Radar Jockey Dot Net

They finally did it. Another milestone here at Jimmy D’s Air Traffic Work Farm. We officially reached a 3:1 controller to supervisor ratio. When I got to work this Sunday morning, one of the busiest days of the week, we had nine controllers and three supervisors. I’m not including the two developmentals (trainees) because they aren’t even certified on one sector and cannot do anything by themselves. Three controllers have a supervisor all to themselves to watch them work. Super! There are a few things to keep in mind to put this happy occasion in perspective.

For one, a couple of years ago they wouldn’t even have considered staffing my area with less than 13 people, and that would have been considered short-handed. We are the busiest area in the building by far, over 30% more traffic then the next closest. We have eight sectors, and when things get really hectic, most of those sectors require two controllers and some even three. You can do the math. Not to mention you can’t have everyone “plugged in” all day without a break, so you need extra people to rotate others out for a rest. The maximum recommended time on position is two hours, but working heavy, complex traffic with weather impacting the operation, sometimes even one hour is exhausting. Tired controllers make mistakes, and the effect is cumulative over time as well. It’s called burn out.

Another is that today just happens to be a beautiful clear VFR day, so they figure they can safely handle it with nine people and they’re not even considering calling in overtime, if they could even get anyone to answer their phone. The problem is, in our world things happen suddenly and without warning. I can recall two important days here, both beautiful sunny days, when things just suddenly went to s***. One of those days was September 11, 2001. Do I really need to elaborate on that? Another was February 1, 2003. I doubt anyone reading this would know that date off the top of their head, but that was the day the space shuttle Columbia disintegrated over and into the airspace I was working at the time. The impact of that was that for rest of that day it was chaos as military and civilian planes converged on our area for search and rescue, salvage, news coverage, etc. and we dealt with rapidly changing Temporary Flight Restrictions and shifting identification requirements to enter those areas. Luckily, on both those days we had plenty of people on hand to handle the sudden workload safely.

Now, keep in mind not every day is clear and sunny down here on the Gulf Coast. In fact, we have more thunderstorm days a year than anywhere. Period. Thunderstorms and airplanes do not mix, and so they either have to stay on the ground, or fly around them. The airlines have schedules to keep and customers that get very cranky when they are delayed, so of course the preference is to get off the ground and find a way around or through a storm system. We have Traffic Management personnel who’s job it is to try and make everything go as smoothly as possible, routing aircraft around weather in advance, and trying not to overload any particular facility or sector with more aircraft than they can safely handle. Note I used the verb “try”. They’re not always successful. Sometimes with all the new routes and confusion and developing weather, many aircraft get squeezed into a small area that gets over-saturated. When that happens, sectors, areas or entire facilities go “down the tubes” where it’s a mad scramble for the people working just to keep airplanes from hitting. That takes lots of people, like I said earlier sometimes 3 per sector. Remember also I said we had eight sectors? And nine people this morning? The most we can optimistically hope for this summer (peak thunderstorm season here) with overtime called in or scheduled is maybe 12 people. Now that will be interesting.

Also disturbing is the fact this short staffing situation is going to get worse before it ever gets better. There are several of my co-workers that are eligible now to retire, and in a year there will be many more, most of whom will walk out the door and never look back. We are replacing those leaving with about an average of one certified controller a year. That’s right. The FAA says they are hiring thousands of controllers. No, they’re not! They’re hiring developmentals, many of whom are terminated, resign, or fail training. Those that are successful take anywhere from two to four years to certify. So out of all the developmentals we’ve hired for my area specifically in the last three years, and I can’t give an accurate number but it’s in the neighborhood of at least 20, only nine of those even progressed far enough to start on-the-job training (OJT). Of those, three more have failed out, and two have fully certified, with one more close to finishing his training. The jury is out on several of the few that remain in OJT. Compound that with a new training program that allows a developmental to be working the only sector he’s certified on, probably only a year and a half since he was hired off the street with no prior experience, at one of the busier air traffic control facilities in the world! That gives me lots of warm fuzzies. How about you?

The FAA admits they have staffing problems at a few facilities, but they would never allow that to jeopardize air safety. Uh huh. These people have lost all credibility with me, so I really don’t give a rat’s behind what they say, but let’s assume for the sake of argument that is true. Well, the staffing problem is going to be very real at most facilities around the nation, especially the busier ones. If it’s true that they won’t allow that to jeopardize safety, then the only option is going to be delays. Big delays. Major delays. Delays like we haven’t seen since the strike of 1981. I fly too, and will be this summer. I’ve already been the victim of delayed and canceled flights. I know how much it sucks and I’m sympathetic, however, you can’t fit 25 pounds of sand in a 10 pound bag, so if you’re heading to the airport pack a lunch and bring lots to read.

Finally, the FAA cannot solve this issue until they quit ignoring the elephant in the room. Controllers do not have a contract, and until the agency negotiates a fair collective bargaining agreement with us that we ratify, experience will continue to retire in droves and new hires will continue to refuse job offers and resign because of the pathetic working conditions and drastically lower salaries. The arrogance of this agency’s management is astounding because they know this is the case, but refuse to admit it and publicly say “Problem? What problem?” Folks,  there’s a bustle in the hedgerow, and it’s not the May Queen, it’s the chickens coming home to roost. Everybody will know soon enough that these idiots systematically dismantled the safest and most efficient air traffic system in the world both to feather their own nests and to cling to pig-headed political ideology. So when you’re sitting on the ramp in a packed, hot airplane for hours without food and water and the toilets are overflowing, or your flight is canceled and you miss your daughter’s wedding, pen a nice thank-you card to the architect of this mess, the ex-Administrator, Marion Blakey. I doubt she’ll read it. She’s busy as the half-million-dollar-a-year CEO of the Aerospace Industries Association. Oh, and I doubt she flies commercial.

