spugbrap’s blog

News/Info:

My at&t wireless service has been horrible for the past 3 days, and I am not alone. My wife and several friends in my neighborhood (in Bristow, VA) have been having the same issues. We are not able to reliably make or receive calls or text messages. Details on the problems we’ve been having are below in the My Story section.

I finally called 611 for at&t customer service, this evening, and the Customer Service Representative (CSR) told me that this issue is affecting quite a few customers. She rattled off a list of states that were reporting these issues, and although the list may not have included every state in the Northeastern United States, it definitely included most of them. I can say, for sure, that DC, Maryland, and Virginia were on the list, since those are the ones I was listening for.

The CSR found as much information as she could, for me, from her computer and from other reps. As of 5:25pm EDT on 4/13/2008, 3200-something minutes had passed since they first learned of the issue (note: There are 1440 minutes in one day). Although she couldn’t tell me when the problem might be resolved, she said that it’s a “priority” and they’re working on it. For what it’s worth, she told me that our 911 service was still fully functional.

If it’s affecting people in that many different states, I figure that means potentially millions of customers may be without reliable voice and SMS service. The outage does not seem to affect all areas, though, but I know it at least covers about a 5 mile radius around my house. So, the actual number of at&t customers affected may be a lot smaller, if it’s just a bunch of small areas that are experiencing these problems.

My Story:

My cell phone started having issues late Friday night (4/11/2008), but at first I thought it was just my phone acting up. I just upgraded the OS on my AT&T 8525 (HTC Hermes) to Windows Mobile 6 last week, and it’s had a few minor issues every day.So, when a friend of mine IMed me and said they kept getting sent straight to voicemail when calling my mobile number, I figured my phone was just being stupid. So, I tried making an outgoing call, but it just kept saying “Dialing” and could not seem to connect.

I checked my signal strength, and saw that I had only 1 bar. Usually, in my house, I have 3-4 bars and my cell phone works just as well as the landline. So I went outside, to see if my signal would improve. I think it went up to 2 bars or something, and after a couple tries, I was able to call out. But, the call was very broken up and staticky–pretty much useless.

Still thinking it could be my phone’s fault, I went back inside, turned off the phone, and removed the battery and SIM card. I left it that way for a few minutes, since that was one of the troubleshooting steps that a Cingular CSR had be perform when I had some kind of problem last year

After about 5 minutes, I blew the visible dust out of the back of my phone, put it back together, and turned it on. When it was done booting, I still had only 1 signal bar, but I tried to make a call anyways. As expected, it was still not able to connect, and when I told my friend to try calling me again, they said it was still going straight to voicemail.

Oh well, it was late at night, and I needed to go to bed anyways. I didn’t really need to use my phone, so I just hoped it would work better in the morning.

On Saturday, my family and I planned to go out and have a pretty busy day with some friends. I ended up having the kids at home while Lacey went out with her friends Jena and Anne. It was a beautiful day out, so my kids and I went outside and planted some flowers (I tried to call Lacey to find out where, exactly, to plant them, but could not get a call through, so the kids and I just kinda used our best judgement for planting locations.), then took care of some long-overdue outside work (cleaning plant debris off the deck and treehouse).

We were expecting Dallin and Xander to come over eventually, to hang out while the wives were out shopping. I could not seem to get ahold of Dallin, though. When I tried to call him (from my landline), it went straight to voicemail. When I tried to send a text message, the message stayed in the Outbox for longer than usual, then popped up an error saying that it was unable to send.

I retried it a few times, and eventually got it to send, after about 10 minutes or so. I didn’t get a reply, though. About a half hour later, I tried to text him again, but had the same difficulties. A few minutes later, though, I received 2-3 messages from Dallin. Apparently he didn’t receive any of my messages when I sent them, but they had just come through all at once. Along with those messages from Dallin, I also received one from Lacey, which had a timestamp of about 45 minutes before. I tried to reply to Dallin and Lacey, but still could not get messages to go out without several retry attempts.

