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No AT&T uVerse for you today!!!

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Seinfeld's Soup NaziTuesday, March 30th, 2010 was supposed to be the big day for AT&T to install their new uVerse service in my home.

Well sadly, as the “Soup Nazi” on Seinfeld would say, “No soup for you!!!”.  For me is was AT&T saying “No uVerse for you” … at least not today, we’ll try again next week.

About a week ago I signed up for AT&T’s triple pack bundle which includes digital TV, internet and phone service.  I received several email confirmations from AT&T confirming that my service would be installed today.  This morning I received phone calls from two different AT&T installers, one for the inside the home work and the other for the outside of the home work.  At least AT&T is organized enough to coordinate having two installers perform the required work at the same time.

My problem started when the inside technician showed up at my home within the agreed to time window and told me that my voice service had been canceled!  I asked him why and he said that his work order didn’t show why it just showed that it had been canceled.  At my urging he called into AT&T’s support center to find out why my voice uVerse service had been canceled.  On his second call into the support center (the first time the support center hung up on him) he found out from the VOIP support group that my voice service had been canceled because my current AT&T voice service has RingMaster® enabled and RingMaster® isn’t compatible with uVerse voice.  I then said that this was no big deal, just cancel my RingMaster® service (which I had enabled to receive faxes on my fax machine using a different phone number with unique ring pattern), but unfortunately this could not be done immediately.  AT&T needs 48 hours to cancel the RingMaster® service.

Fortunately the inside premise installer was very friendly and helpful.  He took the time to schedule a new appointment for installation next week.

So at least, unlike Ellen who was banned from having soup for one year, I only have to wait one week.

My real issue with AT&T is why didn’t they notify me earlier that there was an issue that prevented a smooth conversion to uVerse voice.  All it would have taken was a simple call or email alerting me to the issue and the problem would have been resolved prior to my scheduled installation time.


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University of Miami Computer Room circa 1976 or 1977

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Joey Vossen and Barry Miller in UM computer room

Joey Vossen and Barry Miller in UM computer room

This is a picture of Joey Vossen and Barry Miller (two of the best programmers that I know – Barry wrote a standalone bootable operating system for the 1106 that played Mozart through the system’s maintenance speaker and Joey wrote a program that transparently removed deleted items from every program file on the system) in the University of Miami computer room. In the background you can see two Sperry Univac 770 line printers.  In the foreground in front of Joey (who is sitting) is a Sperry Univac U300 console terminal. The U300 was the console device for the University’s Sperry Univac 1106. As I recall the 1106 @ UM had eight U16 tape drives (seven 1600 BPI 9-Track drives and one 7-Track drive for use with the University’s Calcomp plotter), several 8440 and 8430 disk drives, two FH-432 drums and one FH-1782 drum.

The University of Miami had a Sperry Univac 1106 computer when I started there as a student in August 1976. My first full time job was as a systems programmer for the University. When I left the University in 1982 to work at Eastern Air Lines the University had a Sperry Univac 1100/80A computer system.

My guess is that this picture was taken sometime between 1976 and 1978.

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