Using utorrent

When finished installation you will come to a screen similar to this one. The only thing here that you have to be concerned with is if the port listed is forwarded to your computers IP address. To see if it is click on “Test if port is forwarded properly”.

You can then just click on “use Selected settings”

If the port is fowarded properly, it will tell you. If it isn’t, you will see a screen like this.

When you download a torrent just click on open when the windows File Download box is displayed.

Utorrents box will open up. You only have to click on OK, unless there are files that you don’t want to download, such as a Sample file (for movies) then you can just remove the checkmark next to the corresponding file.

You will see all your file downloading and when it’s finished, just right  click on your file and select “open containing folder” and windows will open up the folder that contains your file.

 

Happy Torrenting.

Little boy none

 

  For several years he had been accustom to an every day ritual which by no means leaves him in a state of pure contentment.  From birth and up to this moment he had been living on a day to day basis with no outlook into his own future. He had made no aspirations and no goals which would set him apart from everyone else. For too long has he wondered what will become of his life.

  Spending every single moment of life on a minute to minute basis, wondering who he is, and where he will be,  lead him into a void in which no escape seemed possible. Instead of taking action, He did the complete opposite – inaction.

  Of this life, which he chose to live, he had not succeeded in anything because he had chosen not to apply himself in a way that puts him in a position to succeed nor to fail. What could have gone wrong? For someone to not succeed nor to fail, is the worse possible outcome in life because it does not leave room for experience. At least people who fail, have that experience to look back on, learn from, pick themselves up and use that experience to better their lives. For someone that doesn’t have neither experience in failure nor success, has nothing in their lives to compare to. Therefore they start at the beginning, like an infant. The only difference here is that the infant has an excuse and a whole lifetime to build upon. A man however, has no excuse and time certainly is not on his side.

  Sitting idle, watching everyone around him grow, succeed and become something, is what he’s done for all his life. People years younger, graduating with degree’s, moving on to better things is what he see’s, as he sits idle, wondering what to do with his life. By this time, he himself should have been one of those people. He himself should have something to count for; a well paying career, exotic vacations, a home, a family, a life. Instead, he just sits idle, watching everyone around him pass through, while he ponders upon his life, and what is to come of it.

  From early childhood, school was the least of things on his mind, it was just another event in his life that he did not care much for. It wasn’t because he did not like school, nor was it because he liked it. His decision to or not to go to school was merely based on how he felt that day. There was no catalyst in the equation for his decisions it was just pure, simple spontaneous decisions.

  What exactly prompted him to fall in love with a flame at his young age? Was there something exhilarating about dropping a match into a garbage bin? or to spark a flame in a little crop, resulting in acres of a field to resemble the pits of hell? What prompted this child to cause damage to vehicles, to houses, to pick up smoking and drinking when not even out of grade five? Certainly there has to be some underlying reason for him to take an axe to another child a year or two younger than him, or to grab another by the throat hoisting the body up off it’s feet against the wall and dropping the teary eyed child to the ground.

  Surely these actions these, decisions had to come from somewhere. But as he later looks back on life, he realizes that there was nothing it was a reaction at the time a decision based merely on spontaneity. No feelings, no remorse.

  Being taken from his home from child services and tossed around from foster home to foster home became his life and it was just another event that was thrown in his path. Something he deemed as fait, something taking control of his life because he had none, nor did he care, and at the time, this knowledge was non-existent. This child just took it as it came and he went with the flow to see where his life would lead. Perhaps this child thought, that this was supposed to happen, this is what always happens and there is nothing that could have been done but to ride with it.

  Foster families were nothing to him and he was nothing to the foster families. He did not experience love, companionship or the feeling of being wanted. He did not experience the feelings of remorse, regret or hatred. He lived as a puppet with fait as his puppeteer.

