Comcast uses Catch-22 as a system design manual

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While reviewing my credit card bill, I noticed that the bill for our Comcast service at the camp was higher than expected. I went to the Comcast website, logged in to my account, and clicked the b to see the details on the bill. I learned that I needed a PIN to access the bill.

For security reasons, Voice management and billing information on your account will be limited until you enter the Security PIN we sent to your home address or email. Enter your Security PIN now, or have it re-sent to you.

Fine. I clicked the link to have it sent to my email. Quick as you please, I was brought to a page where I learned that the PIN will be sent to our camp address in five business days.
Less fine. We don’t receive mail at the camp address.
I looked around around to find another way to find out my PIN. I found none. I initiated a chat session with customer support. After I provided my account info and exchanged niceties, we went to the matter of the PIN.
I learned the following from a nice customer service representative.

  • Even though the message says that they can send the PIN to my email address, they can’t.
  • They can only send the PIN in two ways: by USPS to our camp address, where we don’t receive mail or to our Comcast phone number as a voice message. We don’t have a phone to plug into the phone jack on the router to access the voice service that we didn’t order.
  • They can’t send a text message with the PIN to my cell phone, which the phone number by which the CSR located the account.
  • When I said that I would have to buy a phone to be able to access my Comcast voice mail, she said that wasn’t necessary, that I could borrow a working phone from a neighbor.
    The CSR was very sad for me (her words) when I told her that I don’t have a neighbor from whom I can borrow a phone. 
  • I would have to go to the Comcast office 20 miles away to get real help.
When I got to the Comcast office 20 miles away, the nice customer service rep looked up my account information (based on my cellphone number) and then told me that the system could only send my PIN to the service address (the camp), not to the billing address. I quietly tapped my forehead against the glass that separates customers from service reps. She resolved to fix the problem. Twenty minutes later, she was able get the PIN sent to my home address (“in six to eight business days”).
That was two weeks ago.
Update:
In the process of testing the links for this blog post, I clicked the Send me a PIN links. I just received the following email:

I logged in, entered the PIN, and can now view my bill. Thank you, Comcast, I think.

Father’s Day 2013

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I’m a very fortunate guy.

Not only did I  receive some clever and thoughtful gifts, but, most importantly, we got to spend time together as family. We ate well, laughed loudly, and heard good stories of hope and adventure.

Dept. of Non-obviousness: Drupal configuration message

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You might not think that this stream of messages would be caused by character encoding:

Notice: Undefined index: highlighted in include() (line 126 of C:wampwwwdrupal-7.22modulessystempage.tpl.php). Notice: Trying to get property of non-object in drupal_alter() (line 1042 of C:wampwwwdrupal-7.22includesmodule.inc).

I was editing a configuration file and switched to UTF-8 because I needed to add a few unusual characters to a web page. When I did so, the stream of errors appeared. It took a long time of searching before I discovered. this discussion page where ANSI vs. UTF-8 was mentioned.
It’s not a universal law, but experience shows that the bigger the gusher of error messages, the cause is usually quite small and and the least obvious.

If you get there last, leave a message

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There’s a scene in Three Little Pigskins where Moe and Larry are arranging to meet at a predetermined location:
Moe: If you get there first, put a chalk mark.
Larry: Okay. What if you get there first?
Moe: Then I’ll rub it out.1
Anyway, The Reg reports that scientists have done this, only better, sending a message from one photon to another that that was already deceased.

Measuring P1 destroys it; even so, it gets its state from P4
Image: Phys. Rev. Lett. 110, 210403 (2013)
DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.110.210403

1The Marx Brothers may have done this first, but I can’t locate the scene.

On Google maps and education

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At lunch today, I talked with a former professor about some of the issues that he sees with his students. This, by the way, is at Amherst. The students who get in there did so because they knew how to present themselves to their high school teachers and admissions boards. They knew how to win.
Many student wrote papers that were focused on a narrow topic, crisply-defined, but with little connection to other ideas or domains. These students did well well because they showed a clear answer to a specific, albeit esoteric, question. Their research skills were limited to delivering a precise answer with no ragged edges.
If you ask Google Maps (or any GPS system) for turn-by-turn directions, you get good results. Using those directions will get you where you intend to go, but with a curious side effect. You are delivered as in a tunnel, without context.

Time was, we studied maps and knew not only the path, but also the frame of reference. Recently, I had to travel to a part of a nearby town that was unfamiliar to me. The person I was visiting said that his street is right near the so-and-so school. I used Google Navigation. It made no mention of the school as a prominent reference point. Instead, it said, “in 600 feet,  turn left.” I got where I was going, but Google told me nothing of the fact that this family lived near a school.
It turned out that living near a school was very relevant to this person and his wife because his kids could walk to school. Google told me what was true, but not what was meaningful.

How to lose a sale and win a customer

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While cutting firewood this weekend, the chain slipped off the bar on my chainsaw. In the process of re-

tightening the chain, a small clip and, I later learned, a bearing fell out of the sprocket assembly and into the underbrush. I took it as an omen to stop work for the day. I put the chainsaw into the back of my car.
I went back to Holden the next day to tend to a few other errands and brought the chainsaw to the repair place near our house, Parker Power Equipment. They have worked on other saws before as well as our lawn mower and snowblower.
The young man behind the desk looked at the saw and said that they don’t always have the right Stihl parts in stock, that I might do better to go a Stihl dealer such as the one in Worcester. I had errands in Worcester, so I went to the dealer. They had the parts and installed them at the counter.
Both places did well, but Parker did better. They said that losing this sale was better for me, the customer. They were right. My chainsaw could have been with them for several days while they tried to get the right parts for this simple repair. They earned my loyalty as a customer.

Plans for the weekend? The weather says, “Ha!”

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What’s been weirdest among the many weird aspects of this weekend’s weather has been nearly two days of precipitation with a strong northwest wind.
In typical patterns, systems move up the east coast, dragging a cold front behind them. The cold front shifts the wind to the northwest and brings in colder and drier air. In this case, the wind started to shift on Friday. The rain continued, hard, through Friday and Saturday. Lighter on Saturday night, we saw or thought we saw some snow mixed in.
Three months earlier, we would have called the a three-day Nor’easter.It’s not uncommon for winter storms to strengthen as they get into the Gulf of Maine. Bombing out, they call it. The weather charts don’t show that this happened, only that the systems moved slowly.
There are breaks in the clouds now. There are whitecaps on the lake.
The fireplace, even if we had good, dry wood, doesn’t put out enough heat to fight against the wind and cold. The porch of the camp has single-pane windows with broad exposure to the northwest wind coming across the lake. When I was a kid, we had a pocket door and a pocket window on the wall that separated the porch from the main room. My father removed those during a renovation in the 70s. We could have used them this weekend.
We’re burning wood that’s long past its prime, stuff that was cut five or more years ago. My plan had been to cut and split the fallen hemlock that’s in the front yard. There was still plenty of good meat on much of the tree. Split, it’ll be good for both the fireplace and sauna. It was too cold and rainy on yesterday and on Friday, though, for me to spend very long outdoors.
The rain will stop. The winds will calm and shift again. By the end of the coming week, it’ll be 90.

When cool is too cool

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As states, cities, and towns replaced their traffic signals with energy-efficient LED lights, they discovered an underappreciated feature of the old systems : the heat melted snow and ice.
You can read more in my blog post on All LED lighting: Of Light, Snow & Ice