SBC, clueless?

[Disclaimer: just a public rant about SBC from the owner of powertrip.net]

Apparently today's SBC tech thinks that:

                                    Near        Far

     FEC Counts Fast       :           0           0

     CRC Counts Fast       :        1086           0

     HEC Counts Fast       :         886           0

..is perfectly normal for 1 day and 11 hours on a circuit and that if the circuit responds again that all must be fine... forget that it continues to have ongoing problems, there is no problem if the tech can ping the circuit now and it works.. regardless of it's history. I swear I'd like to know where they get the people who answer the phone or try to troubleshoot via their "live chat" - I've NEVER been satisfied with their responses. The ONLY people I've liked were the on-site techs who had a clue, but unfortunately, they're harder to get in touch with.

Today's tech was "Rose". On a related note, why not check the circuit etc WHILE IT IS DOWN instead of waiting for the customer to jump through hoops and wait for the circuit to come back up in the meantime? *ANNOYED*

[UPDATED: OCT-21-2004]
Ok, so today I get a call from the local tech asking to schedule an on-site appointment and I explain the symptoms and the technical side (as I stated above, the local techs have clue).. and she was immediately able to understand that the problem was not that I needed someone out here but that the redback needed to be checked for a possible issue and that my ongoing circuit problem did not get handled correctly and that I needed to call and "formally" request the speed change through sales this time to fix my ongoing issue (last time the on-site tech tried to change my order, apparently he didn't have permission).

..So, currently I'm looking at 7 days for an "order change" even though it's to fix a problem that's been happening for over a month. At least this still isn't as bad as SpeakEasy - they couldn't figure out how to use a phone or mail to contact their customer to let them know regular updates.. but still not what I'd expect on a business account.

Powertrip thoughts

It's been a while since I've posted anything here, so it's probably time..

A few changes with powertrip recently.. mirrored drives, various patches, ISP change and new amounts of spam.

The mirrored drives won't help if you accidently delete something, but at least will help with drive failure problems in the future.. The various patches will be annoying for some - no more looking at other people's processes and networking, but be glad - they can't see yours either... ISP change was mostly a good decision to help me save a dollar or two since I am paying for this puppy out of pocket - the good side is that the places I've tested our connection from have all had better connections now than before - the bad side is that 1 of the anti-spam groups lists this IP range as a spamming block even though spam never origionated from it - we're working on this one, so far nobody's mentioned that it's affected them..

..and .. yes.. new amounts of spam.
I am in awe at the amount of spam comming through at this point. The load average on the server is starting to actually jump at certain times because of the amount of mail deliveries having to be scanned. I've taken steps to reduce the problem and so far we've had good results, but this is simply unacceptable. Of course, 99.9% of the Internet users realize spam sucks and agrees, the remaining .1% that send this stuff out need to be kept alive for about 200 years of painful torture.. perhaps 200 years of watching informercials over and over... or eating printouts of their spam for breakfast, lunch and dinner (on recycled paper, of course)