The Digital Awakening » General

Streamyx – Noisy Line, Frequent Disconnection And Slow Speed

Peter Tan — Tue, 08 Mar 2011 01:56:46 +0000

The Streamyx connection on my end was plagued with frequent disconnection and slow browsing speed for the past 3 weeks. The speed would become progressively slow after each disconnection. The phone technician came after I lodged the first report on February 17. There was line noise. He referred the case to the Streamyx technician who promptly downgraded the broadband speed from 1.5Mbps to 1Mbps. That solved the frequent disconnection for a few hours.

When the same problem cropped up again shortly, I lodged another report on February 19. This time, the phone technician and the Streamyx technician came. They replaced the phone, checked the line at the wall socket end and then at the point where the line came into the house. The diagnosis was that the concealed part of the phone line was causing the problem and I needed to get a contractor to pull a new line.

They then offered to “repair” the problem for RM80. What they did was bypass the concealed section of the cable and reconnected the line from outside the house to the internal cable. That, too, solved the problem for a day or two. When the same problem appeared, I called the technician and he informed me that the distribution box and phone cable in the backlane will be replaced. In between waiting for the faulty box and cable to be replaced, I called up technical support several times to request for a port reset. That solved the problem for a few hours.

When the problem still persisted after 10 days, I called technical support to lodge another report on February 28. The Streamyx technician called to ask about the problem, then came over to check. At that time, the connection was up and the speed was good. He asked me not to use the wireless router which he said was causing the modem to disconnect. The disconnection and slow speed returned a few hours after he left, even with the notebook connected directly to the modem via the network cable. I borrowed a modem just to check if it was a line problem or modem problem. The same problem persisted with the borrowed modem.

Around this time, the cables at the back were being replaced. After they replaced the cables, they came to check on the line. There was no line noise, but only temporary. It appeared a few hours later in the evening. Pierce sent a complaint letter to TM on my behalf detailing the problems that I was facing on March 3. There was no response to that complaint. I lodged another report on March 6. The next day, the technicians returned to continue with the cabling works. I was told that they were replacing cables to all the houses around the area where I live. Since then, the connection has been downloading at a top speed of around 109 Kbps without any disconnection for the past 12 hours.

It was not the problem with the internal phone cabling, modem or wifi router after all. The speed downgrade was unnecessary. The “repair” that cost me RM80 was needless. The unplugging and plugging back of devices, and the configuring of the notebook broadband dialler when I called technical support to lodge reports were also needless. The problem was never on my side. Thanks to the incompetent TM technicians, I had to endure 3 weeks of Internet hell for nothing.

Toyful Christmas At Mid Valley Megamall 2010

Peter Tan — Thu, 09 Dec 2010 14:38:42 +0000

Imagine, being a child, waking up to a Christmas full of toys and more toys. I would have been elated beyond words. That was how I felt when I walked amongst the teddy bears and toy soldiers and snowmen and clowns that was part of the Christmas deco at Mid Valley Megamall. There even was a carousel, Jack-in-the-box and a musical box ballerina. While we were taking photographs at the Centre Court, we managed to catch a dance performance by an elf, clown, toy soldier and ballerina that received warm applause from the shoppers.

Toys and even more toys at Mid Valley Megamall’s Funtoystic Christmas.

Teddy bears and snowmen adding merriment at Centre Court of Mid Valley Megamall.

Dance performance consisting of an elf, clown, toy soldier and ballerina at Mid Valley Megamall.

An European Christmas At 1 Utama 2010

Peter Tan — Mon, 06 Dec 2010 15:27:12 +0000

1 Utama Shopping Centre really outdid itself for the Christmas celebration this year. The LG Oval was turned into a small Europen village replete with life-size houses and shops offering goodies, gifts and deco for the festive season. There was an abundance of potted Poinsettias. Christmas trees gaily decorated with big shiny baubles, ribbons, gift boxes and sparkly fairy lights. There was an air of anticipation and happiness with shoppers busy posing and clicking away on their cameras while others were busy looking for bargains at the shops. The gaiety really got me into the Christmas mood as well.

An European village Christmas atmosphere at 1 Utama Shopping Centre.

Shops chockfull of Christmas gifts and deco at LG Oval 1 Utama Shopping Centre.

Shops with delicious Christmas goodies at LG Oval 1 Utama Shopping Centre.

Accident On The North South-Expressway

Peter Tan — Thu, 24 Jun 2010 07:23:04 +0000

On our way up to Ipoh last Saturday, we were caught in crawling traffic at the North-South Expressway about 2km from the Bukit Tagar Interchange. We thought it was a police roadblock. The 30 minutes driving at a snail’s pace on a road with a 110 km/h speed limit certainly felt like an eternity.

Somewhere before the Bukit Tagar Interchange at the North-South Expressway.
Photo by Wuan.

When we reached the head of the queue, we saw that it was not a road block. Drivers had slowed down to have a better look at the police and PLUS personnels peering down the ravine by the side of the road. The centre and side guardrails on the northbound direction were badly mangled and broken. We guessed that it must have been a very large vehicle to be able to cause such serious damage. Although the scene had been cleaned up, it was still littered with smaller pieces of debris.

Rescue personnel at the site of the accident.
Photo by Wuan.

It was only when I read the news the next day that I knew what happened.

The following is an excerpt from The Star (June 20, 2010), Five die in separate road accidents:

Che Hussin (Selangor public order and traffic chief) said two members of a family were killed half an hour later, and four others were injured when the car they were travelling in was hit by a tanker coming from across the opposite side of the NSE at Km418 after it lost control.

Roslawati Hassan, 43, and her youngest child, one-year-old Mohd Faiz Haikal, were killed at the scene while her husband and three other children were seriously injured.

The tanker, which was heading south, plunged into a ravine.

The driver, who was pinned to his seat, suffered serious injuries.

The injured were sent to the Sungai Buloh Hospital.

Although driving on the expressway with guardrails separating opposite traffic is safer than driving on state roads, we have to be aware of oncoming traffic. There have been cases of vehicles crashing through the centre guardrails and collide head-on with vehicles on the other side.

Broken guardrail and a tyre by the ravine.
Photo by Wuan.

I am most cautious with express buses. Many times, I have been overtaken by these heavy vehicles while driving at around 110 km/h. One can imagine how fast they were hurtling down the road when their speed limit on the expressways is 90 km/h only.

Mangled centre guardrails, tyre skid marks and traffic cones to caution drivers.
Photo by Wuan.

These vehicles, with their mass and number of passengers they carry, will cause the most damage should they be involved with an accident. Drivers of such heavy vehicles who constantly flout the rules should be taken off the road. They are a nuisance and danger to the safety of other road users.

WordPress 3.0 “Thelonious” Update

Peter Tan — Wed, 23 Jun 2010 09:19:07 +0000

WordPress 3.0 “Thelonious” was released on June 17. I did not have time until yesterday to update The Digital Awakening blog engine. WordPress has made this process painless and fuss-free. It was accomplished with just two clicks, the first the “Update to 3.0″ button in the Dashboard and the second the “Upgrade Automatically” button at the Upgrade page. I also updated all plugins to the latest version with another click of the button.

Everything seems to be working fine except “CG-Archive by Year” plugin. This displays the blog archive by month and categorised under year at the sidebar. I turned it off and reverted to using template tag. Although the latter does not group the monthly archives by year, it shall do for now until I can find another plugin that does something similar.

The update includes a new default template called the Twenty Ten. It has a nice and clean layout, a template that I would want to use for this blog. This theme is also very configurable. However, I am holding back because I am not ready to work on it to suit my needs at the moment.