FIOS failings, Part 2

Following up yesterday's gripe, here's a very telling portrait my current Verizon FIOS service, as of 9:22 p.m. this evening:

4.19 Mbps.  Four.  I run a small business out of our home and we pay over $80 a month for 50 Mbps service.  We are currently getting less than one tenth of what we're paying for. 

Test run at this site.

Here's the corresponding service outage map, which I screengrabbed from Verizon's own site just after I did the speed test:

No service outages self-reported by Verizon in the greater Houston area, despite the fact that this outage has persisted for weeks. 

Something is truly rotten in the state of Denmark.  Verizon has given us the run-around for weeks.  My husband spent yet another interminable about of time on the telephone with "Customer Service" (I use that term loosely) this evening, only to be told next to nothing, just as he was on previous occasions.  Apparently there is an internal outage code or number attached to this event, and that was described to him as TXEDGE5003637.  But when I search for that on the internet, or just the numerical suffix 5003637 within the context of Verizon FIOS, I find nothing whatsoever.

The only thing that "Customer Service" could tell my husband was that they suspected that this problem is not localized - they think based on Verizon's internal coding that it's actually Houston-wide.  Maybe not every customer, but widely distributed.  If that's the case, I can't understand why there's not a major uproar in progress.

Tomorrow during business hours, I plan to send this information to a few consumer advocates at local media outlets, just in case there really is a larger story here.  And also, if it's a widely-distributed problem that's been dragging on for weeks, perhaps a class-action lawyer would be interested in asking some questions.  The way I figure it, Verizon owes me at least fifty bucks and counting, for failure to provide service as agreed.  If there are a lot of customers affected, the effective damages could start looking like real money. 

All I want to know from Verizon is whether or not they intend to restore service, and if so, EXACTLY when - no more blowing smoke up my skirt for weeks on end, saying oh, it will surely be fixed "tomorrow". 

And if they simply do not have any intention of resuming service, then I'd like to have that confirmed so that I can begin what'll surely be a long, arduous process of getting my money back and switching to another provider.  That's all.  Normal business stuff of the type in which any halfways-functional service company should be well-versed. 

Front yard onion progress

November 21, 2013:

Numerous neighborhood children helped me plant the slips, which were about the size of toothpicks.  Pic from this post which described the installation. 

January 20, 2014:

Freshly weeded and watered.  They get a lot of wind in this location, which tends to knock them around. 

We are cautiously optimistic that this crop is actually going to fully develop.  This past weekend, I put about 30 minutes of weeding and fertilizing effort into it, really the first work I had done since planting.

Soils here are chronically yucky, so I fortified with some cotton burr compost. 

Sprinkle some on top...

...work it in. 

I also added a little blood meal to bring up the nitrogen content.

It's not as nasty as it sounds.  Nitrogen augmentation is commonly recommended on sites such as this one and I've probably been remiss in not doing it sooner, although I did fertilize extensively using Microlife at the time of planting. 

The only other effort I've put into this crop thus far (with it being on an automatic drip irrigation system) was to cover it a few weeks ago when we had the hard freeze.  Other than that, it hasn't really been asking for much.  Fingers crossed that things continue to go well.

Some of our neighbors asked us why we didn't put up Christmas lights during the holidays.  My husband and I were both working large numbers of oddly-timed shifts, and we never got around to it.  But we did put the lights under the sheets that kept the onions warm during the freeze. 

And it looks like we'll be doing the same thing again this evening as a winter storm warning has been issued. 

FIOS failings

Some residents of west-central League City (? extent of affected area unknown) are experiencing a Verizon FIOS slow-down right now and might not even be aware that a specific problem exists (although you may have noticed some general service degradation). 

Simply put, depending on which level of service you chose, you might not be getting the connection speeds that you pay for. 

Obviously this meme is a bit out of date, but I wanted to make the point that FIOS is supposed to have such fast download and upload speeds that there's even a fan hashtag called #spoiledbyFiOS. 

Screengrabbed from this site. 

We don't know how many people are affected.  We only know that a technician said that he'd logged at least one other complaint-related call from Centerpointe Section 9, which is our part of the subdivision.

Here's what makes this event noteworthy:  It's been going on for more than two weeks, and as of today, there's still no repair in sight.


My husband signed up to receive automatic updates on the status of the fix.  Here's a screengrab of an email he received back on January 7...

...and those emails are still coming today, January 22!  My husband now has over a hundred emails from Verizon, all with new repair estimation dates. 