Yay! This will officially be my first post about actual Air Traffic Control, which was initially going to be the primary focus of this blog (thus the title). Unfortunately, reality crept in and I found myself too fatigued from the real job to want to bother spending my free time reliving it in laborious narrative. In addition, I felt there were plenty of relatively popular blogs about ATC already, with authors that spoke with more authority than I, so why bother? But…

The other day I stumbled across a blog by a waiter who recounted daily events at his restaurant; dealings with customers, staff, managers, etc. It was entertaining stuff, and really gave a first hand look at what really happens in a restaurant, a la Anthony Bourdain’s Kitchen Confidential. There are people like me out there who were never a waiter nor have any real experience in the food service industry (though I did work at McDonald’s for a year), who are yet fascinated by the whole thing. There is also no small similarity between the atmosphere in a busy restaurant kitchen and a busy air traffic control facility. Take my word for it. I work in Hell’s Kitchen, if not in name only. With new inspiration, I’ve decided to try and regularly post about some of the chaotic, frustrating, maddening, and (hopefully) often humorous things that go on in a busy air traffic facility.

All that said, I’m not going to start this off with my own anecdote. Instead, I was sent the following article through my NATCA local. The words aren’t mine, though they could be, but are the responses of an old, experienced, and ready to retire controller to a letter written by a young, female “new hire”, and is addressed to future air traffic controllers. There isn’t anything here I could find to disagree with. At all.

I’m within months of retiring from a 20-year career as an air traffic controller. You could say I have a little bit of insight into the system, the FAA and the job. I recently received a forwarded email that was originally written by a 24 year old female controller, and it started me to thinking about what I would say to someone contemplating a career in ATC. This is based on her email, with thoughts of my own added.

Put down your copy of Pushing Tin.

The truth is, the job sucks, even for those of us who LOVE it. We are not appreciated by those that we protect, even though we save and protect more lives on a daily basis than any other profession.

The pilots don’t understand or even listen sometimes. The average airline passenger isn’t even aware of the role we play in their flight.

Everything we say is recorded, and we are responsible to back it up in a court of law should the unthinkable happen. We are responsible for knowing more rules than humanly possible. Frequently, the rules change. No mistakes are allowed.

We tend to have superiority complexes. We are in control. We control everything in our environment. It effects our personal life in ways that a non-controller (you) cannot possibly imagine. Your spouse will not understand you or your job.

You can’t bring the job home…but you will have crash dreams. You will control traffic in your sleep. You cannot imagine the stress, which comes not from the job of separating aircraft, but the combination of ridiculous schedules, lack of sleep and overbearing management.

You can never again tolerate a read-back error at a drive thru restaurant. Indecision is unacceptable in any scenario…especially from those you love. You will have a lack of tolerance in communication. You expect people to say what they mean and mean what they say. Life is black and white (yes…it is…there is no gray).

Driving will never be the same again…you will use “anticipated separation”.

Controllers come in 2 varieties: the home schooler/Bible thumpers or the drunks. Most controllers start as the latter, and end as the former. There is something “not right” about ALL of us. You will either look 10 yrs older than your age or 10 yrs younger than your age. You will be on blood pressure medication at an early age.

You never get normal sleep (this part REALLY sucks). You will work in the middle of the night and holidays (Christmas, Thanksgiving, Birthdays). You will never have “normal” days off. Getting over eight hours off between the time one shift ends and the next begins is a luxury.

You will never have a regular social life. You can’t participate in your kids school activities. Your friends won’t understand that you can’t leave work or get off work. They won’t even be able to figure out your rotating schedule. They’ll stop calling because you’re never home, or you’re just leaving for work.

People will think that you are the idiot on the ramp with the lights.

You may be the last person a pilot talks to, and hear the terror in his voice. You will never forget it. Ever. You will relive it again and again.

You won’t make the money that we do (or used to make before the Democratic Congress couldn’t stand the fact that some of the oldest controllers in the busiest facilities made *GASP* almost as much money as a newly-elected freshman Congressman). The new pay bands will never let THAT happen again. You might eventually get the house and the cars and the vacation home. We have them, and the clothes, the watch, the shoes, the attitude to go with it. We’ll sit back and finish out our careers without ever seeing another raise, while you struggle from paycheck to paycheck on the new “equitable” starting salaries.

We are unbelievably hard on each other (ridiculously hard). Thick skin is an understatement. No crying allowed. When you fail we will laugh at you (and laugh hard we will). When you succeed we won’t even acknowledge it (it’s your job…so what?)

Workplace morale? What’s that? All anyone at work ever talks about is “how much longer until I can retire”. The striking PATCO controllers in 1981 had higher morale than today’s controller workforce. Management is a joke, and consists mostly of people patting themselves on the back for catching a controller doing something wrong.

Still think you want to become an air traffic controller? Go get a job at Taco Bell as a manager-trainee instead. You’ll make more money and have less headaches.