By this time, my kids were bored out of their minds, and we were all wondering what we should do. I eventually managed to get a voice call to Dallin, and by talking fast and repeating ourselves, we were able to have a short conversation, despite the fact that the call quality was horrible and static dominated the conversation. The gist of the conversation was that they were at their house, and we were going to come over.

So, the kids and I went over to Dallin’s house. We wanted to go out and do something fun, like go to the park and/or Chuck E Cheese’s. The girls had been out for quite a while, though, so we wanted to coordinate with them before going out anywhere. Of course, we were not able to effectively communicate with them. Thankfully, they arrived at Dallin’s house shortly after we did.

We had more trouble communicating with one another that evening (from the park, Burger King in Gainesville, etc.), and still more on Sunday. It’s been quite frustrating for all of us. We take our cell phone service for granted, since it’s usually pretty reliable. Jena and Dallin don’t actually have a landline, anymore, so they are pretty much cut off from the world right now when they’re at home (or anywhere near home).

I noticed that when we took the kids to their swim lessons in Manasass, Sunday evening, our phones worked just fine. We still couldn’t talk/message with Jena and Dallin, though, since they were at home. This is the point when I realized that the service problem seemed to be confined to a 5 mile radius around our neighborhood.

While the kids were swimming, I went ahead and called at&t, which brings me back to where this post started: Widespread outage, no ETA for a fix.

I’ll post updates when I find out anything more. Hopefully this entry is useful for some of those at&t customers that have been having similar frustrations. I was surprised that when I Google searched the web, news, and blogs, I did not find anything about this outage, even though it covers a wide area and has been happening for about 3 days now.

This blog entry is mostly a stream-of-consciousness that I wrote the day after a major power outage that hit the Manassas/Gainesville area back in January. I was more interested in telling the whole story than I was about paragraphing, grammar, punctuation, etc., so it may be a bit rough in parts, and may be a little difficult to follow. I had noted a few more items that I wanted to address, back then, which is why I didn’t get around to posting this sooner. Finally, over two months later, I’ve filled in those last few details.

It was around 6:10 on Tuesday, January 29, 2008. 20 minutes until my son, Matthew, needed to be at the Music and Arts Center in Manassas for his weekly guitar lesson. I was trying to get all the kids ready to go. Matthew was over at his friend Xander’s house, working on his Pinewood Derby car (the race was on Wednesday night, so he had to get as close to finished as possible (incidentally, he actually won first place in his cub scout pack’s Pinewood Derby tournament! I took tons of pictures of the whole event.)). I was in the process of getting my girls ready to go; everyone went potty, and Nikki just got finished washing her hands, but still needed help getting dressed again (she’s 2, and potty training, so the handwashing sometimes comes before the pants go back on, at this point). But as we were about to do that, the lights all went out.

This is a very rare occurrence around here, so it came as quite a shock! The girls couldn’t remember ever having experienced a power outage before, actually. Usually, the worst that happens is briefly flickering lights (and that’s rare), and maybe once or twice in the past few years the power might have gone out for 1-10 seconds, but this was different.

I told the girls to wait where they were, while I fetched a flashlight. I grabbed two: one that converts into a lantern shape, and my trusty, weapons-grade maglite. I gave the lantern-type one to Skylar, so she could provide light while I helped Nikki get dressed. Of course, she had to be wearing tights that day, which was not the easiest thing to put on a wiggly 2-year-old, in the almost-dark, in a hurry.

When we went to put our shoes and coats on, I looked out the window, and saw nothing but darkness. Usually, our whole community is lit up by streetlights and pole lights in front of every house (the HOA mandates that, actually. I should really deal with fixing mine, before I get a second violation notice about that. ssshhh!!! don’t tattle on me!). At that moment, though, the only lights I saw were flashlights and candlelights moving about in some of my neighbors’ houses. I was slightly relieved that it wasn’t just a problem in my own house, because then it would require me dealing with stuff. :)

I ran up and grabbed Matthew’s guitar, and we hurried out to the garage, where I was immediately reminded of something I hadn’t thought about yet: the automatic garage doors would not work. I was going to have to awkwardly reach up above my car and grab the handle on the string that allows operating the automatic garage door by hand.

