Geekwhore.net - Pimpin’ since ‘02

So if you’ve read my blog you notice that I harp on a local startup cellular company called Viaero quite frequently.  The company does quite a bit right, they have towers all over, customer service isn’t too bad and they employee a lot of local people to work in their stores.  However, they have quite rapidly outgrown themselves. Customer service is not nearly as good now as it was two years ago, while my local store is good some of the sales associates in other stores are horrible.  I have had countless issues with the store in Scottsbluff, NE, stopping in with issues and before I can finish being told that there are no issues and it must just be my phone and that I need to call customer service.  What’s the point of having all of those stores if I need to call in.  And it gets better, on countless occasions I have called customer service to be told to go to the store…and then the store tells me to call customer service!

Recently I got a blackberry curve, I love it, it does almost everything I want.  The one thing that it will NOT do is teathered modem.  I sent an email in to Viaero and had a customer service agent get back with me, they advised that they would see if there were were plans to offer teathered modem services.  After a month of waiting I finally got a reply(right after complaining on my blog about not having heard anything).  I was advised that Viaero has NO plans to offer teathered modem support on the blackberry but that they would were working to offer this on other phones.  Let’s think about this, the customer who has a blackberry obviously needs to be in contact quite a bit more than your regular cell phone cusotmer and would more than likely utilize teathered modem more than a regular celll phone customer.  Not having teathered modem support on the blackberry is completely stupid!

It’s okay though, I found sharkmodem for my blackberry, I ran a few different tests with sharkmodem versus my vEDGE card that I pay WAY too much for considering the crappy speeds/service that I have.  With sharkmodem I had BETTER speeds than on the vEDGE even when running the crappy caching software that Viaero has you install.  Therefore, I’m canceling my vEDGE card and I’ll just buy the sharkmodem software, Viaero can stuff it where the sun doesn’t shine.  I just my hopes up that AT&T or another large carrier that gets it (please not sprint though), one that realizes that your blackberry users are going to pay for additional services to have mobility options more so than the customer who has the shitty free Nokia phone.  I already pay you $40 a month for blackberry service, another $10-20 for teathered modem would have been great.  However, that being said, the sharkmodem software doesn’t cost much, it’s a one time fee and so instead of Viaero getting additional recurring revenue they don’t….bad decision on their part!

I’m sure Viaero has noticed my posts google for viaero blackberry and my blog comes up even before they do…..I’d be more than happy to set the record straight if they would just get a clue!  You know how to contact me Viaero

Nick C

Tags: blackberry, Viaero

I figured that I would try posting to my wordpress blog from my Blackberry. I was rather impressed, the admin interface re-formats great to a small screen which is more than most sites.

On a side note, still no teathered modem from Viaero, I talked to a manager a month ago and they are still waiting on an answer. Thanks for the great customer experience Viaero, hopefully as you continue to grow your support can equal that of Alltel so that when I switch I don’t feel so bad. A simple yes/no/maybe would be fine, but don’t make me call you for updates that is rather backwards.

Oh well, I found sharkmodem for my blackberry, teathered modem for free. What’s funny is that proxied internet through my BB is faster than the EDGE card that I have with Viaero. So I guess with no answer from Viaero I’ll tell them to stuff the $80 a month EDGE card and any teathered service. Way to loose revenue Viaero, I’ll but something cool with the money I saved.

Nick

Tags: blackberry, customer service, Viaero

So about this time of year I always get into a rut.  I like living in Imperial, I have family here, I like my job, I own a house in a nice quiet neighborhood what more could one want right?  However, there is definitely one thing that I miss since moving back to Imperial, friends.  I love my wife and kids but every now and then I would love to just go hang out with the guys, however, I’m not a normal guy, I’m a geek.  Geek’s don’t sit around and play poker, we sit and play games and I really do miss going to impromptu LAN parties and just hanging out.  Unfortunately that it doesn’t seem to happen out here, computer/IT guys aren’t a common thing out here so it always makes for some awkward parties since most talk about farming, ranching and everything but what I know.  It used to be kind of nice, there was a group of guys that would get together and play games, however, that slowly died out and I notice more and more how much I miss that kind of interaction!

I just need more geeks to move back this way….will it happen, probably not, give me another 5 years and I’m sure I’ll snap and move…or I’ll just stop bitching and go on with having no friends in the local area.

So I’ve been using wordpress for quite a few years now.  Anyone who knows me knows that I don’t like website design, I leave that to the pro’s which is why I have a pretty vanilla website.  I like it that way, I post when I want and just add to the mess of crap that we call the internet.  I logged in earlier tonight thinking I’d see how things were going and thinking I would write something.  Low and behold Wordpress 2.5 was out, for whatever reason I always have to upgrade when I see something new is out.  I downloaded the upgrade and put it on my web server, loaded up the admin screen and I must say that wordpress has made quite a few strides.  The admin interface has an ajaxie feel to it and I like it.  Good job wordpress crew, keep up the good work, I know it doesn’t mean much coming from me but I do appreciate all that you do, maybe someday I’ll stop hating on website design and actually make this site something worth looking at but it’s nice to know that with wordpress and a few hours of work you can have something that is very presentable and highly customizable.

Tags: wordpress ajax

So we just turned up our second DS-3 a few weeks ago. Overall I’ve been pretty happy, dual DS-3’s, slowly tweaking BGP, life is pretty happy. However, I noticed as we turned up the second DS-3 that the next logical step is an OC-3 and then I got to thinking how stupid it is to have to deal with circuits in this day and age. The landscape is changing but it can’t get here soon enough. Why can every other piece of equipment on my network work at ethernet speeds (10 Meg, 100 Meg, 1000 Meg…etc), yet when I go to connect to the internet I have to buy it in stupid increments of 45 Meg, 155 Meg…etc. As an ISP we like to wait until the last minute to buy more internet bandwidth, not because we like to cut it close but because it makes no sense to buy a 45 meg pipe that you are only going to use 10 meg’s on. Unfortunately we are forced to because it takes so long to get the connections installed and in place (the most recent DS-3 that we just put in took over 6 months for the RBOC to get installed!!!!). Life will be much simpler when I can go out and simply purchase bandwidth in 5 or 10 meg increments. So I call the RBOC(or whomever I’m buying my bandwidth from), they deliver the piece of fiber that goes up to 1 Gig and then we rate shape the connection to whatever I need. If I only need 5 meg’s that’s fine..charge me for 5 meg’s and the loop, if I need 500 Meg’s then so be it. Also, when you do this, I want to be able to have multiple VLAN’s/MPLS circuits running across it. So if I want 200 Meg’s of internet and then I want 100 Meg’s for a point to point connection then so be it. We currently work with a company that does just this. It’s great, other providers are getting there…unfortunately it’s just not the providers that I have to work with most of the time.