LIVESTREAM UPDATE:

Alrighty, things seem to be back up and working concerning my internet connection, so I feel safe enough to say that there will be a livestream this Friday, February 1st, at 10pm est!  Let’s hope that the connection holds up!

END LIVESTREAM UPDATE!

Ok, so here’s the rundown of what happened with Time Warner:

All last week we were having issues with our upload speeds, which were generally in the 0.04-0.07Mbps range.  This was causing problems when it came to updating the site and sending email attachments, and completely took away the ability to do the stream.

I attempted some test streams last week, but the connection sputtered around before being lost completely every time.  Come Friday I finally got frustrated and gave Time Warner a call to find out if there was an issue.  Upon giving them the phone number for our account, an automated message proclaimed, “I see that we have recently fixed an outage in your area, if you are calling in relation to a problem with your service, feel free to hang up at any time.”

Naturally, I’m paraphrasing, but that was the gist of it.  Anyways, I decided to stay on the line just in case.  I eventually got a customer service representative and explained the situation.  She directed me to use the Time Warner speed test page provided on their site.

I used both the TW speed test and speedtest.net, which provided me with the same extremely low speed readouts I had been getting all week.

“Wow,” she said, “if the upload speed is that slow, we should send out a technician.”

“Alright, great!” I said, “When’s the earliest available appointment?”

click click click

“Ummmm, I can get someone out there by…” click click click… “February 12th.”

“February 12th?!  That’s the earliest available appointment?”

“Yes.”

Although I was less than enthused, I agreed and the rep hung up.

Jackie called me shortly thereafter; she had received a confirmation email for the appointment.

“You should call them back,” Jackie said, “and tell them that we won’t pay them for every day until the 12th.”

Jackie has larger balls than I do.

I called back Time Warner and said, as confidently as I could manage, that we would not be paying them until our service was working 100%.  Suddenly, as if the heavens themselves opened up, there was an available appointment for the very next day.  Ain’t that some $#!^

Damn you, Time Warner, you guys are sleazy jerks.

However, they got the last laugh; the technician showed up late.  I should have foreseen this.

On an infinitely more positive note, a friend of mine introduced me to Artizens, a neat looking 2D multiplayer game that’s currently in development.  Below is a concept video of the game, and if you’d like more info about it, click here!