  Back in school, it was no different, sitting in class, doing what he thought he was supposed to do. Teachers gave out lessons and he jotted the work down. He was presented with relationships, and he accepted the invitation because he thought that is what life had for him, that is what he was supposed to do regardless of his own thoughts, which were empty. Forced into Christianity by one family, he was, regardless of what he wanted, but it was just something else he submitted to. Perhaps God had plans, if there was a even a God. Perhaps God could tell him what to do. Perhaps God had an answer? No. Not in the least bit. There was no God just a priest dressed up in white, with several young alter boys. Just a priest who liked to put his hand on little boys laps. What was this priests intentions? Nothing became of it and the boy did not care. The boy had no feelings.

A few years later, on a Sunday, he decided to pretend to be sick. Off everyone left to their fantasy of a better life, a fantasy of a promised after-life of everything good. And while they all sit at the alter listening to a priests sermon, the boy at home, faking sick wondered what it would be like to hang himself. Being very young, he had no idea how to attempt it so he lashed together some gimp and attempted what he thought was the act of suicide. It’s not known for sure if there were any underlying, excruciating circumstances leading to this act,  but it was, again, just something this boy felt like doing at the time. When unsuccessful, he only shrugged his shoulders and climbed back into bed, to try and sleep and dream of something other than his own mediocrity life.

This boy, who was now 12, went on with his usual journey, trying to fit in with the rest, trying to find where he fits into life. Still had very few friends, if any at all, and rather to be alone, for it was his shell that kept him safe.

There wasn’t much happening at this time in his life, though thoughts of escape crossed his mind a lot. He would go to bed and lay still, eye’s closed, fixating on the blackness that consumed him. It reminded him of his life; Empty and alone. It was a place where nothing could bother him. A place of nothingness. However, despite repeating this ritual, it still did not satisfy his urge to escape. He met a girl, presumably a few years older than he, whom he shared his thoughts and beliefs. She understood, she sympathized, but this he was used to and did not quite believe. Despite this, there was a little sigh of relief just for the sake of someone listening, someone trustworthy. She told this boy about a place no one knew about, a place where no one could go, she had the secret and the guide to his quest. She explained to him what this place was and how to get there, then handed him a book. The boy was intrigued as he stared at the glossy cover, reading it’s title. As he quickly flipped through the pages, a glimmer of hope ensued his empty hallow . This just may be the answer he was looking for. Excited was he to hurry and open the door to this unknown world.

From every night then on, he followed the guide word for word. He concentrated, and practiced, but to no avail, did he find that world that he was looking for. Yet, for some reason, he continued forward, for it was the hope that drove this craving and he wanted to become part of this unknown.

Words from Comcast Customers

Here is a compilation of complaints from Comcast customers, and responses from myself.

 

Comcast takes forever service thru numerous phone calls, service calls and supposedly customer service people who are there to help to resolve a problem. I have had numerous issues including one that was turning off my high speed Internet because it was not used daily (I travel in my job and am not at my home always). I explained that I pay by month, not by hour or day and such was a minimum of 6 to 7 weeks to get resolved. Unbelievable! I am still working on my phone and cable problem with them too. If it were not for my condo involved, I would not be there now. I am working to changing this too!

While there are a lot of customers that do have problems with 1 or more services, one has to remember that it is only about 5% or less of all customers. The most common of problems are in fact related to the customers lack of knowledge of their services and the equipment. The others are outages and faulty installations of services. Customers do not want to take the time to educate themselves, and therefore become ignorant to the technology. Usually a simple button press on a device solves all the problems. Customers fail to realize, that like life, electronic equipment and the software running it, are not perfect. Comcast is NOT God so do not look to them as God.

Every time I called in to Comcast about a down Internet connection in my area they would always blame me. I have been a network administrator and many times I have had to tell their customer service (which is located in Canada) the proper procedure for determining whether my cable modem was the problem or not. So much for being the helpful customer. After many calls they would finally admit that there’s a problem in my area, or there would be an automated message during call-in that there’s a problem in the area and they’re working on it. It normally took 24-48 hours before they posted the automated message for call-ins.

