We've had very patchy Frontier DSL connectivity for over a week now.
It's uncanny that the DSL can work so flawlessly, so invisibly, that we take it for granted. But when connections are dropped and apps that normally update instantly instead stall out, then frustration rises.
I should say that everyone I've dealt with -- Frontier's telephone customer support and technicians -- have been polite, respectful, and seem knowledgeable as they work through their troubleshooting steps.
Here's what has happened since that first call:
The first customer support person did all the standard checks and nothing worked. She created a trouble ticket. (We've learned from past experience with Frontier that a trouble ticket number is crucial to getting some action taken.)
The first technician checked the lines and the signal was strong. He replaced the ADSL filter on the phone jack in my office (the only phone jack we use in the house).
He helped me set up a newer-model modem we got from Frontier in 2016 during another patchy DSL period. The connectivity problem at that time mysteriously resolved itself so we kept on with the old modem. If it ain't broke, etc.
Even the technician had trouble activating the modem. So it was good I didn't try it myself.
He introduced me to Speedtest.net, which Frontier techs like to use to test the line. I installed the free Speedtest app for my iMac, also. Works great.
I had 10 trouble-free minutes of internet and then it slowed and got patchy again.
We tried accessing either the Airport Time Capsule and the Frontier modem's wifi networks, with disappointing results. The Time Capsule has been our default wifi/router for the past three years and has given us no trouble.
Called customer support this morning, fiddled with the modem settings per her instructions, and no joy. (She suggested I replace the 10' cord running from the jack to the modem with a 6' cord. The sys admin guys at work laughed their heads off when I told them that.)
The second technician met me at the house a couple of hours later (same-day service!). He rewired the box outside so only the one phone jack is connected to the DSL line. Prior to that, all four phone jacks in the house were receiving data.
Both technicians reported that the signal coming to the house and from the jack is strong.
The second technician's hypothesis was that the Frontier modem installed last week had wireless turned on, and its signal was interfering with the Airport Time Capsule's signal. So when we experimented last week with first one wifi signal and then the other, we made the problem worse because those signals were colliding and slowing all traffic down. He turned off the Frontier's wireless signal.
The connection is still patchy, unfortunately. When the connection is up, the speed is acceptable. But the connection is not stable; we're losing connectivity a couple of times an hour -- sometimes a brief hiccup, other times for 20 minutes -- which renders the download speed (we're provisioned for 3 mbps) a moot point.
Today's technician really thought the problem was the Time Capsule. I pushed back on that. Why would it suddenly go wonky after three years of no problems?
Our set up is this:
Phone cord from the jack to the modem.
Ethernet cable from the modem to the Airport Time Capsule. The TC broadcasts the wifi signal.
Another Ethernet cable from the TC to my iMac. This effectively wires my iMac to the modem; I can turn off the iMac's wifi and still access the internet.
I prefer having a wired connection to the modem so I can verify whether the patchy connectivity is coming from the wifi or the modem. If Liz's iPad loses connectivity, I can verify via Speedtest whether I've also lost connectivity. If I have, the problem is the signal from the modem, not the Time Capsule.
Liz and I are both getting our internet via the Time Capsule (she via wireless, me via wired), so it could be the weak link. But I'm more suspicious of the Frontier modem. We're an Apple household and I'm frankly loathe to believe this problem lies with the Time Capsule.
Connectivity is better today than yesterday, but not as stable as it was two weeks ago. We will give it a day or two under the normal stresses of email, transactions, streaming video, downloading, etc.
Until I can take my connectivity for granted again, I will likely roam the Frontier for some time to come.
And we all know about their little one-fuck, two-fuck rules that bump a PG-13 straight up to an R. But why does Reservoir Dogs have “strong language” while The Departed has “pervasive language,” and Pulp Fiction has “pervasive strong language,” when they really all seem like they might as well be about the same?