In my previous post about my trip to New York, I mentioned going shopping in New Jersey on the way to upstate New York. That venue was Wine Library, a wine (and beer, liquor, deli) shop in Springfield, NJ, just west of Newark. The director of operations there is Gary Vaynerchuk, son of the founder and self taught wine expert, who hosts a video blog (Internet TV show) which is quickly becoming famous (infamous). His unique approach to wine tasting and wine appreciation has earned him spots on Nightline, Ellen, and Late Night with Conan O’Brien. Gary’s blog, Wine Library TV, has quickly become one of my favorites. I’ve added a couple of widgets over there to the right in my sidebar showing the latest episode and below that, the last 5 wines reviewed on the show. I hope you’ll check out the show and enjoy it as much as I do.

Oh, by the way, the store was fantastic, the staff was exceptionally friendly and helpful, and this was on the Wednesday before Thanksgiving, so things were absolutely crayzeeee. I had to park a couple of blocks away. I also did run into Gary, but he was chatting with other folks, so I didn’t want to butt in. I was shocked…shocked at how low the prices were on everything as well. I don’t know if it has to do with the tax structure up there vs. here (I’m guessing not…New Jersey??) or just the more competitive market, but I spent a little over $100 and brought 4 wines, Tanqueray Gin, vermouth, an 8 pack of draft Bitburger Pils, a six pack of a U.S. craft brew, pate de fois gras with truffles and some really outstanding Italian pecorino cheese with truffles up to my brother’s place. Well worth the side trip, and I hope to get to do it again. Highly recommended.

I’m kind of a tech geek, gadget freak, whatever you want to call it. I don’t have it as bad as some people, but I likes me some electronic gadgets. Anyway, I’ve owned a Garmin Nuvi 660 portable GPS for a while now and used it in three different states with great success. The freedom and time saving a good navigator brings is something you don’t really grasp until you use one. There’s no looking up addresses on Google Maps and getting driving directions, or God forbid, getting out a paper map and manually calculating a route to a destination. In the car, you don’t have to constantly consult those directions or the map while negotiating traffic and turns, and deciding to go get some dinner or go to a movie while in unfamiliar territory is as easy as punching up the nearest suitable in the database of the unit and pressing “Go!” Unfortunately, there is a hidden downside. The user is lulled into a false sense of security in relying exclusively on this little gadget to get him anywhere he wishes to go, and then “Wham!” Some unusual road closure or error in the routing logic crops up and bites him hard.

I made a recent trip to New York for Thanksgiving to visit relatives, who live about 60 miles north of New York City on the Hudson. I usually fly into La Guardia in Queens and rent a car to drive north. This would be the first time using the GPS. On previous occasions, I’d managed to get myself somewhat lost getting out of the city, so I was looking forward to a smoother trip this time. I was also making a side trip into New Jersey before heading north, so I was going to rely exclusively on the unit to get me there as well. I had preprogrammed the New Jersey address into the Nuvi before leaving Houston, so once I got my rental car, I just attached it to the windshield, plugged it in, selected the destination, and away I went. Now keep in mind this was Wednesday afternoon before Thanksgiving Day, in New York City. Mmmmkay.

About the time I crossed the Manhattan Bridge and got dumped into Chinatown in heavy traffic, both pedestrian and vehicular, I started to get a little concerned. You see, the unit came with a trial subscription to a traffic information service that integrates with the navigation to route around traffic tie-ups if it will save you time, or at least give you a warning about delays ahead. I had let that lapse, and here I was watching shoppers on the sidewalk make better time than me. I had no idea if I would have gotten a better route with the service turned on, after all, there was bound to be heavy traffic everywhere, but the fact that I might was gnawing at me as I stared at the bumper in front of me for the next hour or so. There was also street construction so I had to detour slightly around the calculated route, but the GPS adjusted accordingly, accompanied by the somewhat annoying, tinny computer voice saying “re-cal-culating…” OK Hal, try to keep up. I finally figured out it was taking me to the Holland Tunnel to cross under the Hudson River to the Jersey side. I had never been through the Holland Tunnel, so I guessed I would be a tourist. Now imagine four or five major thoroughfares in Manhattan all converging into two lanes to pass through the tunnel a couple miles long. I was starting to understand why traffic was moving so slowly. Once I got through the tunnel, the rest was pretty uneventful, and I arrived at my brother’s house upstate at 5 PM after shopping in Jersey.

Now the trip back to the airport on Saturday proved much more stressful. I had made this same trip many times as well, so I was pretty familiar with it, but since the car rental place was off-airport (so I thought), instead of programming in La Guardia airport, I wanted to put in the address of the rental office. Looking at my contract it only gave some building number at the airport, so that was no help. I searched the points of interest database and found “Avis” on Grand Central Parkway in Elmhurst. Well, I was pretty sure that was the place, so I programmed it in and headed off. Like I said, I was familiar with most of the route. NY Thruway (I-87) south, cross the Tappan Zee Bridge, continue south on I-87 to the Triboro Bridge and the Grand Central Parkway. Being familiar with a route and being familiar with a place are two different things as I would find out. New York City is also a complex of islands and therefore tunnels and bridges are a fact of life and freeways and streets that have been built over a century snake around natural and man-made obstacles like a mass of noodles. Look at a map of the city and it can be pretty daunting to someone who is just visiting and doesn’t know the lay of the land. Now I was putting my complete trust in a little gizmo to get me through all of it.

