[ale] [OT] Whine, moan, and complain - 6 day outage.

[Jim Lynch]

Thompson Freeman wrote:
>
> Ok. The weird part is, we have no idea what was wrong! The  
> AT&T guy showed up, and nothing was working. He tied in his  
> gear, back tracked up and down the line, came inside to  
> double check all the way to the modem, and the blasted  
> _old_ modem started working! He (the AT&T guy) claims no  
> clue as to what happened, and I sure am clueless. Maybe he  
> just scared it into working...
>
>   
Sounds like business as usual for Ma Bell.  Back before the breakup of 
AT&T I worked in a data center that had contracted with AT&T for 
dedicated data communications lines across state lines.  This was back 
when we were running synchronous 4800 and 9600  communications.  Since 
we were also using Ma Bell modems, if the line didn't work, we'd call 
them.  Not once did they ever admit they had a problem.  We'd get a call 
a little later reporting "no trouble found" and magically the line would 
be back working.

JIm.