Coyote Gulch

Thursday, January 31, 2008

Comcast service is terrible, their support is horrible, move to Qwest if you can
It looks like all our troubles are due to Comcast losing our configuration information during last night's power problems in Denver. It's only cost us 4-5 hours, a new router and getting behind on our posting.

For those of you that are trying to get to Coyote Gulch via coyotegulch.net, please be advised that you can't hit the server because Comcast has goofed up our static IPs.

The Comcast agent at Business Services tonight does not have a clue -- so far. Had to hang up on the dude. We don't think that it's possible that Comcast can't look up the static IPs, etc. that they've assigned to a business account. Terrible service.

We're on hold for the next available agent...hoping to get someone with a clue.

Now we're waiting on hold to talk to the senior technician...

Well now we're totally flabbergasted. The tech told me that the static IP numbers we have are not really static numbers at all but DHCP assigned numbers. Well they've worked for 4 years and we know it's just not possible that the DHCP lease could have lasted that long. we've even changed routers in that time so there would have been a new Mac address..

We started with AT&T because Qwest couldn't keep our DSL up back in the last century. Things changed when Comcast bought 'em out. Our recommendation, if you're looking for service, is to avoid Comcast at all costs. An account that we've had for years now isn't what we thought it was and it's going to cost us more each month now to fix a problem we didn't cause.

Comcast service sucks. A four year DHCP lease. Sheesh.

8:39:04 PM

Denver: Paper ballots for fall election
Here's a press release from DenverGov. Denver is going to paper ballots for the fall election. From the article:

Denver Clerk and Recorder Stephanie O'Malley announced today that Denver's voters will vote on paper ballots in 2008 and, unless the state legislature takes an action to prohibit it, voting will take place at combined precinct polling places.

The city's direct recording electronic (DRE) touch-screen voting machines, whose current decertification for use is under appeal with the Secretary of State, would see very limited usage only as vote-marking devices for the disabled community. Plans also call for using the city's existing conditionally-certified ballot scanners to count the paper ballots at a central location, unless appropriations are made for precinct scanners.

The plan caps an intensive process through the latter part of 2007 by the Denver 2008 Elections Model Advisory Committee. The committee was formed last September by newly elected Clerk and Recorder O'Malley and Denver Elections Director Michael Scarpello in response to problems with Denver's voting systems in the past. The committee, consisting of twenty-six stakeholders from various community groups, met weekly in open meetings to closely examine and consider choices for a new voting model.

"Citizens and committee members have told us several things very clearly. By and large they want paper ballots and they want the option of going to a polling place to vote," said O'Malley.

"We do need DRE voting machines for use by the disabled community in order to comply with the federal Help America Vote Act. Our plan is to use those machines as vote-marking devices only. They have the capability to print out a paper record of a person's vote. That paper record will be duplicated onto a regular ballot, which will be counted along with all the other paper ballots."

Announcement of the new voting model for Denver had been delayed two months pending the results of the Secretary of State's voting systems certification process and subsequent consideration of Denver's options in light of those decisions.

9:00:36 AM

Coyote Gulch Outage
Lots of connectivity troubles this morning. A power outage during the night may have taken out our router. If you're reading this things are clearing up.

8:47:44 AM