Comcast Support Representatives trained only with the basics to determine troubles with services inside the house. Most of the time the problem does reside with the customer. There is always a small percentage where the affected service(s) is related to Comcast equipment. This is for us to determine as our systems are tailored to determine if the equipment is faulty or not. There are numerous customers that state they are Network Administrators however do not know what a command console is nor know how to ping a host. What is even more trivial with these Network Administrators is when the cause of their Internet interruption is caused by an improper configuration to their tcp/ip properties on their computer, an environmental problem at their residence, in terms of wireless connection problems, mis-configuration of network settings such as Wireless Zero, 3rd party wireless software, and even firewall settings. Calling in saying you are a Network Administrator will not alter our troubleshooting steps. We answer the calls with scrutiny and do so knowing that all the customers have the same amount of knowledge of networking which is next to none. A real Network Administrator will not have to call into Technical Support. I myself am one of those and always resolved all issues on my own. In relation to the time frame when an outage is confirmed, it is in fact a standard 24 to 48 hour period. I myself do not know why as CSR’s are near the bottom of the food chain so to speak, but I would imagine it is because of the amount of systems that need to be updated and synchronized between servers, domains and call centers. It could also be so that it gives the Comcast IT department who look after the nodes, time to determine if the nodes are affected at all, which areas are affected and such. If the nodes are affected and functioning properly, they automatically report back which our systems update indicating an outage. The other method is to rely on customers like yourself to report to us. In that case, it usually takes about 3 calls of the same issue to automatically declare an outage. This of course relies on the accuracy of the LOQ’s and the end result of the problem has to be exactly the same and the customers modem reporting such problem  would have to be on the same node.

I find it hilarious they solicit for my telephone business.  As I tell the salesperson;  why would I want your telephone service so when the system goes down(which is often) I can be without cable, internet and telephone, all at the same time.  How would I call for service?

Truthfully, you are very right and a lot of us openly joke about this as well which is one of the reasons why in our department (Home Networking) we refuse to up-sell CDV service to Comcast customers. I myself say that Internet should be from an Internet provider, Cable from a Cable TV provider (or satellite provider) and telephone service from a Telephone provider. However, it is only a small fraction of customers that experience full service outages or outages related to their phone service. In the case of people constantly in outages, I would highly recommend not subscribing to CDV. I do not even know why Comcast pushes us to try and sell CDV service in a Technical Support situation. It just does not make any sense. 

I have found that Comcast representatives are constantly making up stories.  I fully understand someone being new and not knowing all the answers, but , to lie doesn’t things any better

I agree. A lot of Representatives do make up stories. Some reasons are due to lack of knowledge because they are new (the turnaround is HUGE). Inadequate training, which is the result of the trainers themselves, lack of knowledge coming into the job, and the worse, some will tell you anything just to get you off the phone. This is because of Comcast politics and pressure to get you off the phone. Tier 1 agents are pressured to keeping each call under about 5 minutes and Tier 2, also known as Comcast Home Networking, are pressured to keeping calls under about 8 minutes. If these are not adhered to, then the CSR’s are reprimanded. So if you find that the CSR’s are telling you BS, transferring you to another dept, dropping you back in queue, or finding that your calls are being dropped, that would be one of the reasons for doing so.

THEY NEVER know what they are talking about.  They never are sure of what they are offering you, they are totally clueless.  How could anyone feel comfortable about buying something that the salesperson knows nothing about.

Unfortunately this can be true some of the time. Again, the biggest reason for this is because of the turn around rate for Comcast employee’s and this turn around rate is due to internal issues and Comcast/Convergys policies, politics, pressure, training, and internal systems issues. I would not generalize the knowledge a sales rep has representing them as a single body, it is because of the ratio between new bodies and experience body’s is quite large that it may appear that no one knows what they are talking about.

Northeast:  Comcast is expensive but my experience dictates customer service is good.  Little to no wait time on the phone and the service techs are on time.  My only complaint is the cost.

I don’t have much to say here, but every market is different. Some markets can get their services for under 40.00. Some markets are more expensive because of cost to provide that service in that area, and quite possibly because there is no competition. You can also apply demographics for each area to consider in the cost of service. I am glad that you have had good experiences with customer service and good response time with the technicians. That only means there is rarely an issue with services in that area.

