OT - Anyone planning to evacuate from Irene?

Plenty. Wooded areas too. Even a great swamp.

If it wasn't for the taxes, it'd be paradise. ...And maybe some other negatives I'm conveniently overlooking at this time. :)

=A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 Dan

They could run copper in parallel with their cable and supply power from the head end. That what the phone company does. Have you ever seen the backup power supply in a Verizon CO? You'd be impressed. Is it expensive? I'm sure it is, but that's one of the costs of doing business. I made damn sure that I had enough backup power to run my business for days - Time Warner did not.

I'm not even remotely suggesting that I wanted them to drop whatever they were doing and fix mine first. But the crews are dispatched by SOMEONE to SOMEWHERE, and it would be a 30 second phone call, or, even better, a couple of mouse clicks to get that information to the call center.

By the way, I have a commercial data account with Time Warner. My bill is over $500 per month. When it works, it's OK, but their level of customer service sucks. We recently ordered a larger block of static IP addresses. They asked me when I wanted to make the switch, and I told them it would be best to do it Sunday morning. Imagine my surprise when they told me that they could only do it during business hours, Monday - Friday. That guarantees a service interruption while DNS servers propogate. Again, I'm not impressed.

To give everyone a better picture of what my part of NJ is like, I'm about

Hey... I'm mostly Sicilian and our... The official stance by many is that there is no mafia.

LOL.

It's the Amish that worry me. Those radicals.

Regards, Joe Agro, Jr. (800) 871-5022 x113

V8013-R

You have no clue about anything. DO yo know anything about how a CATV system is powered? They run 30A at 60 VAC down their trunkline and feeder lines. Trunk line is .750" or larger. Feeder is generally .500". Now, how in the hell could they do what you propose with hundreds of miles of trunklines and feeders?

As far as the batteries in a central office, I've seen them, starting in the mid '60s. I've also see a warehouse full of dead and damaged telco 'Rectifiers' that had been used to float charge those batteries. I built CATV headends and designed distribution systems.

Then find who to call, and call them yourself. If you are a special customer, you can get the local system manager's home phone number. Or even better, the CEO's home phone number. It just doesn't work the way you want, especially with the economy in the toilet. Some crews are dispatched to exact problem locations like a damaged pole or snapped trunkline, while other have to find the cause. In those cases, we had a list of homes at strategic points in the system where people would tell our crew if it was working or not. That would break it down into about three mile blocks. When they knew the first affected area they would work their way back, to find the problem. Sometimes that included looking into a bar to see if their TV was working.

Today, they track the outages through the cable modems that don't respond. If too much of the system is down, the software can't handle it since it's a secondary function. Answering more phone calls when everyone is busy restoring service just isn't going to happen. Even people in the offices are busy pulling supplies from inventory, and calling around for things in short supply. You can use an entire year's supply of some items in a day, after an emergency, and the crews can only work so many hours without sleep.

Try calling to report a power outage, if you aren't the first in your area. All you get is an automated message stating that they have their crews busy on the problems. My electric was out for over a month after one hurricane, and they wouldn't answer any questions, the entire time.

Neither am I. if it's that critcal, you should have distributed servers in multiple areas. If you don't like their service, then drop them and find another provider. Time Warner was never known for customer service, any more than they were as Warner Amex, or any of the other names they used since they first entered the business. They were the worst rated in SW ohio every year that I worked for another cable company. After the first year I was there, we were rated #1.

Dig really deep in your wallet and pay for private fiber, or just live with it. They provide the level of service that the average customer accepts. It's your right to find another provider, or to move the business to where you can get the level of service that you want. Our company would do off hours work, but only if scheduled well in advance. We only had one man on call after the office closed, since most of the time they had nothing to do after hours.

Since you love Verizon so much, why don't you order a bunch of DSL lines? I hear more horror stories about them than I do with people using the Road Runner backbone.

I thought you were in Millington. that's a long way from the Passaic river. The Passaic river always floods in Wayne west of 23. I think all the houses along the river there have davits above the garage. : )

John

I grew up in Northern NJ in Secaucus. Back then it was a good town in a good state. Ten minutes from Times Square but yet in farm country. I could ride through town on my bicycle with my 12 ga. shotgun across the handlebars to go hunting in the swamp with no one getting the least bit excited.

John

Almost perfectly placed half-way between Spruce Run and Round Valley.

Moved from Essex County 1-1/2 years ago or so. Love it out here.

John,

You'd be amazed at where the Passaic goes...

Check out this Mapquest map:

One of my life goals is to canoe the length of the Passaic from start to end... With a few hop-offs for stuff like the Patterson falls.

By the way, the Patterson Falls (Great Falls?) are essentially gone right now. The water level made the falls essentially go under water from what I'm hearing. That's the extent of the flooding in that town...

Oh, yeah, that's a beautiful area. I fsh at Round Valley, and I used to hunt at the Clinton WMA, right next to Spruce Run

I hope to get over there more often, now that I get free senior-citizen park passes. Geezerhood is starting to produce some rewards. d8-)

E-mail me early enough about your trip out this way and maybe we can catch a bite together, etc.

Sure, Joe. I'd like that.

I always thought that the Passaic river started somewhere west of Wayne in the low swampy areas there. I never realized that it continued and ran all over the place.

I almost bought a house in Little Falls way back when. The house was on top of the greatnotch ridge and had a commanding view of NYC and east. I bought an airplane in stead.

The Passaic river drains a lot of territory and it floods with any signifiant amount of rainfall. It must be a real mess with all the rain from the tropical storm.

John

We may not flood as bad as many other areas of the country... But it affects a lot more people and a heck of a lot more businesses than anywhere else in the nation given our business and population density... Imagine it taking 3 hours to go 50 miles (straight line) on highways because of traffic and closed roads. ...That's the commute for some people right now if they are lucky enough to be able to get out.

No worries though, Katina is on the way to give us another round of cleansing rain and wind. :(

Do that today, and they will think that you're a terrorist. :(

Did you come out okay?

Wes

Oh, yeah. But I got a new wading pool in my basement. d8-)

All is well, thanks. Everything is drying out pretty well.

Ed...FYI....Irene is considered to be one of the top ten hurricanes in terms of damage to the US...and likely to move up that scale as the damage assessments come in.

Did you hear that the Republicans do not want to spend any new money helping Irene's victums but want existing programs cut to pay for any hurricane damage?

TMT

TMT

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Yeah, I heard them. I think they'll back away from that posture.

That is easy. You use that generator that you said you did not need.

Dan

We have power. My house lost power at 2:00 AM during the hurricane, when a tree branch fell on our pole drops from across the street. My neighbors did not lose power, so, early the next morning, I ran an extension cord from my neighbor's garage to my house.

Meantime, the water in the basement had risen to almost 7 inches. The sump pump didn't actually pump it all out. After the rain stopped, the level went down 4 inches without the pump running. It just ran down the sump hole and out under our slab. Very strange.