"Please try again later"

[muckefuck]

Sometimes it's a good thing I don't have connectivity at home. Last night, for instance, y'all would've been treated to a frothing rant about how my phone company sucks abites the heads off kittens. Now where there was once rage, there is only despair. I can still receive calls at home, but I can't call out and they refuse to help me further unless I call from the apartment. She tricked me into admitting the existence of my cell and when I asked, "What would you tell me if I didn't have a cell phone?" she refused to answer the question on the basis that it was "irrelevant". At least she didn't simply cut me off, the woman I spoke to last night. Thus ends my five-year experiment with trying to stick one in the eye of the local overlords. I mean, as shitty as SBC is, their service can't possibly be worse, can it?

Calming my nerves took a quick ranty call to my man followed by a Coke with 151-proof rum. (I originally asked for a "Cuba libre" and the bartender was like "What is that?" I despair again! I mean, really, how obscure is that? It's not like I asked for a Modernista or something!) One thing about recovering from rage, though: It makes me feel expansive. Even before the alcohol kicked in, I had no compunction about treating the other bar denizens like old friends--not that I spoke to many people besides the Cliff Clavin of Big Chicks, who lured me into an hour-long disquisition on literature, from the development of the novel to the parallels between Philip Roth and the rock group Queen. (Who knew he used to manage a bookstore?) It reaffirmed my ambition to tackle Dead souls one of these days and gave me a few new talents to look out for, notably Randall Kenan. More than that, it kindled my love of great literature--to the point that even in my bleary stupor, I was trying to finish the next chapter in Genji before falling asleep upright with all the lights on.

Comments

[snowy-owlet.livejournal.com]

What's in a Modernista? In my bar books I only found two versions of the "Modern," one of which contained sloe gin and the other absinthe, so *shudder*.

Couldn't just say Rum and Coke

[(Anonymous)]

Call it a mentira next time. Only aging Spaniards will get it...
-e

[niemandsrose.livejournal.com]

Is it like the "New-Fangled" (c.f. "Old-Fashioned") we invented the other day over on Rick's journal?

What about the lime?

[muckefuck.livejournal.com]

His reaction was, "Is that Spanish?" I was like, "Yes, but..."

Re: Couldn't just say Rum and Coke

[lil-m-moses.livejournal.com]

Some friends of mine actually had trouble once when asking specifically for a rum and Coke.

[snowy-owlet.livejournal.com]

Is there any better combination than puns and liquor?

[gopower.livejournal.com]

Abolish local service. Go cell only and cable modem -- the wave of the future. Well, until the next thing comes along.

[cpratt.livejournal.com]

Either that or DSL + VOIP. I'd do it in a minute if I didn't live so far out in the countryside.

[niemandsrose.livejournal.com]

Some folks might make a case for liquor and firearms...

[febrile.livejournal.com]

I may well be moving soon, and am strongly leaning towards the Comcast/SBC pairing. RCN's Bundle is a bundle all right, but not of joy....

[febrile.livejournal.com]

Liquor, firearms, and the first guy who makes a bad pun...?

[muckefuck.livejournal.com]

I was leaning towards that before (when RCN decided they could better service me by doubling their charges), but lhn came up with some reasonable objections and I was dissuaded. Well, really, it was the thought of having to investigate a shitpile of calling plans to figure out which one made sense for me that did the dissuading, but the reasonable objections didn't hurt.

[muckefuck.livejournal.com]

Either way, I'm still stuck choosing between SBC and RCN. Those is the guys what owns the wires, goddangit!

[snowy-owlet.livejournal.com]

Oh, right. I live near a bunch of those people.

See also: liquor + fireWORKS

[lhn.livejournal.com]

Though wires may be entirely optional soon one way or another.

(As muckefuck notes, I'm still leery about losing the basic emergency reliability of POTS. That may become less relevant-- if no less worrisome-- if it turns out that all the emergency services I'm depending on are at the other end of VOIP or cellular lines themselves, of course.)

[fengshui.livejournal.com]

Get Metered Rate services from SBC. You should be able to get that for $11 a month plus taxes. You'll pay per-minute for outbound calls, but inbound are still free. I think they even give you $2-3 of credit for outbound calls every month, so most months you won't pay anything more than the base rate and taxes if you only use it for local call (< 12 miles).

Then you can add the cheapest long distance you can find to that, or use VOIP or cell for your long distance and toll calls.

[gopower.livejournal.com]

While they lock you into 2-year contracts (bastards!), they are usually more flexible about letting you change plans within their respective services. The big drawback I've found to cell-only life is that there's never that happy blinking light on the answering machine indicating messages when I get home. Of course, it didn't blink all that often...

[muckefuck.livejournal.com]

Looks like it's called "Measured Rate" in Illinois. They're unsurprisingly cagey about the cost of the phone line, but I think this might well bring my charges back to what they were before RCN decided to jack me.

Thanks!

[lhn.livejournal.com]

Now that may make some sense. I'll have to look into it.