Why is it that whenever you have a confirmed service appointment with Comcast they insist on having the service tech call you prior to coming to your house? I don’t understand this concept. You have an appointment but yet they still call and if you DO NOT answer your phone, they automatically CANCEL the appointment. This happened to me just two weeks ago. I made the appointment, took the day off from work, and when the tech called, he called my wife on her cell phone at her office which she never heard because the phone was in her purse.  Next thing I know my wife calls me and said she had a message from the tech telling her to reschedule.  To make matters worse, because this has happened before, I made sure when I made the appointment, to confirm with the customer service weenie, that they have the correct phone number, MINE, not my wife’s. The customer service person even read my number back to me and assured me that the tech would call me.  (My wife’s number was the primary number because she had the Comcast account prior to our getting married.) Bottom line, I never got service that day and had to reschedule and take another day off from work!!!

It is your responsibility to be home during the time window. It is your responsibility to answer the phone when it rings. If and when the tech calls and there is no answer, it is assumed that you are not home in which case, it is a waste of the tech’s time to arrive at a home with no one around to let him in the house. This is the very reason why a technician calls. It is also your responsibility to ensure that your information is correct on the account. It is always best to do this at your local Comcast center and is the logical approach as well. Do not call Comcast Support to have the information changed on the account. Since the Comcast number is a national number and call centers are in the U.S, Canada, and Philippines, restrictions to what agents can do do an account pose complications. Our systems are synchronized with the local centers, not the other way around. So if you want your information changed, it is best to go to your local center with 3 pieces of identification, or call your local center. If you do not know the number, you can call 1-800-COMCAST and ask the CSR for the number to local. In some cases,  however, the work order is not properly annotated  with the call first number, this then  becomes an issue with the CSR creating the Trouble Call and an internal review on the agent should be in place (however never is).

Several years ago, they were having a lot of outage problems in my area.  I assumed it was due to new construction down the road, but I still had to call and report the outages every time.  The hold times got longer and longer.  One night, after being on hold for 35 minutes, I hung up, called back, and at the prompt, chose the number for “new service request” instead of “to report a service problem”.  Imagine my surprise when someone answered on the first ring.  Apparently once they already have you signed up, they don’t care how long you wait.  Their priority is getting new money coming in.  As soon as I could, I switched to a dish.

This is an example of ignorance and someone with no logic. Hold times are high when you call in and choose the option for technical assistance over choosing the prompt for “new service” because current customers have no need for new services, so the sales department will not be in queue. Comcast is setup with multiple departments to handle different types of calls. That is logic and good structure. Your complaint is not valid and your ignorance and lack of pure logic is the reason why you were likely mistreated and probably had your call dropped. Unfortunately there are several people like yourself that we have to deal with and in most cases, will NOT deal with. If you want your problem resolved, do not act like a child and do not go screaming in our ears, verbally abusing us, because we have every right to drop your call and will continue to do so Until YOU behave accordingly. There is NO incentive for us to keep you as a Comcast Customer. If you cancel your service, we still have a job. So threats about cancelling your service will go unheard, and you will be immediately transferred to retention.

I called about a switch over from insight to comcast as well.  My wife’s email was forwarded to one address then she changed that one and set up forwarding to it as well.  They failed to tell us that if you change your new comcast address the old comcast address is deleted and not usable.  Not to mention that the forwarding will not work on that address.  I stayed on an online chat for hours with a guy and caught them in several lies.  At one point he said he would ask the senior technicians then came back later and said he has no contact with them and is not allowed to ask them questions just send them a ticket.  This guy was a supervisor and so I asked for his supervisor as well and he could not produce one.  After talking to insight support I was told that I was more than likely talking to a guy who doesn’t even work for Comcast.  I called him on it and he lied at first, then admitted to work for another company and he wasn’t sure how the stuff worked that i had asked about.  He wouldn’t give me a comcast contact so i kept in a online chat for 4 more hours.  I guess he can’t finish the conversation till the customer is willing to stop so i let him have it once i figured it out.  Eventually i gave up and a few days later the forwarding was fixed and I felt like I wasted enough of their money on the one chat session.  Just couldn’t believe that a supervisor didn’t know what kind of mail server they used or where it was kept. I hope at least that my hours of chat will help them get their mess straight and maybe get off this list.

