Eli Hodapp

9/11 ramblings.

Reposted from The Naperville Potluck

I have the utmost respect for everyone who lost their lives in the attack, from the people working in the building to the firefighters and police officers who sacrificed everything in the line of duty. I still clearly remember my reaction the morning of September 11th, 2001. I was getting ready to go to work, and flipped on the TV while I sat there quickly scarfing down some frosted mini wheats with a measly sprinkling of milk, having gotten the last of the gallon.

My reaction was confusion, not confusion of what would drive someone to do something like this… but confusion as to why the TV station I was watching was playing a movie so early in the morning. I watched for a few minutes, trying to figure out if what I was watching was Die Hard, or some similar attack on New York City action movie I’d never seen. I remember thinking how realistic the special effects were and how interesting the cinematography was, using the news anchors to progress the plot of this mysterious movie I’d never seen before.

Looking at the clock and realizing I was on the verge of running late, I figured I’d look up the TV listings when I got to work if I still at all cared what movie it was, assuming I didn’t forget about it on the way. Being pressed for time and originally turning on the TV to check the weather to see if I needed to bring a coat with me or not I grabbed the remote and flipped channels hoping the catch the end of some morning news show. Then it hit me.

This “movie” was playing on every channel. It wasn’t a movie, it was real. I ended up not going to work, along with nearly everyone else at my company and instead watching the live news coverage with my family. To this day, remembering the feeling of confusion trying to figure out what “movie” I was watching changing instantly to complete horror when I realized what was happening when I changed channels still creeps me out.

Having grown up in this country, living my whole life without any major threat, (I mean, I guess I grew up during Desert Storm, but I don’t think anyone ever had any reason to feel at all threatened for their immediate safety or lifestyle.) I’ve always naively felt immune to this sort of thing. Terrorism? That’s the kind of stuff you hear about when you watch the world news and they talk about the Middle East. As cliche as the phrase “in a post 9/11 world” is, I think very few people, myself included would appreciate the things we have in this country as much as I do now without this eye opening experience. Previous to the attacks, I never had any reason to ever consider how much is hanging by a thread that could all be taken away in the blink of an eye by a small band of insane people willing to stop at nothing to destroy America.

I suppose it was a semi-justified sense of false security. After all, who would be dumb enough to mess with the greatest country on the planet? Who would be powerful enough to destroy not one, but two vital skyscrapers in the New York skyline? Before all this transpired, why would you ever worry about something like this happening?

Since then, I’ve found the reaction of our government as a whole to be somewhat embarrassing. I don’t think the Patriot Act makes anyone feel safer. Our retaliation to the attacks by just carpet bombing any area that could possibly be harboring any terrorists was ridiculous, the “war on terror” has been about as effective as the “war on drugs”. Dragging Saddam Hussein in to this fiasco further complicated things. So far we’ve spent over half a trillion dollars on military action resulting in a response from the September 11th attacks.

Are we any safer? It seems to me our senseless aggression in the Middle East has accomplished nothing but giving even more reason for these extremists to hate us and in turn seek whatever retaliation they can.

I hate you, Covad.

I’ve been having problems with my DSL lately, I keep losing sync randomly, ping times are all over the place, and my transfer speed vary wildly. I called Speakeasy about this, they were extremely helpful in doing everything they could possibly do on their end and recommended dispatching a technician to see if there is any problems with something on site. They were supposed to show up sometime between 9:00 AM and 1:00 PM.

Around 2:00 PM this was posted to my trouble ticket on my account page-

“FST 6401 Brian d reports; I arrived at the client prem-while parking I called the client to find out the restaurant name. The district manager-Peter answered. He told me he didn’t know of any DSL trouble and unless he called me back in 15 minutes not to stop by. I waited, he did not call back. The client Peter said his DSL is working-no problem and did not want me to work on it today.”

So basically, I have trouble with my DSL over a holiday weekend, their arms are kind of tied because there’s like one Covad tech working the area, they squeeze me in as soon as they can today. The idiot parks his car, calls Noodles, they say their DSL is working fine and he’s like “Well my job is done here!”

So I email this to Speakeasy-

“It’s pretty unbelievable to me that a technician can get dispatched to fix what seems to me to be a pretty well documented problem with my DSL, talk to someone whose name isn’t on the account as the billing or technical contact OR anywhere on the trouble ticket who quite obviously has no idea what they’re talking about and just decide “Well, that’s that! Nothing to see here!”

I mean, at bare minimum wouldn’t the technician want to get out of their truck and give things a once over since they drove all the way out anyway? I seriously can’t even begin to understand the logic, especially with the price of gas these days, why a tech wouldn’t at least want to be a little proactive especially given the intermittent nature of this problem. As previously noted in this ticket, the line tested poorly enough to get a tech dispatched. Who fixed it in the meantime? A kind old traveling wise wizard with a magical wand that has a knack for fixing line errors and low bitrates?

My mind is just kind of blown with the continual problems I seem to have with Covad for anything to do with my personal account, business account, as well as accounts of customers of mine who I’ve recommended to Speakeasy. Speakeasy’s service and support is absolutely outstanding, and I honestly don’t do business with a company in my personal or professional life that I am more satisfied with… until something needs to be handed off to Covad.

It’s kind of like when you go to the grocery store and you have a sweet old lady who scans every item with care and precision, the whole time smiling ear to ear and asking you about your day only to have your groceries slide down the conveyer belt to their doom, bagged by some green haired pimply high school kid with a dozen facial piercings who quite literally could only do a worse job bagging your things if they had some type of hydraulic ram rod to further stuff and break everything you just bought.

I wait with baited breath and fingers crossed that the loaner modem arrives tomorrow and fixes my problem, either that, or whatever magical incantation the traveling wizard was kind enough to cast on my DSL continues enchanting my line.”

We’ll see how much free stuff I get.