First, I turned on my car’s headlights, though, to give us a bit more light than the flashlights were providing, without having to hold onto anything. My car’s annoyingly-bright (to other drivers on the road) headlights reflected off the wall and lit up the whole garage pretty well.

Then, I reached up and pulled the manual release string on the garage door (good thing I’ve got long monkey arms, so it wasn’t too much of a problem), then I grabbed the handle on the garage door and opened it all the way.

Next, I buckled the girls into their carseats, and backed out of the garage. Since we don’t operate the automatic garage doors manually very often, I wasn’t quite sure if opening it later would be trivial, so I didn’t close it yet. I ran into the house and unlocked the front door, then came out the garage and closed it.

As I was about to get back into my car, Lacey arrived with Matthew. She told me she’d been trying to call my cell phone, but it wasn’t going through. I suggested that maybe it was because I had been using it, off and on, as a flashlight, and maybe it doesn’t like to act as a phone when it’s being used as a flashlight.

At this point, it was already around 6:20, so she said I shouldn’t bother going, since he would be way too late. I wanted to try, though, because I get him to his guitar lesson up to 10 minutes late pretty often, and it usually takes 10-20 minutes to get there (depending on traffic/lights). So, Matthew hopped into my car, while Lacey pondered how to get into the house. I told her that the front door was unlocked, and that there was a flashlight on the floor, on the left, just inside the front door. So, she went in, and the kids and I took off for the Music and Arts Center.

On the way there, we saw the emergency lighting on at Matthew’s elementary school, and I talked to the kids about how/why they have that, and we don’t. When we got to the main road, the traffic light was out, and people were not exactly taking turns at that point, so I waited until no cars were coming on the main road before turning.

When I got to the next light, it was out, too. People were trying to take turns at this one, but they were not doing a great job of it. It was an awkward intersection. The main road had 2 main lanes and 2 turn lanes (right and left), in both directions. The other road had 1 main lane and 2 turn lanes each direction. This meant up to 14 cars could potentially be waiting at that powerless light at any given moment.

Thankfully, there were not that many cars, but even trying to coordinate 8 cars taking turns, in the dark, and in the rain (oh yeah, forgot to mention that! it wasn’t too much rain, but there was a little bit, here and there), is fairly challenging. We got through it, though, and the next light we encountered was actually functioning. Looking around, while waiting for that light, we saw the fire station, which appeared to have all lights on. We wondered whether fire stations have nothing but emergency lighting, since emergencies are when they are needed most. We watched a firetruck and an ambulance come out, sirens wailing and lights flashing. Shortly after that, our light turned green.

As we were turning, I looked to one side and a whole shopping center appeared to be without power. Then, we passed a couple of housing developments that seemed to have full power. The traffic lights were out, though, but they were fairly minor intersections, where the traffic lights have only actually recently been put in, anyway, so they didn’t pose much of a problem.

When we got to the next major intersection, the light was out. This time, it was an intersection of two main roads, where probably 16 cars could be waiting at any given time. There were a lot more cars at this intersection, but still, luckily, not 16 at once. Still, people were confused and didn’t know how to take turns properly, so it was a very dangerous place to be. While I was waiting for my turn to go straight, the person next to me decided to go ahead and go through. Since that caused everyone else to stop and wait for that car, anyway, I went through as well.

Then, we almost immediately got to another major intersection of 2 main roads, where I believe a cop was directing traffic. Phew! That sure made things easier/safer. After that, we drove past some neighborhoods with power, and some without. I couldn’t recognize a pattern from my perspective, but maybe it would make more sense if you looked at it on a map.

Around this time, I started talking to the kids about how power gets from the power plant to our homes, and what types of things can cause outages. I know I mentioned wind and ice affecting the above-ground power lines, cars running into utility poles, construction equipment digging in the wrong spots–where power lines were buried (and I told them about Miss Utility), and anything else that came to my mind. The kids listened intently, and asked a few questions that only kids would ask (i.e. cute ones. wish I could remember them!). It was fun having this opportunity to teach my kids something that ordinarily just wouldn’t come up in normal conversation.

