Why do we have to know more about computers than cars?

Just after I posted “Erratic cellular settings” I thought about cars and problem solving.

Long ago I learned a little story about car problems that may have been older than me.

A car dealer gave his wife a new car.  She was delighted with it, but she complained that it ran erratically.  A mechanic checked it out and could find nothing wrong.  She brought it in again with the same result.  Finally, the head mechanic went out with her.

She started the car, pulled out the choke, and hung her purse from the choke.

Sometimes, you have to just be there to solve a user’s problem.  I found this out when a user couldn’t access a document because his computer terms didn’t the same meanings as others did.  I had to go to his house to understand the problem.  I found out the cause of an error in my own software when I saw a user print a document on his on printer.  I had assumed a negative number for a printer line would not get printed.  It worked fine on my Apple printer, but it didn’t work on his third party printer.

The problem with computers is that the designers expect their users to be expert car mechanics, masters of intricate analysis of problems.  But all the average user wants to do is touch a few buttons or type a few words to get his or her work done.  If their cars sputters when it should purr, they take it to a mechanic who often can diagnose the problem within an hour.  But if their devices sputter when they should purr, they are expected to put in hours trying to get enough information to get somebody to finally make a correction to the software (or tell them not to hang their purses on the menu bar).

My plaint about all this complexity is whatever happened to the “Computer for the Rest of Us” (The 1984 Apple Macintosh)?

Magree's Law on technology

Magree's Law: the occurrence of user problems is proportional to the square of the "improvements".

I came up with this contemplating how as computers get more powerful and "user friendly" they seem to have more and more head-banging user problems.  See Apple Support Community for verification.

Actually, this applies to all sorts of technology.  Just think of all the great stuff there is our cars and how much harder it is to find the right buttons.

Apple Computer and Reliability

I sent the following as a letter to the Editor of Barron’s on 2003-05-27.  Over eleven years later I’m still waiting for the reliability that I asked for in the letter.  And the unanswered list in Apple’s Support Community gets longer and longer.  At least Apple now offers system upgrades as a free download, even major upgrades like Mavericks to Yosemite.  Still I will wait until I buy a new computer for the major upgrade.  I still do believe “We ain’t seen nothin’ yet!”

I have two other ideas for improving Apple than those given in “Beyond iTunes”.

First, Apple really needs to develop OS X as a super-reliable operating system.  It is great that a problem application rarely crashes OS X, but there are many problems in OS X and applications written for OS X that can be very annoying to users, experienced or otherwise.  This super-reliability needs to be in OS X off-the-shelf and in rapid solutions from Apple as problems arise.

Apple’s AppleCare support staff were unaware of problems connecting some Macintosh computers to Internet Service Providers (ISPs) who deployed the latest modems (v.92).  The first two I spoke to about my problems connecting or staying connected could only suggest that I completely reinstall the operating system!  After a few weeks of frustration, I stumbled on the cause (the new modem type at my ISP) and the solution.  The fix for my level of operating system (10.1.5) had been available from another unit of Apple before I even called the first time!  The third support person to whom I angrily told the solution had been ignorant of the problem when I called.

Worse yet, Apple’s own discussion boards had dozens of messages about this problem both for my older level of the operating system and the latest level (10.2.6).  The fix I found did not work for those with the latest level.  Apple did not seem to be responding to any of these messages.  This lack of response loses some business for Apple; I should pay $129.95 to upgrade to a system that may be useless to me?

This leads to my second thought.  Apple should take a page from Microsoft’s customer-relations book.  Microsoft has adopted the slogan “Trustworthy Computing”.  Apple should have the slogan “Responsive Computing”.  Not only must Apple provide a even more trouble-free operating system, but it must respond to customer complaints in a more timely fashion.  It seems too often Apple treats its customers as ignoramuses who haven’t even checked if the computer is plugged in.  It has too often pushed customers off on user groups in the expectation that these will have members who can solve all problems.  User groups may have only five or six members who really delve into problems and then don’t use the same configuration in the same way as many other members.   Apple should better monitor its support lines and its discussion boards to find out what problems its users have, seek to elicit more details from those with problems, correlate similar problems, and provide timely solutions to those problems that are widely available within Apple’s own organization and to its customers.