My first clue that something might not be kosher was approaching the Tappan Zee bridge. I knew it was coming up, seeing it on the display as well as all the signage along the highway. Suddenly, the GPS instructed me to exit to Palisades Parkway south. Huh? My initial instinct was to ignore it, continue across the bridge and let the unit “re-cal-culate” to the route I was sure was the quickest, but then in the back of my head, a voice told me that maybe there was a better way to get to the rental place that was different from going to the airport itself. After all, I had a heck of a time finding the return for another company once that was off-airport when I went to the airport first. So, I took the exit. The drive down the parkway was pleasant, traffic was light and the autumn leaves were still on the trees. It was a nice drive so I started to relax. That came to an end when the parkway ended at the George Washington Bridge.

As far as I know, all the bridges in New York City are toll. That in itself isn’t a problem, but the one I was presented with here was: The way the GPS was telling me to go was E-Z Tag only, or whatever they call the automated toll collection system there in New York State. I didn’t have one of those, and there were little signs pointing me to an alternate route for cash only. So I followed those signs through the surface streets of Fort Lee, New Jersey while the exasperated GPS let out a barrage of “re-cal-culating” prompts as I ignored it’s attempts to get me back on it’s idea of the proper route. I finally made my way through the toll plaza, only to find that the lower level I needed to take to exit on the other side where the GPS was telling me I needed to go, was closed. Grrrrr. So getting to the other side of the Hudson onto Manhattan Island, I had to make a dizzying array of quick exits and tight turns on ramps before I finally got back onto a route that looked like it would get me to a freeway again. Only I had no idea where I was going now. That’s not a pleasant feeling when you’re in New York City. There are at least a few areas there I didn’t want to end up in wandering around lost, if you know what I mean. Another issue was quickly becoming important. Time. It was now looking like I would arrive at the car rental counter an hour before boarding time, with a shuttle ride and TSA security checkpoint in between, and the more I dilly-dallied, that time cushion became smaller and smaller. For a few seconds, I even panicked and thought maybe the car rental place I programmed in was at JFK, and not La Guardia, but a minute later it was apparent I was heading in the right direction.I finally got onto the Grand Central Parkway and I could see the little checkered flag on the display indicating I was close to my destination. Then I saw a sign that jogged my memory. “Gas”. I needed to fill the tank. Crap! I pulled into a little station right there on the parkway, situated as it was I’m sure to cater to the numerous renters like me returning. I topped off, and pulled back onto the parkway, drove about a half mile, and the GPS was telling me I was arriving at my destination. Well, I was right at La Guardia, and no Avis car rental in sight. Argh! All that nonsense just to arrive at the airport itself anyway!

I saw a sign that promised to lead to Car Rental Returns, so I reverted to the ancient art of sign reading to find the place. I ended up circling the terminal drive for 20 minutes before I gave up, pulled over and called the number on the contract to try to get directions. The lady told me to go to Terminal A, and I would see the signs for Avis there. Oh really? How was I supposed to know that? Sure enough, once I got to Terminal A, the signs successfully directed me to the place, which contrary to my memory on arrival, was not off-airport. I complained bitterly to the agent that the signs to return car rentals here were horrible. She agreed, and said the Port Authority would not let them put any more signs up than what was already there. How nice for visitors which you hope to attract to spend money in your city!

The whole experience will surely diminish the trust I place in my GPS unit to completely rid me of personal responsibility for navigating. I might even have to carry a map. Just in case.

I love steak. I don’t eat it very often, maybe once or twice a month because of the negative “side-effects”, but when I do I enjoy it immensely. I also never eat steak at a restaurant. Eating out, steak in my price range is almost sure to be of less quality than I get at home. Eating at a premium steak house isn’t a palatable option either, no pun intended, and in fact, I’ve never been to one. It’s extremely expensive, more than I can eat in one sitting, and reheating leftover steak that I might take home in a box is just not appetizing, making it even less of a value. So I’ve been perfectly satisfied with the USDA Choice beef I get from Sam’s Club at a price that is sometimes cheaper than I can get lesser beef from a grocery chain. I don’t usually pay attention to the price per pound, but I think I average between $11-$13. The meat I get there is tasty and very tender. I’ve never had any complaints, other than the limited cuts available. My favorite steak is a porterhouse, which Sam’s doesn’t sell. I’m limited to boneless ribeye, New York strip, or tenderloin. A porterhouse steak is a New York strip on one side of the bone and a fillet mignon on the other, so it’s really two steaks in one.

Never having eaten a “premium” steak though (think Morton’s or Ruth’s Criss), I was always curious how much better it might be than what I’m used to. I figured if I ever got the chance to get some of that meat at home, I would try it. Now granted, I don’t have any advanced equipment that some of these steak houses might have to cook one of those steaks to perfection, but I do a pretty good job with what I have, and it still won’t change the flavor of the beef itself. A friend turned me on to an outfit that has been supplying USDA Prime dry-aged beef exclusively to restaurants for a long time and now was marketing to the general public as well. I’m not going to name names here just to avoid any trouble, because what I’m going to write is strictly my opinion, but you should be able to figure it out with a little research. Their prices are exorbitant, but are all-inclusive. The packing and shipping of frozen beef has to be a big part of it I suppose. Now dry aging is supposed to impart some kind of magical textural and flavor transformation in beef which has been supposedly unavailable to the home cook until now. I have long intended to try it, but up to now couldn’t justify the expense. However, this past week was my birthday, I always treat myself to something special this time of year (no one else will) and I hadn’t really spent much money on myself so I decided to splurge. I got on the web and ordered a pack of four 20-ounce dry-aged porterhouse steaks for (gasp) $189.