Isn’t it logical that if an email address is changed, it can no longer be used or accessed by yourself? This is not the fault of Comcast nor the representative. This is pure logic. If you decided to sell your car and buy a new one, do you expect to be able to continue to use the car you just sold? If you had an Insight email account and everything was ported to a Comcast email account, you will no longer be able to use username@insite.com or whatever it may be. So it will be your responsibility to inform your contacts of your new email address, as it would be your own responsibility to update your friends, family of a physical address change; It’s logic. In regards to the person you were speaking with, he wasn’t really lying at all. He was most likely a new hire and did not know the entire process. We do not have direct contact with technicians, dispatch or local. Everything we do, is done remotely. We create tickets and if those tickets reference a problem that has not been resolved, it will be forwarded to a department assigned to handle the specific problem. Supervisors are just that; Supervisors. They make sure the agents adhere to policies, they do scheduling and look after other internal issues. Their job has nothing to do with Comcast Customers at all. They will not troubleshoot your issue nor do they have any other information that CSR’s have. If you escalate to a supervisor expect them to only make notations about your problem, and be prepared to be transferred to a CSR to further troubleshoot your problem. Most Supervisors have no technical knowledge of Comcast services because it is not in their job description. They are there to handle internal issues. Supervisors, do not have supervisors, they report to the Manager of Operations, and the Manager of Operations will NOT ever take a call. Your only option at this point is to go to www.comcast.com/contactus and find a contact number that meets your demands. Most problems, however are dealt with, as in your issue, the problem had been resolved and probably would have been resolved a lot sooner if you did not escalate to a supervisor, but instead ask to speak with another agent.

I have nothing but bad things to say about Comcast.  I called the customer service department because I wanted to bundle my services. I called to see what kind of discounts I could get.  The CSR told me that I could get all the pricing on the internet and that they do not give discounts.  I told her that I was planning to disconnect my service and get service from DirectTV if they couldn’t offer me a better package.  She told me she could disconnect my service for me that day if I wanted her to.  I told her to wait, let me seal the deal with Directv first.  She told me once I got my package with DirecTV to call back and they would disconnect my service.  Comcast is pretty much the only cable game in my area.  They don’t feel they need to attract customers or put any time into customer retention.  The service is shoddy at best and extremely pricey.  I did go with DirecTV and I am a much happier consumer.  DirecTV gave me everything I asked for and bent over backwards to get my business.  Comcast didn’t care if I stayed or not.  They figured there would be another customer to readily take my place.

With the lack of information given, the most I can do is guess what exactly happened here. I am guessing you made a wrong IVR selection and did not get in contact with sales. Sales does have numerous deals and discounts that are not currently publicized. Retention’s also have these same deals and packages. From your statement, it sounds like you were in contact with a Tier 1 agent who is there to troubleshoot your service and billing issues, as they would most likely not know of any discounts, promo’s or packages. I also come to this conclusion because as you state, the agent didn’t seem to care that you were going to disconnect your services. Tier 1 and Tier 2 don’t handle disconnect issues, or threats. We transfer directly to retention. It is their job to handle those threats and requests, that is why every company has a retention department. It wasn’t Comcast that didn’t care about your switch from Cable to Satellite, it was that agent and your incorrect IVR selection. Your attitude while one the phone probably didn’t help either.

