Anyone have experience with Verizon DSL in their home?

Thanks

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"Brandystew" wrote in message ...
Anyone have experience with Verizon DSL in their home?

Thanks


Yes, I have been using Verizon DSL since May 2002. It is reasonably fast (not as fast as the cable service I had before I moved)
and reliable. My only complaint is that the IP address changes way to frequently, but that is probably not relevant.


--
Al Reid

How will I know when I get there...
If I don't know where I'm going?

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OSPAM (Brandystew) wrote in
:

Anyone have experience with Verizon DSL in their home?

Thanks

(To send e-mail, remove NOSPAM from address)


Yes, what do you want to know?

I've had a 1.5mbs/384kbs for two years to our house in FL, business
service with a static IP and my own email server. In that time we've had
four outages, one due to a config change on IP ranges without
notification, two due to gateway issues resolved after calls to tech
support. One due to a powersupply fault on the router.modem at our end,
which the came out and fixed withing four hours of the call. Other than
those problems its worked fine and has always maintained bandwidth as far
as we can measure. It's usefull getting all our telephone and internet
charges on on bill.

Sales group and pricing are usually pretty good. Getting anything
implemented other than a service defined in the sales brochure is a
lottery as to whether they can put it in correctly.

If you have a support problem then expect a long time on the phone. The
call queues are usually long. The implementation and support groups are
split by function and geography and they don't talk to each other. For
example the DNS group are all but useless, the people looking after the
verizon gateways are very good. Anything to do with hosting or backbone
issues are another company entirely.

hth

About a year and a half ago, I gave them a try. First they told me it
wasn't available in my area; and my incoming wires were no good. Well, my
apartment is in a building 1 FOOT from the verizon building, and the wires
are the old heavy copper ones.....they said I was too far away.
Well, when I convinced them 1 FOOT wasn't too far, they hooked it up, but
could never get it to work. However they did manage to continue to bill me
for it for over a year, and after a lot of screaming they finally credited
10 months back to me.

Gee, maybe they are better now??

However, at my other place, I have Comcast cable and can't say enough good
things about them. Once my modem died, and they had a new one to me in 1
1/2 hours. Can't beat that.


"Brandystew" wrote in message
...
Anyone have experience with Verizon DSL in their home?

Thanks

(To send e-mail, remove NOSPAM from address)

Just got it last night. Good telephone service then the CD didn't work.

375 upload speeds, 1800+ DL speeds.

Northern, NJ...

Regards,
Joe Agro, Jr.
http://www.autodrill.com
http://www.multi-spindle-heads.com

V8013


"Brandystew" wrote in message
...
Anyone have experience with Verizon DSL in their home?

Thanks

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Brandystew wrote:

Anyone have experience with Verizon DSL in their home?

No, not in my home. I live in Fiberoptic Junction, and can't get DSL here.

I have, however, set up Verizon DSL for two clients. The process in my case
involved doing a network installation of Debian Linux, and downloading
somewhere around 500 MB of packages from the fastest available server. I
found at both locations that the download speed was around 150 Kps. This
is less than half the speed of cable, but the difference between 5 Kps and
150 Kps is plenty enough to grab your attention and make you think you just
put a rocket ship in your computer.

The only measure of reliability I have is whether or not people call me with
problems. They would call me to deal with Verizon for them (a free part of
the service) and I haven't had to call Verizon yet. One of them has been
running for about a year now.

All in all, it's a pretty good deal. As an installer, I prefer using a
router for my own benefit. Routers eliminate the need to futz with all the
fiddly PPPoE configuration nonsense, and save me effort. The most recent
install came with a router as part of the package, and I think perhaps that
is because Verizon themselves recognize how much easier life is when you
let the router manage that stuff transparently.

Like every other format of broadband I have experienced, Windows is pretty
much inescapable for getting the ball rolling the first time. Once the
modem is provisioned, it no longer matters what platform you're running.
However, it's probably necessary to keep a copy of Windows in your pocket
somewhere in case you ever have to provision a new modem at some point in
the future.

--
Michael McIntyre ---- Silvan
Linux fanatic, and certified Geek; registered Linux user #243621
http://www.geocities.com/Paris/Rue/5407/
http://rosegarden.sourceforge.net/tutorial/

Have had it for over a year now, very few problems. Am in former GTE
territory,
so I avoid the PPPoE nonsense. The VZ software is pretty intrusive, dumped
all that, it didn't do anything useful anyway. Use of a firewall is
absolutely,
positively mandatory! Receive about one virus infection attempt per second.
VZ does not filter the ports, so you see lots of probes.