FedEx dropped off the box two days after I ordered. It was pretty big for four steaks, but inside was a Styrofoam cooler, and inside of that, a small box packed in dry ice. There was still plenty of the dry ice left for playing around with, an extra bonus. Inside the small box were the four individually vacuum packed steaks, frozen solid. They looked a little smaller than I expected, but I took one out to place in the refrigerator for thawing but weighed it first, and it was almost 21 ounces. OK, I put the rest away in the freezer. They claim the frozen steaks will be good for up to a year in there.

So I fired up the grill that night and cooked myself a $47.50 steak, which is probably what it would have cost me to eat it in a restaurant with all the trimmings as well, making my original argument against steak houses seem pretty foolish. I could have a bottle of wine at home that definitely would have cost me at least three times as much though. I noticed it didn’t smell any different to me, dry-aged or not. It looked to have slightly better marbling than the New York strip at Sam’s. Anyway, I pulled it off at medium-rare and the moment of truth arrived.

Cutting into the fillet portion, it was obvious I probably didn’t really need the knife. Though the beef from Sam’s is almost as tender, this was probably the most tender steak I’ve ever had. I anxiously wondered what wonderful taste experiences I would unlock as I brought the fork to my mouth with a nice crusty-on-the-outside, pink-and-juicy-on-the-inside hunk of hugely expensive meat. What I got was disappointment. It tasted no different, not better or worse, than any of the beef I buy at Sam’s. Bite after bite, I just kept saying to myself, I will never, ever spend this much on a steak again. The only difference I could discern was the tenderness, and that really only extended to the fillet side, I couldn’t actually say the same for the strip side.

While the steak was certainly tender and delicious, there was no way on this green Earth it was worth even a dollar or two more than what I already have available. Not to me anyway, and certainly not at 4 to 5 times the price. If you have a Sam’s Club nearby and are not a member and you love beef, you owe it to yourself to get a membership, because you’ll make up the $40 annual cost in meat purchases alone. Truthfully, that is the only reason I’m still a member.

I got my first phone bill since I switched my service. $59?? There was that feeling in the pit of my stomach again. When I looked at the detailed bill on line, sure enough, they were still billing me for monthly DSL as if nothing had changed. I finally called today to talk to customer service. Again, a very pleasant and professional agent. I really can’t complain about the people I’ve dealt with personally there. Anyway, he gave me quick instant credit on the current bill, and said there was another, larger credit on the next bill that would zero out the money I’ve been paying since August 20 when I originally requested the disconnect (it’s now well into October). He then gave me the hardest up sell I’ve had yet on additional services, bundled services, package discounts, a lot of stuff I’d already had on the old line and got rid of on purpose. It was an amazing, virtuoso performance. He didn’t cast a spell though, so I escaped with my finances intact. Do you think they’re feeling the pressure from competing services like VOIP and wireless (their own AT&T Wireless notwithstanding)? I think so. Good.

[Author’s note: this post was written over the course of a week or more, and for the most part several weeks after the events took place. I can’t guarantee that everything happened exactly as told, but it’s pretty close, to the best of my recollection.]

I live in a small area north of Houston where archaic cable franchise agreements and economic realities limit my broadband Internet options. To be honest, I do have options. Mediocre or poor. Fine, I don’t have it nearly as bad as folks in rural areas, but then again, they’re busy doing chores or something, and don’t know what they’re missing anyway. Living in a major metropolitan area, I shouldn’t have to go begging. My neighbors just a mile or two away have access to reasonably good cable TV and Internet service through Comcast, why don’t I? The cable company I have access to is notoriously unreliable, and their customer service is non-existent. Why should they have to provide a satisfactory service when there is no competition for pity’s sake? Anyway, the best I could do for years was DSL from Southwestern Bell. I’ve been a customer for about six years, through their re-emergence as SBC after gobbling up a few other “Baby Bells”, and now recently reincarnated as AT&T after assimilating the final remaining regional carriers. Eerily similar, my cellular company started out as AT&T Wireless, was bought by Cingular, and now Cingular has been merged into…AT&T. This is a company that was broken up by the government decades ago because it was a monopoly. Mmm, smell that irony.

Back when I first got my DSL service, it was the cat’s pajamas. Umpteen times faster than dial-up, and at a time when cable Internet service really hadn’t started to penetrate the market. A few years ago, they offered me an “upgrade” to faster DSL. At the time, I was also sold a bundle of packages for my phone service. I was swimming in new found money so what the heck? Well, times changed, cable got about half the broadband share, and other technologies started appearing such as optical fiber (FTTP). Meanwhile, I started to see my speeds actually seem to decrease while everybody else’s got faster. I heard rumors of AT&T “capping” users bandwidth, then pretending to “fix” the problem if the customer ever called tech support. I kept telling myself I needed to call and inquire, but I could just never get around to it. I’m no wallflower, but I hate calling tech support for anything. Besides, I was getting 680 kbps, and after reading my contract, I was paying for 384 kbps-1.5 Mbps, so really I was getting almost twice the minimum and I feel stupid complaining about something that technically I can’t complain about. Never mind that even on AT&T’s own bandwidth tester, I was coming in 70% slower than their other customers. The one thing that made me stick with AT&T though was the reliability. In six years, my service never, ever went out (that wasn’t the fault of my equipment anyway). I’d rather have a dependable but slower connection almost any day.

