You made some new friends who live far from you

[austin_dern]

And then there's my other venture into customer relation satisfaction phone queues: this one over the Mifi device which my father found perfectly unsatisfactory during his trip out west, since it only worked when he was in a Starbucks with free Wi-Fi. I phoned their support line and left their guy perfectly confused in that I wasn't reporting a current service problem but rather one which had happened the previous week.

This wouldn't stop The Script, of course, as nothing but tactical nuclear weapons will. So, yeah, we went through the ritual of turning it off and back on, and even the variant of stepping outside to see if that does anything, because Virgin Mobile noticed that I was calling from one of the cell phone black holes of the universe. But through repeatedly pointing out that whatever the problems might be in my corner of central New Jersey, they could not be the same problems affecting Utah, Montana, Idaho, Oregon, and Washington State the previous week. Eventually the voice on the phone conceded there might be something to my deduction.

Just what, though, we don't know. There wasn't any real hope of tracking down the cause from such a remove, really. But they did give a credit for the full month of service even though it was only a week my parents didn't get what they had paid for. And there's even a happy ending: the Mifi worked perfectly for the trip my parents took to my brother last weekend, and served their Internet needs throughout the birth of their second granddaughter. My father was even delighted that it worked in the car. My other brother, apparently, has a Mifi that only works when stationary, and my father assumed all were like this.

So my father's quite pleased and we have something to point and laugh at my brother about now.

Trivia: When Afonso de Albuquerque arrived in India to be the second Portuguese viceroy in 1508, the first viceroy, Francisco de Almeida, refused to recognize Albuquerque's commission, and threw him in irons for months until another fleet from Portugal arrived to confirm the appointment. Source: A Splendid Exchange: How Trade Shaped The World, William J Bernstein.

Currently Reading: Highway Of Eternity, Clifford Simak. Man, even for late Simak, when nothing happens, nothing happens.

Comments

[bunny-hugger.livejournal.com]

Despite your bad experiences with that Mifi, I actually went ahead and ordered myself one using all the Amazon gift cards I got from my work's health incentive program. I'm glad it ended up working eventually. I figured, well, it's effectively free for me, so why not? The only trouble is it's backordered, and at this point it's not clear if it will come before our Cedar Point trip or not, which would be a really good time to have it.

[austin-dern.livejournal.com]

I hope it does come in time for Cedar Point. I haven't been made to fall back on the Mifi for need, but it is really easy to see where it fills a useful niche, particularly for folks like us.

[bunny-hugger.livejournal.com]

On the other hand, I assume you can tether to your iPad, so we can get Internet that way.

[austin-dern.livejournal.com]

True. Although to date I haven't actually figured how to use my iPad that way. I've used it directly, is all.

[bunny-hugger.livejournal.com]

I'm sure you can find relevant documentation before we go to Cedar Point!

[austin-dern.livejournal.com]

You're right. We'll have to make sure I read and even understand it before then.

[chefmongoose.livejournal.com]

We may at some point pick up one of those mifi devices for anthrocon, provided i can convince my programmer that yes, it's a good idea to have things as internet-based as I want them to be. also for him to have time free to program such.

(anyone who knows drupal and is interested in poking around AC's code, let me know.)

--Chi

[austin-dern.livejournal.com]

I have actually done little bits with Drupal, although I wouldn't say I know it.

I'm surprised that the default isn't to assume stuff should be Internet-based as far as possible or compatible with security and how everybody else has a couple jillion Mifi devices cluttering up the spectrum.

[chefmongoose.livejournal.com]

Apparently my programmer's concerns are security and latency. Wired internet plus a wireless backup are handleable for under $300, which takes care of the "Internet is down, how do we register people?" problem.

Right now Anthrocon's On-Site registration is completely off the grid. I want that to change, I do not have the direct skills to make that change.

--Chi

[austin-dern.livejournal.com]

Reasonable concerns. Security particularly, given stuff like payment data going through things. I wouldn't know how to address those problems.

[chefmongoose.livejournal.com]

The payment data would be going predominantly over the internet as it had, or collected via the same credit card machines that it had. Security involves more the names, phone numbers, birthdates, addresses, etc that Anthrocon collects from attendees.

i think that's still less of the hangup than latency, to be honest.

--Chi

[austin-dern.livejournal.com]

Ah, then the challenge is to figure out something else that can be done at the same time as computer network stuff is, so that if the network is sluggish nobody realizes that's the problem. I suggest a laminating machine.