The fridge squawked this morning | We have a 10 year contract & this is the summer preview

About a month ago, I wrote how the refrigerator doesn't know Zuul yet, however it still spoke to me. The front panel lit up telling me to order a new filter and an alarm rang out. Well, this morning when I was getting water, the panel lit up telling me to replace the filter and the alarm loudly went off. Even the "REPLACE FILTER" light kept blinking. 

I guess the refrigerator knows it's words properly, but it doesn't know how to calmly request filter changing. It's going to be one of those things I do this weekend, I guess....

Hotwire sucks. Their customer service sucks. Their service sucks enough that you don't want to deal with it. 

We had an outage last night and people aren't happy. 

Let me preface it by saying this: Sure... we had some nice, calming, strong, breeze come through for most of the day, but it wasn't anything close to hurricane level. It was the type we sometimes get during the afternoon rain storms in the summer. Nothing to get up in arms about.

Okay, back to story.

About 4pm the internet and TV go out. My mother is in the middle of streaming a movie when the picture goes black. The new Vizio TV is still on, but the streaming isn't. She looks at her phone and tries to get online. Can't. 

She calls Hotwire to inquire about the sudden outage and they said they are aware of it. The problem is, this person is in Miami and they are having terrible storms (search "Miami storms April 11 2023" in whatever browser you use and you'll find videos of flooding. Guess they're getting rain?) which is causing power issues. So Hotwire can see there's an electrical problem and there is nothing they can do about it. 

My mom informs the guy that:

1. We aren't in Miami. We are in Fort Myers.

2. We have power and electricity. Otherwise she'd not be on the phone, in the light of the house. There'd be absolutely nothing on, where it's just the internet and television service that went out.

3. We aren't having any storms of any sort. It's a little cloudy and windy, sure, but everything in nature is fine in this neighborhood.

The guy responds saying it's a problem around my community. Hotwire is aware of it. He name checks another community (which is about 2 miles away from my house) hoping that will get my mother off the phone. It doesn't, but obviously, since Hotwire isn't admitting it's their stuff, what are you going to do? 

Something else was said that it's a national thing, and I said to my mother I didn't think Hotwire was national, and if they are using that excuse, is it like the time Comcast cut a cable in Tampa and the state went dark? 

About a year ago, Comcast allegedly was doing something in Tampa at a big distribution center and wires were cut, making the whole state lose its Xfinity services for day or two. It wasn't the best thing to happen, but they fixed it.

So state wide outage means it's got to be fixed quick? Who knows.

Meanwhile, this doesn't look good for what the next ten years will be. My community has a decade long contract with the service provider and if services are rendered useless at a sneeze, no one can get work done (there are people here who work from home). As it happens to be, one of the parcels was set to have their monthly Zoom meeting last night, but didn't, since there was no internet. 

Oh, the irony..

Since the whole internet service deals with wireless technology, it makes things harder, as there's nothing you can really unplug and test. Service goes into the Nokia box and then streams out wirelessly to other areas of the house. If the box says there is a failure, it's not like you can see if the coax cable came loose as there isn't one. No wires except an Ethernet and power cable. 

Blurry pictures of the failed box:

I was in a rush last night so the lights on the box look like they're exploding. The red light is the failure light. 

When we finished our dinner and my mom finished making phone calls to people in the neighborhood (regarding the lack of Hotwire), I took her phone off the Wi-Fi spray and had her check the local social networks. Her Facebook and Nextdoor apps were loaded with complaints from people in the community, saying how this is so horrible and what has the master board gotten us in to? We can't deal with this for ten years, especially in the summers when we get storms. One good wind will knock us off the grid for who knows how long. 

The master board thought this would be the best way to future proof the community as many people were getting in to fiber optics. It was also the most economical. Well, it's proving difficult as the services aren't available in cloudy skies and there is no local service center you can call in to, to see if there are problems in your area. We're stuck like Chuck and now people are wondering (even more) if there's something the residents can do, to make complaints to a Better Business Bureau type of place. Sue the company or something. We got swindled by our master board and those members are probably getting a nice kick back, which is why they're turning a blind eye. 

"Everything is fine" they say. "We have no problems", they say. So when the internet goes out in the middle of your Zoom call or your kids can't finish their remote learning from school, what do you do? Surely not everyone is gaming around here... life is happening. But the board doesn't see this. They refuse to acknowledge there's a problem. 

In the end, we're going to have to deal with this and it's frustrating as all hell. You vote for people to make the best decisions for where you live, and you get kicked around and are given something useless. Wow, sounds like other things going on in this world, don't it??? 

Yes, the internet did get restored, evident by this posting. My mom said around 9:30 last night, she got a text from a neighbor asking if the TV came back on. My mom checked (she wasn't in the living room), and sure enough, the TV played. Texted neighbor back, saying it worked, and the neighbor said she didn't have hers yet. 

I guess it went on for her a little later because my mother didn't hear anything. 

This morning, her TV worked, but just as I was about to wrap this post up, she asked for help in the living room. There was a message on the screen about there being a problem with the DRM and the station couldn't be played.

Wait, what?

Doesn't "DRM" mean "Digital Rights Management" and it's about copyright protection? Which is why you can't copy a CD or DVD because it's protected media?? What does that have to do with the cable station streaming to our cable box???? What in the actual hell?! All of a sudden the news stations are copy written and you can't watch them?? 

I ended up having to unplug the TiVo box and turn it back on. Then I needed to re-connect it to the internet as that's the only way we can watch anything on that thing. Five minutes later, TV works. 

Still doesn't explain the whole DRM thing, but whatever. This piece of crap service we have is just another nail in the coffin on how tech can't save everything...

Time to get ready for work.

Cheers;