more, tore the insulation and > now the two wires are touching each other. KM> Or just plain pulled loose at some point, but the copper break is KM> invisible inside the stretchy insulation. Not surprising after KM> the whole durn thing tried to blow away completely! In this case the line pulled loose during the derecho: I was taking pictures of the neighbour's tree that had fallen into our back yard (more for insurance purposes) and 'noticed' a largish branch had become entangld in the lines to the house (electrical, old cable, phone), At that time noticed the telephone lines were lower than normal (one is live with voice, the other was for the data line). > Called CenturyLink's repair; fiddle with the automated portion for a > while (four minutes?), then get to a live person -- we'll just say "not > from this country", plus I could here another person nearby in the > background with the same accent. KM> Philippines. Being quite annoyed with their lack of usefulness, I KM> asked their Twitter rep, who at least makes an effort, but KM> couldn't do anything for me. Hmm: quite possible. And now that you mentioned it I recall that bit of trivia. I can't say the guy I was talking to was unhelpful (unlike the idiots I talked to years ago with my DSL noise issue): he did run some tests which pretty much verified what I had already checked but probably 99% of the customers don't have the background. The only thing I found annoying was couldn't get repair out the next day as in the past -- OTOH not his fault, maybe a bunch of the local repair crew were assigned to repair the hurricane damage.... Not like we don't have the cell phones as an alternative. KM> Tho the accent (all alike, all SIX of the different pleasant but KM> useless people I spoke with) sounded to me vaguely African, so at KM> a guess, migrants. Definitely not native Spanish speakers, nor KM> like any Filipinos I've known. My guy might have been an Indian immigrating to the Phillipines! > So I called Wednesday late morning; a > tech won't be out until Friday sometime between 8:15 and 4:15. ...Keep > the cell phone near! KM> Indeed... I don't even have a landline anymore, other than what KM> the DSL uses. I don't use the phone enough to bother beyond the KM> cheap Verizon prepay (I have it set at $15/mo. but if you only KM> use it two days per month, could pay as little as $5 -- it's two KM> bucks per day of use, no limits) but someone gift me an older KM> iPhone which I keep meaning to hook up with Ting... KM> pay-as-you-use, no contract, $6.95/mo. minimum. That sounds like a very good deal! We're with TracFone which around here piggybacks on Verizon. Mine is $25 every other month (so $13 a month) and his is $9 every month -- earlier this year they screwed up the automatic payment so service was temporarily dropped. Doesn't use it enough to notice was 'dead' for around a week. Good plans for our use but I don't think would be good for you as not enough data. KM> And found the number of the very good local Centurylink tech KM> (knew I saved his card for a reason!), called him, he's still on KM> the job and is supposed to come check things out later today. KM> Whether he'll be able to FIX anything is a different matter. Good! Hopefully something relatively simple. Years ago the problem I had had with the sometimes slow to dropping out DSL was a bad port at the Central Office. They physically moved by line from one computer to another (I was told 'across the room') and that fixed that! ¯ BarryMartin3@ ® ¯ @MyMetronet.NET ® .... Elbow macaroni. Why not wrist, hip or knee macaroni? --- MultiMail/Win32 v0.47 þ wcECHO 4.2 ÷ ILink: The Safe BBS þ Bettendorf, IA --- QScan/PCB v1.20a / 01-0462 * Origin: ILink: CFBBS | cfbbs.no-ip.com | 856-933-7096 (454:1/1) .