A wild show appears
Monday September 10, 2018

You used listen. It's super effective!

Turns out, watch is also super effective.

This Sunday around noon in Europe, or about 8pm around these parts!

So why now, and why so late?

Well here's the skinny. My ISP's been sick. Throwing up all over the place, unable to keep anything down really. In short - I've never quite tried anything like it. Since the 11th of July my connection started exhibiting packet loss left and right. At first it was intermittent. Eventually it progressed into full-blown constant full-on packet loss.

Friends and family will hopefully agree that I am a patient man. Perhaps too patient.

I'd like to lead upfront by saying my ISP is/was clearly a family business. The upside of a small ISP is that their support is generally easier to deal with if you've got some basic computer skills. I.e. you'll not first have to wade through multiple tiers of support before finally getting to a person who can do more than ask you to turn off/on various pieces of hardware.

An example of this upside is when I was having issues broadcasting my stream to SlayRadio way back when I started trying to do shows here down-under. They actually got in touch with Slaygon (who runs SlayRadio) and did some troubleshooting directly with him. Try doing that with any other ISP. Admittedly, 99% of the time the problem won't be with the ISP, but on the off-chance that it is, you can count your blessings when you're not dealing with a massive corporation.

The downside of a smaller ISP is that their tools may be limited and the sheer manpower they have is also strongly capped. This I unfortunately experience in spades towards the 'end'.

I think it took my ISP about two weeks to even confirm the issue was not on my end. Then some ideas were hatched and attempts were made, none of which ultimately resolved the issue. I think that stretched over 2-3 weeks. At this stage my ISP seemed convinced it was likely their supplier (OptiComm) who was the source of the issue, perhaps even some hardware in my apartment supplied by OptiComm.

It took about another week to get a tech to show up from their supplier (we're now about 6 weeks in for those keeping count), only to confirm that the problem was indeed with my ISP and not OptiComm. Sigh. I was promised a solution within a week (more or less), and instead the ISP basically went belly up.

Sufficed to say, I am now with a new ISP. Despite the unbelievably poor service I was offered towards the end, I still appreciated when my old ISP was 'working'.

All that is old news now and I'm glad my connection has finally stabilized the point of doing shows again. So hopefully I'll see you all this Sunday!