Made it, got good news

[pseydtonne]

I made it through today fine. It sucked but it's over and so is that whole treadmill of selling. I am on the cooldown of this exercise now. In fact, I may get to help with some of the trainees for the last few days instead of having to sling calls.

I gave a coworker a ride home. His car died in the parking lot and he lives in Cambridge, another seven miles down the road from me. I'm also picking him up in the morning; since his shift is an hour earlier than mine, I need to sleep early.

You know what? It's over. I still have eight work days in Manchvegas but the real labor has ended. Nothing matters now. All I have to do is get through tomorrow and I'm on Arisia Time for four days. It'll be a relief.

My apartment is a serious mess. I have no time to clean until after the con. I need to take out the garbage.

Meanwhile, some good news for any New England Comcast cable modem customers in my LJ pod: the speeds are going up again for no extra money. As of January 26th Anyone with the regular 3000/256 will suddenly have 4000/384; anyone on the speed tier will go from 4000/384 to a frightening 6000/768. It's one of those "unplug the modem for sixty seconds and boom" gigs.

Ummm... and now I should get some chores down and pass out.

-stoked, Dante

Comments

[hakamadare.livejournal.com]

incidentally, when you get a moment, would you mind posting some makes and model numbers of modems that can support the higher speeds and associated sugary goodness? just in case, y'know, someone wanted to look around on eBay or whatnot. hypothetically.

oh, and p.s. i keep wanting to use the term "foobamaloo" (sp?) in technical conversation at work, e.g. when referring to the bizarre case design of the Sun Ultra 10.

[pseydtonne.livejournal.com]

The good ones for DOCSIS 2.0 compliance are:

• the Terayon TJ700 series (a small, blue and well-deisgned truck of a modem),
• the Motorola SB5120 (what I have) and SB5100 (more common), and
• the Toshiba PCX2600 (one of the newer lords of the church and a stable Mabel).

On my second tier would be:

• the D-Link DCM202 (decent but built in response to the DCM201, which overheats badly and requires that you take the front off),
• the Linksys BECM10v2 (fine as they go but Linksys expects you to upgrade something that should never be touched).

Whatever you do, avoid the RCAs. They suck. They overheat. Skip 'em.

[teddywolf.livejournal.com]

What about my old sharkfin?

[pseydtonne.livejournal.com]

If you're leasing it, go to the Malden office ASAP and swap it. I had to swap mine. The 3Com Home Connect Cable Modem (the official name of the Sharkfin) is not DOCSIS 1.1-compatible and Comcast is already up to DOCSIS 2.0. The term in the Knowledge Base is "decertified" -- it still works but that may change. This may explain any upstream issues you've had.

I swapped my Sharkfin about a month ago and the difference is startling. I didn't expect any difference at all. Then I compared my numbers and saw that they were much more like the spec (especially on the upstream) than I'd seen before.

You want to feel worse for Haka, though. He has an even older 3Com cable modem. Remember that one they had sitting on the floor over by what used to be and will soon again be the modem tech area? One of those. Yeah. Scary.

Here's a link to Comcast's rate-a-modem listings for customers. (http://faq.comcast.net/faq/answer.jsp?name=17905&cat=Connection&subcategory=Cable%20Modems) This is actually in easier read than the internal site although it's missing the blinking-light pictures.