Whiz bang products may get the public’s attention, but it is great customer service that keeps people coming back.

Melvyn D. Magree

A former programmer who has spent forty-five years learning only a tiny bit about computers and who believes, “We ain’t seen nothin’ yet!” (Now fifty-six years!)

Technology: A Big Bother We Can’t Do Without

Technology: A Big Bother We Can’t Do Without

Melvyn D. Magree
Originally published in the
Northland Reader
now the
Reader Weekly
March 2, 2000

 

Life is so much easier with technology,
but it's care and feeding can be time consuming at the wrong time.

Harvey Mackay, author of Swim with the Sharks without Being Eaten Alive, recently wrote a paean to technology (Star Tribune, 3 Feb 2000).  In the main I agree with him that technology has given us lots of freedom: freedom to travel, freedom to communicate, freedom to enjoy art, and on and on.

Many of us have traveled far and wide thanks to technology.  Even in our local travels technology has given us more and more freedom.  I remember when tires lasted 10,000 miles and oil was changed every 1,000 miles.  Now many tires are guaranteed for 50,000 miles and oil can be changed every 6,000 miles.  And I’m glad “they don’t build them like they used to.”  My current vehicle has nearly 60,000 miles and has never broken down (not including a flat tire); it’s the first of over a dozen vehicles to give such reliable service.

Many of us no longer write letters and articles with pen.  I have moved from pen to mechanical typewriters whose keys stuck to electric typewriters and carbon paper for copies to computers from which I can send as many copies as I want anywhere in the world.

Unfortunately, computer technology has not become as reliable as the modern automobile.  In fact, the reliability of computer technology seems to be inversely proportional to the complexity of the technology.

In a speech given in 1998 Gary Bachula, then Acting Undersecretary for Technology in the Department of Commerces, tells a good anecdote about the computer/auto comparison.  Bill Gates said that if autos were like computers they would weigh 30 pounds, get a 1,000 miles per gallon of gas, and cost less than $500.  Bachula responds that if autos were like computers they would crash twice a day, stop and fail to restart, and have to have the engine reinstalled periodically.

Bachula's speech contains several other items where computer technology fails to meet our needs.

Ten years ago, some software crashed but online connections seemed rather stable.  We could send email without problem though only to people on the same network.  We could download kilobytes of software but it seemed to take forever, or at least all evening.

Now email packages contain a great array of editing and formatting features, a number of user defined mailboxes to organize messages, and more features than most people can use.  We can send email to almost anyone with a computer anywhere in the world.  But the email software might crash when organizing the mailboxes and lose all the mail we just sent.

Now we can download megabytes of software and it still seems like forever, but it takes only an hour or so.  But, the browser may crash or decide that it has received everything even though it has a few megabytes to go.

Now we can print pages that look like they came out of a book and with multiple colors.  But then when we have a deadline, the system may say that it can’t find the printer or the cartridge starts smearing or the system crashes every time we try to print more than a few pages.

To make matters worse, we have to maintain our computers a lot more.  In the simpler days we only had to dust the computer once in a while, change the printer ribbon occasionally, and clean the disk reader head periodically.

Now there seems to be lots of care and feeding of the operating system and many programs.  We have to make sure all the programs are compatible with our settings of the system.  We may have to track down some weird setting that is not even mentioned in the manuals to make something work.  Every so often we have to do a “clean install” of the system or a program to get rid of an accretion of stuff whose purpose we know not.  We have to defragment our hard drives periodically to make our software run more efficiently.

It is ironic that as the computers become easier to use, they require more work to use.

This is but a part of a trend of a larger issue: pushing costs off to the end user.  Costs may be monetary or may be of time.  ATMs can be a great convenience but banks push the costs to the user with transaction fees.  Public Radio’s 75Music closed its 800 number and opened a web site.  It saved on personnel costs but it takes more customer time to gain information online than it did to talk to a live person.

