Hey all, I guess this is the week of me only talking about personal things. We’ll be back on more fandom/book related things next week.
I’ve kept this really quiet, but my apartment complex has been having massive internet issues. It’s something that has been getting steadily worse over the past year (thanks pandemic), but it really got horrific around May. I discovered that I couldn’t stream on Twitch for more than a half hour, otherwise I’d drop frames and crash. It was to the point that I basically just gave up.
Other issues were that Mom would be kicked off randomly, which was bad because she works for the government and this was affecting her job. She’d be on calls with coworkers and suddenly she’d get disconnected.
While all this has been going on, several of our neighbors have moved in and out, and I’ve been noticing that things have just been getting worse. The last straw was last week, when Mom was kicked on and off the internet a grand total of 26 times in under an hour. Yes, that’s almost once every two minutes.
So we called our ISP and had a grand old time trying to troubleshoot. (I’m summarizing the four conversations, but suffice to say the Italian in Mom came out… Loudly.) Finally, during the fourth call we got them to agree to send someone out.
The gentleman from our ISP came on Monday, right after work. After he checked in with us, he went out to where the lines came in. This room (outside, which services our entire building) happens to be located right next to my room. The man opened the door… and let out swear word combinations that I hadn’t heard before. I popped my window and asked if everything was ok, and he asked if I would join him outside, as there was something he needed me to see.
So I masked up (because duh, and he was masked as well), and came out. He showed me a mess of cords and told me that he knew exactly why there were so many issues. And he wasn’t happy about it.
Apparently, there are supposed to be two lines for each apartment that run off the main lines from the ISP. But what was happening was when we had someone new move in, they weren’t setting them up on their clearly marked lines. No, they were splitting OUR lines, because ours happened to be the first they saw. What should have been an easy job just became a nightmare.
The poor man had to call a supervisor out, because this issue far exceeded our apartment. He apologized to me (and in turn Mom, but she was still inside) about the issue. Honestly, I was just glad for an answer.
The supervisor arrived along with an area manager, and the three set out to make things right. Very long story short, they had to let the other residents know, switch out their internet to the lines that were dedicated to them, and apologize for the inconvenience.
Suffice to say, they got our internet back online first, along with a wonderful discount. We got all new equipment too, because ours was burned out after having to run double-time for two years without anyone realizing it.
It’s been a couple days since then, and we haven’t had any issues. In fact, both yesterday and today I have done test Twitch streams, and all worked great. It looks like I’ll be able to stream in the afternoons as well as evenings. Yay!
So, I’m basically back to streaming. No set schedule yet, so ignore the sidebar for now. I’m still trying to lock down a schedule that will work for me. We shall see.
Until Next Time!
