DD-WRT and Cox-- any warnings?

[Matt Graham]

After a long battle with technology, Technomage Hawke wrote:
> On 6/4/08, Lisa Kachold <l_iesa at yahoo.com> wrote:
>> Having built radius servers, maintained 60,000 dialup Livingston
>> portmasters, configured DNS and mail, with a CCNA on inactive status, [...]
>>
>> "What is the DNS server IP address?"
>> "Blah, blah blah blah blah ...delivered by DHCP.."
>> "What is the DNS server address?"
>> "And it is not going to change..."
>> "What is the DNS server address?"
>> "Usually the DSL will define that for you..."
>> "What is the DNS server address?"
>> Eventually the 2 server 8 octet addresses will be grudgingly leaked.

Whoa.  Last time I had to ask for something like this, the phone guy said, "Oh 
yeah, it's 1.2.3.4 and 5.6.7.8" in less than 15 seconds.  Then again, this 
was in 2000, for a dial-up ISP, and I exchanged the secret White Male Phone 
Handshake(tm) with the guy beforehand :-] .

YMMV, but I've always had decent luck with phone support.  Patience, having 
all the info the phone people need near at hand, and being polite at all 
times tend to help.  Maybe next time, I'll get the Bastard Phone Droid From 
Hell and will have to rescind this paragraph.

> heh, they really could use you in the NOC.

Sounds like it.  But are the phone people near the NOC, or outsourced, or 
farmsourced, or prison-sourced?  Anyway, the people who are supposed to be 
providing tech support are too often the people who can memorize a few 
scripts and are willing to work for starvation wages.  Also, in lots of call 
centers, the only important thing is the average call time.  Not whether the 
user's problems were fixed, not whether the users were happy, just how long 
the call took.  This may have changed since ~2002, but I don't know for sure.

> I've tried getting a job with cox just so I can do a better job of it
> (having been a customer and having windows and linux skills to spare),
> but i just don't see that happeneing (I have applied 4 times in the
> last 2 years and all I get is "try again next time").

Hiring decisions are often made in weird ways.

> anyway, I am even seeking jobs at places like best buy and wal*mart.
> right now, a job is a job.

True.  (Sigh, I still need one too....)

-- 
    Technology makes it possible for people to gain control over
    everything, except over technology.  --John Tudor
  My blog and resume: http://crow202.dyndns.org:8080/wordpress/
Matt G|There is no Darkness in Eternity/But only Light too dim for us to see