I hate my ISP
About 10 minutes after 8 last night, our internet connection went pfft.
If were were back in the States, this would not be a problem. Someone at the Internet department at Cox would check the network, reboot the servers, and boom. Net's back. They'd do it at 8 PM, 11 PM, 4 AM or whenever. Actually, they wouldn't have to do it, because they have a system good enough that they wouldn't black out what is essentially an entire city block for one faulty little network switch.
But this is not the States. This is Britain, and Britain is not a 24-hour society. The doors to our ISP's offices close at 8:00, and if you have a problem between 8 PM and 10 AM the next day, you can consider yourself fucked.
Here's the thing, though. Our ISP (Keycom, in case you want to avoid them in the future) is a company dedicated to providing telecom services to university students across the UK. University students who stay up way late at night to work, or to talk to people around the world, or perhaps to just watch a bit of TV, or maybe even find some porn. Late-night is peak time for Internet use wherever you go. To not have at least someone on call to go over to the office and reboot the server if it crashes at, oh, JUST AS YOU'RE PULLING OUT OF THE FUCKING CAR PARK, is absurd.
Anyway, bad enough we were blacked out last night... I had work due. Jess was smart. She turned hers in hours earlier. I was not so smart.
I threw my lappy into my bag and ran down to the bus stop. There was a Starbucks in Camden Town. Starbucks has wifi. It's 9:00. Starbucks will be open, right?
HAH! They closed at 8. Once again cursing the English, I started up Camden High Street, looking for somewhere--anywhere--that might have wifi. (Why did I not go to my school's library? Because they close at 8 too. Bastards.) So I hear one guy say to another guy, "Yo, yo," kinda quietly, followed by footsteps behind me as I hauled ass down through the Camden market. If they were trying to mug me, they sucked... Their feet kept scraping the pavement. They were not skilled in the art of the ninja, and so they missed out on a year-old laptop and about 80p in change.
I turned the corner and dashed into the Holiday Inn, and asked the desk guy if he knew someone around who had a hotspot. "We do, sir," was the very welcome response. I paid £4 for 30 minutes of airtime, got my classwork sent in, and walked back through the market, past the guy at the tube station offering me weed/blow/horse/hos, and back to the bus stop.
I should bill Keycom for the £6 I spent because of their piss-poor service.
If were were back in the States, this would not be a problem. Someone at the Internet department at Cox would check the network, reboot the servers, and boom. Net's back. They'd do it at 8 PM, 11 PM, 4 AM or whenever. Actually, they wouldn't have to do it, because they have a system good enough that they wouldn't black out what is essentially an entire city block for one faulty little network switch.
But this is not the States. This is Britain, and Britain is not a 24-hour society. The doors to our ISP's offices close at 8:00, and if you have a problem between 8 PM and 10 AM the next day, you can consider yourself fucked.
Here's the thing, though. Our ISP (Keycom, in case you want to avoid them in the future) is a company dedicated to providing telecom services to university students across the UK. University students who stay up way late at night to work, or to talk to people around the world, or perhaps to just watch a bit of TV, or maybe even find some porn. Late-night is peak time for Internet use wherever you go. To not have at least someone on call to go over to the office and reboot the server if it crashes at, oh, JUST AS YOU'RE PULLING OUT OF THE FUCKING CAR PARK, is absurd.
Anyway, bad enough we were blacked out last night... I had work due. Jess was smart. She turned hers in hours earlier. I was not so smart.
I threw my lappy into my bag and ran down to the bus stop. There was a Starbucks in Camden Town. Starbucks has wifi. It's 9:00. Starbucks will be open, right?
HAH! They closed at 8. Once again cursing the English, I started up Camden High Street, looking for somewhere--anywhere--that might have wifi. (Why did I not go to my school's library? Because they close at 8 too. Bastards.) So I hear one guy say to another guy, "Yo, yo," kinda quietly, followed by footsteps behind me as I hauled ass down through the Camden market. If they were trying to mug me, they sucked... Their feet kept scraping the pavement. They were not skilled in the art of the ninja, and so they missed out on a year-old laptop and about 80p in change.
I turned the corner and dashed into the Holiday Inn, and asked the desk guy if he knew someone around who had a hotspot. "We do, sir," was the very welcome response. I paid £4 for 30 minutes of airtime, got my classwork sent in, and walked back through the market, past the guy at the tube station offering me weed/blow/horse/hos, and back to the bus stop.
I should bill Keycom for the £6 I spent because of their piss-poor service.