Here’s the excerpt. If this worked, the resultant toot will be formatted more to my liking with 4 pieces of information (plus a featured pic).
Category: Ham Radio
Crazy dream last night involving a notebook containing technical details for #HamRadio repeaters around the #TwinCities having been stolen in a burglary, and needing to go downtown to the office in the middle of the night to change a bunch of passwords. Even though it was the middle of the night, all my co-workers were there, including one of my bosses, Helen Yarmoska… except the part of Helen Yarmoska was played by actress Julie Bowen. And any of you who know Helen can see what a brilliant bit of casting that is.
I opened a ticket with their help system 6/15/23 8:02 AM with the following:
Xfinity internet had been dropping 2-4x/day briefly the past couple weeks. Then yesterday morning, it was out first thing, and this time the outage really was on their outage map. Outage ended on time, and everything came back online except my Cisco SPA525G with three lines (voip.ms, hamsoverip, hamshackhotline).
I have had to MANUALLY edit some things in the web UI for each of voip.ms and hamsoverip, and they both came back to working.
I need to MANUALLY edit whatever’s wrong with hamshackhotline, but because you guys do this auto-magical provisioning script thing, I’m unable to find plain instructions/screenshots of what fields need to say what. I don’t even know what my SIP account’s password is. If I’d ever been told, it’d be in my 1Password – it is not. Was only ever known by someone on your crew who did stuff remotely.
Where can I get the details necessary to MANUALLY re-configure SPA525G for HsH 11079?
This was their response…
Bill Lewis posted 6/15/23 8:32 AM
Hello Kelvin D. Olson,
As requested, here is your password: a3869(obfuscatedBitsForReasons)5903b728
Please be advised that because you will now be modifying settings in your endpoint, you are now transitioning from “Full Service Support” to “Self Service Support”. This basically means that it might be possible for you to accidentally change a setting in your phone and disrupt your service with us.
Because we won’t know what you changed, there will be no way for us to effectively help you.
If you find your phone in a condition where it does not operate as it should anymore, you will be required to perform a full factory reset on your phone, and then perform a re-provision to restore your phone to the settings we recommend for optimal performance.
Regards,
Closed by Bill Lewis with status of Closed 6/15/23 8:32 AM
Kelvin D. Olson posted 6/15/23 8:44 AM
Well… aren’t you just awful?
Please close my account.
So… these guys work from the assumption that if you’re getting a VOIP phone, you’re getting it to do one and only one thing. They have you point your VOIP phone at an automated provisioning script which wipes out anything ELSE you’ve got going on that phone. When you instead sign up with HamsOverIP.com, you get access to a Wiki wherein the left menu contains…
Configuration Guides
..Endpoints
….Hard Phones
……Cisco
……..Cisco 525g
…and there you find step-by-step instructions, and screenshots of all the settings on the web UI for the phone.
NIGHT AND DAY DIFFERENT from giving me the password (one of MANY things I needed to know), closing the issue, telling me there’s “no way for us to effectively help you.” Uhm, fuck you, I can show you a great example of a way to effectively help me. You’re just an Alpha Hotel and a LID, Bill.
Conflicting Factors Influencing My Brain Stem
…and how they present challenges to restful sleep. While we’re at it, I’ll talk about an iOS App that I think should exist, but I have not yet found. My wife and I both snore. In my case, it’s severe Sleep Apnea for which I wear a CPAP, but that doesn’t guarantee that I’m 100%… Continue reading Conflicting Factors Influencing My Brain Stem
2022 Field Day Debrief
Back in my TCRC heyday, when I was in my 30s and within the first several years of being a radio amateur, Field Day was always a club event. TCRC did 3A, plus a VHF bonus station, plus a GOTA bonus station. Now in the Days Of Covid, I am loathe to hang around in… Continue reading 2022 Field Day Debrief
WiRES-X YSF AMERICA-LINK Peeves
Over-Mod Boys – a sub-category of mic-eaters. Their voice peaks are badly clipped, and the magic of the CODEC preserves the full splendor of their horrid audio signal. Nose-Puffers – as they exhale vigorously at the end of each transmission. Often also mic-eaters, these are surely morbidly obese dudes who are out of breath simply… Continue reading WiRES-X YSF AMERICA-LINK Peeves
Moved The Tune-A-Tenna
I had a few problems with the initial location where I’d put the Tune-A-Tenna. Due to surrounding structures, etc., I could only orient the legs E-W, which is the shorter dimension of my lot. Too close to my wife’s office, so QRO was out of the question (while she’s in there). Metal mast interacting with… Continue reading Moved The Tune-A-Tenna
Going Old School With An Inverted Vee Dipole
I know I’ve had various flavors of Wire Dipoles over the years. At least one of them was an Inverted Vee configuration. I’ve never had a tower. I’ve had a metallic mast once before, but what was on it was something where all the working parts of the antenna were above the mast. A few… Continue reading Going Old School With An Inverted Vee Dipole
60 Meters Is Weird on FTdx3000
Someone on the Twitters challenged me that 60m was “hot” for FT8 about a week ago, so I endeavored to try working at least one station on that band – had never worked that band on any mode yet. It was challenging. I have since learned some “tricks” to get it to work. So, when… Continue reading 60 Meters Is Weird on FTdx3000
Simpler Mic Audio Path
How I Used To Do It Condenser Mic XLR-XLR Cable Mixer with Phantom Power Input gain setting Compression setting (usually 0) 3-band EQ (usually flat) FX Send knob (half-way) FX out 1/4” “Left” plug 1/8” stereo “Left” connection FTdx3000 “Line” jack (3-cond mini handles line in & out) How I Do It Now Condenser Mic… Continue reading Simpler Mic Audio Path