05-07-03 @ 7:46 am EDT

All right, as for why NMO.net = extreme suckage...prepare yourself for LOTS and LOTS of warning violet. Your eyeballs will be bleeding by the time you're done with this one, IF you can finish it...

Firstly, you've probably noticed me gripe about NMO.net, our ISP, in my journal previously. All throughout the month of March, the days were characterized by numerous long outages on their part...with very few updates on their main page EXPLAINING said outages. Just because these usually happened in the middle of the night, I suspect they didn't think anyone would have noticed them. Ahem, NMO! You DO have nocturnal users!

It sure would be nice to be REFUNDED for all this lost time...

Before this past Sunday, the fun tradition continued with major outages EACH Sunday morning for the past three weeks. All during time periods when I'm usually online. The first two weeks it was just outages; wouldn't take me anywhere; everything stopped loading for over an hour, even the homepage. The third week, there was a dialup problem. They owned up to that last one (it was AMERITECH'S fault!--uh-huh), but not to any of the others.

Still, the problems seemed to lessen a LITTLE in April...and nothing acted up this past Sunday morning, surprise of surprises!...but everything that happened YESTERDAY more than made up for what was starting to go good. And it's STILL not completely resolved.

And I just know that NMO will be thinking this is all MY fault--they ALWAYS find somebody else to blame--but I was only following THEIR stupid-ass instructions!

It started when, the night before, Ma told me we had been sent an e-mail from NMO saying they were going to be changing our dialup number soon. I was too sleepy to take much notice of it, and from what I gathered, she hadn't paid the best attention either. Which I guessed to mean she wanted ME to deal with it.

I logged on yesterday night and bla bla bla, did all my stuff. Since Ma hadn't gone to bingo, we were connected to the Net continuously from around 5:30 PM and into the middle of the night. When this is so, somebody--either Ameritech or NMO, I'm not sure--ALWAYS kicks me off at 3:30 AM on the dot. ALWAYS. I'll usually be surfing or writing with numerous windows open and then bam, "Do you wish to reconnect?" ASSHOLES! And I can't just reconnect, like that. I have to close the browser and restart the computer else if I just reconnect, the browser will refuse to take me anywhere. I wish I knew why they keep timing me out like that. Nowhere on NMO does it say anything about calls being timed out. The only way around this problem is to disconnect sometime before 3:30, then reconnect. I think they do this on purpose, in the hopes of us racking up more phone calls. Wouldn't put it past them.

Anyway...Ma had been disconnected several times while playing games that night, so I didn't bother to close the browser and disconnect. Until 3:30, when they kicked me off. I hadn't thought it would happen since I thought her earlier disconnections counted as logging off! Apparently not. So I sighed and closed the windows which I had JUST loaded, and restarted the computer.

After I had done that I logged back on and decided to check out that e-mail Ma had mentioned. I had a half hour before I was going to log off for a while, so I figured I might as well get that out of the way. I figured it would be as simple as me just changing our dialup number. Well, all I can say now is--NOT!

I opened the e-mail and read it. It goes as follows, with identifying details removed...

5/5/2003

Laura H.

We are upgrading our dial up lines in your area to provide better service to you, our customers. [*snort*--hold on, please allow me to LAUGH LOUDLY AND VOLUMINOUSLY!--okay, back to the letter...] Please change your dialup settings using one of the numbers below. You must also change your user name by adding '@nmo.net' with no spaces.

Example: User Name = abcd must be changed to abcd@nmo.net

We are also providing over 10,000 numbers nationwide for travelers. There are over 400 numbers for Michigan alone! Click on 'National Access Numbers' on our Webpage, and designate a state to find one.

NEW LOCAL DIAL UP NUMBERS

Petoskey, Boyne City, and Charlevoix Dial In: xxx-xxxx
Cheboygan, Indian River, and Onaway Dial In: xxx-xxxx
Mackinaw City Dial In: xxx-xxxx
East Jordan Dial In: xxx-xxxx
Gaylord Dial In: xxx-xxxx

These are LOCAL CALLS for anyone in the designated areas.

The current number you have will be in effect for the next few days only. Please change your number as soon as possible to avoid not being able to log on.

To ensure the best connection and to avoid trouble, please upgrade your modem drivers and/or firmware BEFORE switching to the new number. Your drivers and firmware should be available from the support website of your computer manufacturer, or modem manufacturer.