Also, there have evidently been adult movies ordered on my service that were not ordered by me. I work nights and I know that nobody was home on some of the and I was at work some of the times these movies were “ordered”. I told comcast this and they gave me such a hard time about taking them off, told me that I needed to provide proof. With a copy of my schedule they told me that it didn’t prove anything and still wouldn’t dismiss the charges. $300 worth of movies that I didn’t watch, I wasn’t going to pay for that!! This is a battle that I am still trying to win

This is kind of funny because I remember at the end of my shift, walking passed and agent asking someone for help about a billing issue. The floor support that was trying to help the agent was no better at their job than was this particular agent trying to get help. This floor support agent pointed out to the CSR about the adult videos. In fact what they were looking at was the adult channel line up and price per PPV adult title, NOT what the customer had ordered. I had to point this out to both of them, unfortunately, after the CSR had informed the customer of PPV adult titles being ordered, creating more confusion, and showing the lack of experience the CSR AND floor support had. Definitely not a good experience for the customer, nor a good image by Comcast. In this similar case, unless this is the case that is associated with your account, what really had happened is that the customer had gone into arrears and would only pay the 60day past due balance every month to keep the service from being soft disconnected. This resulted in a revolving past due balance being applied to the account. Sine the 60 day past due balance was less than the 30 day balance and the 30 day balance being less than the current balance, what was really happening is that the 60 day balance was being paid, which then next month, the 30 day past due balance from the month before, would then be a 60 day past due balance, and the current balance from the month before would end up being the 30 day past due balance. Because the current balance every month was larger, the difference would be added to the past due balance every month, resulting in the bill climbing higher and higher. This would have been resolved if the customer had paid off the entire balance all together, and kept up with the payments instead of letting it slide.

In the case where this is not your account I am speaking of, you are ultimately responsible for PPV titles ordered on your account. So if you were honestly at work during those times they were ordered, then your children, husband, wife, g/f or b/f are ordering them and you don’t know it, or you are just cheap like a lot of people and don’t want to pay for your services. In this case, Comcast is not at fault. You are.

feikd$

You say your sad? Get up off your lazy ass and snort some blow. Really. Your doing yourself no good sittin around sobbing over some bullshit that really has no importance in life.

You say your depressed? Get out and get drunk. Get high, get laid. Enjoy your fucking life. What is the point? Ignore your feelings, fuck your inhibitions and just do something. Call someone up and flatten a house, a person, knock off a corner store or something. It’s your life, you do what you want with it, it’s too short to waste on depression and sadness. Fuck it fuck them and fuck all that get in the way.

Is there something you want? fucking take it. Who cares about the consequences. It’s your life. Fucking do it. Let it out, fuck it up. You like it, you want it, go for it. Who cares about anything out.

I’m sick of hearing about how this person is sad, and that person is depressed, and how this other person is crushing on a person and to damn scared to say a few words to him. Get some fucking balls and move on, move forward.

Just have fucking fun. who gives a shit about everyone else.

 

Drink til u puk, fuck til ur sore, do drugs til u can’t dance no more.

Fuck u and fuck them.

 

live it all.

Corporate Networks and Security

One would think that corporations would take necessary steps to make their network as secure as possible because they are dealing with a lot of sensitive information. Well, at least with one particular company, it partly holds true. Though just about everything requires a UID and pwd, the company has several shared resources and mapped drives with read access. These are normally hidden, and while the corporation’s network spans across Canada and the United states, Security through obscurity seems to be their best defence. A simple NMAP of the network revealed all the shares and browsing these shares, some sloppy admins had their UID and pwd in some files. Using this, another scan using the acquired credentials, access to secure information and drives was obtained, as well as access to Fileservers, backup servers, routers, managed switches and security systems. Other problems arose when many systems had remote desktop enabled, SSH and Telnet were also a means of possible access. If someone had malicious intent, it would be extremely easy to control the entire domain network, and cover his/her tracks using installed proxies and DNS poisoning attacks which are extremely easy to implement in this particular network.

What would be the answer to the many security problems this corporation has?

well a few hints..

Enable program security by allowing only certain programs to be run that are needed to run and necessary to get the job done.

Another one would be to disable the USB ports for portable devices. These are two very easy solutions which can be done at the domain level through active directory.

 

Anyways, I had fun discovering what I had.

Comcast CHN..

Part 2.

In the last section, I talked about the pit falls of Comcast Home Networking and the problems that arise when a customer subscribes to such a service.

What options is there for a Comcast customer or future customer?

