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A Week without internet access is torture.
Posted:
Wed May 19, 2010 9:33 pmby Spokavriel
I don't have enough upstream at the moment. I will post my rant, small as it is, when I have my full bandwidth.
Had to get a new internet service provider.
Edit: Trying again now that I see something working.
I feel I should introduce my problems of the past week. In addition to my currently mildly deranged state as a result of it.
Starting at about 12:30 on the 13th my time my prior internet service provider decided to have someone out here and connect service for television to one of my neighbors and the service man went and seeing that there was no TV service to my apartment disconnected my cable for the 4th time in the last 9 months.
Then I called the company because of my internet access being disconnected and I was told I was no longer authorized to make inquiries or decisions about the account.
I"M THE ONLY USER! The ONLY consumer of their product at this address. And they were acting like I was a hacker trying to manipulate them into giving extra information about another persons damn account.
So because of their incompetence I have not had internet access until a few short hours ago today with my new service provider. And that service won't really be on at full speed until some time later tonight.
During the interim I watched all the Carmen Sandiego Cartoon episodes that I managed to DL (most of last 3 seasons and almost half the first season.) along with capturing Carmen Sandiego on my Apple IIe emulator and getting within 5 cases (in 24 hours) of the highest rank in the Multimedia PC edition of Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego? It arrived in the mail the day before yesterday.
I even made an ID based on the ones seen in the Where on Earth cartoon ones. I was that bored.
- Spokavriel_ACME_credentials.PNG (303.51 KiB) Viewed 13264 times
I guess I'll have to show it later. I've tried uploading it for the past hour and it failed. Then I tried to just preview this and that also failed. So I'm submitting this as is and probably going back to mostly offline until I have my whole internet access after 8:00 (Stated but not guaranteed activation time) tomorrow morning at latest for my full bandwidth to be enabled.
Re: A Week without internet access is torture.
Posted:
Wed May 19, 2010 9:48 pmby KonokoHasano
Guh, I'm really sorry to hear that. I remember when we had so many problems with our internet provider, and the net went out for several days. We eventually had to get a new provider.
Re: A Week without internet access is torture.
Posted:
Thu May 20, 2010 12:22 amby Spokavriel
The problem is 50% of the time I didn't have internet access it was because of some over zealous (The company claims) serviceman disconnecting the wire for my internet connection. And it was adding up to 5% down time. It wasn't worth the frustration and hopefully I will have a much better situation with AT&T
Re: A Week without internet access is torture.
Posted:
Thu May 20, 2010 12:55 amby Lioconvoy
I go thought my phone service myself, but I have Earthlink as a back up.
I was worried you weren't around lately. Good to know you had come to no physical harm, just emotional.
...is the old previder going to charge you still? I mean if they say you can't make decisions or iquiries, does that also mean you can't shut it off?
Re: A Week without internet access is torture.
Posted:
Thu May 20, 2010 1:22 amby Spokavriel
That was the last straw that made me drop them. We had gotten me authorized a long while back to avoid that BS. So instead of insisting they re-connect the service yet again the hardware they provided was given to my mom and nothing of theirs is in this apartment any more. She's the first name on the bill because the whole reason for any services from them was because she had gotten it back when she moved in with me a while back. Cable TV was turned down to expanded basic only as soon as she moved out because I saw no point to that . And you might remember when I commented about my choice between continuing with Basic Cable or having power to use any of my appliances a few years back. From that point on I only used online from that company. Since then they have accidentally disconnected my internet access no less than 40 times. Most of the times though at least the people were apologetic instead of being a total ass like this last year.
Re: A Week without internet access is torture.
Posted:
Thu May 20, 2010 3:25 amby Lioconvoy
I hope once your access is again normal it doesn't take too long to catch up on your recent topics. Spamville isn't the same when you avoid it.
Re: A Week without internet access is torture.
Posted:
Thu May 20, 2010 11:05 amby frice2000
Heh ow...I had similar problems with my old cable internet provider (Time Warner) though I did remove the little scrambler they put on the line in order to block the basic cable. After a year or more of dealing with their incompetence blessed FIOS came to the area. It is a godsend of epic proportions until I need to call them to report an issue. Since I don't have a phone number (use my cell) through it which has a New Jersey not New York area code I get connected to the New Jersey Fios support over and over and over until after about 12 transfers they connect me to the New York offices. It's fun! Speaking of Fios get it if you can it is a thing of fiber optic beauty. But still your story says reminds me of the not so ancient proverb I once heard. In regards to a service choose any two of these three because you can't have all three: 1. Price 2. Quality 3. Customer service. I think it holds true.