Commonly you can find the newest drivers from your manufacturers' site, such as www.dell.com, www.hp.com, www.ibm.com, www.gateway.com, www.sony.com, etc...

If you don't have a brand name computer you can identify the manufacturer and model of your modem by going into modem properties under 'My Computer --> Control Panel,' on Microsoft Windows.

If you need assistance identifying the modem please call our technical support number, please be advised that due to the vastly large number of modems on the market today that your best chance for help with the modem and drivers will be from your computer or modem manufacturer. [BTW, that there was what we writers call a COMMA SPLICE! DOLT! DOLT! Keep reading...]

While we anticipate only a small number of problems related to modem firmware, firmware is the #1 influence on the quality of your connection beside [sic] physical lines. And keeping your firmware up to date helps assure the best quality internet connection available to you.

If you have any problem whatsoever, please call our office @ 1-800-xxx-xxxx

Thanks for being a customer,

Donald K.
President
Northern Michigan Online
xxxxx@nmo.net

All righty...after reading that, I had no idea what the hell he was talking about. Firmware? Wha? I figured I would just leave that alone since I wouldn't know what I'd be doing. As far as I can tell, our modem works just fine--it is NMO that has the problems sometimes. So I decided to focus on the dialup number.

I went to our homepage to see if they mentioned anything else, and wouldn't you know, they did!

Switching Dial-Up Numbers (a download to help)
posted by Jason S. on Tue, May 06 11:19 AM

To help in switching to the new numbers I have posted a new dialup setup utility here. Simply download this program, and save it to your desktop. Once the download is finished you can run the program by double clicking it and entering your username and password.

[ read more... ]

Oh, do not bother with the "read more"...that just led to the download link. Lotta good that did. I figured I should just do what they said, since they must know what they're talking about. So, I clicked to download this software, and continued browsing in the other windows I had JUST opened up (remember, I had just logged back on after being kicked off).

The download was about 500kb and finished in a few minutes. I decided I might as well set up the new number while I was surfing as well. So I clicked on "Open" after saving it to the desktop. I figured that if it looked too complex, I'd just wait until later in the morning, because I only had about twenty minutes left by now until I was going to log off and go listen to music.

Wrongo! As soon as I clicked "Open," it disconnected me without warning, and closed all my windows. F**K! They could have at least WARNED me! They're lucky I remembered where I left off, and hadn't been WRITING anything...with a sigh, I decided to just finish the process. It couldn't take THAT long...

Sheesh, if I'd known how wrong I was...

So, I opened the download and started to install it.

Firstly it brought up a box saying, "Warning! You have old account(s) on your computer. Would you like to delete these before continuing?" And it had a list, the last two of which were our (my mom's and mine) e-mail accounts.

...

THOSE SNEAKY BASTARDS! I was going to refer you to the paragraph from the homepage that I pasted above--but they have EDITED it since then! I guess our numerous phonecalls got to them! It was originally posted on Monday, May 5th--NOT Tuesday, the 6th. What that USED to say, at the end, was something like, "It will ask you to delete old accounts. Don't worry, you won't lose your old e-mail. You can safely delete your old accounts." (Emphasis mine.) I took that to mean that I HAD to delete my old accounts in order to set up the new number--because, hello, who the hell in their right mind would just say one day, "Duh, y'know, I feel like deleting my e-mail accounts for no reason whatsoever!"? As I said to Ma later on: "If deleting the old accounts WAS NOT mandatory, why didn't they just say, 'You DO NOT have to delete your old accounts if you don't want to'?"

Anyway...I swear to God, the old homepage info used to say that it was okay to delete your old accounts, which I took to mean that I was SUPPOSED to. Because like I just said, why the hell would somebody want to delete them unless they thought it was necessary...for God's sake. The omission of this information I take to mean that my complaint struck a chord with them and now they are hurrying to cover their tracks!

Well...relying on their erroneous (though I didn't know it at the time) info, I deleted our e-mail accounts! BECAUSE I THOUGHT IT WAS NECESSARY! It mentioned changing the username, so I figured that along with setting up a new dialup number, they would lead me through setting up the e-mail accounts again too. My God, what assholes these morons are...