-- Tom


"Brandystew" wrote in message
...
Anyone have experience with Verizon DSL in their home?

Thanks

(To send e-mail, remove NOSPAM from address)

Silvan wrote:

Like every other format of broadband I have experienced, Windows is pretty
much inescapable for getting the ball rolling the first time.**Once*the
modem is provisioned, it no longer matters what platform you're running.
However, it's probably necessary to keep a copy of Windows in your pocket
somewhere in case you ever have to provision a new modem at some point in
the future.

OK, as a dialup customer, the term "provision a modem" is new to me. Was
ist?

--
Homo sapiens is a goal, not a description.

On Wed, 24 Nov 2004 14:41:49 GMT, "Ol' Texan"
wrote:

About a year and a half ago, I gave them a try. First they told me it
wasn't available in my area; and my incoming wires were no good. Well, my
apartment is in a building 1 FOOT from the verizon building, and the wires
are the old heavy copper ones.....they said I was too far away.
Well, when I convinced them 1 FOOT wasn't too far, they hooked it up, but
could never get it to work. However they did manage to continue to bill me
for it for over a year, and after a lot of screaming they finally credited
10 months back to me.

Gee, maybe they are better now??

However, at my other place, I have Comcast cable and can't say enough good
things about them. Once my modem died, and they had a new one to me in 1
1/2 hours. Can't beat that.


"Brandystew" wrote in message
...
Anyone have experience with Verizon DSL in their home?

Thanks

(To send e-mail, remove NOSPAM from address)

The critical distance with DSL isn't the distance to the Verizon
office, it's the distance to the local phone company's switch. And it
_is_ critical. So is the quality of the lines. The fact that they're
old is not a point in their favor.

Short form: I'm not sure they were giving you the runaround and anyone
considering DSL needs to check those two factors.

I got Earthlink and I had about a three-week fight before we got the
connection working reliably.

Not that I'd reccomend Earthlink. They outsourced their customer
support to India a couple of years ago and service has gone absolutely
to hell.

--RC

Sleep? Isn't that a totally inadequate substitute for caffine?

On Wed, 24 Nov 2004 09:31:22 -0500, "Al Reid"
wrote:


How will I know when I get there...
If I don't know where I'm going?

If you don't know where you are going ...
It pretty much doesn't matter how you get there.

On Thu, 25 Nov 2004 09:50:57 -0700, Mark & Juanita wrote:

On Wed, 24 Nov 2004 09:31:22 -0500, "Al Reid"
wrote:


How will I know when I get there...
If I don't know where I'm going?

If you don't know where you are going ...
It pretty much doesn't matter how you get there.

Where ever you go,
there you are.

On Thu, 25 Nov 2004 10:45:01 -0700, Doug Winterburn
calmly ranted:

On Thu, 25 Nov 2004 09:50:57 -0700, Mark & Juanita wrote:

On Wed, 24 Nov 2004 09:31:22 -0500, "Al Reid"
wrote:


How will I know when I get there...
If I don't know where I'm going?

If you don't know where you are going ...
It pretty much doesn't matter how you get there.

Where ever you go,
there you are.

How can you be in two places at once,
when you're not anywheeere at aaaaaaall?

--
SAVE THE PARROTS! Eschew the use of poly!
----------
http://diversify.com Poly-free Website Development

OSPAM (Brandystew) wrote in message ...
Anyone have experience with Verizon DSL in their home?

Thanks

I have Verizon DSL in Maryland. It's been up for about a year with no
problems at all. I get excellant upload/download speeds. Verizon
differs greatly from place to place, what you really need to look at
is how it runs in your area. Go to http://www.dslreports.com and you
can search for reports specific to your area.

Jo

"Doug Winterburn" wrote in message
news
On Thu, 25 Nov 2004 09:50:57 -0700, Mark & Juanita wrote:

On Wed, 24 Nov 2004 09:31:22 -0500, "Al Reid"
wrote:


How will I know when I get there...
If I don't know where I'm going?

If you don't know where you are going ...
It pretty much doesn't matter how you get there.

Where ever you go,
there you are.

and you take yourself with you.

On 24 Nov 2004 13:32:30 GMT, OSPAM (Brandystew)
wrote:

Anyone have experience with Verizon DSL in their home?

Thanks

I've had Verizon DSL in NE NJ since day one. The first year was not
good. Since then they've become very reliable. In my area, DSL is much
less costly than cable. If you frequent the Newsgroups you'll find
Verizon wins out over cable in retention and completion. The downside?
Technical support.
Do get yourself a gateway router to use as a firewall and eliminate
the need to install that dreadful PPOE and Verizon software.

