The Insomniac Coder

This is an update to an article I wrote a couple of years ago , I thought it was time for a refresher. Pedro's Rules of Business Email: 1. Must follow the same standards in place for WRITTEN communications. 2. Spell check the damn thing, please. It is embarrassing to all parties when an email has unnecessary typos. 3. Be concise. Be specific. Write in full sentences. 4. Check your tone. 5. Check the stupid carbon copy and blind copy lists! Then do it again! 6. If you are complaining about an error, make sure the error isn't yours. It makes you look stupid and somebody will eventually dig out the email to use it against you. 7. Provide relevant information. If you are sending a screen capture, also send the URL of the page, so others can replicate it. 8. Don't hit the send button if you are upset. I am sure 99.99% of all email clients in use have a draft feature. 9. Don't hey people, it's rude. Don't dude people, it's st...

Now that's a handful for a title, but that's about what just happened to me: the Verizon FIOS ONT has a built-in battery that it uses as a backup for its phone lines. If there is a power outage, this makes sure that you will be able to use the phone for about 8 hours. It doesn't help the TV and Internet signals, it is simply used for the phones. And if the battery goes bad, or the ONT "thinks" that the battery is bad, the ONT will refuse to power up even if the AC current source is healthy. So there I was, being held hostage by a device that relies on a battery, for a service I don't subscribe to, with healthy AC power and no way to keep my Internet connection up for more than two minutes in a row, and every 5 minutes or so it would drop completely dead until I reset the ONT. And of course, the perfect time of the day for neither of our cell phones to get a decent 3G connection so we could Google it. After about a long miserable hour I was able to fi...