This trend was brought up over 25 years ago in a computer publication that few even in computer professions read, which is too bad.  The article was “Guidelines for Humanizing Computerized Information Systems: A Report from Stanley House” by Theodor D. Sterling; it was published in Communications of the ACM, November 1974.  The portion that has stuck in my mind is “One of the most common methods of increasing the efficiency of a system is to employ the recipients of the service as unpaid components whose time, effort, and use of intelligence do not appear in the cost accounting.”

I missed my calling.  Instead of being a pseudo-retired programmer, I should have been a successful envelope salesman like Harvey Mackay.  Then instead of spending so much of my time in the care and feeding of my computer, I could have passed the problems on to my IT department and forgotten about it.

Addendum: 2014-09-18

Our use of technology has changed greatly in the ten years since I wrote the above.  And the change will probably be even greater in the next ten years.  In the ten years since the above, the number of problems has probably increased even more than the benefits.  I sometimes I think I spend more time searching for solutions to things that don’t work right than I do actually doing something with the technology.

For example, I have a more powerful computer with software that can do much more than ten years ago.  But it seems like it takes ten times as long for a program to load now than then.  Supposedly, I can take some steps to improve this.  However, I think it will take me two or more weeks of full time effort to back everything up, weed out unnecessary files, and do a “clean install”.  When do the two minute waits for a program to load accumulate to be more than the two weeks of new installation?  I think I might just hold out until the next time I upgrade, possibly two to four years from now.

©2000, 2004, 2007, 2014 Melvyn D. Magree

keywords: Harvey Mackay, technology, computers, software, problems, cost benefit, end user, crash, slow response, clean install, Theodore D. Stirling, Gary Bachula, ACM, Association for Computing Machinery

What did I learn outside school?

Last week I asked what did I learn in school, with an emphasis on how much I had forgotten of what I supposedly learned.  What I really learned in school was to learn.  I had teachers who excited me about a subject, and I had subjects that excited me even if the teacher didn’t.

I also had many other people outside school who enticed me to learn, something too many kids don’t have.  The high point of this seems to me to have been when we lived with my mother’s aunt and uncle, especially between the ages of 9 and 14.  My environment was rich with printed publications.

They subscribed to the morning Cleveland Plain Dealer and the afternoon Cleveland Press.  They subscribed to Saturday Evening Post or one or two of  its competitors.  They may have even subscribed to National Geographic.  I loved comic books and subscribed to Walt Disney Comics and bought Looney Tunes from time to time.  But we also had books.  I remember having a set of “East Wind Stories”, a set of stories about fictional animals.  I borrowed books from the school library and the downtown public library.

We also listened to the radio.  I remember that Aunt Gertrude had to have the station changed five minutes before Walter Winchell came on: “Good evening, Mr. and Mrs. America from border to border and coast to coast and all the ships at sea. Let's go to press.”  We also had 78 rpm records and listened sometimes to the station that played some classical music.  Was that WDOK?  I remember preferring piano music to violin music because the pitch was often lower.  And of course, lots of pop music.

We had no TV then.  I remember a when TV cameraman came to the sledding hill I often went to. He filmed me going down the hill with hands and feet in the air.  To see the newscast, we stood outside a TV store.  We also went to the TV studio where they graciously showed it to us.

I had many more outside school learning experiences before I graduated from high school, but in interest of space, I’ll skip forward to the summer before my senior year of college.  I wanted to learn about computers and found a summer job at Ohio Oil Company (Marathon).  Because I was put in a clerical job rather than a computer job, I borrowed Elliott Organick’s “Programming the IBM 650” from the company library.  With that knowledge, I wrote a program to calculate the square root of any number.  I gave it to my supervisor who passed it on to others. Within days I was transferred to a group more closely involved in computers.  Eventually I was given the task of writing a program to process quotas for gas stations and others.  I had lots of help from others on details of how the IBM 650 worked.  On my last day, I handed in the manual for how to use the program.  I think it was used by Ohio Oil for a year or two.

When I graduated from Ohio Wesleyan, Case took me back for a masters program in mathematics. Not only that, but I was given a graduate assistantship in the Computer Center that covered tuition and paid $75 a week too!

