Results for week of 2/20-2/26

HOURS
Administrative  3.00
Study                     3.75
Play                     19.00
                              -------
                              25.75

This was unavoidable.  A lot of very strange and time-consuming things happend, mostly technical issues with computer peripherals.

I was having problems with my router, and I couldn't seem to do anything to make it work.  I never had a problem with it before, but we hadn't used it lately since we only have one computer.  Now that my wife has a laptop, I dug the router out so that I could set up our home network.  I messed with the router and all of the connections for quite a long time.  I finally wound up calling Belkin technical support.

I got through very quickly, and you probably won't be surprised to find out that the guy sounded like he was in India.  It wouldn't have been so bad except that the sound quality of the connection was quite poor.  Not only was the quality poor, but it sounded like 5 other techs were talking on the phone a few inches from where my tech was sitting.  It was very hard to filter everything out.

What was even stranger was that though I caught onto his accent eventually, he seemed to be having a lot of trouble understanding me.  That's the first time I've had a problem being understood by someone with an East Asian accent.

That's not the worst part though.  This guy was the dumbest and/or most obnoxious tech support person that I have ever dealt with.  The main problem was that he refused to believe what I was telling him.  Many parts of the conversation went something like this:

Tech guy--How many lights do you see on the router?
Me--Three, counting from the top, the first, second and fourth lights are lit.
Tech--If there are three lights, they must be 1, 2, and 3.
Me--That is what the instructions show that it should have, but I'm seeing lights 1, 2 and 4.
Tech, after a long pause--So how many lights do you see?

We went around like that for a while, and then there was this conversation (again, not word for word, but close enough):

Tech-Could you give me the model number?
Me--WNR2000-100NAS
Tech--Are you sure that's the right number?
Me--Yes, those letters and numbers are to the right of where it says model number.
Tech--The model number has to start with an F.
Me--I'm looking right at it and it starts with a W.
Tech--Maybe you're looking in the wrong place.

At the point I considered the possibility of a typing error in the instructions, so I looked on the box and everywhere else I could think of to find something that might show a different number.  The model number didn't seem to be on the unit itself, and I couldn't find any kind of number/letter sequence that started with an F.

So we went around for a while, and then I remembered that the instructions said to have the model and serial numbers ready when I called for technical support.  If I gave him the serial number, he could match it up to the correct model number, right?

Wrong!

Me--I can't find anything that starts with an F, but I have the serial number if that will help.
Tech--I don't need that.  What is the model number?

This went on for more than half an hour, including a lot of long pauses where he waited for me to give him information that I didn't have, or he just didn't like.  Then, on to another topic:

Tech--It must be the modem.
Me--It can't be, I use the modem every day to connect to Comcast Cable, and I used it yesterday.  I don't have all of the lights on the modem, and that only happened when I connected the router.
Tech--If you don't have lights, you must not be getting power to the modem.
Me--I have one light.  If it didn't have power, I wouldn't see any lights.
Tech--Please check to see if the power cord is connected to the modem.

We went around and around for a while, and the call had been going for almost an hour by then.  After another of his long pauses:

Tech--I really need the model number.
Me--I ended the call.

Of course, this summary doesn't include all the times where the tech had me disconnect and reconnect things in various ways.

He had said that it might be a Comcast problem so I decided to call them.  The woman that I talked to (I wish that I remembered her name) couldn't have been more professional and helpful. She got right down to business, and after about 5 minutes of pleasant conversation, she said that the modem was bad.  I asked how that could be, and she said that it was old, that she had sent a signal to check it, and that I should make an appointment for someone to come over with a new modem, or I could just come in the office and swap it out for a new and better model.

I went to the local Comcast office right away, and to top off a much more pleasant support experience, I was standing in line waiting to talk to someone, and the woman at the other window said, emphatically, "No, I'm taking him!"  It was an old friend from my time as clarinet section leader in a US Army Guard band.  She was my second chair player, I hadn't seen her since 2006, and I had no idea that she even worked in my city.

By this time I had already bought a new router, so I hooked up the new modem, and everything worked fine, in fact much better than before.  I don't know exactly what happened.  It seems to be too wierd a coincidence that my router died just at the time I hooked up my old modem.  I had used that modem/router combination before.  My wife thinks that the modem was already weak, and addding an old router to the circuit brought the whole thing down.

That's certainly possible.  I have  had some lagging while playing poker.  But a lot of PokerStars players have been complaining about lag slowing down their tables, so I'll never know for sure. What I know for sure is that I don't want to deal with a Belkin product again, not with support service like I experienced.

The above was a very condensed and incomplete version of all of the tech issues, but those issues, along with a little time setting up my wife's computer, kept me from playing for a couple days. Now my wife and I each have our own computer, and we can both get online whenever we want without worrying that we're keeping the other from doing things online.  That's going to make things much easier for both of us.

My wife had fun entertaining herself by sending me instant messages from the laptop, even though she was sitting only 15 feet from where I was playing poker on the desktop.  We're both very glad to have a computer to ourselves, and there should be nothing to keep me from putting in some serious hours this week.

PROFIT AND LOSS
Starting bankroll 2/20  $50.42
Ending bankrool 2/26   $49.52
                                                  --------
                                                -$0.90

After my "Carnage in the Nanostakes" (see previous post) I managed to get back most of what I lost before all of the computer stuff happened, so I'll take that.  I'll just have to keep doing that, get a respectable bankroll (and keep it), and start making money again.