Nice to see ya back. Congrats on Acme Detective...Did Rockapella come to your door and sing
this for you?
Re: A Week without internet access is torture.
Posted:
Thu May 20, 2010 11:36 amby Spokavriel
No they didn't. It would have been a great surprise if they did. As far as Fiber Optics goes AT&T has that in place between all the service hubs. So its Fiber after about 3 blocks of copper. The closest distribution hub is less than 300 yards away from me here. Closer to 140 yards as a Raven flies but the lines aren't ran that way.
I am working on collecting WiTW screenshots from most of the Broderbund games from the series. (Not the newer ones) to see if I can match all their lyrics.
After I get enough screenshots I'm going to put my Web cam to the screen and along with some additional screenshots I'm going to attempt to reproduce the henchman appearance and capture animations too. But at how slow I work that could probably take another 3 years. If I knew how to hack the software for them it would be easier.
Edit: Lio speaking of Spamville there was a deleted PM from you when I got back. Could you please PM me what it was about? Odds are it was spamville related.
Oh Edit again. Almost forgot I made a gif of some screenshots of when I captured Carmen. Problem is once you get into the Hall of Fame in the older game it doesn't let you use your name any more so I kinda borrowed another one check the last frame before the repeat.
- Carmen_Captured_2010_May_13_Thursday_Longer_lasting_frames.gif (19.64 KiB) Viewed 13186 times
Re: A Week without internet access is torture.
Posted:
Thu May 20, 2010 11:56 amby frice2000
You could make some Lets Play videos and post them to Youtube or the like might be interesting.
Re: A Week without internet access is torture.
Posted:
Thu May 20, 2010 12:20 pmby Spokavriel
I could but I won't. The Carmen Sandiego games actually made by Broderbund before the Junior Detective line (V3) games came out were random and aside from increasing in rank had no real story line to them. Nor actual path followed. Luck of the draw could have you handed a Carmen Case when you're still an investigator.
MPC levels
Cases Rank
00 . . . Gumshoe
01 . . . Investigator
05 . . . Senior Investigator
10 . . . Inspector
16 . . . Senior Inspector
23 . . . Detective
31 . . . Master Detective
40 . . . Super Sleuth
Right now I have 38 cases all with Guilty convictions. There is always a jail break before you hit Senior Inspector. My game has had 3 jail breaks so far. There are after all only 20 members of V.I.L.E. in that edition of the game. There's better than average odds you could hit on a Carmen case before you hit Detective but its unlikely. And even if you do its deliberately so hard that if you end up checking more than 2 sources of information at any location on her trail she'll get away.
Re: A Week without internet access is torture.
Posted:
Thu May 20, 2010 4:40 pmby Neko-
Re-introduction time
Yeah... I can see how a week being internetless (is that even a word) can harass ones mind... Glad to have you back online
Re: A Week without internet access is torture.
Posted:
Thu May 20, 2010 5:45 pmby Spokavriel
No kidding.
I'm also having loads of fun trying to catch up on things that happened elsewhere online. Especially video content. Its a headache.
Oh I just got the rank of Super Sleuth. Still no sign of Carmen. But I do know she is in the game I've seen her captured when I first was introduced to the MPC edition of the game.
Re: A Week without internet access is torture.
Posted:
Thu May 20, 2010 5:49 pmby frice2000
Linky. Use the tactics pioneered in that video and you're sure to win...
Re: A Week without internet access is torture.
Posted:
Thu May 20, 2010 6:24 pmby Spokavriel
Rather not it appears to be ineffective and quite painful.
Re: A Week without internet access is torture.
Posted:
Sun May 23, 2010 8:36 pmby Spokavriel
I'm really glad the Carmen in Where on Earth didn't like Guns. And you know they didn't have much of a place in the Brøderbund games either. Oh sure the sound effect for them gets included in some jail breaks but the games are higher on comedy when the graphics became advanced enough for it instead of bloody.
I wonder where the split would make sense for trying to break this off and continue the Carmen discussion in Other Talk... I really like the convo topic but it doesn't fit here.