TomL

Do get yourself a gateway router to use as a firewall and eliminate
the need to install that dreadful PPOE and Verizon software.

Do tell me more about this please... Just got DSL and was thinking of using
the provided modem/router combo unit for the house as it is both wired and
wireless.
--


Joe - V#8013 - '86 VN750 - joe @ yunx .com
Northern, NJ
Ride a Motorcycle? Ask me about "The Ride"
http://www.youthelate.com/the_ride.htm

Born once - Die twice. Born twice - Die only once. Your choice...

Have unwanted music CDs or DVDs of any type? I can use them for our
charity. eMail me privately for details. Donation receipts available.

TomL wrote in news:bq2gq05umuc1hn0l5smub03007erhs4gua@
4ax.com:

On 24 Nov 2004 13:32:30 GMT, OSPAM (Brandystew)
wrote:

Anyone have experience with Verizon DSL in their home?

Thanks

I've had Verizon DSL in NE NJ since day one. The first year was not
good. Since then they've become very reliable. In my area, DSL is much
less costly than cable. If you frequent the Newsgroups you'll find
Verizon wins out over cable in retention and completion. The downside?
Technical support.
Do get yourself a gateway router to use as a firewall and eliminate
the need to install that dreadful PPOE and Verizon software.

TomL


That's an important point: NEVER install the stuff on the Verizon CD.
DO get a router (VZ may give you the router/modem combo thingy (Westell
327 I believe).
DO use the VZ supplied cable for the connection between the telephone wall
jack and the modem (it's special twisted wire, rather than the flat phone
cord).
Do try to get the straigthest most direct inside wiring (preferably cat5)
from the NID to the modem.
DO put filters on all other phone equipment.

See HiEv's pages here for more help:
http://www.alt-hacker.org/~HiEv/vzindex.html

--
Best regards
Han
email address is invalid

Joe wrote:
Do get yourself a gateway router to use as a firewall and eliminate
the need to install that dreadful PPOE and Verizon software.

Do tell me more about this please... Just got DSL and was thinking
of using the provided modem/router combo unit for the house as it is
both wired and wireless.

In Maryland, near Washington DC, Verizon sends new DSL customers a
combination DSL modem / router / 4-port hub / wireless hub. At least that's
what they sent friends of mine, who I help get connected three weekends ago.
It was relatively painless to get set up, although it did take one call to
tech support. The user name and password for the modem wasn't included in
the documentation.

-- Mark

Joe wrote:

Do get yourself a gateway router to use as a firewall and eliminate
the need to install that dreadful PPOE and Verizon software.

Do tell me more about this please... Just got DSL and was thinking of
using the provided modem/router combo unit for the house as it is both
wired and wireless.

You don't need to worry about it with the new modem/router they're offering.

--
Michael McIntyre ---- Silvan
Linux fanatic, and certified Geek; registered Linux user #243621
http://www.geocities.com/Paris/Rue/5407/
http://rosegarden.sourceforge.net/tutorial/

Mark & Juanita wrote:

How will I know when I get there...
If I don't know where I'm going?

If you don't know where you are going ...
It pretty much doesn't matter how you get there.

Now there's an interesting topic.

I'm trying to find a Boy Scout camp waaaaaaaay in the middle of nowhere,
with nothing more than an extremely crappy map to guide my way. I drive
around for over an hour on all kinds of twisty little unpainted back roads,
and I still haven't found it.

I know exactly where I am in relation to my point of origin, and I can find
my way back home easily. I just don't know where I am in relation to the
destination.

So is that lost, or not? I say not. I'm not lost if I know how to get back
to a known location. Everybody else tells me I was lost.

--
Michael McIntyre ---- Silvan
Linux fanatic, and certified Geek; registered Linux user #243621
http://www.geocities.com/Paris/Rue/5407/
http://rosegarden.sourceforge.net/tutorial/

Larry Blanchard wrote:

OK, as a dialup customer, the term "provision a modem" is new to me. Was
ist?

Setting the thing up for the first time, basically. You don't just take it
out of the box, plug it in, and get online. You have to jump through some
hoops to prove who you are. I imagine this is especially true for cable
modems, since the cable company has no way of knowing who you are except by
the MAC address of the modem you're using.

I don't understand the inner workings of the process or I never would have
spent four hours screwing with reinstalling Windows (because I had to feed
it all those stupid driver CDs to get it running well enough to run the
setup program) just to do this.

