The storm apparently did a U-turn up in the mid-Atlantic and headed back down here. It’s been dumping rain on us overnight, and through the morning, on its way west. It’s headed across Florida and back to the Gulf, where it may reform. Keep an eye out for it, Texas.

That’s one of my pet peeves. It’s very frustrating to get someone in tech support who a) has no knowledge at all other than what’s on the checklist in front of them and b) certainly doesn’t know as much as you do, particularly when it comes to first principles or logic and c) doesn’t know that they don’t know, and answer your questions with gibberish, often in a condescending way as though you’re the idiot.

This happens all too frequently, and it happened again today with DirecTV.

I’ve got a weird problem. Intermittently, I’ll lose signal on some channels, starting with pixelation and audio breakup, deteriorating into complete loss of satellite signal. The last time I was having a problem like that, in California, it turned out to be a bad LNB, so I went out and bought a new one, and installed it.

The problem persists. Now here’s the really strange part.

When I run a test on the individual transponders while it’s acting up, the odd-numbered ones are fine, with signal strengths in the nineties. The even-numbered ones are zero across the board. What kind of failure would cause this kind of selective behavior? What’s different between odd-numbered and even-numbered transponders that would cause one to be fine and the other useless? I thought it might be something in the logic programming of the receiver, but I hooked another one up, and saw exactly the same behavior.

It seemed like an intriguing problem to me, and I figured that if I talked to DirecTV about it, they’d have some kind of ready explanation. And indeed they might, if you could actually talk to someone who understands how the system works, instead of a drone with a checklist, who not only couldn’t explain it, but didn’t seem to think it remarkable. He simply kept leading me through his check list. When I explained to him that even was bad and odd was good, he could only repeat, “that means it’s seeking signal,” as though that actually meant something significant and useful.

The bottom line was that he said he’d send someone out to look at it. On October 12th. I’m tempted to make another attempt to see if this time I can at least get someone with a little intellectual curiousity, and ability to think, but I’m wondering if anyone out there has any insight.

It’s not the receiver, it’s not the LNB. It could be dish aim, but the problem with this, as with all hypotheses, is that it doesn’t explain why I have a perfect signal on odd transponders and zero on the evens. Same thing with a bad cable, which is the only other thing that I can try at my end.

If someone described the symptoms to me, and I had no other knowledge, my first guess was a problem with the transponders on the satellite itself. But that implies that everyone else would be having the same problem, and it’s hard to imagine that occurring for long without DirecTV doing something about it.

Anyway, I guess I’ll try swapping cables, just because there’s nothing else I haven’t tried, but if that’s the problem, I’ll be very interested to understand what kind of cable failure would affect half the transponders, and only those with even numbers.

[Update on Sunday morning]

Thanks for the input. I finally did get in touch with someone at DirecTV who knew what they were talking about, and he told me that the most common reason for this behavior was cabling, with receiver second, and LNB a distant third. He couldn’t explain the physics of it, but said that in his experience, it was usually a bent pin on a cable, or some similar problem.

I went out this morning, and started tracing the wire. I found a corroded connector where it goes into the house on the active line. When I moved it to the other side (on a line we aren’t currently using), which wasn’t corroded, the problem seems to have gone away. I’ll have to watch for a while to see if it recurs, but that looks like it was the culprit. I’ll have to go to Home Depot and get a replacement for it, and seal it back up out of the weather (it only had electrical tape wrapped around it, which is probably why it went south).

Here comes Jeanne, pointed right at us.

My server is having trouble with DNS. It can ping the internet by IP, and when I ping by name, it makes an attempt and echos the IP, but cannot ping. My /etc/resolv.conf file contains only “nameserver 192.168.2.1” which is the address of the wireless router.

Am I doing something wrong?

[Update]

I finally found the DNS servers for AT&T. When I put them in resolv.conf, everything seems to work fine. Thanks for the suggestions.

I’ve got a weird (at least to me, I’m hoping that it will be obvious to someone else) problem with my network.

I’m running an 802.11(g) router. I’ve got my server and my desktop ethernetted to it, and I’m using my laptop in wireless mode. All machines are seeing the router fine (and getting Internet access), but the laptop is not able to see the other two machines and vice versa on the network. The laptop can ping everyone, but the laptop cannot be pinged. I’m running in encrypted mode on the wireless connection, and wondering if that might be the problem. It doesn’t seem like it should be, because I would think that the signal is being decrypted by the router and available through ethernet.

Does anyone have any ideas?

[Update]

D’oh!

