Modem

TL;DR: Comcast had a local area issue. I set up a status page for my house after many outages. The status page actively monitoring connectivity forced Comcast to look outside our home for a fix after several visits. Forced switch to Comcast Business The pandemic hit, and our lives became 100% “virtual” last year. As a family that “cut the cord” years ago and I’ve been working from home for quite some time, our internet consumption was pretty high. Our neighborhood is only serviced by one provider, Xfinity (aka Comcast, one of the worst providers of them all). We were ever mindful of our Xfinity usage. The 50% emails before the halfway mark in our billing period made for some dining room table conversations about peak usage and devices. Once I fired up Red Hat Livestreaming, Xfinity’s data caps would be smoked within the first fifteen days of the month. We had no choice but to make the switch to Comcast Business to remove those caps. ...

It’s the most wonderful time of year! When everyone gets together with family or friends they haven’t seen in who knows how long. Of course, the topic of Trump, social media, and burnt gravy stories will come up. But, my personal favorite topic is, “I have this issue with PIECE OF TECHNOLOGY XYZ. Please help me!” Luckily, despite having not worked on anything other than Mac and Linux the past seven years, I don’t get too many wild questions from family. I’ll sit down with Grandma and help her with an iPhone issue from time to time. My mother-in-law has some legacy e-mail stuff all filtered in her Gmail. Sometimes AT&T changes something and it breaks. These things happen. Complex systems are hard enough. No sense in me being an asshole about it (although I will get frustrated from time to time). ...