--
Michael McIntyre ---- Silvan
Linux fanatic, and certified Geek; registered Linux user #243621
http://www.geocities.com/Paris/Rue/5407/
http://rosegarden.sourceforge.net/tutorial/

On Sat, 27 Nov 2004 11:37:06 -0500, Silvan
wrote:

Mark & Juanita wrote:

How will I know when I get there...
If I don't know where I'm going?

If you don't know where you are going ...
It pretty much doesn't matter how you get there.

Now there's an interesting topic.

I'm trying to find a Boy Scout camp waaaaaaaay in the middle of nowhere,
with nothing more than an extremely crappy map to guide my way. I drive
around for over an hour on all kinds of twisty little unpainted back roads,
and I still haven't found it.

I know exactly where I am in relation to my point of origin, and I can find
my way back home easily. I just don't know where I am in relation to the
destination.

So is that lost, or not? I say not. I'm not lost if I know how to get back
to a known location. Everybody else tells me I was lost.


Sounds to me like you weren't "lost"; the Boy Scout camp was. ;-)

Silvan wrote:

Mark & Juanita wrote:

How will I know when I get there...
If I don't know where I'm going?

If you don't know where you are going ...
It pretty much doesn't matter how you get there.

Now there's an interesting topic.

I'm trying to find a Boy Scout camp waaaaaaaay in the middle of nowhere,
with nothing more than an extremely crappy map to guide my way. I drive
around for over an hour on all kinds of twisty little unpainted back
roads, and I still haven't found it.

I know exactly where I am in relation to my point of origin, and I can
find
my way back home easily. I just don't know where I am in relation to the
destination.

So is that lost, or not? I say not. I'm not lost if I know how to get
back
to a known location. Everybody else tells me I was lost.

"Tarzan not lost, Tarzan _here_. Trail lost."

Seriously, if at all times you know where you are and how to retrace your
steps you're not lost. Your destination might be lost but that's another
story.

Just for hohos, try plugging the address if there is one into Mapquest and
see if it can give the directions.


--
--John
Reply to jclarke at ae tee tee global dot net
(was jclarke at eye bee em dot net)

On Sat, 27 Nov 2004 13:22:26 -0500, "J. Clarke"
wrote:

Silvan wrote:

.... snip

I'm trying to find a Boy Scout camp waaaaaaaay in the middle of nowhere,
with nothing more than an extremely crappy map to guide my way. I drive
around for over an hour on all kinds of twisty little unpainted back
roads, and I still haven't found it.

I know exactly where I am in relation to my point of origin, and I can
find
my way back home easily. I just don't know where I am in relation to the
destination.

So is that lost, or not? I say not. I'm not lost if I know how to get
back
to a known location. Everybody else tells me I was lost.

"Tarzan not lost, Tarzan _here_. Trail lost."

.... snip

Just for hohos, try plugging the address if there is one into Mapquest and
see if it can give the directions.


Mapquest will almost always give directions; however, those directions
may not necessarily be of any use. This past summer, I was staying in
Huntsville at the airport hotel and requested Mapquest provide directions
to a certain destination. Mapquest obliged with a detailed list of "go
this far, turn north on ..., go ... etc." I followed the directions,
unfortunately Mapquest took me to a point, where, sometime in the future,
people may be able to cross over or under the interstate that dead-ended
the road I was to follow. I was able to gaze through the fence, across the
interstate to the other end of my route but had no way of getting there
from the directions I was provided. So, with the exception of
approximately 100 yards of road and an overpass, Mapquest provided a
detailed route to my destination.

I did find my way to where I was headed, but Mapquest kind of
disappointed me.

J. Clarke wrote:

Just for hohos, try plugging the address if there is one into Mapquest and
see if it can give the directions.

Right. The address. 1 BFE Plaza East. Seriously, that place is
waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay out in the middle of nowhere.

--
Michael McIntyre ---- Silvan
Linux fanatic, and certified Geek; registered Linux user #243621
http://www.geocities.com/Paris/Rue/5407/
http://rosegarden.sourceforge.net/tutorial/

Mark & Juanita wrote:

people may be able to cross over or under the interstate that dead-ended
the road I was to follow. I was able to gaze through the fence, across
the interstate to the other end of my route but had no way of getting
there
from the directions I was provided. So, with the exception of

Same thing with Street Atlas USA. They told me they use the maps provided
by various localities, and sometimes these maps include roads that were
planned, but never built.

Locally, they show a road connecting two points, but actually you have to
drive about 20 miles out of the way, all but three of them on gravel roads,
to reach the other side of that imaginary mile-long line.

