Another Verizon outage hits Silicon Valley. As this map shows, the Verizon outage is turning the United States upside down.
Verizon Outage Hits Silicon Valley
Category Archives: Tech Fails
Huge Bay Area Comcast Outage
Somehow Comcast missed waterproofing 101 in their cabling class with the first mild El Nino blameable storm knocking out Comcast’s less than robust monopolized Internet and Cable TV service. Comcast is clinging to a dying business model and refuses to see the writing on the wall. Consumers only need you because you’ve managed to monopolize the Bay Area’s Internet providers. Once their is another viable option, toast you will be.
Loud Comcast X1 DVR Cable Box
Is your Comcast “X1 Operating System” DVR extremely annoying?
Like this one:
Yep, low quality hardware rented for exorbitant prices. That’s the Comcast way. They now have decided to hack together a social media team to counteract the many negative posts and videos that have gone viral showing less than professional conduct and mediocre service and equipment. Don’t the Cable Providers realize that consumers just want to watch Game of Thrones without their equipment freezing up as solid as the icy wall of the North? And to not have their fans and electronics wailing as loud as a White Walker while trying to watch normal television? If you have to turn up the volume just to hear the conversation over the din of the evil Cable Box, that just doesn’t add value to the high cost cable TV watching experience that one comes to expect with a 210 dollar a month premium cable bill. The only time that the Comcast X1 DVR box is quiet is when it is unplugged. But of course this defeats the purpose of having a DVR box digitally recording your favorite shows while you are away. Why does the “X1 Operating System” box have to be louder than the original bad ass X1 Rocket Plane flown by Chuck Yeager?
That plane broke the sound barrier! It wasn’t meant to be in a quiet living room cranking out 80 decibels of buzzing noise while doing absolutely nothing like the Comcast Xfinity X1 “Operating System”! By the way their X1 Operating System is really just an embedded version of Linux “Made with love in Philadelphia”.
Time for the return of Rabbit Ears?
Did you know you could still get digital television channels over the air with an actual antenna for free? Tivo (yes Tivo is still around!) now even has a DVR just for recording television from an HD antenna. Comcast is part of a dying business and is trying every trick in the book to try to get cash money from their subscribers. And it is working for some and alienating others. Eventually there will be no need to pay Comcast or Time Warner Cable or any of the other Media Monopolies for their content distribution and they will cease to exist.
Verizon Wireless outage in Santa Clara and San Jose
Verizon Wireless service has been down all day in parts Santa Clara and San Jose in the heart of Silicon Valley.
After spotty service last week, whatever the problem was took the service out completely for a while. Verizon Wireless service does seem to be back up for now. Who knows if there will be any word from Verizon on what caused the outage or even if they will admit to having an outage. Customers of AT&T and Sprint seem to still have cell service so it doesn’t seem to be the dreaded Solar Apocalypse.
It could quite possibly be a localized Sharknado swirling around a Verizon cell tower. Flying sharks get hungry and they’ll eat just about anything.
“Verizon is working to restore your services” is the blanket statement on their Verizon Service Outage Information web page.
Happy data streaming Silicon Valley and beware of flying sharks!
San Mateo Internet Outage caused by lightning?
A brief internet outage hit the San Mateo Silicon Valley area just as a strong storm front was crossing through the area. Thunder and lightning was reported during the storm. I heard some rumbles of thunder, did you? Pretty rare event here in Silicon Cali.
Those of you who have Comcast’s new internet connected cable boxes may have noticed that without an internet connection, even with a good cable TV signal, you are unable to change channels or do anything else with your cable box. It will remain stuck on the channel it was on when the internet went out. This is how Comcast monitors everything you watch and gives you an “enhanced experience”. You can always go old school and hook up an antenna for those over the air channels. Remember those? They’re still out there and many are HD now.
Beware of the T-Rex page!
Happy 2014 Silicon Valley!
Happy 2014 Silicon Valley and the Bay Area! No Scarlet Plague has stricken the Bay Area in 2013 and no dot com crash has hit as of yet. But some of the signs of a bubbly dot com bubble are appearing. From a frothy, unsustainable real estate market that has pushed rent costs higher and higher, to increased traffic of Tesla Model S 4 door sedans piloted by GoogleGlassHole drivers running up and down the 101. It’s here. The Tech Bubble. When will it pop? No one knows. Yet. Though some of the high flyers of the Tech World in this bubble are different from the Pets.com era of the past. Some of these booming tech companies in SiliconCali are actually profitable and are minting money as I type.
Get a call from 800-847-4084?
Did you receive a call from 800-847-4084? Have you bought anything from Dell recently?
Well this is their automated robo call system trying to sell you an extended warranty. Don’t buy it. It’s just a profit machine for Dell. If you pick up when 800-847-4084 calls, there will be a delay while the call is routed to a call center operator’s phone. Then you’ve just given them a chance to try their pitch on you. Most companies have ceased this practice as it is very annoying and off-putting to customers. But in the dying days of PC hardware sales, cold call selling is probably still going to prop up the bottom line until the inevitable demise of the standard computer hardware model.
