Thank you for calling Apple

A few weeks ago, we suffered a power outage at home. I don't know how long the outage lasted, but it was long enough to cause the servers to drain the UPS battery and force an ungraceful shutdown. I came home to a powered house, however, no internet service. After some investigating, i found the primary network server (DHCP & DNS) were down due to corrupt root disk. No problem. fsck.ext3 /, a reboot and we were good. However, still no internet service. It seems the firewall died and was not coming back up. Well damn.

For the past months, i had noticed the servers seems to respond quite slow and even seem to hang doing such mundane tasks as tail -f /var/log/messages. I figured the servers were dieing a slow death probably do to thermal abuse as the room in which they reside can get to be pretty hot. I knew a replacement was on the horizon, but the death of the firewall pretty much made that a necessity.

In the interim, i moved the shiny new Apple Time Capsule (airport with a 1TB hard drive inside) down to the basement where the DSL line comes in. A quick reconfig, and it was NATing for us. It was a suitable device, but pretty lacking in features, compared to a full linux iptables NAT/firewall/router. However, something seemed off... "the internet" was really slow. I didn't put much thought into this, and went on with my new firewall order.

This past weekend, the new hardware arrived and Saturday morning I eagerly set it all up. I didn't get exactly what I wanted... a Fedora 9 hypervisior running the Xen kernel (Xen doesn't run as a hypervision on F9... I'll have to wait for F10). What I did end up with was a pretty sweet system: Fedora 9 running on an Intel Core 2 Duo 3.16Ghz proc and 1 GB of memory. Yeah, WAY over kill for a firewall. Never the less, i still have plans.

I set up the new firewall via my laptop which was connected directly to the same switch as the firewall. It was zippy, to say the least. I was quite pleased. I also noticed the other two server were responding way better than they have in months! perhaps all this time I had a sick firewall with a dying NIC or something causing havoc on the network... *shurgs* who cares, it's all good now. The new firewall is working and the Time Capsule is once again just a simple Ethernet/Wireless bridge.

The next day, i moved my laptop back up stairs and once again went wireless. I remembered that i had wanted to make some random change to the firewall, so i ssh in... What is this?! slugish response!! ssh to the network server... same thing! shitty response from it. Something was amiss. I had already checked for hacking and ruled that out. No one owned my servers. something else was going on.

Ben also complained that his iPhone couldn't get out to the internet via the wireless connection. My iPhone exhibited the same issues. I also began to take notice of the intermittent drop of service when streaming music to an export express. Something has to be wrong with the Time Capsule.

I contemplate what the issue could be... poked around in the settings, no effect. well damn. If this thing dies or has to be replaced, there's nearly 1 TB of movies and TV shows and porn which will need to be backed up someplace. *sigh* I came to terms with the fact i'd have to call apple tech support.... so today, i got fed up with the shitty wireless service the Time Capsule was providing and called apple.

the voice response unit at the apple help line was actually pretty good. I told it I was calling about a "Time Capsule" and it replied "okay, please wait while i connect you to apple wireless product support", or something to that extent. About 30 seconds later, i'm talking to a human! So, okay... good experience so far.

The rep is on the phone, asks how she can help me. I describe the problem: massive latency & dropped connections across multiple wireless devices all connecting to the Time Capsule. I have the Airport Admin open, ready to read off config setting and serial numbers. She asks for the serial number. I provide it. Then she says:

"Okay, i need you to click the apple menu in the upper left corner of your desktop for me, then go to 'about this mac' and tell me the serial number of your computer".

"ummm... okay. but, i'm having a problem with my airport. not my laptop"

"i understand sir, but i need the serial number of your laptop so we can troubleshoot this issue"

"ooookay. it's [reads off serial number]. OH! wait! no, no, no. I mean... I'm having an issue with the Airport Time Capsule, not the airport on my laptop *chuckles a little*"

"yes sir, i understand that, but we need to start with your laptop"

Now, i've been in the tech world for a long time and this was not my first call to tech support. Back in the day, when i was a hot shit desktop admin, i'd call tech support and say "my shit is broken, i've done all these troubleshooting steps you're about to ask me to do. it's broken. fix it". That got me by for a while, but there were a few embarrassing times the phone tech would bitch slap me back into place and mention something i'd not tried... and it fixed the issue. So, after a few years of maturity, i've learned to just grit my teeth and let them do stupid diags i already know the outcome of.

So, she asks me to make some network changes, clear out some config setting, and reboot. as if i've not already done this three times... So i reboot. It's back up. She asks if the problem is resolved, and yes, it "seems" to be okay, but that is a symptom of the problem: it works for a bit, then it doesn't.

Happy and cheery, the rep tells me "oh, good, it's working. If it stops working again, call back and tell the rep you speak with what you've already done". I reply "but wait... i still have two iPhones, which work on other wireless networks, but not on this one... as well as another laptop. what about those??"

"Sir, i can't help you with an iPhone problem."

"yeah, but this isn't an iPhone problem, this is just another symptom of the network issue".

"Yes, sir, i understand, but I can't assist you with iPhone issues, i'll transfer you to the iPhone tech support desk... One moment".

The next thing i hear "welcome to the Apple iPhone Technical Support Line. Your wait time is greater than thirty minutes..."

And i hang up.

So yeah, Apple's tech support, so far, is about as helpful as they on-line help, which sorta reads like Ikea furniture instruction.

step 1, unwrap your nifty shiny new apple device
step 2, set your nifty shiny new apple device on a table and masturbate while soaking in it's awesomeness
step 3, plug in your apple device
step 4, your apple device is now functional

but wait... it doesn't work and there's a yellow flashing light!

repeat steps 1 - 4. it's an apple product. it just works. don't worry about the details.

Well, you know what Apple... FUCK YOU. We're not all fucking idiots who can't find the power switch or don't think to plug in the device. But sometimes, believe it or not, your shit doesn't work. (or it breaks). what a concept. And then what? You have shitty customer support who read the same on-line help docs and know even less about the device than i do.

grr... so the boy (apple lap boy #1) informs me that i need to call back and get to level 2 tech support. Someone who understands the word "latency" in terms of network stuff.

Perhaps tomorrow night, i can compose myself and call them back.

In other news, the new Sigur Ros album is awesome. Seems it came out in June, but i didn't realize it until this weekend. Quite good. The first track is awesome. Second is quite good. And i've not paid close attention to the rest of it. However, in my passive listening, i have enjoyed the entire album.

On sunday, i wanted to try a new neighborhood restaurant called The Social House. Atlanta Magazine did a little review of it and gave it high marks. We stopped by around 1:30 pm. I thought this would have been well after the brunch crowd, however there was nearly an hour wait for a table. So fuck that. I'm not waiting that long for a pancake.

So today, Brian hits me up and I invite him to join me for a trial run of this new restaurant. We meet at 12:30pm and get a table right away. The menu is impressive. Full of New Orleans inspired breakfast and brunch dished. Pancakes are served in stacks of 6. Several salads, and a lengthy list of brunchy type of items featuring shrimp, fish, poached eggs, bread puddings... all yummy looking. It takes a while to choose just one item.

Brian ended up with a stack of blueberry pancakes. I got a savory bread pudding topped with blackened shrimp in a buttery cream sauce. WOW, it was good. So where Brian's pancakes. So yeah, if you're in the mood for breakfast or brunch, check it out. The staff were VERY friends and helpful, albeit a little slow. But then, it's a southern style breakfast place... it's okay to take a little time.