So I plodded on in servile ignorance, not truly understanding the extent to which I was being ripped off. Then I took a little trip. I went up to New York to visit family and while the brother I was staying with had Roadrunner Cable Internet for years, I’d never personally experienced it. This time I brought my laptop though, and he let me plug into his network to use his connection. I was blown away. It was like a whole different Internet! I could watch or download any videos I wanted, no waiting for buffers to fill or an hour (!) for a download, and while I was downloading, I could still surf to other sites with very little noticeable lag. His connection was 10 times faster than mine. In other words, a file that would take me an hour to download at home took me six minutes at his place! I giddily downloaded all the video podcasts and short films I could while I was there.

Now the seeds of discontent had been planted. I started evaluating my situation. I was paying about $110 a month total for phone and DSL, which included a bunch of features on my phone that I never used, unlimited long distance that again, I never used (that’s what email is for) and $34.95 plus tax for my slow-as-molasses-in-winter Internet. Man, did I feel like a tool. How much money had I wasted over the years? I decided to make a concerted effort to find something better, though I really didn’t think I would be successful. Provenance led me to Broadband Reports. I have used their speed testing tools and other utilities a number of times, but I don’t really remember why I was there this time. Perhaps to get one final speed test to show AT&T when I ultimately had to capitulate and call tech support after failing to find something better. Anyway, I didn’t realize they had tools to find providers in any given area, and show ratings from customers. I plugged in my zip code and confirmed there was no other cable option than the one provider, and they still got horrible reviews. But wait. What’s this? A really highly rated local ISP serving the Houston metro area providing DSL service that I’d never heard of: Oplink. They had almost no negative reviews at all, and most of the positives commented about blazing speed, great personal customer service, etc. I went to their website and looked at their offerings. I could get 3 Mbps service with a static IP, for only five bucks a month more than what I was paying now for miserable service. If I lived with a dynamic IP I could get the service for five bucks less than I was paying now, but I was tired of messing with dynamic DNS services to be able to access my network from the Internet. They also had a handy how-to page on how to sign up for or convert an existing line to “Measured Rate” service, the cheapest form of phone service, but still compatible with DSL. The only caveat to all this, and one that gave me a little twinge of concern, was the phone line had to be AT&T because Oplink resells AT&T DSL, but provides Internet service through their own network. I slept on the idea of switching for about 2 days, then I finally pulled the trigger.

I called AT&T and after navigating a really maddening automated voice response system finally got a live human after maybe 15 minutes. I got right to the point. I wanted to convert my line to a local measured rate service and drop all additional services, including my DSL. The agent cautioned me that since I currently had an extended metro line (all local calling in the Houston and surrounding area), they would have to change my phone number. I had foreseen that already, so that wasn’t a problem. She also gave me the expected attempt to keep me as a customer, telling me if I gave her a chance she could save me more money than any competing service. I wanted to say “Yeah? Then why don’t you do that already?”, but I just gave a quick “No thanks”. After a few minutes she told me the order had been placed and to expect the number change in two days, but that there might be a problem with the DSL disconnect. It would be complicated by the number change and would have to take place afterwards, and so there was a chance it would “error out”, but she would annotate my account so they should be aware of what I was trying to accomplish in case of problems. I thanked her, hung up, then went right to the Oplink web site for their phone number.

The phone rang maybe three times when I was greeted with “Oplink. This is _______, how can I help you?” Wow. That was different. Okay, I had a question before I ordered service. I explained I was converting my line and the number was going to change, could I submit my order now or should I wait? He said I could order now, no problem, but even though he would probably personally process it, it was better for me to use the order form on the Web to avoid any potential errors like transposed digits and the like, and there was a space for remarks on it and to just make a note about the number change there. Cool! Away I went and ordered service. I figured in three to four days, I should have brand new shiny Internet. I could not have been more optimistically misguided (wrong -ed.)

The first hint of trouble appeared in less than two hours. The gentleman from Oplink called and left me voice mail and sent me an e-mail, which I ended up getting first. He said there was a problem with my line, that he couldn’t order DSL through AT&T because it appeared they had already placed an order for their service through AT&T/Yahoo. He said it was common for them to “slam” customers like that and that I needed to call them and cancel that order. I called him back and told him I neglected to mention that I already had service through AT&T/Yahoo, that it was supposed to be disconnected a day or two after the number changed, and maybe that was the confusion. He told me it was too bad he didn’t know that ahead of time, because it would have been quicker to just do an “ISP swap” and leave the DSL active, but since I had already ordered the disconnect, just let it go through and they’d order new service when the line was clear. As soon as I hung up with him, I called AT&T again. After more maddening voice response hell, the agent I spoke with told me he didn’t show any orders for DSL on my account. Hmmm…

Two days went by, my number change went through on schedule, and I waited. Another day went by and I could no longer log in to my DSL service. Okay, that was a good sign. However, I still had a link light on my DSL modem. That didn’t seem right to me. Now, I wasn’t without Internet entirely. I have broadband wireless through Sprint for my laptop, but it’s far from satisfactory when sitting at home where the reception isn’t the greatest and I get maybe double or triple the speed of dial-up on average. On the fourth day, Oplink called me. Something was not right. They still showed DSL active on my line, and they couldn’t place their order until it was cleared out. I asked him about the link light and he said that definitely meant my line was still provisioned for DSL. He told me I needed to call AT&T back, tell them to disconnect their DSL, make sure they use a specific software package to place the order, and to get a confirmation number from them. I called AT&T now for the third time, more menu frustration, finally spoke with another agent, a very friendly and helpful woman who assuaged my urge to reach through the phone line and throttle somebody. I told her what was taking place, everything Oplink told me to say, and she complied and gave me the disconnect confirmation number. It should be effective in about three days she said. So she showed my service active? Yes, she said. So I should be able to use it right, because I hadn’t been able to log in? Yes, certainly, she said. I hung up and turned on my modem, tried to log in. No dice. Argh.

