As you mostly know, I am going through some crap with AT&T U-verse. I have gotten to the point of writing a strongly worded letter. Here is v1. My boss is currently reviewing and adding to it. I’d love some input:

To whom it may concern:

My name is Bryan <lastname> and my AT&T U-Verse account information is as follows:

<account info removed for privacy purposes>

Since the week of 2/2/2009, I have experienced over 10 outages of my service. I have had 6-8 visits from technical support personnel. I have called into the AT&T U-verse support number more times than I would like to recount. I have received numerous diagnoses for why my services have been down. Finally, the issue was determined to be a problem at the NOC with a piece of hardware.

I was given no ETA as to when this hardware issue would be resolved. At one point, one of the techs suggested that I have Time Warner cable come and install so that I could use that temporarily while AT&T figured it out. Fortunately, I never had the install done as I was lead to believe on Monday (2/23/2009) that the issue was resolved.

You might be saying to yourself, “hey buddy, what’s the big deal?!?”. Well, I am a strictly “work at home” employee. I work for a small consulting company and do not have an office to go to if my services are not up and running.

Although I have received quite a bit of credit to my account, I have to say that my faith in AT&T’s reliability of service is in the negative numbers. I am currently pricing out other services to see if they can compete with what AT&T offers. Due to my experiences, you have lost at least 4 more potential customers.

Although I do quite enjoy the service that AT&T provides, if it is not up, what use is it? What use is a credit to my account when I cannot use my services?

On Friday, 2/27/2009, I experienced another outage so I called into AT&T customer support with my employer on the line. Because of the problems with AT&T’s reliability, we, as a company have lost close to $<a lot> in billable time and services that I have not been able to provide due to loss of connectivity.

The customer support rep kindly credited my account by another $100 understanding fully that this did not help in terms of the service coming back up. She then transferred us to tier 2 support who verified that a technician was on his way. We then asked to speak with management. At this point Marc (mj2556) got on the line.

I explained to him that my employer was on the line but he refused to even listen to what he had to say. Understanding this, I asked to speak with HIS supervisor at which point he informed me that he is the highest customer facing person that I can speak to. I would not say that I think he was lying, but, in my experience working for a support organization, there is ALWAYS someone higher to speak to customer facing or not.

I again explained that we are a small company (4 people) and that due to AT&T’s inability to resolve my intermittent connectivity problems, we have lost close to $<a lot> in services rendered.

At this point, Marc asked me if I had read the AT&T TOS. He specifically said that AT&T U-verse is not meant to be a business grade product that it’s “all in the TOS”. I have to say that this made me very upset. I asked him to explain to me how this many outages, tech support visits, lost time, etc would be acceptable to ANY customer. He was not able to do this and again stressed that I look into AT&T U-verse business services.

During the time I was talking with Marc, the services actually came back on. Shortly after, the tech arrived and did some further testing and communicating with his peers. It was then determined that the hardware problem was resolved last night, but the ports on my ONT were never unlocked. The tech verified that they were in fact unlocked and then gave me his phone number. He instructed me to call him directly if I experienced any more outages in the next few days.

To sum up, I am sick of talking to AT&T support. You are all very nice, but I have lost sleep, time, work, wages, and patience.

Additionally, my employer is currently exploring legal action with regard to this matter.

I eagerly anticipate your response.

Regards,

Bryan M. <lastname>

Last night, Victoria and I went to watch this round of testing over at the Shaolin school. I highly respect everyone’s effort put forth in getting up in front of the Grandmaster to perform their material. It takes a lot to do that and I inherently respect anyone that does.

Testing took a LONG time. There were quite a few people testing this time around. I think there were:

• 2  Green – > 3rd Brown
• 4  3rd Brown – > 2nd Brown
• 16 (I think) 2nd Brown – > 1st Brown
• 8 1st Brown – > 1st Black
• 9 2nd Black – > 3rd Black
• 2 3rd Black – > 4th Black

Actually, whoa, that’s 41 people. Now that I think of it, testing started at 7pm and finished right around 10pm. That’s actually pretty fast for 41 people… never mind. Grand Master Sin, you are the man!

I thought that Hugh looked super drunk during Drunken Straight Sword. That was awesomely done. All of the people that tested for 3rd degree were great. Truly inspiring to watch. I can’t wait until I can do what they can do. I can’t wait to take my test in 6 months so that I can start learning Hsing Ie.

Sifu Cheryl’s test was particularly inspiring. I give her just a ton of respect and my admiration for taking that test. I remember back in February, when Ryon and Lien tested for 4th, all I could think of during their test was “oh god, the humanity… when will it end?!?! they just keep going form after form after form…”. Excellent job, Sifu Cheryl, you are an inspiration.

After testing, we (me and V) went out to eat at Trudy’s with some of the south school people. We primarily hung out with Paul and Sasha which was a lot of fun. I haven’t really gotten a chance to ever hang out with them. We should do it more often.

Now, finally, onto my point and the title of this post. At Trudy’s I ate chips and salsa along with the (why, oh why did I order this) stuffed avocado. Don’t get me wrong, the thing was delicious, but, I feel absolutely horrible today for eating it. I don’t mean horrible as in “beating myself up” horrible, but physically, I feel gross.

I feel like there’s a film inside of my mouth that won’t go away no matter how many times I brush my teeth. It’s nasty. I have been drinking water all morning in an effort to try and rid myself of this stuff.

The up side would be, well, lesson learned. It’s interesting to go back on this blog and see how many times I have written about how something I have eaten has made me feel “ick”. I think the light bulb (DUH, DONT EAT THAT SHIT) has finally illuminated. 

