AT&T sent me a bill for $0.00
After I canceled my cell phone with AT&T, they sent me a bill for zero dollars and zero cents. Check this out:
And it’s due by Jul 26. 2011! Should I write a check for $0.00 and send it to them?
Archive for July, 2011
What could really happen if Congress doesn’t raise the debt ceiling
A good read, by Dan Ferris in Extreme Value:
What could really happen if Congress doesn’t raise the debt ceiling
http://www.thedailycrux.com/content/8195/Dan_Ferris
In the meantime, in the weeks and months that follow August 2, something unexpected would happen… something nobody in government wants you to know. You’d find out how much you don’t need the government.
Networks are getting worse
It seems to me, networks (in general) are getting worse.
My network here at home, AT&T U-verse, sucks in general. It works enough of the time that I don’t bother looking for another. But it’s not good.
Example: I was downloading a radio show from one of my favorite DJ’s, S.A.M.E. Radio (Steve Anderson Music), and the file gets to about 60% or so and then just stalls out. My downloader (wget in this case) eventually times out and then automatically re-tries with resume, and gets the rest of the file. This happens every week.
Example: I help a local non-profit down the street with their networking needs. Almost every day, their network fails completely, for no apparent reason. We’ve tried changing routers, other networking equipment, testing for zombie machines hogging network, etc. We’ve called the guys out there to check the line; they say all is well. But I don’t think so. No one seems to be able to find out the cause and fix the issue. It’s an ongoing issue.
Example: Recently, I needed to transfer a huge file (about 30G) from a remote server to my own machine or one of the servers that I control. It was basically a backup. It took me about a week to finally get this friggin’ file. I tried transferring with gFTP (Linux) but that timed-out. I tried transferring with scp from the command-line, but that timed-out too. I tried using wget/browser via Apache, but that also timed-out. I tried initiating the transfer from the server to me, and from me to the server. Nothing worked; the transfer started off great and fast, but then just fell to nothing and eventually timed out. The only thing that finally worked was this: I sent the file to another linux server I control (which happened relatively quickly but still took all night), then transfered the file to my work computer, then broke it up in to 1.5G pieces so that it would fit in a FAT32 filesystem, then put it on my 32G USB drive, then brought it home and copied all that into my home linux machine, then cat’ed it all back together again. All because of crappy networks.
Example: I was downloading some software from SourceForge with wget on the command-line (of course). It got 80% done, then just timed out. I let it sit there for a while and it finally re-started, resumed, and finished the file.
Failures like this didn’t used to happen. Seems like they are happening a lot more these days. What’s the world comin’ to?!?
