Another Busy Week

Well, it's been another busy week, but this time at least I'm used to getting up before 6AM to start my day.

On the home front I've been making very heavy use of my printer and the refill kits. I learned three things by using the refill kits:

1. Printer manufacturers have one Hell of a scam going on with their ink prices.
2. Printer ink is really, really, really messy.
3. Printer ink is also very, very, very persistent.

I'll be sure to keep you posted on the fascinating life of printer cartridges.

Other computer-related stuff isn't so happy. My network feed has been ... well, it's China Telecom. That pretty much says it all. It's low-grade service presented by a bunch of people who'll be paid the same whether the customer is happy or not, so would rather sit on their fat asses all day than actually provide a service. This is what happens when you have government-mandated monopolies (or, as Microsoft demonstrates, monopolies of any kind).

Sometimes doing business in China is intensely frustrating. I knew that China Telecom was going to be a problem the moment they set up my connection. The guy setting it up got very antsy when it turned out I wasn't going to be installing China Telecom's spyware/adware to connect -- and that, indeed, I wasn't going to be using Windows at all. He kept trying to load the software -- Windows software, note! -- on my system and was wondering why it wasn't working. While he was out talking to someone on the phone, I just took the userid and password he was using and put them into my router. Time taken? About ten seconds. When he came back, I was merrily surfing away. He still wanted to go hassle someone else to get a Windows laptop to "check my connection". (Apparently having the connection working in front of him wasn't enough to convince him that it was working. Or something.)

Sure enough, the first thing I found out about the feed after a week of use was that they had about 100 people connected to a line which could give actual broadband service to maybe a tenth of that. During the evenings in particular I'd get about 5KB/s speed tops. About the same as using a dial-up modem. That's "broadband" according to China Telecom. I decided then that I really want to get a different provider.

The building I'm in has boxes for China Netcom. China Netcom isn't very reliable as a provider in my experience -- they go down more often than a Vegas streetwalker -- but when they are working they are bloody fast! My normal speed when I was using them was 8 times the maximum speed I can get from China Telecom even in theory. (900KB/s vs. 120KB/s) That means that they were over 100 times faster normally than what I'm getting from China Telecom, say, right this minute.

Try contacting China Netcom sometime, though.

Their equipment has no telephone numbers on it for contact or servicing. Their web site is a dog's breakfast of one window after another before you get numbers that... don't work. Email? Hah! No business in the world has good email support. Not even the companies that exist, for all practical purposes, entirely on the Internet. A big telecom company? Not a chance.

So after literally months of searching, we finally figured out how to contact China Netcom. Who don't serve this building. They have the equipment here, though, because when they get enough customers they'll hook up the boxes and provide service to the building. But they won't actually sign up any customers because they haven't hooked up the boxes. The circle of stupidity that was this explanation apparently made sense to them, even as it sprained my brain before I thankfully shut it off.

So back to hammering China Telecom. They insisted up down and sideways every time they were contacted that they could do nothing to increase the speed of service. Until the last conversation where they said if we contacted the University office (which had hitherto never been God-damned mentioned!) we could actually pay more for improved service. Which is something I literally asked one week after getting connected and seeing how crappy the service was!

And we still can't upgrade because of stupid bureaucracy that Joan doesn't have time to deal with and the foreign affairs office doesn't want to deal with because it would mean actually doing a job.

And this is business in China. Big business, I mean. Small businesses aren't run by retards. They want money and if you're willing to give it to them, they're willing to bend over backwards and then twist themselves into a pretzel to help you give that money to them. I'm getting my leather jacket resized now, for instance, and while they're at it I asked for a couple of alterations to the styling. No problem there! But big businesses? They seem to think that just existing is reason enough to give them money. "Give us money," they say. "We'll figure out what we'll offer you in return. Someday."

I mean really! I was there, I was waving (metaphorically) hundred-RMB notes in their faces saying at the top of my lungs "I have money! I want to give you this money! Price is no object! Let's do business!" and getting blank incomprehension in response. With China Netcom they just had to string one cable about 25 metres. That's it. And I was willing to pay a month's salary to get it! About enough to pay for ten people in one of their existing accounts for a whole year! And China Telecom? Add "incompetent" to "criminally corrupt" to the list of charges I'm drawing up against them in my head.

OK. Now I've got that out of my system.

In other news, at just the right time I'm getting two of the books from my wish list sent to me. Someone also shipped me a book that has opened my eyes to web design. It was in electronic form, so the physical copy is now in my wish list as well -- it's a really good book about web design with hardly any HTML or CSS in it. A book that isn't just boilerplate and pages and pages and pages of code, but instead offers a deep glimpse into the world of visual design.

Tomorrow -- China Telecom willing -- I'll be making a very special celebratory blog post, so please stay tuned.