Adventures of Comcast Bonnie

The last year has been NUTS! It's been non-stop since I started the twitter gig at work. Ya'll keep me pretty busy :) I can honestly say the up's outnumber the down's this year, and that's a good thing! I hope that the same can be said with you. I wanted to put down on "paper" all of the great and bad things in my life, because you all help me through it every day! For that, I thank you from the bottom of my heart. Even if you're there to yell at me at first, your kind words and encouragement... and snarkyness... make the days go by quicker, and give me the motivation to keep going.

This year, the following things sucked:

• Broke up with BF of 3 years in March
• Had to give my poor cat back to the shelter (medical issues)
• Lived with said ex and 2 other guys until August (oh my, drama)
• My Indoor Color Guard disbanded (instructor left us :( )
• all of the nutty issues from buying my house
• all of the nutty issues AFTER buying the house
• all of the nutty issues in this past WEEK
• Docsis 3.0 (not anymore!)

• I was in the NEW YORK TIMES (how freaking cool is that???)
• I've met multiple awesome people, both at work and outside of work
• My Indoor Guard Girls took 1st place in their region, and 2nd place at Championships! (after 8 years of being dead last every show!)
• I BOUGHT A HOUSE!!!! (c'mon, that's pretty good for age 24!)
• Docsis 3.0 (yeah, it's all sorts of hot now)
• Helped well over 3,000 people directly, and thousands more indirectly
• Bringing change to a company that is ready for some shakin' up
• Discovered very important things about me that finally have explanations (yay a.d.d.!)
• Helping YOU.
  

So, I was reading Consumerist.com today and noticed a post about an unfortunate experience between a customer and his modem/us. The insanity that happened here is going to probably end up popping up more and more often as we transition away from legacy devices and focus on the cool new stuff (D3!). Here is the link to the page with the information about the WHY

A few things that are helpful to know about the upgrade process:

• DOCSIS 1.0 and 1.1 modems are the only devices needing to be upgraded
• If you have a DOCSIS 2.0 modem, you're fine (unless you want super speeds)
• If you have a DOCSIS 3.0 modem, you're fine
• This does NOT apply to every region. If you have an EOL modem, you should receive notice via snail mail and/or email. We are doing this area by area, and I do not have a schedule of who's going to do this when. Don't freak out, just be prepared for the future! Plenty of notice for the bulk of you reading this.
  

I like to say awesome... a lot. Fair warning.

Another day, another blog post, another cool thing to share with you guys!

We've soft launched (haven't made a big deal, basically) our new Comcast Secure Backup & Share service for our customers.

This is cool for those of you who need to put something 2gb and under "somewhere". Portable apps, maybe some pictures you wanted to share, documents, whatever! Here's some of the specifics from what I've been told so far:

Comcast Secure Backup and Share is an easy, secure, and reliable way to back up and share all of your important files. Now, you can access your files from anywhere with an Internet connection for easy sharing. You can download the Comcast Secure Backup and Share application and have convenient access to the Comcast Vault. Components of solution include:

1. Comcast Secure Backup & Share PC application – downloaded to the PC during product registration. Used to backup files and restore files. Application can be downloaded on multiple PCs so that files from each computer can be backed up.
   
   
2. Comcast Vault – Secure Online storage of backed up files. You can access their Comcast Vault through any Internet Connection for downloading or sharing.

Comcast Secure Backup & Share features include:

• Automatic backup can be scheduled
• Bandwidth throttling and block level incremental backups
• A secure online backup and storage utility
• An easy upload and retrieval mechanism
• Remote access to your files from any internet connection
• Ability to share content from the vault to family and friends

• Comcast High-Speed Internet subscription – Primary account must complete registration
• 133 MHz processor
• 64 MB RAM
• Windows 2000, XP, Vista SP1 or SP2, or Windows 7
• Either Internet Explorer 7 or later, Firefox 3.0 or later
• (No word on when there will be Mac support, sad to say!!!)
  

• You must be a Primary High-Speed internet subscriber to purchase the service.
• After purchase is made, any secondary can download the product. A secondary UID’s backed up content will contribute to overall storage purchased by primary, though the files will be stored in your own private vault.
• Each UID can download CSB&S desktop application to multiple PCs
• Due to copyright concerns, music files can be backed up, but not shared.

I had the cool opportunity over the weekend to be a tech for a day. It is something I had been meaning to do for awhile, but never had the time. I was in Cape Cod for the weekend visiting folks, and one of them happens to be a technician for Comcast. I had nothing better to do until they were done working for the day, so I tagged along and finally got some field tech time.


Some of you may have seen the tweets on Saturday. Here's the low-down!

We didn't start the day at this location, which is both a satellite office for the techs and a payment center. Saw the OLD payment center next to it... huge improvement :)



i'm at a customer's house doing a triple play install. of course two gigantic black labs are helping :) 11:39 AM Dec 5th

Having fun with punch blocks... which really aren't that much fun to be honest... 12:34 PM Dec 5th

Did I neglect to mention it was raining? A LOT?



First install finished! Next job involves finding out where a customer's dialtone ran off to. Comcast ninja skillz activate! 1:16 PM Dec 5th

ACTUALLY, we ended up picking up a job that was just a quick install of a cable box at an apartment complex. My tech, however, is a little OCD like me. We ended up cleaning up the entire box for the building so everyone would have happier cable!



Next up: Ooooh triple play install with home networking! Should be tons of fun (no really!) 2:43 PM Dec 5th

I actually spent this job setting up home networking for this customer while Will redid the phone wiring down in the basement. Sometimes, we're not given the most awesome wiring to work with from your old provider, but we'll make it work somehow! :)

(waiting for the test call to confirm service is working)


last job for the day, fixing some phone wiring to restore said rogue dialtone from earlier then done! 5:34 PM Dec 5th

This was actually an interesting dealy-o. The sad part is, we were not able to fix without an electrician (the phone line coming in was just... very unhappy). We got the dialtone, we did not get to fix the underlying problem. The GOOD news is, we know what it is and this customer knows exactly how to fix it. YAY! Also, Mr. Customer was super excited about having a social media person in his house :)

Alas, poor missing dialtone. We knew you well. Everyone should hug their next tech... they probably need it. This isn't an easy job! 5:58 PM Dec 5th

This is so true. It was raining hard, 40 degrees, never know what you're getting yourself into when you go to the next job... every house is different. Every job is a new challenge. I definitely gained a bit more insight into the field tech's day (this was a SLOW day, fyi), and how tough it can be. Gotta say, I slept like a baby that night!