You can help the victims of Hurricane Ike by making a financial gift to the American Red Cross Disaster Relief Fund. This Fund enables the Red Cross to provide shelter, food, counseling and other assistance to victims of Hurricane Ike, as well as others.

I was shocked to learn that the Red Cross has accrued more than $70 million in debt, caring for victims of the recent Hurricane Gustav. Now completely strapped for cash, they are literally borrowing from everywhere, but have stressed that they will continue to help victims of these disastrous hurricanes, no matter what.

You can donate $5 to American Red Cross disaster relief efforts simply by text messaging the keyword “GIVE” to “2HELP” (24357). Donations will appear on your monthly bill or be debited from your prepaid account balance. Standard text messaging rates apply.

Millions of Houstonians will be grateful for your help during this difficult time!

For those of you who somehow missed the news, we were recently hit by Hurricane Ike, a Category 2 storm with a storm surge more typical of a Category 3 or 4 storm. We were fortunate to have avoided any major damage, and our power has been restored after nearly 60 hours. More than 2.2 million folks in and around the Houston area are still without electricity. Our story follows…

On Friday, September 12th, we began preparing the house (and yard) for Ike. We setup a shelter in my garage office, since it is the most secure part of our house. Had an air mattress, the kiddos’ sleeping bags, battery-powered lantern and other goodies in there. Outside, I spent an hour tightening up our fence, and then took the reflector from my satellite dish down, since it had the biggest potential to be torn off in high winds.

We spent most of the evening hours in the cul-de-sac, visiting with neighbors who rarely spoke with us otherwise. That was probably the most enjoyable part of the experience. (more…)

This morning, Tom, the most senior—and helpful—AT&T Tech so far, came to the house and began working on my continuing problem with upload speeds. After nearly six hours, the problem is finally resolved!

Turns out, there was a mismatch of VPI/VCI cards on either end of my line. There was a 768 kbps card on one end, but a 512 kbps on the other end. The mismatch should have simply resulted in lower upload speeds altogether, but apparently they also use slightly different protocols, which resulted in abnormally high packet loss.

Here’s what I’ve learned through this ordeal:

1. Once you get past the first level of “script readers”, the level two support folks at AT&T are quite knowledgeable, attentive and friendly.
2. Contrary to the rumor mill, AT&T does NOT throttle upload speeds.
3. If you’re experiencing slow upload speeds and have eliminated line trouble, ask about your VPI/VCI card.

Now, I have no idea how the problem occurred in the first place, since I was getting great upload speeds up until two weeks ago. Apparently, somebody swapped in the incorrect card at some point. But, I’m back to my happy uploading self, and ready to get back to work. I’m sure my clients will be happy as well!

Click here to read Part One of this tale.

The AT&T repairman just left, after nearly 2 hours of further troubleshooting. He said he’s never encountered an issue like this. Not reassuring.

He replaced the modem, the card at the hub, and completely changed the line from the box at the front of the subdivision to the hub. Same speed results after each change: 5,100 Mbps download, still less than 100 kbps upload.

He has now kicked this issue up to the “LightSpeed guys”, who handle connection issues from there to the main central hub.

I’m becoming more convinced that this is a case of “bandwidth throttling” and nothing to do with cabling. I also find it interesting that no one else in the neighborhood is reporting a similar problem. Guess I’m the only one in the neighborhood who UPLOADS files. Hmmm.

I decided to blog about the drama I’ve been experiencing with my newly-installed AT&T DSL, mainly so that I could have a record of my current situation. In my experience, things that begin as minor technical annoyances can escalate over time to the point where you find yourself asking, “How did I get here?”

So let me begin at the beginning. I was an early adopter of cable internet, one of the first in our neighborhood to have it installed, in fact. In those days, Time Warner was king in Houston, and we were all very happy. I enjoyed better-than-advertised download speeds, and uploading files was at least somewhat faster than the alternatives.

As a web designer and graphic designer, I upload files constantly. Whether I am sending a print-ready PDF to a printer, or uploading PHP files and graphics to my web server, my work depends on decent upload speeds.

Fast forward to last year. Comcast took over all of Time Warner’s Houston assets, and things got ugly very quickly. Their tech support was an absolute joke, and after months of unresolved service issues and being treated like an incompetent idiot, I reluctantly decided to switch to AT&T DSL.

For the first two months, things went very well. The download speeds were not quite as fast as the Roadrunner service, averaging only 5,100 Mbps. But the upload speeds were WONDERFUL… 600-700 kbps, nearly double what I was getting on the the “new and improved” Comcast network.

Then about 10 days ago, I noticed that it was taking longer for my files to upload. Uploading a 1 MB file now took 3-5 minutes, which is an eternity in web design hours. A quick speed check revealed the following:

Repeated speed tests, using several different services confirmed the slow upload speeds. The plan I am on with AT&T promises 6Mbps download and 768kbs upload. We’re nowhere close to that!

My Mac is set to backup nightly to an offsite disk, part of my .Mac service. That backup has failed the last four nights, timing out somewhere during the process.

This morning, I have spent a total of three hours on the phone with four different tech support personnel. We have “power-cycled” everything in the house repeatedly. I think they even had me turn the microwave off and on again. We’ve tried every trouble-shooting technique in their “script”.

The modem configuration page reveals 6,016 kbps downstream and 800 kbps upstream, although “real-world” speed tests tell a much different story.

Currently, I have a 50-ft. phone cable plugged directly into my phone box outside, and connected directly to the modem. Took one of my three computers—a different computer than the one on which I first experienced the problem—and plugged it directly into the modem. Exactly the same speed results.

So we’ve got another tech guy coming out tomorrow. I’ll post the update.

With a fresh 2-year commitment to this product, I’m really hoping to get this resolved. I can’t afford to spend hours of billable time waiting for uploads to complete.

Ayone else had a similar experience? Is AT&T practicing bandwidth throttling, akin to what got Comcast in hot water a few months ago? I don’t use P2P services, and almost all of my file transfers are conducted via FTP, with the exception of the aforementioned Apple .Mac sync services. Am I being “throttled?”

More tomorrow.

The importance of making a great sales call is measured in the success that you have in developing a relationship with a prospect or making a sale. Whether you’re a seasoned veteran or a rookie salesperson, knowing how to navigate through a sales call is paramount. Here are three simple keys to making every call successful… (more…)

Lawyers. Accountants. Radiologists. Programmers. Engineers. That’s what our parents told us to be when we grew up. But Mom and Dad were wrong. The future now belongs to a very different kind of person with a very different kind of mind. So says Daniel Pink, author of the compelling must-read, A Whole New Mind: Why Right-Brainers Will Rule the Future.

“The era of ‘left-brain’ dominance—and the Information Age that it engendered—is giving way to a new world in which artistic and holistic ‘right-brain’ abilities mark the fault line between who gets ahead and who falls behind.”

In his book, Daniel describes a seismic shift that—while not yet fully realized—is already underway in much of the modern world. We are rapidly moving from an economy and culture built on the logical, linear, computer-like capabilities of the Information Age to one built on the creative, empathic, big-picture capabilities of what’s rising in its place: the Conceptual Age. (more…)