I followed the instructions after that. It asked me for the username, and I typed in Ma's old username, adding "@nmo.net" after it this time--AS THE E-MAIL INSTRUCTIONS ABOVE SAY. (Keep that fact in mind because THAT pops up again, too!) It then asked me for the password; I typed it in twice. Then for Ma's real name; typed that in. Then asked me to change the dialup number, and I selected it from the dropdown menu provided. I can't remember at the moment what else it asked for, if anything, but I followed all the instructions provided, and...after I had gotten all the new dialup info filled in...the program closed. The end.

??? I was confused. Firstly, it had not asked me for MY username info--I do not have a username to log on to the system, we both just use the same one, but I DO have an e-mail account, and Ma has one, also. There are two of them. That was the "secondly"--it didn't ask me to provide e-mail account info. I had just deleted our e-mail accounts--why hadn't it asked me to provide that information to set them up again? I figured that since they had said it was "okay" for me to delete the accounts, they'd then provide me a means by which to set them up again!

"Maybe I have to go into Outlook Express and do it from there," I mused, and so decided to do so. It was almost four AM now, when I usually get off, but I assumed I could fix this up quick.

YEAH RIGHT!

Firstly, I tried logging on, and when I got all kinds of funky dialtones I groused to myself that it probably wouldn't work. But it did. I opened the browser and then went to read new mail. And...

It brought up a popup box with Ma's username, and asked me for a password. There was already one in the box, though I wasn't sure what it was. It has never asked me for confirmation before, so I just hit "OK."

It rejected the password and asked for it again.

I used all three of the passwords that I knew Ma might have used. None worked. So I placed "@nmo.net" after her username in the hopes that that was all that was needed. I ended up having to try all three passwords again. None worked.

I checked our e-mail account properties, and whereas before they had been "mail.nmo.net" and "mail.nmo.net [1]," now both were listed as just "nmo.net" and "nmo.net." Both were in my mom's name. Neither was in mine.

NICE!

I can't remember exactly when but this is when I started to lose it. We could not send or receive e-mail, because I HAD DELETED THE ACCOUNTS! There were two SOMETHINGS still listed there, but they weren't functioning. And I had no friggin' password! My fit woke up Ma (*sigh*) who came to investigate. Cue lots of arguing and me freaking out even more. I gave up the hopes of going and listening to my music; I was too upset by now. Cosmas even came over to lick my ears and rub my foot, I was so mad. (When the cat is paying me attention, you KNOW it's bad. Whenever I freak out, it's like it's his cue to come stomping in and perform all sorts of annoying actions on me to get me to calm down.) I can't remember everything that Ma tried, but I sat on the floor, dropping my head in my hands, and then heard her say, "Uh-oh."

She had tried creating a NEW e-mail account--something we had paused doing, because it asked for "POP3 Server" junk and all this stuff we do not understand. She'd tried anyway, using a different username for herself, and...now apparently, ALL OUR E-MAIL--700+ MESSAGES--WAS GONE!

Cue second major freakout of the night. Dad was getting ready to go to work by now, and he was getting miffed as well. Cosmas was starting to act out, seeing as I hadn't paid him any attention earlier; I had to scream at him and pull him off my VCR. (He was doing SO WELL until he did that!)

Well, bla bla bla...Dad simmered down and left, and Ma and I started to peter out, given as it was now about 6:30 and she had to get up for work at eight. I hated waking her up, but when I freak out, I need somebody there with me! Not that we had gotten anywhere. Now not only did we have no e-mail accounts, because of me; we had no E-MAIL, because of her! I hoped and hoped that perhaps it was just because with the creation of the new account, she was now logged in to that account, which, being new, was of course empty; the contents of our two old accounts were just sitting somewhere hidden on the hard drive. Ma grew very pessimistic and insisted it was likely gone, while I tried to hope. I lamented that we hadn't saved it all to CD when we'd had the chance!

She promised to call NMO and clear it up in the morning. I could still log on, so I fiddled online until eight. We both agreed not to restart the computer (she had been seeking a way to restart without saving changes, like our Windows 3.1 computer could do, but couldn't find one) in case we could somehow save the lost e-mail before then.

Eight o'clock came, bla bla bla, Ma went off to work and later on I went to bed, leaving the computer on. She came back home on her lunch break to call NMO and try to get everything cleared up.