Today, my AT&T services are out again. They were actually out last night when we got home. Even though I was absolutely exhausted last night, I did call in to see if I could get the ball rolling on resolving the problem. They, again, advised me that Alcatel was replacing some hardware in the CO and that my services should be restored in the morning.

Sorry, Charlie… incorrect. If anyone out there knows of an address where you can send an invoice to AT&T, my company would LOVE to invoice them for the week of work that I have lost due to their inability to get my service to a steady state (incidentally, everything had been working since Saturday 2/21… they almost made it a week).

Two good things that came out of my conversation with the account retention department today were:

1. There is no feel to cancel.
2. I will receive a check for any credits that are currently on my account (currently ~$300).

I am thinking that it might be time to take the money and run. The thing that sucks about that is that I don’t really have many options for services. In my area, I have:

1. Time Warner Cable – Pros {faster broadband, probably more reliable} Cons {more expensive, absolutely horrible DVR interface}.
2. Dish Network/ATT DSL – Pros {Lots of HD channels, I already have a dish} Cons {Not sure if ATT DSL even exists anymore, satellite dish thwarted by clouds, 2 year contract, multiple bills}.

Sucks…

I wish there were more choices.

At any rate, because of this crap with AT&T I know of 4 customers that they have lost (Ryon & Sam as well as my grandparents). As I’m on the phone with AT&T tier 2 support, my grandmother is sitting on my couch saying “no way in hell I’m getting AT&T”.

Tomorrow is the semi-annual tournament for our school. I am really looking forward to it. Although I am not sure if I will yet be sparring (I know, I should, but I don’t know), I am definitely competing in all of the forms areas both internal and external. Here’s what I have decided I am doing:

• External Belt Level – Mad crazy drunkard fist.
• Internal Belt Level – Tai Chi Broadsword and Chen Tai Chi
• External Non-Belt Level – Skewer the Sun (2nd degree straight sword form)

Starting at 7pm I will be involved in the demonstrations. As far as I know, the only part I will be in is the demo of drunken kung fu. I am either doing mad crazy drunkard fist or drunken broadsword. Not sure yet, but I guess I will find out when I get there. If you have ANY interest in martial arts, you should definitely come and check it out. It will be a Munchinson Middle School off Anderson Lane.

Breakfast – Apple with PB

Lunch – Jason’s deli – Small cup of tomato basil soup, salad bar (mixed greens spinach, egg, artichoke, nuts, tomato, cucumber, balsamic dressing).

Dinner – Ouch – Trudy’s – Chips follows by their stuffed avocado.

I haven’t posted a DailyOM in a while, but, I felt that this one was apropos. I’m sure anyone could relate to this one:

February 25, 2009
Hard Learned Lessons
Bad Days

We all have days from time to time when it feels like the world is against us or that the chaos we are experiencing will never end. One negative circumstance seems to lead to another. You may wonder, on a bad day, whether anything in your life will ever go right again. But a bad day, like any other day, can be a gift. Having a bad day can show you that it is time to slow down, change course, or lighten up. A bad day can help you glean wisdom you might otherwise have overlooked or discounted. Bad days can certainly cause you to experience uncomfortable feelings you would prefer to avoid, yet a bad day may also give you a potent means to learn about yourself.

You may consider a bad day to be one where you’ve missing an important meeting because your car stalled, the dryer broke, and you received a piece of very bad news earlier in the morning. Multiple misfortunes that take place one after the other can leave us feeling vulnerable and intensely cognizant of our fragility. But bad days can only have a long-term negative effect on us if we let them. It is better to ask yourself what you can learn from these kinds of days. The state of your bad day may be an indicator that you need to stay in and hibernate or let go of your growing negativity.

Bad days contribute to the people we become. Though we may feel discouraged and distressed on our bad days, a bad day can teach us patience and perseverance. It is important to remember that your attitude drives your destiny and that one negative experience does not have to be the beginning of an ongoing stroke of bad luck. A bad day is memorable because it is one day among many good days – otherwise, we wouldn’t even bother to acknowledge it as a bad day. Know too, that everybody has bad days, you are not alone, the world is not against you. Tomorrow is guaranteed to be a brighter day.

Home made chicken fajitas (grilled white meat, sautéed peppers and onions, low carb tortillas, low fat cheese, regular sour cream, avocado, salsa).

Grilled pineapple.

… that Southern cuisine was bad for you, check out this map that I saw on popsci.com (http://www.popsci.com/content/state-lines). Apparently, Alabama, Tennessee, and Mississippi have the highest obesity rates in the country. It’s also amazing to see that in most states the rate of diabetes is around 10%. That is absolutely insane, people! That means that in most of the US, 1 out of every 10 people is diabetic! What does this say about us as a society/culture. Open your eyes… read… stop trusting conventional wisdom… it’s clearly NOT working.

Despite still being sore from Friday, I decided to get in the garage and do a 20 min workout.

AMRAP (as many rounds as possible) – 20 min

• 15 Kettle Bell Swings
• 50 jumps (rope or ledge)
• 10 Kettle Bell Clean & press
• 20 Wood choppers with medicine ball

I managed 7 sets plus everything minus 12 wood choppers. In other words, I was 12 wood choppers short of 8 full sets.

Post workout, I did planks. 2 sets, middle, side, side, 30 seconds each.

I hope I am able to life my arms for mixed sparring class at V’s TKD school. That headgear is looking more attractive =).