Let me put it this way, until Comcast gets its’ act together and provides a more professional installation with leading market hardware, I would suggest putting that 150.00 + 5.00/mo to better use and purchase your own router from an electronics store. The only downfall to this, especially for those less technically inclined, is that your only support and instruction to get your home networking up and running is from the manual that comes with the router, and the technical support for the manufacture of the router. But hey, here’s something that will save you money: A quick call to Comcast to schedule a technician to install it for you comes at a price of only about 50.00! Yes, you see, usually, if there is something wrong with the Comcast service or Comcast equipment, there is no fee. Everything else, there is a 50.00 charge, and for those in the North East, it’s half of that. So you really do win in the end when compared to Comcast’s own Home Networking service. Be advised though, that fees can vary depending on market.

So you’ve decided now, to take my advice, save yourself some money, but what router do you  purchase? Well, really any router you wish. There are budget wireless routers out there and there are routers that are more expensive that offer more features and better hardware.

The most common wireless router out there is the Linksys wrt54gs, and is pretty inexpensive and proves to be a great router. This particular router is an 802.1b/g router and offers good reception in medium sized houses. However, with my experience talking with customers, I have noticed that the standard 802.1b/g routers are not sufficient. This being because of the size of the house, or other factors such as other wireless networks causing wireless interference. In that case, I would greatly recommend an 802.1n router. I personally own the D-Link dir-655 and am very satisfied with it. What the 802.1n routers offer over the 802.1b/g routers is range and speed. Now some manufactures will make claims on the packaging, and for the most part, they hold true. However, like any wireless device, one has to factor in other constants that may degrade the performance of the router, this being, other wireless devices, floors, walls etc. I will tell you that the N routers do tower over the b/g routers and is definably worth the money. This of course goes without saying that your computer has the capability of the N technology. If you have a desktop, you are most likely going to have to purchase an 802.1n wireless card to take advantage of the extra range and speed. You don’t have to limit yourself to the same brand, but it helps. If you have a new(er) laptop that has an Intel Chipset, then you may already have the N capability built into the laptops card. Also, all newer Macs, should already have this capability already. This would be something for you to inquire about at the store or with a friend or your computers manufacturer.

After you have done all the necessary checks, and planning, you will be all set to go, and trust me, you will be glad you went with the alternative over Comcast’s offer.

Convergys and Comcast CHN

Last night at work was just complete bullshit. I am starting to get sick of being in tier 2 support which is only for CHN (Comcast Home Networking) customers, and being a dumping ground for everything but CHN. Clearly this two tier system is not working at all and I would just rather them scrap the idea and combine everything into one, or re-train every single tier one agent. It seems that every night now we get more and more invalid transfers from people with cable issues, phone issues, AOL issues and issues about their 3rd party routers and VOIP phones. This night I got fed up with all the invalid transfers. I am not being paid to take tier 1 calls and to do their job. This is the reason why there is a 2 tier system. No one really seems to care and don’t see any problem with it. This includes the micro-management ie: Team-Leaders and includes Mr. Kavannah. Nothing is being done, and they all expect me, and others, to be a pawn and just accept every invalid call. Well i’m sorry. I am not going to accept this as an answer to the unorganized structure of Convergys (or Comcast) if you like, and am now refusing to accept and take any calls that are not related to Comcast Home Networking, which by the way, is a crock of shit in it’s own.

Why is Comcast Home Networking a crock?

Well lets begin with the outrageous installation charge of a severely outdated gateway, which is a modem, router, and Wifi access  point in one. For 149.95, Comcast customers get to have this outdated piece of hardware installed, most likely by some illegal immigrant that cannot speako da anglis, or some teenager not even out of high school yet, that only knows the basics of networking, which is what he was taught to him by some Comcast trainee, that only knows the same. Most of the time, the installation is half-assed.

The hardware:

A Linksys wcg200 or a Netgear wgr814. The Linksys wcg200v2 only supports WEP, which by today, is one of the most insecure encryption to date and can be easily hacked within minutes with the right tools. Honestly, it would be safer to leave your network open than it would to be using WEP, because the later will only tempt people to hack your network because they know how easy it is to hack. Despite the wcg200’s short-comings with security, it seems to be the most reliable out of the two.