Over a hundred emails with new repair date/time estimations?!  What the hell is up with that?!  I never heard of such a thing!

And neither have I heard of a two-week-plus wait time for a "restoral", either.  Here's Verizon's own site for checking your connection speeds (peak hours are the most telling times to test).  I, for one, will be requesting that our bill be adjusted to reflect the service that we've actually been receiving. 

Friends don't let friends drive drunk. 

Friends don't let friends get less than they paid for, either. 

@CenterBlog: Tweet don't fail me now

I am now tweeting as @CenterBlog.  

Screengrabbed from Twitter. 

Furthermore, I am going to reserve that account for only the most important and interesting local logistical information, with this blog remaining the repository for every other topic.  I will also endeavor to follow other local Tweeters whose information proves to be functionally useful (once I get them identified).

I was reluctant to begin this initiative but I see a clear need for it.  It's a platform through which information can be shared much more dynamically than a blog. 

Yesterday I lamented about the fact that I drove my daughter and her best friend to Baybrook Mall, only to get stuck in a grotesque traffic jam because all of the electricity in the area, including that which powers the traffic lights, was off.  We wasted over an hour dealing with that. 

Back in September, I howled about a localized but extremely-impactful Verizon Wireless outage that had hundreds if not thousands of people running in circles trying to restore their connectivity.  The outage was not reported to Verizon Customer Service, and so many of us were told by Verizon that we had malfunctions with our individual phones.  I wasted valuable chunks of two consecutive days dealing with that one. 

There was no way to find out about either of those messes in advance such that they could be avoided.  And that's just dumb.

In Centerpointe subdivision, we used to have one POA member who would send email alerts when need-to-know situations arose.  But after many years of above-and-beyond-the-call-of-duty activity, that member has since discontinued the neighborhood newsletter and largely discontinued the email alerts as well.  I don't have access to that original emailing list, so I can't engage in any equivalent connectivity using email.  Twitter is the next best thing and might even prove to be more useful because of its ability to link to additional sources of information. 

As I was driving my daughter to school this morning, I encountered something rather undesirable that you'll probably want to avoid.  But you'll have to refer to @CenterBlog to find out about that if you're using a mobile device (the Tweet list should be viewable in the right column if you're viewing on a full-sized device). 

Power off around Baybrook Mall this afternoon

I don't know what caused it, but I suspect the IH-45 realignment construction may have been the culprit.

About half of the mall had no power as of about 3:15 p.m. today, and there were no streetlights working south of El Dorado around the mall.  Apparently the power had been off for some time by that point, because many stores were closed and others were in the process of shutting their doors. 

We hung for about 15 minutes, then split (the mall is not really my sort of venue, but I have a teenaged daughter, so I end up in all kinds of places that I wouldn't otherwise choose to be).  I saw a bucket truck south of Bay Area Boulevard along the feeder, but the guy appeared to be working on a minor line.  Hard to believe that could have disrupted half of Clear Lake.  

Some of the interior stores and food court had power, but most of those on the outer ring of the mall were dark.  I wondered if the interior ones were maybe running on a generator. 

I sure wish we had a local news service where we could get real-time info on these kinds of events.  It would have saved about five thousand people some hassle this afternoon. 

Garden of art-in'

This is my brain.  This is Warhol.  This is my brain on Warhol.  Any questions??

Left to Right, lower series: 
Broccoflower, cheddar cauliflower, and purple cauliflower all currently growing in my suburban back yard.  Unlike Andy, I did not take artistic license with any colors here - that's what these three specialty cultivars actually look like. 

I was afraid that the hard freeze of two weeks ago would wipe out each and every one of them, but they all bounced back to look exactly like this today.  This is an amazingly easy and productive vegetable to grow in our area. 

How to trim live oaks

Each and every one of us southern suburbanites has 'em standing tall if not proud in our front yards:

Oh, look!!!  A shapeless blob that looks exactly like everyone else's shapeless blob!!
:-)

Live oaks can be beautiful, but not when they are allowed to remain in an uncontrolled, scruffy state.  We gave our two front yard specimens some time to grow and fill in before we commenced with the training I'll describe below. 

If you live in greater Houston, now (December-January) is the time to trim your live oaks if you're going to do it this year.  The trees are at maximum dormancy in the dead of winter, and they haven't begun to shed their leaves, as they do in the spring (which confuses the hell of out people who are not familiar with live oaks, sometimes leading them to do terrible things to the trees, such as "topping" them). 

