Friday, November 04, 2016

new modem needed

so apparently CenturyLink is doing some kind of upgrade in my neighborhood which requires that I get a new modem. And of course rather than just sending me a notice, they have to do this thing where they put me behind some kind of proxy where every page I go to gets me to this notice that I need to talk to somebody about getting a new modem and in the meantime click this box to restore your internet service for the next 12 hours.

Except that clicking the box does not work and I can't order a new modem until customer care opens tomorrow morning. Tech support has no way of removing or disabling the notice and escalation has gone home for the day.

I'm getting ping responses, I'm able to ssh around to places and view https: webpages, and it looks like DNS queries off my servers are working, so whatever they're doing with outgoing connections only involves port 80. But I can't tell what's happening with incoming TCP connections (thank you stanford's telnet block and unfortunately "downforeveryoneorjustme" doesn't have an https version), though everybody being idle for 4+ hours on LambdaMOO and no incoming mail received since 9:02pm is not a good sign.

Update: (Friday 11am): Got through to the daytime tech support.  Oh yes, your modem is totally compatible with the upgrade, we'll take you out of the walled garden now.  And today's tech-support says last night's tech support should have been able to take care of it.  Aaaaargh.

Things seem to be back.
(next lookout is November 14 when the actual work is supposed to be happening)