Dreamhost not a dream, as expected

So I had a trial hosting account with Dreamhost.  They bill themselves as being a host that specializes in WordPress shared hosting.  The control panel they present customers is not the standard Cpanel variety you will find most places.  Supposedly this is a custom control panel they wrote themselves.  I have to admit that I actually prefer Cpanel.  I found the Dreamhost panel dated and not very efficient.

Getting a site up on Dreamhost was easy enough but it wasn’t long at all until the issue that caused me to cancel popped up, performance.  Response was consistently poor, with some clicks requiring a 10 second wait until anything happened.  It got bad enough that I contacted support multiple times.  Each time they said they found an issue that they corrected.  After these support contacts, the site performance would be better for a short while only to return to sluggish city shortly thereafter. I can only assume Dreamhost either doesn’t monitor server performance very closely or their shared servers are overpopulated.

There were other things that annoyed me about Dreamhost like having to pay extra if you wanted phone support.  Basic shared accounts are relegated to email only support with a response within 24 hours. (shitty)

So anyway, I pulled the plug on Dreamhost today although I did keep the domain name I registered with them, I might utilize the name going forward.

IX webhosting actually seemed good in comparison to what I saw at Dreamhost, scary.  I’d really like to host with wpengine.com.

So after my epic waste of time with Comcast on the phone last week, the end result of which was my getting Blast internet and digital tv service for 49.99 for 6 months, my single convertor box arrived yesterday.  My plan was to hook it up to the tv in the bedroom, enabling me to have conventional cable tv access in one room of the house.

To make it work I needed to spend some time in the sweat box attic, redirecting one of the dozen lines of coax I have in the house to connect to the Comcast feed, which has been used exclusively for internet the last couple years.  After doing this I hooked up the cable box and let it sit for awhile as directed in the instructions, presumably for it to configure itself on the Comcast network.

So I went back in later and turned the TV on, I was supposed to be seeing an activation screen.  Instead I saw nothing.

I unplugged the box and plugged it back in.  The LED’s on the front of the box went through a series of flashes and on screen I saw messages about the box booting up.  However after the boot screen went away I was once again returned to blackness.  WTF?

I immediately had a theory as to the source of the problem.  When I went internet only with Comcast, a tech put a filter on my feed from the pole that blocked the frequencies used for tv service.  In my phone discussion with the clueless woman last week, this was never brought up and I am 100% sure that physical filter is still in place.

So it was later at this point, I fired up an online chat with a Comcast rep named Mary.  I explained the background as well as my the reason I suspect it is not working.  She proceeds to totally ignore the information I gave her and starts going through her script.  “Are the cables tight, unplug the box, blah blah”

I explain to “Mary” that I did check all of these things and that I have a decent amount of experience when it comes to connecting AV equipment.   She ignored that information as well and just kept spitting out items on her checklist.

Mary’s final diagnosis was something is wrong with the brand new box which I am 90% sure is not the case.  She said she could have a technician come out, ON FRIDAY.  I laughed out loud out at the idea that Comcast had so many problems that the quickest they could get to me was 4 days later.

I shared my amusement with Mary at Comcast’s inability to address my problem in a faster manner.  She said if I wanted I could go to the local Comcast office and swap the box. Great, so I get to go out of my way to swap a box that I am sure is not the problem, awesome.

I chose the latter option. I am hopeful I will get someone behind the desk that actually listens to what I tell them and arranges to have a tech take the filter of my feed.  Of course it probably is a pipe dream.  I knew when I hung up the phone last week the odds of this going as planned was slim to none. Nice of Comcast to meet my expectations.