hello!

[trayce.livejournal.com]

Hello all. This is more an introductory post than a rant, I'm new here but sadly not new to these kinds of communities. Used to hang out on atsr and I suspect there's a few readers here who'd recognise me ;) Anyway, here's the sad part: I got out of helldesk a looong time ago - used to work for AAPT (when it was Connect, as some AU people may know) and I ran screaming from there to provisioning about 4 yrs ago vowing never to return...

But needs must when the devil farts at you, or whatever it was Blackadder once said, and for want of a job I've somehow ended up on a sort-of helpdesk AGAIN, GAH. I was hired as a customer service/provisioning rep for a satellite ISP to support one of their very large clients - a national supermarket chain we multicast ads and music to (yes! Blame me for the shitty muzak you hear, haha). Somehow though, the company laid off too many people, and I got roped into being a network engineer when I've neither the proper skills nor the inclination to want to do 24/7 effing on call network support I didnt sign on for (thats a rant for elsewhere though!). It blows. But, it pays well, so....

Anyway. I suppose I should add a rant. 2-way broadband satellite is an unusual beast - its relatively new in Aus, and suffers from problems one doesn't encounter in terrestrial services. Things like susceptibility to weather, ridiculous contention loads, etc. Thankfully, most of the time the service "just works", and the best bit - we support the link and one hop past it, so any routers/servers/ etc I dont give jack shit care about and dont have to.

However we DO have to rely on skilled antenna techs to install the damn dish right to start with. If they dont, the problems are ongoing. Dropouts, slowness, the whole nine yards. We have a scheme called Hibis that gives rural people broadband for affordable rates, but they expect it to behave like DSL - WHICH IT IS NOT. If I hear one more client whine about latency, sluggishness and outages I will scream. YOU ARE ON TOP OF A MOUNTAIN IN THE SNOW. THE FACT YOU HAVE BROADBAND AT ALL IS A MODERN MIRACLE. IT IS SUBSIDISED BY THE GOVT. GET ONE LIFE.

We also have clients in the middle east. Try dealing with a reseller in Baghdad some time who's setup you're not even privvy to, so all you can ever suggest is "restart the Linkstar, check the dish alignment it looks out, the BUC may be faulty". No, we do not turn your service off on purpose. NO! We dont have network problems. If yr link is offline, the problem is 90% likely YOUR end, not ours, and when you're in fucking BADGHDAD theres little I can do is there?

ARRRRGH.

I feel much better now. Hello everyone!

Comments

[lordstorm.livejournal.com]

About bloody time you posted here. ;) Working satellite now?

Heh, I know exactly what you're talking about with regards to satellite installations, having worked in the payTV industry with the old man for 4.5 years (before being sucked into sysadmin and helpdesks): Galaxy, Optus, Austar/Foxtel, in the suburbs of Sydney, Brisbane and Melbourne and as far-flung as regional and outback Australia (Lightning Ridge, St George, Blackwater, Bourke, and even bloody Mackay). Settings like LNB details, symbol rate, FEC, which satellite (Optus B1 or B3, etc), encoding, standing on the tiles 7 floors up with a satellite meter judging signal strength in dBA....no picture? Where's your bloody smartcard mate? Lugging around 1.5m curved concave parabolas, metres worth of RG-6-quality coax and cable-making tools.....ah, those were the days.

Ahem, reminiscing too long there.

I even did a month as an install techie for satellite internet, back in 2000. Man that was bad: just getting the customer's satellite card installed in the right PCI slot was a nightmare usually, and not every customer had a valid install of Windows or whatever OS they had either. Ack. I'd much rather prefer a profession where I can troubleshoot a machine without needing to physically interact with the customer or their machine.

Glad to see you floating around again. Care to rejoin our respective FLs? :)

[trayce.livejournal.com]

I shall add you now!

One good thing at least about the service we do is no sat cards - they're standalone sat modems (linkstars) which work pretty well most of the time. We do have some old Simplex clients, but they dont call really. Thank fuck =)

[tmercenary.livejournal.com]

One of my previous employers was a small city. There was a two way terrestial radio dish that connected two buildings so that the remote site could be on the city network. I had to adjust the dish's one time. Being 30 feet in the air and standing on the side of a building isn't fun when the people who would be called to save you if you got stuck are all standing around at the bottom looking at you with amazement.

[trayce.livejournal.com]

Heh. I had a tech the other night, poor bastid, who doggedly tried to finish an install, on a tin roof, in a thunderstorm! Man. Thats crazy.

[spitefulcrow.livejournal.com]

That must suck.
I remember trying to get Dish TV and broadband before the local cable company rolled out its DOCSIS and DTV services, only to be told that we had too many trees behind our house.
Glad that I didn't go with them and get stuck in a contract, because Cablevision came through four months later.

[trayce.livejournal.com]

I feel terrible when Line of Sight is the one issue that prevents an install. Some of our clients are, by dint of being in rural areas, surrounded by forest and hills. Our govt subsidy covers a basic 1.2 dish and mount, but some people need pole mounts and huge dishes they're not prepared to pay for. I've had to deal with some VERY rude techs about such issues... I tell you, I hate rude/smartass techs more than dumbass clients! Especially cos I'm female... :( I think thats another topic for a new rant tho ;D