I’d changed my network from 192.168.1.* to 192.168.2.* and forgot to tell Zone Alarm on the laptop.

Problem solved.

But by a wider margin.

It looks like Ivan is headed into the Gulf. It may still affect Florida, but the most probably target is the Panhandle, and both weather.com and accuwearther.com have taken southeastern Florida out of the target zone. That’s good, because we didn’t need another one, particularly so soon, but it may be hard on people in the panhandle, or the Gulf Coast in general. Send them your best wishes, and donations.

I know, you think that’s my one-word description of those idiots continuing to defend the memos.

It is, but the purpose of this post was to describe the play of the Wolverine offense against Notre Dame throught the third quarter.

The play calling is atrocious, and when it’s good, the execution sucks. They only seem to have two pass plays–a low-percentage long ball down the field, or a short play almost deliberately contrived to avoid being caught beyond the first-down marker. The Irish O-line is making Michigan’s look like schoolgirls. Unable to score a touchdown, they may still win this, but they sure don’t deserve to. And if they do, it will be the defense and special teams (at least the field-goal kicking unit, and ignoring the guy who tripped Breaston for the fumble) who will be responsible, not the offense.

[Update]

Talk about dumb play calling. Why didn’t Notre Dame go for two, after that gift of an interception? Now Michigan can (at least in theory) win it with another field goal (the only offense they’re capable of today).

[Update]

A draw play on third and nineteen? A draw play on third and nineteen?!!!!!

Sure, why not.

They deserved that blocked punt. Why not give them the gift of another TD? I mean, it’s not like they had any plans to score any more this game anyway.

[Update]

Clearly, the offense needs a lot of work. They are not going to win this game. The only chance at this point is a returned interception.

It’s nice to excuse them because they lost Underwood early, but if your offense becomes totally ineffective because you lose your best runner, you don’t have much of an offense. Losing Underwood would explain a couple touchdowns in the margin, but not the inability to get into the end zone completely. At least not for a team with the bench depth that Michigan should.

[Update

OK, so they’ve scored again, off another turnover. Why not?

You can’t blame the defense for this (you can rarely blame the defense for a Michigan loss). They’re worn out. They’ve been on the field for far too much of the time, because the offense is…what was the word again? Oh, yeah, up in the post title.

[Update]

OK, as usual, they tease, getting a TD two and a half minutes before the end of the game. Of course, just to tie, they have to get two points after, and repeat the feat…

[Update]

OK, they get the two points, but miss the on-side kick. Now, of course, I have to watch to see if the defense can make a last stand.

[Wrapup]

As I said, the offense lost this game. The Dee did as well as possible under the circumstances, but the O came alive a few minutes too late.

This isn’t the end of the season, but it’s probably the end of any hopes of a (mythical) national championship for the Woverines this year (unless they go the rest of the season undefeated, and Notre Dame ends up number one at the end of the season).

Carr has to take his O coach to the woodshed, and perhaps even considering replacing him. As I said in the post title, this was a pathetic performance on the part of the Michigan offense.

Of which I’m reminded amidst all the discussion about the forged documents–people who don’t know the difference between a typeface and a font, including journalists, who should know better. Microsoft and the computer industry have blurred the distinction that was once very clear to the printing community.

Times Roman is a typeface, people.

Times Roman twelve-point italic is a font.

The long delay between posts had nothing to do with conditions; it was the normal one that occurs almost every night as I sleep. We’ve stokd up on canned goods, water, batteries, fuel, and other necessities. Last night was the time to stok up on slumber, because we may not get another chance at it until late Sunday. Fortunately, the storm didn’t disturb us, though I heard a few gale blasts about 7 AM.

It’s relatively quiet right now. Trees are blowing, but not hard, and it’s not raining much. Based on the forecasts, I don’t expect that to last long. Fortunately for us (and unfortunately for many others), it continues to head further north. If it makes landfall near the current prediction (up near Melbourne or Fort Pierce), we’ll get off pretty easy in Boca, all things considered, even if it restrengthens this afternoon and evening. Most of the storm surge (our biggest fear) will occur to the north of the storm, and most of the winds we get will be from the north and west.

I don’t know how much longer I’ll be blogging, but at this point, if I quit, it will be because I no longer can (most likely due to power out–the battery’s shot in my laptop), not because I’m voluntarily unconscious.

[Update a couple minutes later]

Whoops. Wrote too soon. The wind is picking up now. And there are a couple crazy people out driving down the street.

More in the thick of things, in Melbourne. She’s still on the air as of a few minutes ago. Wish her (and everyone here) as much luck as you’ve apportioned my way.