One of the jobs of Computer Center assistants was to provide help to sophomores who were taking the mandatory numerical analysis course.  We started in July, were given the ALGOL manual for Burroughs 220 and let loose.  In the fall, we were answering all kinds of questions for the undergraduates.

We also learned the assembler called SAVE written by a PhD candidate.  As a project for the only computer class I took, I wrote a simpler assembler called HELP, of which SAVE was the answer. Darned if there wasn’t somebody using HELP long after I left Case.

Case had ordered a Univac 1107 and I learned its assembler and instruction set from a manual. When I completed my master’s work I applied for work with Univac and was hired.  I was first set to some mathematical project that I had no idea of how to proceed.  Luckily for me that group was dissolved and I was moved into the FORTRAN compiler support group.  My boss never learned to write FORTRAN but he was a crackerjack at solving problems with the compiler.  I wound up solving problems with the FORTRAN library, pieces of code called on by users that did things not part of FORTRAN itself, like mathematical functions.  I never took a class in the compiler or the assembler it was written in.  We just jumped in and started solving problems.

Because I did have experience (or was it interest) in ALGOL, I was given the responsibility for fixing problems in the compiler, written by somebody else.  A Norwegian customer wrote an extension for simulation, called, surprise, SIMULA.  Without any training except the manual and trial and error, I fixed problems in SIMULA and its library.

I spent nearly twenty years at UNIVAC and kept learning things on the fly and even giving classes in what I learned!  I’ve lost track of the software I learned.

Then I went off on my own and learned more and more computers and software.  Even now with thirty years experience with the Macintosh, I learn something new with every release.  I’ve lost track of the number of software programs I’ve learned.

With these I’ve learned three things: software can be easy, software can be obtuse, and we ain’t seen nothing yet!

Also published in the Reader Weekly, 2014-08-14 at http://duluthreader.com/articles/2014/08/21/3928_what_did_i_learn_outside_school.

Making systems work: The psychology of business systems

This is the title of a book by William C. Ramsgard, Wiley, 1977-09-29 and the quotes that follow are from various scraps of paper that have been gathering dust on my desk.

“The successful information system provides all the related and general xpj requirements for operating personnel, based on normal organizational activity.  New information requirements are always modifications to the existing information system and are fulfilled by a minimum caretaker staff without disruption to existing informational and organizational structure or substantial additional resource allocations.”

From a note in ABC Stenoscript and http://books.google.com/books/about/Making_systems_work.html?id=RkBZAAAAMAAJ

From another note on this book

“Peasecod’s Parameter
When the time recorded in the maintenance log approaches the original systems development time, the existing system is dying and the systems cycle should be repeated for a complete new development of the system.”

From another note in ABC Stenoscript

“Systems should be built not to solve problems but to provide opportunity.”

How many seconds in a minute?

According to Apple, there are ten seconds in a minute!  Maybe even less.

Last week I downloaded and installed the latest Mavericks update on my Mac laptop.  Near the end of the lengthy process, it displayed “10 seconds left” for some part or another.  Twenty seconds later, the display was “10 seconds left” (or was it remaining?)  And again at thirty seconds on up to sixty seconds.  I don’t remember how soon after that time was displayed I started tracking the time, and I don’t remember how long after I had noted sixty seconds had passed before I stopped tracking.

But whatever, is this the lauded corporate “efficiency” that government supposedly lacks?  Whatever else is going on in the operating system that is inefficient.  I do know that Microsoft products have been getting slower to load.  I can almost go downstairs to pour a second cup of coffee while waiting for a spreadsheet to open.  This is even true of spreadsheets that don’t have a lot of data.

And of course, there are all the user complaints that seem to go on for years without resolution.

I do know from personal experience that not all problems are resolvable and that some take a long time to get enough data to solve.  In the sixties at Univac I was part of the small team that maintained the FORTRAN compiler.  We had a user report (number 498, I think) that we never solved.  Our main problem was trying to figure out what had happened on a computer we had no direct access to and not enough information to ask the right questions.  We never had another user report with the same problem.

On the other hand, I see complaints about the same problems year after year in the support communities for Apple and Microsoft.

What is the critical mass for these problems such that the big corporations will put enough resources into resolving these issues?

