[ale] OT: Comcast, but I do Linux!

[Scott Castaline]

Okay, so this last Friday we moved into another house also a rental just 
west of Dacula. We still have Comcast, so I thought that was a good 
thing. I was pleasantly surprised when I set up my stereo and found that 
the FM reception here was far superior to what we had at the last house, 
but Cell reception really sucks as in almost non existent. Usually only 
1 tick in sig strength. It doesn't seem to be vendor isolated either as 
my next door neighbor has Sprint and we have AT&T and another neighbor 
has T-Mobile and all have same issue. We are very close to a tower but 
some distance from other towers.

Anyway, Comcast was here Fri to hook up my STBs, and Modem for Broadband 
& phone. All seemed to be working when he left as I didn't yet have my 
equipment unpacked and hooked up yet to verify, so had to rely on 
Comcast line tests. I did later get my wife's work laptop connected to 
the modem, (which is a Thomason DCG535-2 combination broadband/Telephony 
Modem) and M$ Winblow$ connected okay. The next day, I got my system and 
D-Link router/WiFi hooked up and no connection. Router was never issued 
an IP etc. Switched back to wifey's laptop and all is well. My wife 
calls support and gets some lady telling us that we needed to get the 
Premium Service Contract that would have added $50.00/month to my bill 
and for a short time only a special discount for the one time membership 
fee of $25.00. I sort of blew a gasket going WTF?!?!? At least she 
didn't tell me that I had to install window$s on my system.

Using my wifey's laptop again, I found a thread from 11/2006 on my exact 
situation (DHG535-2, D-Link DIR-615). I didn't realize that there was a 
battery in the modem so just pulling the plug did not clear the MAC from 
the laptop thus blocking the router from getting loaded. There is a 
reset button inside reachable via paperclip (the same one I use for 
manual CD eject and other resets, my wife now calls it the golden 
paperclip and is no longer criticizing me of keeping it). I was then 
working, but wait, my mother-in-law calls on our cell phones asking why 
we were not answering our home phone. Turns out the phone was never 
ringing, but we would get dialtone and if by chance we picked up the 
phone while someone was calling us we would connect. Again support is 
trying to sell us another outrageous package but no just send us a tech.

Today tech comes, he found that the installer had wired the line using 
Red/Black instead of Red/Green. We now get ring. Also I told the tech 
about my experience with support about the broadband and he laughed and 
said that figures for weekend support..