I woke up around 5:30 PM to record and went to log on. And...now I could not even get the f**king DIALUP to work! It kept refusing the username and password! >_<;;; I called Ma and yes, she confirmed it; her efforts to fix it with NMO's "assistance" (more like ASSistance) had just made things worse. They had no idea what was wrong. Duhhhrrrrrrr, look at us, we work for NMO! **puts on a white cone-shaped hat & sits in corner** She wanted to try one more thing when she came home, so I just worked on my Chronicles and finished Part 12 of RTMI and started Part 13 until then. (Yah, I'm a lot more productive without the Internet. So sue me!)

She came home around 6:30, but NMO's offices close around six so I had few hopes of her getting through to anybody. Still, some guy had called from NMO and left an 800 number on the answering machine while I slept; Dad had tried to get me to listen to it--"You'd better call them before they close"--but what does he care?--I knew that if Ma hadn't been able to make any headway, then I certainly wouldn't, either. Plus I HATE talking on the phone...I remember my last asinine conversation I had with our CABLE provider, who by now, in comparison with NMO, is actually starting to look good! (I had a rant typed up about them somewhere but I don't think it's in here...it was WAY more convoluted than all of this, if you can believe that...) I resolved myself to a night without Net access...which for me is pretty damn difficult, since I practically LIVE on here.

I assumed I was going to be doing a LOT of typing last night...*sigh*

Well, Ma came home and tried what she hadn't yet--a different username--she assumed that because she'd signed up a new username, "laurabeaden," in Outlook Express, that this was the one she had to use to log on to NMO itself. (I told her they were two different things, but she didn't listen...she keeps thinking her DISPLAYED e-mail name, "Laura B.," is her username, when her username is in fact hxxxxx, the first part of her e-mail address! She does not know the difference between the two, and refuses to believe me when I tell her they are DIFFERENT. For example--my outgoing e-mails all say "RLH / Tehuti" or something on them, but my USERNAME is "tehuti." Two different things! She doesn't get it...)

Well, long story short, her effort failed. She informed me that I had been wrong about the password--it was two letters off of one of my attempts. Duh...looking back, I believe she was right. I doubt it would have worked though, since I had deleted the e-mail accounts, and you can't very well log on to something that doesn't exist!

I told her about the "@nmo.net" thing, the part the e-mail said you had to append to your username. And she said that the guy on the phone had said, "No, you don't have to do that; just use hxxxxx." Um, HELLO, MORONS! YOU SAID IN YOUR F**KING E-MAIL THAT I HAD TO ADD "@nmo.net" TO THE USERNAME! WHY THE HELL DID YOU SAY I HAD TO DO THAT IF I DIDN'T? WHAT F**KING USERNAME WERE YOU TALKING ABOUT?!!

Ma had no clue, and apparently the guy advising us had no clue either as he never said--just said that no, that wasn't what we were supposed to do! So that was TWO things they told us to do that we did not HAVE to do! Delete old e-mail accounts--which they did not DIRECTLY say I had to do, but they pretty much insinuated it, and they never said I SHOULDN'T or DIDN'T have to!--and add "@nmo.net" to the username, which the e-mail said I HAD to do, but this moron then told Ma I did NOT have to do! Who's working for these guys, eighteen year olds?!

(I have NEVER trusted the powers that be at NMO.net, simply because they cannot spell basic words. They actually had an article on the homepage and for the entire first half of it, they kept spelling "browser" as "broswer"! I can't help it; if somebody is in charge and they can't spell, I do not trust them as a person in charge. Looks like I was right, this time!)

GROWL GNASH STOMP KICK HIT SCREAM...need to calm down and collect myself. *breath* On with the story...

Somewhere in all of this, Ma fiddled with the settings in the e-mail and tried again to log on using her old username, instead of the new one she'd created which had apparently wiped out our e-mail. And...bing! "Ma--look at all that e-mail!!" OUR MESSAGES WERE BACK! I'd been right; the empty inbox we'd been seeing was just the one for the new account. When Ma somehow got back into the old account, there was all our old e-mail. We promptly fished out a CD and spent maybe ten minutes just figuring out how to save it all to CD at once. We just ended up saving the entire Outlook Express program, otherwise we'd have had to do each message individually. How come they don't let you export them or save them all at once? Cripes! Oh yeah, this was yet ANOTHER stupid mistake on NMO's part. When Ma had been telling the guy about this earlier, he'd said, "Nope, once you've created a new account, all that old e-mail is lost." STRIKE NUMBER THREE, DUMBASS, YOU'RE OUT!