Here’s a radical idea!  For every unsolved problem a company has, the CEO should have his or her pay docked ten dollars per day.  Let’s be generous, and only count weekdays that are not holidays.  Would these problems go away sooner?

What about docking the CEOs pay for every day that false advertising is present.  Apple has made downloading Mavericks free to encourage people to move away from older operating systems.  Supposedly Numbers, Pages, and Keynote are free.  These are competitors to Microsoft’s Excel, Write, and Power Point.  These three Apple products are listed in a Top Ten Free downloads in the App Store.  However, if you place the cursor next to them, “$19.99” appears rather than “Free”.

Many users have complained about this for three months or more!  Is this another case of Adam Smith’s warning about trusting those who live by profit and have deceived and oppressed the public?

Too much time spent solving computer glitches? Invoice the CEO!

When I installed Apple’s iOS 7.0.4 on my iPad suddenly the return key on my Logitech Solar Keyboard Folio didn’t work.  I looked and looked for a solution with little success.  I went back and forth with Logitech until they sent me a set of steps to reset the iPad.  The steps worked.

In the past few days I installed iOS 7.0.6.  I don’t know what happened to iOS 7.0.5.  After the installation of iOS 7.0.6, the return key on my Logitech KB didn’t work again.  Sunday or whenever I went through all of Logitech’s reset steps again.  After a bit of hit and miss banging the keys on the keyboard, the return key worked again.  A minor downside was that my wallpaper settings were reset to the default settings.

Then this morning the return key didn’t work again!!!  Was it because I had turned my iPad off and on.  I only needed to do the reset on iOS 7.0.4 once.  After a couple of tries I got the return key working again.  Again, it took awhile before pressing the return key had any effect.

Maybe tonight I’ll leave my iPad on and hope the return key works in the morning.

I am so tired of being an unpaid beta tester for software.  I think I’ll start sending invoices to CEOs for my time.  I wonder who has more problems – people signing up for health care exchanges or people who use a lot of computer software?  I do know that the support sites of many computer-related companies are filled with problems that never seem to get an answer.

Enough for the day!  I am going to spend the rest of the evening reading a paper book!

Obamacare and careless corporations

I sent the following letter to the Duluth News Tribune.  It was published 2013-12-24.  You can also find it at http://www.duluthnewstribune.com/event/article/id/286844/publisher_ID/36/.

Enough already about Obamacare glitches

Please, enough letters about the computer problems related to Obamacare. A truism of any organization, government or corporate, is that people tell the boss what they think he or she wants to hear.

When customer complaints about installing Windows7 came rolling in, did the press call it “Windows Steven” after Steve Ballmer, CEO of Microsoft, or Steven Sinofsky, then head of the Windows Division?

Complaints are rolling in about Apple’s latest operating system, Mavericks. Has the press called Mavericks “Cookware” after Tim Cook, CEO of Apple?

Creating software is a messy business; the more that is promised, the less that works right. Way back in the 1960s I was part of a team developing a new, groundbreaking operating system. New releases were never on time and never took care of all the reported problems. Very few customers had a day without crashes. That software was simple compared to what we have today on our computers and even in our smartphones.

President Barack Obama was educated in law, not computer science. He has to rely on others, including all the private contractors, to give him correct and timely information. Do you think Steve Ballmer got as much bad news as he should have? Do you think Tim Cook got as much bad news as he should have? I know we were under a lot of pressure to report good news about that ancient operating system.

The designers of HealthCare.gov were probably behind before they even started. Few, in or out of government, fully appreciate the complexity of the task.

A bad tech week

Besides the problem of my iPhone not turning on yesterday, I spilled coffee on my laptop keyboard this morning.  I tried holding too many things at the same time.  Now the shift key on one side doesn't work and both option keys don't work.

Besides that, I've been trying to sync my calendars among my laptop, my iPhone, and my iPad.  I've read post after post on this problem and have found no satisfactory answer.  People on one device never get transferred to another device.  I used Contact Cleaner on my laptop address book and wound up deleting a couple hundred people on my iPad.  Needless to say, I did not sync my address book to my iPhone.