Now the weekend went by, and by Tuesday, I’m thinking things should be starting to happen. I turned on my modem again. Link. Crap! I called Oplink. I was now on a first name basis with several of the employees there, but I’ll leave out the names for privacy. The gentleman told me they were still not able to place the order and that they were elevating the problem with AT&T tech support. I expressed my frustration with the situation and said I wanted to complain to any regulating authority or consumer protection organization I could find about AT&T. I mean after all, why should they be in any hurry to fix the issue with a disconnect? I had already checked to see if I could file a complaint with the FCC, but even though I was dealing with a phone company, it was their Internet service I was having an issue with, and the FCC clearly states they don’t regulate ISPs, so I didn’t think I would have any luck there. The Oplink guy strongly urged me not to get a third party involved at this point, because it would probably only delay getting the problem fixed even further. Fine. He said he’d keep me updated.

The week ended without word, the weekend came and went, and now I was into my third week without any Internet service at home. I live on the ‘Net. I communicate with everyone that means anything to me there. I get my entertainment there. I do all my banking and pay my bills there. I was missing my TV shows because my desktop computer is my PVR (Personal Video Recorder -ed.) and without a network connection, it couldn’t download TV listings. I was managing with my wireless broadband, but there were plenty of ways that fell short. It was probably the roughest on my daughter, who was in the last semester of her education degree and needed Internet access for all kinds of things, and so had to commute 25 miles to school even though she didn’t need to be there for anything other than to use the computer lab to complete assignments. Every day I would wake up and think “Today is the day this nightmare will finally come to an end” then I would go turn on my modem, and the link light would be there staring back at me, taunting me.

I called Oplink. The gentleman said he was still having no luck and would call AT&T support again and see what they could tell him. He called me back in a few minutes and said he was on the phone now at the same time with AT&T. Apparently, they had determined that AT&T/Yahoo DSL had been ordered on my new number (you know, the order that didn’t exist?), but the order had been done incorrectly and so now the system was in some kind of error condition that they were trying to figure out how to clear out. I was told to be patient, they were working the problem, and it shouldn’t be too long. The week progressed and no word. Finally one morning (Wednesday? Thursday?) I woke up, turned on the modem, went to make coffee, came back and… The link light was still blinking. Hallelujah!! No link!! I went to my laptop to fire off an e-mail to Oplink and there was one from them waiting for me. It said bad news, still no word, be patient. I replied that hey, I just turned on my modem and there was no link, I think somethings happening. I got a reply that indeed, that was a good sign.

Confident that things were about to change, I even told my daughter that we would probably have Internet by the end of the week. Ha! Friday came, and went. No word. I didn’t even have the heart to call anyone anymore. I was beaten. Yet another weekend went by with the wires silent.

The following Tuesday, I was greeted with an email from Oplink. “Welcome to Oplink DSL!” Holy crap. They must have been able to get the order in. I was at work at the time and my phone rang but I couldn’t answer it. When I got to my voice mail, it was from Oplink, telling me they had finally been successful in ordering the DSL provisioning on my line and barring any further problems (which were still possible) my service should be up on Thursday night. They were shipping their modem and it should arrive by Thursday afternoon. Wait, what was that noise?? Ah, those trumpets and the choir of angels rejoicing. Pesky when you’re at work.

Wednesday evening I returned home from a Bible study to find a box sitting on the front step. Cool, my modem had arrived, so hopefully I would be able to hook it up the following day when I got home from work and I’d be up and running. Thursday I had a little pep in my step. Oh yeah, getting my Internet back. I was still a little apprehensive though. Somewhere looming was the dread that something else would go wrong. I got home and turned on my old modem. No link yet. Well, I’ll just plug in the new modem and be ready to go then. I didn’t think my old one would present any compatibility problems; t wasn’t actually old but a recent model I bought on my own to replace the original aging SW Bell modem I had to begin with. Just the same, with all the problems I’d been having I didn’t want to take any chances. I disconnected my old modem, plugged in the new one, and nothing. No lights, no nothing. Oh you have got to be kidding me! I called Oplink. He asked if the power adapter had an LED on it, most didn’t but mine might. I didn’t know. I looked. Sure enough, it did. I plugged it into a wall outlet and no light. Well, I think we found the problem. So the guy says my house is on his way home from work, he’ll bring a new modem by and swap them out. I think I might have lost consciousness, but only for a second. I stammered that wouldn’t be necessary, I’ve got my own modem that should serve in the meantime. He asked if I knew if it was compatible or not, and I said I didn’t see why not, I was using it with AT&T. Okay, he’ll ship out the replacement then with a pre-paid return label for the other one. I mentioned I still didn’t have service. He said it usually happened around 7 pm, which was the due time on the paperwork as well. Sometime after 7 pm but after 8 pm, I turned on the modem again. Blink, blink, blink. No link. AT&T strikes yet again. So I should be surprised they couldn’t get my DSL back up since they had such a problem disconnecting it?