At this point, we’d driven about 5 miles from home, and we were still seeing power outages left and right. Some lights were out, some were on. Some intersections had police officers directing traffic, but some didn’t. There seemed to be more intersections with police as we got closer to Sudley Rd. (Rt. 234 business), though, since that’s a major artery through Manassas.

When we got to the light where we needed to cross 234 to get to the shopping center with Music and Arts Center, I saw that the shopping center on the right had power (Toys R Us, Party City, etc), but the one we were going to did not. I went across anyway, though, to see if Matthew’s guitar teacher happened to be there, playing by emergency light/flashlight/candlelight. It was a stretch, but I didn’t want to rule it out, after having driven all the way there through dangerous intersections. We could see that there were people in Music and Arts Center, but there were no lights visible inside, and nobody came out to greet us when I stopped my car in front of the store to look. Oh well.

So, I drove up to Giant, because they seemed to have a LOT of lights on. As we got closer, it sortof looked light emergency lighting, but seemed like just too much lighting for that to be the case. Even one of the register number lights was on, and there were definitely employees and customers in the store. So, I went and parked my car in the far corner of the parking lot, like I always do; uphill (so no carts will roll into it) and away from most other cars.

Before going in, I tried to call Lacey, but was still unable to reach her (oh yeah, I had tried to call her repeatedly on our way there, but had not been able to get through at all. Just then I vaguely remembered hearing something, at some point, about using SMS (text messages) in emergency situations. I tried sending Lacey a message, and she got it!

Finally, I could tell her how crazy the drive had been, and tell her that the power was out at the music store. I also told her that we were going to go into Giant, since it seemed to be open, and pick up a few things. I figured that would also give the police more time to station officers to direct traffic at more intersections, and would also give the power a little bit more time to be restored. She replied that I should try to get candles and flashlights, too.

So, the kids and I got unbuckled and walked all the way across the parking lot to Giant. When we got there, there was a sign on the door that said “sorry, temporarily closed” (or something like that). I guess the customers that I had seen must have been in the store when the power went out. I figured it was probably good that we couldn’t go inside, because there’s a good chance the credit card reader wouldn’t have been working when I got to the checkout, so it was good to avoid that risk, since I had no cash on me (sorry, Clint, I did not take your advice about always carrying cash).

I was going to try to drive to a store that did have power, but I decided that with traffic the way it was, and with my car running very low on gas, I should probably just get the kids home. Then, I could potentially run out later (in the van) to pick up whatever we might need from a store that had power, somewhere.

So, I took the kids home. On the way home, we found that more intersections had police officers directing traffic, which sparked a fun conversation about the light-saber-esque devices the cops were waving around.

We also talked about why cell phones were not working, but SMS messages were. I was not all that knowledgeable about that subject, but I certainly had more to offer than my 2-, 4-, and 8-year old kids, so I told them what I did know, most of which went over their heads anyways. :)

When we got home, I sent Matthew out to open the garage door (by hand). Just as he started pulling it open, the power came back on! Then, Lacey came out to greet us.While we were gone, Lacey had found all the candles in the house, and had carefully set them up throughout the house. She was all sorts of bummed that the power came on just as we got home, because she wanted to show us her pretty candle setup. She’d spent quite a while putting them on safe [enough] surfaces that cats would not be messing with, and the end result was a functional and aesthetically pleasing candle configuration. So, we went around and turned all the lights back off as soon as we walked in, so the kids and I could enjoy the candlelit house.

That was fun, in itself, but then I had an idea for something else fun to do while the lights were all out. The kids had all received tubes of glow bracelets for Christmas, but we hadn’t gotten around to actually using them yet. So, we opened those up and got cracking (literally.. that’s how you activate the glow) on making glow bracelets and necklaces for everyone to wear and play with. That was fun for everyone, and helped us to make the most of a weird and kinda scary situation (albeit a little too late, but it certainly helped change the overall mood of the evening!)

In the days immediately after the outage occurred, I was keeping my eye on local news sources and blogs, hoping to learn more details. Here are a couple links I saved:

• WTOPnews.com: Power Outages in Northern Va. Resolved
• BLACK VELVET BRUCE LI : Power Outage In Sudley