Then I received a letter from my bank that they had moved money from my savings account to my checking account.  On my first try to access my account, their system was unavailable.  When I finally got on, I found that there had been yet another transfer made.  As I reviewed the online statement, I found that I had transferred money from checking to savings instead of the other way around.  At least I have an account that makes sweeps rather than overdraft charges.

Now I'm off to Best Buy to find out if the Geek Squad can repair my keyboard with little time and no charge.  I assume there will be a charge because it was my fault rather than Apple's.  I do hope that I move money the right way to pay any charges.

PANIC! My iPhone won't turn on!

Boy!  All those complaining about the glitches about the Affordable Care Act should go to the discussion boards of almost any hardware or software company.  Dozens and dozens of people complain about problems and the companies never respond directly.

This evening my iPhone would not turn on after my not having used it for an hour or so.  I held and held the power button or the home button.  Nada.  I planned on going to Best Buy tomorrow about it, I have a two-year warranty contract.  But first, why not try the Apple Community?

Ah ha!  People have been complaining about this problem for over a year.  I found at least four threads about the problem.  The solution provided by other users is simple: hold the power button and the home button down at the same time.  I think my screen came on within a few seconds.  Some had to hold it even longer.  Some had no success.

By the way, when I had my iPhone working again, I noticed I had an App update.  The reason for the update?  Bug fixes.  When was that app updated last?  About a week ago.  The reasons?  Bug fixes!

Corporate bug fixes

I am ready to start the update on my iPhone from iOS 7.0.2 to iOS 7.0.3.  The explanatory text is

"This update contains improvement and bug fixes."

Wasn't iOS 7 supposed to be this wonderful update?  Frankly, I long for iOS 6 because a lot of things that used to work don't work as well with iOS 7.

The learned wanted, learners need not apply

Back in the bad old days before the Internet was ubiquitous, I was the sysop of the Genealogy Roundtable on GENIE (General Electric Network for Information Exchange).  It had a very primitive typed command interface that many users had difficulty mastering.

One user either couldn't print or couldn't save a file from the Genealogy Roundtable.  My being in the Twin Cities and he being in Cleveland made it very difficult for me to know exactly what was on his screen.  I went to Cleveland for personal reasons and as a side trip, went to his house.  I forget what terms were on his screen, but he had a completely different idea what those terms meant than I did.  Once I explained them to him, he was able to do what he wanted.

During this same period, I wrote a genealogy program called Family Events.  One user complained that certain printed charts had lines that shouldn't be there.  I couldn't visualize or understand his problem because my printed charts looked OK.  It wasn't until we were both at the same genealogy conference that I understood the problem.  He was using a non-Apple printer and I was using an Apple printer.  As a shortcut I had given unneeded lines a negative length.  The Apple printer didn't print these lines; the non-Apple printer printed them as long extraneous lines.  I think once back home I recoded the problem in about an hour.

It's sort of like the urban legend of the kid who solves the problem of the truck jammed under a bridge: let some air out of the tires.

Once I wrote the above paragraph I thought of a related subject that I wanted to write about - the "shortage" of "high-tech" workers.  From this thought, I changed the title of this entry from "More on problem solving" to "The learned wanted, learners need not apply".  This "shortage" has been going on for decades.

The basic problem is that too many employers want somebody who can begin working on complex problems on day one.  Once those problems are solved, you may be replaced by someone who can begin working on the new problems on day one.

I've never had a job that I did not require some training after I was hired – from grocery clerk to bus driver to main-frame computer programmer.  My very first computer job I had to teach myself the basics of programming the company's computer.  For my nearly 20-year job with Univac it was constant change and new things to learn.  I didn't know FORTRAN, but I was set to finding and correcting errors in the compiler and its library.  In fact, our supervisor, John Macgowan, never did learn how to write a FORTRAN program, but he was a real whiz at finding and correcting errors in the compiler.  I won't bore you with the details, but it was nearly 20 years of constant learning and change.  I burned out when microcomputers came on the scene and I didn't feel like Univac was keeping up.  So, I started my own company and learned how to program several microcomputers without the benefit of special training.