After the old messages were saved to CD, Ma got in touch with a WOMAN on tech support! Hallelujah! There was actually somebody there, and it was a WOMAN! No offense to guys or eighteen year olds, but for God's sake...somebody with some sense for a change... (I know there are plenty of decent and intelligent males and eighteen year olds out there, but some of them should really go to work for NMO.net!) She talked for a while and tried a few things, none of which seemed to work...somehow, though, she finally connected. We got our Net connection back! And wouldn't you know it?...the username is hxxxxx@nmo.net!! I TOLD YOU!

So what the HELL was that suckwad on the PHONE smoking??

Still...our issues with the deleted e-mail accounts remain. Ma has said she will attempt to get THAT problem resolved later on today. And I hope it does. I feel angriest that *I* am the one who started all this crap by deleting them...angriest, because I know the dorks from NMO will be thinking that *I* am responsible for all of this ("Duh, what did you delete your accounts for, dude? That's, like, stupid"), when in fact, it was their stupid-ass misleading "INSTRUCTIONS" that made me do these things in the first place! Honestly--if the instructions told you IT'S OKAY TO DELETE YOUR OLD ACCOUNTS, wouldn't you take that to mean, DELETE YOUR OLD ACCOUNTS TO FINISH THIS PROCEDURE? Otherwise, why wouldn't they just say, YOU DON'T HAVE TO DELETE YOUR OLD ACCOUNTS--SKIP THIS STEP? And then the deal with changing the username to include "@nmo.net"--well, DO WE OR DON'T WE? Make up your *$&*#$* minds! Thirdly, they REALLY showed themselves up by telling us that our e-mail was gone when it turned out that for once, I WAS RIGHT!...it was just hidden all along. Ma ended up feeling bad about something that she hadn't even messed up in the first place. I know the feeling, because I'm still feeling it right now! These stupid f**kwads can't even type up 1-2-3 without messing it up and tossing in erroneous information to make sure their customers mess up supremely and start flooding them with annoying calls. I HOPE TO GOD a bunch of OTHER people were calling in and complaining, too!

Check THIS out...

Troubles with new phone numbers and V.92 modems
posted by Jason S. on Tue, May 06 07:03 PM

A few customers are having problems connecting and/or staying connected to the new dial in numbers with V.92 modems, since the new numbers support V.92. The problem (in many cases) seems to be the inferior quality of the Broadcom V.92 modems packaged with Gateway and apparently some Dell computers; which tend not only to not work, but not follow the standards set for V.92 AT commands.

You can read more about the problems here.

We highly recommend that you find, download, and install the latest drivers for your V.92 modem prior to changing numbers, or you may not be able to get connected.

Awwwww! Of course, NMO! The problem is always somebody ELSE'S fault, never ever YOURS...I said already I don't understand zip about the whole modem issue, but with all the other passing-the-buck crap they've pulled, I wouldn't find it hard to believe if THIS is another glitch on their own end, too...the guy posting the updates seems to love dissing different operating systems, as if he feels he is somehow "superior"...*snorthissLAUGH!*

And nice little bit of "covering their tracks" they did with deleting that old misleading info about it being OKAY to delete old accounts, hmmmm? Not even a disclaimer saying "Oops, we didn't mean it THAT way!" Just a nice little edit job, deleting the offending instructions, and slinking off with their tail between their legs, hoping nobody noticed...

But somebody MUST have noticed, even if just us, else they wouldn't have omitted that info. Hence my hoping that they are getting plenty of annoyed calls from OTHER people who followed their instructions and f**ked up the same way I did.

I hope you're happy, NMO! Why don't you get a three year old to write instructions for you, at least then they'll be simple and they'll probably make a LOT more sense.

Anyway, that is why I am currently beyond pissed off at my suckass ISP--I've long said that if it weren't for us being signed up at lots of sites with our NMO e-mail addresses, we should just change providers--and take a look, we don't even have our e-mail addresses anymore! Care to take one more little nudge at us, NMO? Then I bet you'll really "thank us for being customers." In the past tense!

Dumbasses.

Damn, but that took me like an hour just to type and proof...and I have to pee...ugh.