The Merriam-Webster site says pervasive can be neutral ("a pervasive sense of calm") but "is most often used of things we don't really want spreading throughout all parts of something," such as "a pervasive stench."
The M-W site ends with a shoutout to the MPAA:
... Beginning in the early 1990s, the MPAA started giving the R rating to movies with "pervasive language." Most movies have language throughout, of course. The MPAA is using the phrase "pervasive language" to refer to the frequent use of a particular kind of language: profanity.
Strong language? Profane language? Bankrupt language for an obsolete and purposeless ratings system?
At my day job, there's an email I need to send every week. Same subject, same message. The recipients stay mostly the same, though sometimes there are changes in the lineup.
I don't want to have to manually create this email every week. I want the computer to do what computers are supposed to do: remember and do stuff for me so I don't have to remember and do it.
We use Outlook 2016 on Windows 10. Outlook lets you create recurring appointments, recurring reminders, and recurring tasks -- but not recurring emails. Fair enough. The other recurrences only bother you, but sending recurring emails can bother lots of other people.
Because our workstations are locked down, I cannot easily install any macro or automation software that could help me with this situation.
Two Solutions
So here are two solutions I cooked up using just the tools available to me from Windows 10.
The first one made me feel like the Professor on Gilligan's Island creating a catapult from bamboo and coconuts. The second one is plainer but gets the job done.
Neither of these are exhaustively tested or vetted procedures, so use at your own risk.
Solution 1: Fully automated
1. Create a contact group
Create a contact group in Outlook containing the message's recipients. Let's call it Recurring email group.
If the recipients list changes in future, then you only need to add or drop names in this group and nowhere else. The email template we create next will still work fine.
Create an Outlook email with the text of the recurring message and the subject line.
In the To: field, enter Recurring email group.
If you usually include a signature in your emails, then do not include it in this template. Outlook will add the signature automatically when the new email is created.
Save the email as an outlook template file (*.oft). For the purposes of this exercise, let's call it Recurring email template.oft.
By default, templates are saved to C:UsersusernameAppDataRoamingMicrosoftTemplates.
You can specify a different path but it's easier to just accept the default; if you specify a different path, make a note to yourself of the file's location because you will need the file path in the next step.
3. Create a batch file
I couldn't believe this is what I had to resort to, but it was. God bless batch files. Still incredibly useful little tools.
Open Notepad (do not use Wordpad or Microsoft Word, use Notepad).
Add the following lines to the batch file:
@echo off
cd C:UsersusernameAppDataRoamingMicrosoftTemplates
start "C:Program Files (x86)Microsoft OfficerootOffice16OUTLOOK.EXE" "Recurring email template.oft"
There are many ways you could write the batch file; for example, I could have entered qualified paths to both the .exe and the .otl. In this case, I did what made sense to me to do.
Save the batch file to a folder on your hard disk. An obvious place is your C:Usersusername directory, but anywhere will do. Again, remember where you saved it because you need it for the next step.
Before you go any further, double-click the batch file and make sure it works as intended (a new email is created with the contents of the template file).
From the Start menu, open Windows Administrative Tools>Task Scheduler. (If you don't see an icon for the app, then try some of these methods to open it.) The Task Scheduler sports a most horrific UI. Fortunately, we won't be here for long.
In the right panel, under Actions, create a Basic task.
<ol>
<li>The trigger is the time you want to send the email, such as every Friday at 11 a.m.</li>
<li>The action is to run the batch file. Navigate to the batch file and select it.</li>
</ol></li>
You can search Google or YouTube for more help on the Windows Task Scheduler.
5. You're done!
Now, every Friday at 11 am, the Task Scheduler will fire off the batch file, which calls Outlook to open the template file, and a new email will open up -- ready to go -- for you to review and send.
6. But just in case...
There are lots of moving parts to this contraption. Glitches happen and a component may not fire off correctly.