Tree trimming is partly a matter of taste.  I lived in west Austin for three years and became influenced by the dramatic sculptural way in which residents tend to groom their oaks there:

Those are either live oaks or red oaks.  This is a real estate sales pic which was discussed in this post.   

Compare that beautiful Austin house above to this house chosen at random in Centerpointe (screengrabbed from Google).  These trees are not the least bit pretty, and you'd never even know that there's a beautiful house behind all that hot mess of un-pruned riotous live oak.  These residents have actually put good care into edging their landscape with stone and trimming their bushes, but the impact is completely overwhelmed by the trees.

These trees do a profound disservice to this property.  I don't mean to pick on these specific residents.  About 80% of Centerpointe front yards are currently in an equivalent state. 

I have multiple motivations for wanting to make my front yard look more like the Austin example than that Centerpointe example shown immediately below it. 

First, I prefer the open style - I find it looks more groomed and it also makes the front yard look and feel much more spacious. 

Second, I don't want my live oaks to shade the front yard to the point of damaging our lawn or raised bed growth.

There's our front bed of winter onions in progress.  The morning shadows need to remain light and dappling, not overwhelming and crushing.  (And yes, I do need to weed this bed, but so far these onions are coming along well.) 

Some folks are not going to be comfortable trimming their own trees, in which case a professional services company can be used.  I don't know of a good one for trees, so I can't recommend one here.  In fact, if your live oaks are already very large, you might have no choice but to hire someone, but ours are still fairly small.  If you are brave enough to tackle this as a DIY project, here are some basic steps worth considering:

First, review Randy Lemmon's general tips on tree trimming.  He is Houston's local landscaping expert.

Second, assemble your tools (you'll see pics of the tools in the sections below):

1. Step ladder (careful).
2. Long-handled loppers.
3. Hand-held pruning shears.
4. Hand saw and/or chain saw (if your live oaks are larger)
5. Safety glasses (tree debris will be raining down on you from above).

Third, start by removing larger branches that are either pointing downward, crossed over other branches, or crowding out other branches.  If you spend a few minutes eyeballing your tree, the ones that need to be removed will start to jump out at you. 

Loppers rising to the challenge.  Our trees were planted 4 years ago, and so most of the branches are still small enough for loppers rather than saw. 

Use the process of elimination and logical deduction as to which branches to keep and which to remove.  That little branch cut off at lower left... that one in particular was clearly not going to amount to anything if allowed to remain on the tree.  All it would do would be to interfere with the healthy, well-formed larger branch extending outward to the left.  It would also drain energy from the parts of the tree that I'd prefer to see growing more vigorously. 

Fourth, once you've got your undesirable major branches thinned out and removed, use hand pruners to remove smaller suckers.  The word "sucker" sometimes means basal shoots, which emanate from the roots.  But I'm using the word here to refer to any minor branch which is "clearly not going to amount to anything good if allowed to remain on the tree".  That's the question I ask myself when deciding what to cut and not cut.  "Is this one going to do any good in adding to the tree?"  If the answer is no, I cut it off.

Or my husband does, because he's quite good at this kind of thing. 

The closer you are to the trunk, the more suckers should be removed. 

Fifth, make sure to remove any damaged branches.  Even if they are in a good location on the tree, if they are damaged, nothing good is going to come from them, either.

Here's an example - this branch was growing from the tree in a good location from an aesthetic standpoint, but it had fissured.  It had to come off. 

Sixth, don't be alarmed at the diversity of life you'll find in your live oak.

This is called Spanish Moss and it's like nature's Christmas decoration. 

Seventh, step back and admire your own handiwork routinely in the process.  Don't try to do too much at one time.  If you're unsure as to whether or not to cut certain branches off, leave them on and re-evaluate at a later time after the tree has had more opportunity to grow and fill in.

There's the before and after on this particular tree, although it's not shown from the same viewing angle here.  I could probably do more even more shaping, but given that this was our first major trim, I want to allow the tree more time to grow before I decide what to do next. 

Are ya feelin' it!?!?!

That's the Austin exemplar on the left, and a silhouette view of my newly-hacked oak on the right.  My tree is decades younger and still pretty gangly, but you get the feeling that it's starting to move in the desired direction. 

Eighth, bundle up all your junk for the trash man.  Our collection service won't take cut limbs unless they are cut short (three feet, I think) and tied with twine.

Into every life, a little trash-bagging must fall.

We find that this is a two-person job:  One person to trim, and the other person to bundle and bag. 

Happy trimming.
:-)