What I didn't learn was how to run a business.  Then I learned that businesses don't want new employees who will learn.  That is, learners need not apply, we want the learned.

See "So-called high tech shortage".

Round robin service robbin' my time

I started this entry near the end of May as "Good Service from a Large Corporation" but never finished it or posted it.  The original follows up to the ellipsis (…).

Last week our internet service kept going out.  The "internet" light on our DSL modem would go out, and we couldn't send or receive any data.  We would unplug the modem, wait about five minutes, and replug the modem.  Within a couple of minutes, all the modem lights would be lit normally.  This kept happening more and more frequently.

We attributed it to the wind and the rain that went on for about three days.  But when the weather cleared the problem persisted, maybe with less frequency.

I sent email to our phone company, CenturyLink, with the suggestion that the storm may have been causing the problems.  I received a sympathetic reply from Martina that there was no known problem in our area.  My guess is that few people call up when they have problems that they think will go away.  Martina also suggested that I call a service number or set-up an online chat.

I was reluctant to do so because, with so many companies, one just goes around in circles.  Also we were heading to our cabin that has no DSL.

When we came back on Saturday evening, we still had the problem now and then.  When I woke up in the night, I checked if the internet light was on.  I reset the modem from my iPhone, it came on.  Before I had gone back to bed, the light was off again.  I reset the modem again and went back to bed.  When I got up in the morning, the light was off again; I reset the modem.  Repeat three times within an hour.

I'm not sure when the light finally stayed on, but I called my ISP, Hickory Tech, to hear if they had heard any problems.  The support person who I talked to said there had not been any major problems reported.  He thought, as I did, that the modem may be becoming faulty.

I fussed and fumed about going to the CenturyLink store in the local mall or to Best Buy.  I would do that on Monday.

Meanwhile…

Well, on that following Monday I did nothing about buying a new modem.  Over two weeks later the problem still persists but as I write this sentence the internet light is on.

I think the Monday was Memorial Day, and I knew Best Buy would be open.

On Tuesday after Memorial Day I did have an online chat with Melanie of Boise of CenturyLink.  She did some tests and found that our service had been throttled back.  She wrote "…all I did was go in and correct the provisioned [sic] speeds from 3M to 7M".  I thanked her and told her she deserved a raise.

However, speed has dropped again.  We also had a major power outage last night; see "Taking life for granted".

So, I'm back dithering about buying a new modem.  The ActionTec website recommends the "C1000A for CenturyLink" or the "Q2000 for Century Link".  I went to BestBuy page for the C1000A and looked at customer comments.  Many said that it was simple to install but a few others described exactly the problems I have been having with my DSL modem bought in October 2005 (the date is on one of the line filters).  These comments were made for purchases this year: 2013!  I should shell out a hundred bucks just to have the same problems again?

If some people have no problems at all and some people have problems no matter when they bought their DSL modems, I would say one of two things is happening.  Either the quality of the modems is inconsistent or the quality of the internet service provided by CenturyLink is inconsistent.  Or maybe both.

I didn't feel any better about my quandary when I found out that CenturyLink was rated 14 of the worst 15 companies for customer service by Business Insider.  And replacing telephone service with cable service isn't a good alternative.  Charter is rated 3 in the worst customer service list!!!

See all my other rants about this problem in
Internet service – What free market?
Internet service but not customer service
Who is worth more, the CEO with rigid rules or the employee giving excellent service?
Free market and the Internet
‎

I guess my only recourse is to have a chat with Melanie in Boise every so often to get my provisional speed bumped up again.  She gave the best customer service on this issue of anyone else.

To end on a good note about customer service, see
Why do people pick on the Post Office?

Magree's software laws

Magree's first law of software is that the complexity of software rises to meet or exceed the capacity of the fastest systems available to run it.  Don't believe me?  Try accessing almost any web page on a 24kb dialup:)

From this discussion and others I've come up with Magree's second law of software: the number of problems rises exponentially with the complexity of software.  It's kind of hard to believe if you consider the bad old days of mainframes having a good day without a crash.  But on the other hand, I've had more problems this year with software than the previous three years.