Have you ever wondered what it’s like when Julia Child orders food at a restaurant? When Picasso went shopping for art supplies, I wonder if the cashier ever gave him advice? Would a modern guitar tech turn his nose up at Eddie Van Halen’s pieced together Frankenstrat? How does Dale Earnhardt, Jr. feel when he watches someone else change the oil on his car?

Okay, so Dale Earnhardt, Jr. probably changes his own oil, but that doesn’t change the fact that my cable modem has been acting up and I was forced to suck it up and call Cox’s tech support. Sigh. And while I’m no Julia Child, I have been a senior network engineer for ten years and possess both a good understanding of networking and some pretty amazing troubleshooting skills.

Sigh. Again.

Last week, my cable modem began “cycling” itself. Two or three times each hour all its lights would flash and I’d lose Internet connectivity for 5-10 minutes. I quickly discovered that both of my cable modems (yes, I have two) were doing the same thing at the same time. There’s no way both of my cable modems went bad at the exact same time. The problem was definitely “upstream”. That’s when I sucked it up and dialed Cox.

For six months back in the late 90s, it was my responsibility to interview potential help desk new hires. We had a list of questions we were required to ask applicants, but there was only one I really cared about. “A user calls in and is having trouble printing out a document on a network printer. Troubleshoot the problem.” The right answer, and the answer I was looking for, involved narrowing down where the problem was. Two very quick ways to troubleshoot a network printing problem is to see if (A) the user can print to any other printer, and (B) if any other user can print to that same printer. Regardless of computer types or network topology, those two very quick and simple tests will point you in the right direction. You would not believe how many people simply threw their hands up in the air and exclaimed, “How can I troubleshoot that without knowing more details!?”

Susan contacted Cox’s technical support people five times last Friday and got five different answers, ranging from “there is no problem” to “the problem is in your house” to “the problem is in the street.” I suspect if we had called ten times we would have got ten different answers. It reminds me of the old joke about the student who worked a math problem three times and got three different answers. We were finally told that the problem was in the street, and that it would be resolved over the weekend.

The problem was not resolved over the weekend, and didn’t end up being in the street. But other than that, they got it right.

After having my connection dropped in the middle of a Facebook Texas Hold ‘Em poker tournament, I’d had enough. I called Cox (Call #7) and told them the problem still hadn’t been resolved. They asked me for a ticket number. I told them I didn’t have one. They told me they would have to start over. I blew my top.

Actually, I left out a step. When I first contacted tech support they realized, after ten minutes of troubleshooting, that I was not a residential customer (I have a business account) and that he could not assist me. I knew things weren’t going well when, five minutes after giving him my phone number, he still didn’t know what state I was in. (Pro tip: Type “405 Area Code” into Google.) He referred me to the business technical support line.

The business technical support people are a little better and said they would send a tech out — which tells me that, despite repeated calls and an acknowledgement on their end that a problem existed, that no tech was ever sent out. Awesome. This analyst also asked me for a ticket number. I told him I didn’t have one, but that I had learned my lesson and would always get one from that point on. He scheduled a tech to come out to the house after 5pm, which was nice. He then asked if there was anything else he could do. I said he could give me a ticket number. He said that wasn’t really necessary. I said BS. He got me one.

As promised, a tech did come out to the house after 5pm. The tech was twenty years old. That means when I got my Cox cable modem account in 1998, he was nine-years-old.

If I’ve never shared this with you before, here’s a little secret from the world of tech support: every technical support analyst thinks everyone else is dumber than they are. Every technical support analyst wants to be the alpha male. The quicker you admit to a tech that s/he knows more than you (whether they do or not), the quicker the problem will get resolved. Just act dumb; it works. As the tech walked around the outside of the house I said things like “Gee!” and scratched my head a lot and asked how all that big ol’ Internet can come in through that tiny little wire and tried to look dumb. Once the tech came inside and saw my network setup, the jig was up.

The first rule of troubleshooting, if you want to locate a problem, is never make two changes at once. If Person A can’t print to Printer A, seeing if Person B can print to Printer B doesn’t tell you a whole lot. The on-site tech changed out the cable splitter outside my house, then came inside and changed out the cable splitter inside my house, and the problem was fixed. He declared the problem was inside the house. Of course he did. If the problem’s inside my house, I can be billed for the call; if it’s outside the house, it’s their problem. If I get a bill for the visit, I’m going to tell them the problem was “in the street” and see what they say.

And so, the problem is fixed. I’ve been pinging Google for almost 24 hours straight now and have only lost a handful of pings. While I like to complain about dealing with technical support guys, I love my cable modem, I’ve had great service for a number of years, and can’t imagine life without it.