A stumbling block is simplicity, for the sake of prilicla's sanity. She's not crazy about the sound quality of the cell phone, so it would probably be necessary to transfer the landline phones (to VOIP, while keeping a clearly-marked emergency phone plugged into the landline. Does anyone sensitive to telephone sound quality have anything to say, good or bad, about VOIP services? Is the bandwidth use noticeable if you're talking and using other web services at the same time? (Conversely, if you're doing a big download while you're talking, does it degrade sound quality?)

Though it's also not clear that I'd actually save much, if anything. I'm paying SBC $32/month including tax. Vonage is $15-25/month, depending on plan-- add $11 for a barebones landline to that and it's the same ballpark. (Sure, that includes long distance, but I make most of the long distance calls and I use the cell.) Still, it at least gives me something to look into if SBC decides to jack up its rates to make up for the customers it's hemorrhaging.

[fengshui.livejournal.com]

Yeah. The phone companies tent to hide Measured/Metered Rate, as they probably lose money on those lines. However, it's in the FCC tarriffs, so they have to offer it, whether they like it or not.

I pay about $20 a month total with my line under that rate. (45% taxes!)

[lhn.livejournal.com]

According to a post a couple of weeks ago on broadbandreports.com:

Measured rate service in IL is priced from $2 to $9. I have asked many people at SBC to tell me what the rate difference is based on...but no one has yet delivered on the promised return calls. I know that as long as I have had SBC/Ameritech service, I have NEVER been able to land myself in a location that qualifies for the $2 line...it's always the one that costs $9. Then there is the "federal access charge"...except that it's not Federal and not charged by the government. The taxes, the legit and the bogus ones. And, in my case, the charge for unlisting my number. The total comes out to $17 and some change.

Nothing Beatsa Coke and Pizza

[danbearnyc.livejournal.com]

Don't you just love old advertising logos? There were several signs with that logo that opened in my old neighborhood in '67 and I can still see them in my minds eye. So much tastier, if less effective, than rum and coke.

As for phone service, my Verizon was so bad last year that I first switched from DSL to cable for my ISP. The Verizon service went downhill and I had such a serious problem that I had to call the state regulatory board, the exact title of which I forget. I used the magic word "disability" regarding my cpap, and Verizon was fined $1,000. When my geek friend Roddy arrived from Dallas he then set me up on Vonage. I haven't looked back and have been extremely happy ever since.

[muckefuck.livejournal.com]

At that rate, it's hardly better than the $9.50 Local Saver Unlimited plan! Still, a substantial net savings for me either way.

[innerdoggie.livejournal.com]

Ugh, I hate doing business with the phone company over the phone. I almost lose my temper and start yelling every time, and they refuse to do business via snail mail. It must be part of their business plan to avoid having stuff written down, and they'd rather risk angry customers than being committed on paper. I ended up contacting the State's Attorney's office about AT&T. Grrrrrrrrrrr. Double-grrrrrrrrr.

[muckefuck.livejournal.com]

Mine seems to want to do everything by e-mail. When I'm on hold, they remind me where to log on and the URL is prominently displayed on my bills, whereas the phone number is nowhere to be found (though that of the regulatory commission is prominent; was this a warning sign I missed?)

[his-regard.livejournal.com]

Is the bandwidth use noticeable if you're talking and using other web services at the same time? (Conversely, if you're doing a big download while you're talking, does it degrade sound quality?)

No and no, pretty much. VoIP systems use Layer 3 routing, which means individual packets are prioritized by service and destination. "Phone" packets are priority scheduled at the local routers, which sends them in advance of other data packets.

VoIP conversations take place at 64Kb/second. In most high-bandwidth channels, this is a small-to-negligible amount, and won't affect other applications' transfer rate o'ermuch. As for quality, it's not any different from a POTS line, which converts voice to that level for digital transfer where the copper line terminates at a phone company switch. (Mind, this assumes a simple phone->network->phone connection. Funky tech wizardry like call following can cause lag (almost always) and/or lost packets (if the signal goes wireless).)

description and gauntlet

[his-regard.livejournal.com]

The Modernista is, as you've discovered, a variation of the Modern cocktail. The general recipe:

2 oz. blended Scotch
1/2 oz. dark rum
1/2 oz. punsch*
1 tablespoon pastis (Dubonnet, Lillet, what have you)
1/2 oz. fresh lemon juice
orange bitters

The Modernista uses absinthe as the pastis, which leads me to suspect muckefuck only asks for it when he wants to be a smart-ass. If, however, he can provide compelling evidence (or at least a convincing lie) that he has imbibed a true Modernista, I'll buy him dinner.

* about punsch: Most people I've known for a while have been subjected to a discourse about the two ways to distill sugar cane. The primary way treats it as grain in the making of Scotch, which begets rum. The other way treats is as grain in the making of vodka, which begets cachaca. There is yet an other, other way, in which the rum is sweetened into a liqueur; to extend the Scotch analogy, it is the making of the Drambuie version of rum.