Posted on by Belinda O

Garbage In, Garbage Out

I got some distressing news from my Internet provider today. Apparently, they don’t service WordPress.com. That means that connecting to my blog is sporadic and frustrating. I’m connected now, obviously, but in the future I may need to take my laptop to work to be able to post anything on a regular basis.

In case you’re wondering, it’s AT&T Internet Air. I called them and spent a half hour with their tech services, and in the end the nice man who’d been helping me said, sorry. Nothing more we can do.

The night before I spent two hours with one of WordPress’s Happiness Engineers, who was also very nice, but ultimately we realized the problem wasn’t with WordPress. So I’m frustrated. I don’t know how often I’ll be able to post since connecting is so difficult. I’ll keep trying, of course.

Technology is not perfect. We’ve come to depend on it, but things like this happen. At work, one of our customers has a very flawed system for reporting claims, which is what my department handles. A co-worker says they just need AI, but the bottom line is, garbage in, garbage out. They used to say that a lot, remember? Now it seems you don’t hear it as much, but it remains a fundamental truth for computer science.

It looked sort of like this.

My dad worked with computers for years, starting in 1959. We used to go down to his offices and see the giant green computers all housed in one room. I was in awe of them. These machines would spit out all kinds of code that my dad and his colleagues refined as much as possible. Recently he told me that at one point, a large number of employees were working on a project and they split up into teams that each worked an eight-hour shift, so someone was working on the project 24 hours a day.

His shift was 4 a.m. to noon. One day my mom said she didn’t think she could handle that schedule any more (it left her dealing with three small children alone most of the time), and he told her, it would end on Thursday. She was dubious. How did he know? Because that was the day they were going to ship the program out to the customer, he said. Any problems that came up after that would be dealt with as they arose.

It seems that’s similar to the way problems are dealt with now. How many updates do we get to our operating systems? No one, not even Microsoft, can guarantee that their programs are perfect when they first release them.

So I’m holding out hope that my problem with my Internet is being addressed. For any number of reasons it isn’t practical for me to change providers. If my posts are more sporadic than ever, you’ll know why. If they’re more frequent, it’ll be because I connected and took advantage of the situation.

Image Credits: Frustrated Man © Brian Jackson–stock.adobe.com; Computer Room © Londita–stock.adobe.com

20 Replies to “Garbage In, Garbage Out”

  2. Wow! That’s all I can say. New and improved doesn’t always equate to that. I do use my phone internet (T-Mobile) with my laptop when I am away from the house. I have a separate internet bill at home. It is not the most expensive but it’s not cheap. I have had no problems so far. Century Link just changed to Quantum Fiber. They say my rate won’t change. We will see. Good luck to you going forward.

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    1. I’m apparently logged into Jetpack on my laptop (they checked), and I’m definitely logged in on my phone, which is where I respond to most of the comments left on my site. WP tried so many things, they really were good about it. Bottom line is it’s my Internet connection.

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  5. Computers…can’t live with them, can’t live without them. Both AT&T and T-Mobile just went through my neighborhood, digging up yards to install their fiber optics. We use neither service. That is frustrating, Belinda. Fingers crossed for you that things get worked out. Seems strange to me that with a company name of ‘Internet’ they don’t support it better.

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    1. I’m with you there. This “Internet Air” is their latest thing, and I’m stuck with it. For one thing, it’s the least expensive option available to me, and I need to save wherever I can. But there’s more than that. Some of my friends have T-Mobile, and they’ve had nothing but problems. And so on. Hopefully this changes. At least I can get it on my phone. I think it’s the Jetpack thing, which I supposedly have on my laptop, but who knows.

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  7. Ironically, right now we have some sort of issue where our email is requesting a password it already has. The request for password entry comes up, but it already is logged in as such. We’re not sure why this started, but we also know we are not alone judging by comments online. Technology…sigh.

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