I was certainly beaten now because I didn’t even whimper, I just resigned myself to another long wait and more frustrating phone calls. Friday was a day off and I was busy doing other things. I came home late in the afternoon, turned on the modem, and it blinked for a minute, then steadied. Hallelujah!! Those trumpets and angels again. Quickly I went to my router setup page, shuffled through my emails to find the one with all my IP settings for the new service, and plugged everything in to WAN configuration with static IP. I rebooted the router, then went to my desktop and opened a browser. “Unknown address…”. Okay, not working. Checked the settings on my desktop, everything was Kosher there, rebooted my computer just in case, tried again. “Unknown address…” Double-checked the settings in the router. Everything seemed in order. Okay, well maybe my modem isn’t compatible. I figured I was going to have to wait now for the new modem from Oplink, feeling like an idiot for not accepting the offer of having the replacement brought to me personally the previous day. I found other things to do, but before I went to bed it occurred to me I could easily find out whether the problem was with the modem or the router: just plug my laptop Ethernet adapter directly into the modem, set up the IP settings to match those provided by Oplink, and see if I could connect. If so, it was the router, not the modem that was the problem.

Saturday morning, now two days past the one month anniversary of no Internet at home, I tried the direct connection with my laptop. It worked immediately. Huh! I joyously surfed over to Broadband Reports to do a speed test. 2513 kbps (2.5 Mbps) down, 420 kbps up. Woo HOO! About four and a half-times the speed I had with AT&T, for less (not counting the static IP address). Not nearly what my brother gets with cable, but a huge improvement nonetheless. Now to figure out why my router won’t work. I powered everything down again, plugged the modem into the router and powered back up. I went to the setup page of the router just to check one more time to make sure everything was what it was supposed to be, then I hit the “Save Settings” button for good measure and it did a soft reboot. When the router came back up, I went to a command window and sent a ping out to Google. It worked! Whoa. I opened my browser. It went to my home page. Yes!! I went to my laptop, connected to my wireless LAN (I have a separate wired router and wireless access point) and it worked too! Up and running baby! That wasn’t so hard. I have no idea what I did to finally make it work, but needless to say at this point, I really didn’t care. I HAD INTERNETS!!!

So it’s been about 2 weeks now and I’m loving the new speed. I also love the fact that if there is ever a problem, I can call Oplink and talk to a guy just down the street who will give me personal service, and that more than likely, it’ll be one of the guys I’ve been dealing with over the last month trying to get AT&T off their ass. I won’t have to dread ever making a call to support anymore and my money is going to a local business who were even willing to stop by my house on their own time for crying out loud to make things right. That’s what I’m talking about. Of course, there is that little matter that AT&T still provides the DSL link… <shudder>

Writers have always said (have they? -ed.) in one form or another that if you want to be a writer, you have to write. I don’t really want to be a writer, but I do want to write. Does that make sense? It’s therapeutic, and on some level I find it satisfying. I took a creative writing course in high school and rather enjoyed it, much to my surprise. My teacher seemed to be pleased with my work and encouraged me and there have been others at times that have had good things to say. I wish this medium were around back when I was in high school, or shortly thereafter. Back then there really wasn’t a way to get a wider audience beyond a teacher or family or friends without plying the trade. You know, actually making an effort. Finding a subject, researching it, writing draft after draft, maybe some peer review from other struggling authors, then submitting Xeroxed copies (kids, ask your parents -ed.) to various publishers in hopes of getting one of them to look at it just long enough to spot the nascent brilliance buried within an anguished soul. Shoot. Now I just fire up the ol’ inter-web thingy and spew whatever literary genius comes forth and I’m a published author! I don’t even care if anybody ever reads it; it’s the thought that someone might. Someone from anywhere in the world. Maybe a few someones, er… somebodies. Not only that, it’s probably better they be faceless, nameless readers. Criticism from acquaintances can sting. Strangers throwing garbage is relatively painless.

They might hate it. But I’ll be honest. I started reading something once that I really didn’t like. It wasn’t very good writing and I wasn’t too fond of the author either. It was my father’s memoir, and there were things in the few pages I browsed in the time he gave me that I never, ever knew, and probably wouldn’t have otherwise. People write things they would never say or talk about publicly, or maybe they just couldn’t say it nearly as eloquently. I know I’m much more coherent using the written word than I am discussing a topic in person, so there are things that I might be able to say in writing that I would just leave unsaid otherwise. That’s not to say I wouldn’t be better off leaving it unsaid, period. That’s another subject. My point is, even though someone might not care for me or my writing, there is always the chance I could alter their perception in some way, whether it is of me, or the subject matter. That’s too good to pass up.

Back to my creative writing teacher: Mrs. Gregory from Arlington Central High, LaGrange, NY. Nope, I didn’t forget her name. I wasn’t going to mention it before, but I figure just on the astronomical chance she reads this, I owe her enough to give her public credit for influencing the life, however trivially, of a troubled teen almost 30 years ago. Must not have been very trivial though if I still remember, huh? One of the things she said I have always remembered was that if you sit down to write and can’t think of anything to write about, start writing about not being able to think of anything to write. Just write about anything, or nothing. Before you know it, you’ll have pages filled up and more ideas than you know what to do with for future pieces. Mrs. Gregory, that’s pretty much what I did tonight. I started out with a blank sheet the size of planet Earth and nothing to write, and it led me to you. Ladies and gentlemen, I have a blog…