 

The Netgear wgr814, however is very different. It supports only WPA-PSK which, is more secure than WEP, but is still susceptible to being cracked using a dictionary attack, though it’s uncommon to have a WPA network cracked because it is still easier to crack WEP, and it’s still in abundance.  Here is the caveat though: Comcast has both gateways modified with their own firmware so it limits the capabilities of both routers and a lot of the options necessary for today’s home networks, are not available. The worse to come, though is that Comcast has updated the firmware to the Netgear gateway to the point that it’s completely and utterly useless as a reliable gateway and they refuse to fix it.

Just what’s wrong with the Netgear? You are stuck using the old WEP encryption that is so easy to crack, which equals out to be “false sense of security”, if you are using any wireless computer running Windows Vista. Comcast, through their firmware update for this gateway, made it so that when WPA is used, Vista machines will only have access to Google. For the longest time, they blamed it on Microsoft and a Windows update, however, with the combined efforts one night on a 3 way call between a Dell rep, a Comcast customer and myself, found out that it was in fact the result of Comcast’s firmware update.

Now, part of the function of a gateway, and a router, is to route information from one place to another. This is not so with either piece of equipment. Since Comcast has modified the firmware on these gateways, it is next to impossible to use more than one computer to play games online, or to play your PS3 or XBOX online. If you are so unlucky to have the Netgear gateway, then you will never, ever be able to get your gaming console online. What happens is that the gaming console will crash the entire gateway and down will come the entire home network with it. There used to be a fix, which was adding the console to the DMZ, but again, with Comcast’s nasty firmware, this no longer holds true. Do you use VPN to connect to your workplace? well, your in for a surprise as well, as many people have had problems with their VPN connections, even when their computer is added to the DMZ and no, port forwarding will not work either. Why is this? One suspicion is that Comcast disabled the option for IPsec, PPoE L2TP and VPN pass-through. Another suspicion is that Comcast has also disabled Universal Plug and Play, which can be useful for many software applications

So, lets go back a little bit. What exactly does one get for 149.95 + 5.00/mo rental for the gateway? You get, a half-assed installation with no “site survey” completed by the tech, to make sure the wireless signal gets to where it’s supposed to go, you may or may not be left with an Ethernet cable, if a USB network card was installed, you may or may not be left with the driver cd. An outdated, insecure, unreliable gateway will be installed in the most un-professional manner and location and installed with insecure settings. To go along with that, you’ll find lack-luster technical support (more on that later).

 

So what can be done about this? What are the options available to Comcast and future Comcast customers? Stay tuned for more in the next segment.

price index of canadian currency

http://www.bankofcanada.ca/en/rates/inflation_calc.html

A title

VGH’s are good. I love going home early. Got to be careful though, because I need money.

I can’t wait until the summer months. Hoping it’s a dry humid one. Want to go Geocaching, and do a lot of outdoor activities.

I sorted things out.

non-trustworthy friends; no more.

moving in June – happy about that.

A rekindled love 1000’s miles away makes the right move; I’m happy for that.

We’re all going to hell

All you Mormons who like cussing, you are going to hell
All you preachers who like fucking, you are going to hell
Little boys that choke the chicken, you are going to hell
It’s the nature of evolution, the dinosaurs went to hell

Hell hell hell it’s a wonderful place
It’s a place of fire and brimstone
All you Christian politicians, you are going to hell
Magic Jesus apparitions send you to hell
Buddhist monks without god you are going to hell
Those of you dissecting frogs, you are going to hell

Hell hell hell it’s a wonderful place
It’s a place of fire and brimstone

All you Catholics wearing condoms, you are going to hell
All us fatties eating bonbons, we are going to hell
Un-baptized babies learn to limbo, purgatory is hell
And your religion is a gamble and you are going to hell

Hell hell hell it’s a wonderful place
It’s a place of fire and brimstone

There once was a man who thought that if he ate all the pages in the bible he could kill most anything
In 1913 he died of a stroke when he tried to eat the book of kings