So, set a reminder in your calendar for an hour or so after the email is supposed to be created, something obvious like "WAS THE EMAIL CREATED??".
Aside: What methods didn't work
Getting Task Scheduler to simply open the template file. The Scheduler wants either a program or script; specifying the .oft file is not enough, even though the file is associated to Outlook.
The Task Scheduler would not accept a qualified path to outlook2016.exe (which took a while to find, BTW) with the .oft path as an option.
It was when these two obvious ways did not work that I hit on the batch file method.
Solution 2: Manual but maybe more foolproof
Create the contact group, as above.
Create the email template file, as above. Open up a File Explorer window so you can see the .oft file you created.
In your Outlook folder hierarchy, create a new folder called "Templates" or something equally brilliant.
Drag the .oft file from the File Explorer window to the "Templates" folder in Outlook.
Set a task reminder or calendar reminder for the date and time you want to send the email.
When the reminder fires off on the date and time you selected, go to the Outlook "Templates" folder and double-click the email template. A new email will open up with the template's contact group, subject, and message you specified.
The second solution is more manual, but also less prone to gremlins in the system. Outlook task and calendar reminders always perform solidly.
We just spent hours to save minutes. You're welcome.
Search YouTube for "mouse trap game." I was amazed at how many videos there are. Not just of the board game contraption, but many animations recreating the action of the trap. ↩︎
I have been posting a business/productivity/mastermindish type article every Sunday on LinkedIn for a few weeks now.
Usually, I take a post or part of a post I've published here first, revise it, clean it up, and post it.
The "Columbo" post is from an idea I read somewhere on Mark Forster's site, though I cannot now find the reference. I put a structure around it, added the Columbo references, a dash of 3 Principles, and there it was.
So the only video I could really link to that worked with my article was the following short (under 10 seconds) video illustrating what you need to do when you hear that "just one more thing" gremlin in your ear.
Frontier DSL experienced a mass outage in Durham, NC, last night, before I was able to make yesterday's post.
I refuse to tap out a token post on my iPhone SE, so I let it go. Thus was my streak of daily posts -- started last Christmas day -- ended. Boo-hoo.
In retaliation, I will post twice today. This post will count as my March 27 post; the next one will be the March 28 post.
The DSL was still down this morning and may not come back till sometime tomorrow, if then. So I may draft another quickie post and schedule it for tomorrow, just in case.
I cannot remember where I got this quote, but it impressed itself on me so much that I had it posted in my office cubicles for years, on my old Google blog site, and on my old Tumblr site. I love it so much I want to post it again.
“True Work is that which occupies the mind and the heart, as well as the hands. It has a beginning and an ending. It is the overcoming of difficulties one thinks important for the sake of results one thinks valuable.”
My friend Bob told me about Google Photos’ capability to automatically stitch together a sequential series of photos into a panorama shot with mostly good results.
Bob told me of another way to abuse the auto-stitch feature. A friend of his was around when someone was photographing groupings of their friends in sequence to create a panorama. “Wait,” the friend said. He then inserted himself into each group of people that were part of the series. They were puzzled as to why he was pushing himself into every photo.
When the shots were stitched together into a panorama, it looked as if there were six clones of the friend hanging out with his/their friends, with each clone in a different pose: laughing, talking, looking at the sky. Brilliant!
(originally posted 2018-03-25, updated for micro.blog)
A bomb exploded in my neighborhood last night on a sidewalk I walk every morning with my wife and two sons. We’re all okay. The boys are oblivious, thankfully, but my wife and I are a little shook. I wanted to get down a couple thoughts...
Writer-who-draws Austin Kleon lives in a neighborhood where one of the Austin bomber's devices exploded. He shares a bit of the panic and anxiety he felt about his family, and where to find the best information in an emergency.
Forget breaking news and even neighborhood listservs. The best information was via the official Twitter feeds of the police and EMS departments.
I also admire his taking of the long view; some information is always there, ready for the taking.
