Erieversible

After some consideration Erieversible has come to the end of its natural life.  It was started to tell a story of trans-atlantic migration and now that the migration is at an end it really has nowhere to go in its current form.  We’re now settling in to what we hope will be our family home for many years to come and are battling the same hassles that everybody else is battling.  So, what would get posted on Erieversible would be our daily existence, and I’m not inspired by that. 

So, as from today, Erieversible (as is) ends. 

We still welcome questions from anyone contemplating a trans-atlantic move.  We’re still willing to help on any matters that we can.  We’ll still be here.  We just won’t be recording the boring minutiae of our daily life in Western New York.

Blogging can be fun, though.  So it is quite likely that after a short rest (using the time to catch up with the backlog of work on the children’s websites) we’ll probably be back, under a different name, recording entries from a different angle.  I just have to decide the angle and come up with an inspired name for it all. 

In the last couple of weeks I’ve received 3 invitations to join someone’s account on Facebook.  Why?

I must admit that I just don’t see the point in these social networking sites.  While we live a certain portion of our life online, with Erieversible, with the kids having websites, with other ventures, it seems that Facebook is a step too far.  Have these people got no-one more worthy than me to invite onto their accounts?  

Even the kids’ websites are now being reconsidered.  They were set up for distant friends and family, and while the move to the US has brought a lot of those people nearer it has also created a whole new subset for that audience.  However, just how much personal information should be available online?  One visitor to the kids’ websites has emailed to say they enjoy watching the kids grow up.  Pardon????  That could be scary.

I guess it is a time for contemplation about just how much goes into the public domain.  How much is published but secured behind access restrictions.  It is quite scary just how much information about individuals you can find out online nowadays.  Much of that information was always in the public domain but not so immediately accessible.

Time for serious contemplation about how to take things forward….

I’d like to be notified, wherever I am, when the power fails at our house.  I’d like to be notified when the level in the sump reaches a certain height.  I’d like not to pay a fortune for that service.

There are a number of devices that will detect those events.  Some are ‘local’ and just emit a loud noise.  Some will call you up by phone.  Those sounded like they’d be perfect.  Except that we have a digital phone service and that won’t work without power.

So I’ll throw a UPS backup device into the mix, to support the cable modem/phone box.  Except that the digital phone service still won’t work.  At least, according to the “customer service” people at Time Warner Cable.  Unfortunately I don’t believe them.  Why not?  Well, they can’t explain why it won’t work, and they all appear to be quoting from standard question responses.  In other words, they haven’t got a clue and are just parroting pre-prepared answers to common questions, picking the answer that seems to best suit my question.  That is fast becoming the dictionary definition for “customer service”.

If I can’t be phoned with the alerts, how about an email?  What I really need is a device that networks and acts on these triggers.  Technology has moved on from phones being the pinnacle.  These devices should perform the same basic function but use up to date communication methods.  However, it seems no-one else thinks so, as such devices are nowhere to be found.

I think I’ll try the UPS route anyway.  Or can anyone out there tell me why that wouldn’t work?  Why does the cable modem/phone box care where the local power comes from?  It’s all way beyond my simple mind.

Update:  After battling past the first-level “customer service”, through the second-level supervisor and then management, I finally, at the 4th time of asking, received a believable answer from one of their technicians.  The answer?  A UPS will indeed be sufficient to keep the digital phone working for local (i.e. not affecting Time Warner themselves) outages.  But why was it such a battle, and what about the poor average customer who believes the first (or second, or third) answer given?  I guess it is back to the new fangled concept of “customer service” meaning “read from the script”.