Cowboy ISP

My ISP, Cox.net, was kind enough recently to grant me a 1mb/sec download speed increase, at no extra charge. As this is 33% faster than what I already enjoyed, I was much pleased by this development. How often in the modern age will a service company provide more service for the same price?

All was well the first few days. Zippy quick, and all of my perfectly legal downloading went so fast I realized I might be in the market for a terabyte disc array to handle all of the goodies. Joy, happiness, then, alas! Packet loss, and massive latency. Tiny info bits lost to the ether, and little hiccups in the system causing my speedy connection to pause periodically.

Distressed, I picked up the phone and called Cox tech support. The guy I spoke
with was minimally helpful, suggesting my hardware was not up to snuff. I knew this not to be the case, 'cause i'm just nerdy enough to have run a number of tests ruling my end out as the source of the problem. Called back, spoke to someone more polite and more knowledgable, and the consensus was that something was amiss, probably in the lines leading into my house. A tech would be out in a few days.

Cool.

Guy arrives in jeans, a hefty toolbelt, bushy mustache - the works. Could have been a younger version of the trusty old Brawny man. He takes a poke around outside, replaces a connector that was broken, but it doesn't solve the problem. Cox tech guy goes out to his truck to phone home and tell the folks there is a wider problem that needs attention. Problem won't be fixed today. I suspected as much, but they have their procedures, so I play along. I realize the tech guy is doing his job, and at least he isn't lying to me by either blaming my hardware or denying there really is a problem.

Nice guy. Found a wasp's nest under my porch roof, whipped out a can of the nastiest bug spray I've ever seen and blasted the evil little buggers into the hereafter.

Told him he really didn't have to do that, to which he replied:

"I live for this shit."

I call *that* service. :)