Oye. My Verizon installer and his backup crew finally left a little after 9pm. We’re still noti n business yet. They have to replace a 1000-foot underground fiber optic cable, and after trying in the dark, finally gave up.

A different work crew with that experience will return tomorrow, my presence is not required. After I get back from work tomorrow (sometime around 6pm), my installer will meet me at the house to finish the job, if everything goes okay in the afternoon.

Although Verizon didn’t complete the install, I’m somewhat intrigued by them. Granted, I think this was certainly their problem, and think they could have identified this flooded box issue more timely. Although the installer showed up a bit later than expected, he never left the area from 1pm to 9pm, except for a late lunch. Verizon brought out additional people in the late evening to try to resolve this issue for both myself and my neighbor sharing that junction box.

The dynamic in play here is that Verizon is trying to make a good impression on new customers. My neighbor has the service for a week, and now he has an outage. I can’t get my new service installed. Verizon is making a big push to supplant Comcast cable in this area. If we, as new cuatomers, got fed up with Verizon, we would switch back to the warm arms of cable with no chance of returning to Verizon again. Bad word of mouth would certainly take place.

Based on past experiences, unfortunately, Comcast would not have done the same level of effort if I was a regular customer.  They would have sent out crew after crew for days, fixing one piece at a time.  Then again, once I’m a regularly-paying Verizon customer, and this kind of outage happens again, I wouldn’t be surprised if Verizon behaves likes the cable company too.  It’s the nature for companies to get lackadaisical about their customers.  Only now at the end of my tenure with them has Comcast unfortunately shown any interest in offering me any deals to save me money, even when I called months ago to inquire.

I hope my Verizon service is up and running tomorrow night. For now, my wife is watching cable tv, and I’m online using my cable internet.

There’s gonna be a Verizon party at my house tonight. Here’s the scoop.  The neighbors I’ve spoken to, and the discussion posted online, prepared me for one possibility. I didn’t expect the troubles. To prep, we cleaned up the basement in various spaces, I took a vacation day, and dropped off the kids early to school

Here’s what I expected:  The 8am on-time arrival of a Verizon technician.  I expected the tech to be here for approximately 6 hours, considering that we only have one TV and one PC to hook up.  Done by 2pm, I could take my daughter to her 15-month well-child visit @ the pediatrician.

Here’s what I got:  The tech never showed up at 8am.  I called around 9am, and received a new (“updated”) expected arrival time of 12pm.  Um, 4-8 hours of install means you are eating dinner with us?  The tech finally showed up at 1pm, and started to work. 

About 3 hours later, he shows me that the central box in the yard that has the connections for our entire row of townhouses is filled with rainwater, and that’s why my neighbor is having issues, and why I won’t be working. 

Uh huh. Riiiiiiiiight. 

The latest update is that they have called back some guys from North Brunswick to do some emergency work, and may be here working outside and in my house even after 8pm. 

I’m glad I haven’t cancelled my cable service.  This should be interesting.  More later.

Yup, they’re coming on Monday, 8am, and we’re ready.  I’m taking a vacation day, as I asssume I won’t have any internet access for most of the day.  Of course, I copied a lot of files over to my laptop so I can do work while the Verizon installer is puttering around in my house for the day.

I’ve been reading up on what to expect.  From what most people have experienced, the guy shows up around 8am, for 4-8 hours, installing the Optical Network Terminal (ONT) and possibly even replacing the coax in the house.  We had no idea where this guy was going to be installing and working in the basement, so we spent time cleaning up the basement in various locations.  I happened by chance to speak to one of my neighbors on the way to the recycling corner, and he just switched to FiOS a week ago.  He took me on an imprompto tour of his basement, where they installed it in his laundry room.  I dunno at this point.  I suppose I’ll just point him to the basement, and keep him off of my couch, and drinking my beer.

I’m not thrilled by being forced to use their stupid wireless router. I’m a geek.  I like to use my own stuff.

If you read my earlier posting about moving to Verizon, you read that I’m soon abandoning my comcast email addresses.  Now is a good opportunity to streamline my various email accounts.  Contrary to popular misconceptions, I don’t believe in having a 101 email accounts — who wants to check them all?  A while back, I got rid of my long-standing (since 1999) hotmail account (ah, grandma_funk76, I still miss thee.)

My sumo_joel Yahoo! account is tied to my Flickr account and Facebook, but it gets more SPAM than I should have to endure.  I’m debating what to do with the Yahoo! account. Can I even switch the email address associated with Facebook?

I’ll probably use one of the default Verizon mail accounts for business purposes (bills and stuff, and you get 9 accounts.)  What should I do for personal?  Everyone but my mother has a Gmail account, so I looked into that.  Gmail seems interesting, but I would use IMAP to synch my email with my BlackBerry and my Outlook on the home desktop. 

I tried signing up for a gmail account, and guess what?  Some jerk has already taken joelipe@gmail.com, and joel.ipe@gmail.com.  Can you believe that?  Who has my exact name, in two different formats?  I’m absolutely shocked!  I have half a mind to write these two guys, because inquiring minds want to know.  My wife jokes that the accounts may belong to a “Joe Lipe” or even a “Jo Elipe” (a chick?)

I’m befuddled.  I also don’t have a potential email account for personal use. I considered even setting up some using my joelipe.com domain.  Some options I have considered are joel @ joelipe.com, me @ joelipe.com, YouGoGirl@joelipe.com, and even StrongPimpHand@joelipe.com.

Any suggestions?

It’s the end of an era.  After nearly 9 years (since I moved out from my parents place), I’m finally switching (more like abandoning) Comcast for my cable and broadband needs.  It was a momentous occasion, because not only was I moving away from living with my parents, but I was also……. going to get broadband internet.  If you know me, you know that broadband was a dream to behold and wrap around myself like a comfy blanket.    I despised the dial-up internet we had at my parents’ house, so I was ready for the fat pipe.  I’ve had the same comcast email addresses since 2000.

So why am I switching?  In a nutshell?  Verizon’s FiOS service.  FiOS is fiber optic, which is pretty cool.  After over two years of telling us through mailings and signs hung on our doorknobs, it was turning into something akin to vaporware. I even read in our community newspaper about the frustrations the community association was experiencing from dealing with Verizon.  Sounded like FiOS was never going to happen. 

Oddly enough, and seemingly overnight in March, a Verizon salesman knocked on our door, and asked us about signing up. When?  Now. Now? It was all deployed?  So he said. Well, I didn’t chomp at the bit, since we don’t have an HDTV.  What’s the benefit of HD channels when you don’t have the tv to watch them.

Relax, we didn’t get an HDTV (though I keep trying to wear my wife’s logical resolve down.)  Verizon is doing a pretty neat bundle — FiOS TV (with a number of HD channels), phone (local and long distance), and broadband (10 Mbps downstream, 2 Mbps upstream.)  Total cost before taxes and fees?  $94, which I have been told by the CFO (my wife) will save us $50 a month.

$50 a month? My wife makes a lot of sense. Even better, looks like we’ll be getting back all of our familiar NYC regional channels that Comcast had gradually taken away from us over the course of a year.  Bite me, Comcast. I put in the installation request today, so I’m looking forward to trying out Verizon’s fiber optic network in a few weeks.