--
Michael McIntyre ---- Silvan
Linux fanatic, and certified Geek; registered Linux user #243621
http://www.geocities.com/Paris/Rue/5407/
http://rosegarden.sourceforge.net/tutorial/

Silvan wrote in
:

J. Clarke wrote:

Just for hohos, try plugging the address if there is one into
Mapquest and see if it can give the directions.

Right. The address. 1 BFE Plaza East. Seriously, that place is
waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay out in the middle of nowhere.


Which is exactly where Boy Scout Camps belong. ;-)

Patriarch
Woodbadge '87

On Sat, 27 Nov 2004 23:01:50 -0500, Silvan
wrote:

Mark & Juanita wrote:

people may be able to cross over or under the interstate that dead-ended
the road I was to follow. I was able to gaze through the fence, across
the interstate to the other end of my route but had no way of getting
there
from the directions I was provided. So, with the exception of

Same thing with Street Atlas USA. They told me they use the maps provided
by various localities, and sometimes these maps include roads that were
planned, but never built.

Yep, I think in my case the cross-over is planned, but it will be
sometime when I'm a little-old old person.


Locally, they show a road connecting two points, but actually you have to
drive about 20 miles out of the way, all but three of them on gravel roads,
to reach the other side of that imaginary mile-long line.

Ouch!

Silvan wrote in
:

snip

I don't understand the inner workings of the process or I never would
have spent four hours screwing with reinstalling Windows (because I
had to feed it all those stupid driver CDs to get it running well
enough to run the setup program) just to do this.


The best thing to do is ignore their process. Their process is designed to
automate the installation in a standard manner.

When you are using anything that isn't a plain-vanilla setup, you are far
better off to put something in the middle to talk to their network. In my
case, it has always been a not terribly expensive router. Our first one
was a FreeBSD box that one of the kids put together from leftover parts, a
1-floppy type super low end box that did simple routing and address
translation. The current box is a less than $150 firewall/router, from
SMC, with features that were $50k when I got my first dialup account.

Today's routers handle all of the network config dynamically. There's very
little reason for you to have to run their software on your desktop. And
their software is almost never current.

My cynical experience says that you do NOT want the provider to label you
as 'one of those LINUX guys'.

Patriarch,
who knows more about the business side of this stuff than is good for the
soul...

I suffered with Verizon DSL for three months, and then cut my losses
and switched to cable.

The DSL was cheaper then cable, I wanted a digital satellite dish, so
I decided I would go with DSL (and so have two bills a month instead
of three). Like an idiot, I bought into the package that had a $250
cancellation fee if I had it less then 12 months.

I had no problems getting the service up and running instantly, but
the connection was really poor. Download rates were great
(60-100k/sec), but my connections would usually time out after about
200-400k. This meant that many web pages would time out when loading
giving me an error screen, and require hitting the "reload" icon
several times. Forget about downloading a big program unless you use
a download manager like GetRight, which can reconnect after each time
out. Numerous phones calls and emails and chat sessions with the
Verizon techs did not solve anything (The usual answer being to clear
my browser cache and power cycle the modem. Yeah, like I was not
smart enough to have already tried that myself).

Finally, one tech told me that this was not a problem with my setup,
but was representative of the service other people in my area received
due to my distance from the switching box. Of course, they were happy
to charge me the $250 early termination fee to get rid of my faulty
connection.

What a joke. I got reliable 49k hookups with a normal modem, which
gave a more pleasant browsing experience then the DSL due to never
timing out when loading web pages.

I felt that even pying the $250, I was saving money due to the loss of
aggrivation. I switched back to cable, and had no more problems.

So the database derived from maps failed you. Do you think the maps
themselves would have done better?

In praise of the postal people, the information they furnished mapquest on
the location of the post office bearing our zip code is 35 years old and
three and a half miles away.

"Mark & Juanita" wrote in message
...
On Sat, 27 Nov 2004 23:01:50 -0500, Silvan
wrote:

Mark & Juanita wrote:

people may be able to cross over or under the interstate that
dead-ended
the road I was to follow. I was able to gaze through the fence, across
the interstate to the other end of my route but had no way of getting
there
from the directions I was provided. So, with the exception of

Same thing with Street Atlas USA. They told me they use the maps
provided
by various localities, and sometimes these maps include roads that were
planned, but never built.

Yep, I think in my case the cross-over is planned, but it will be
sometime when I'm a little-old old person.


Locally, they show a road connecting two points, but actually you have to
drive about 20 miles out of the way, all but three of them on gravel
roads,
to reach the other side of that imaginary mile-long line.

Ouch!

patriarch wrote:

The best thing to do is ignore their process. Their process is designed
to automate the installation in a standard manner.

Yeah, but I spent two days picking some of the best brains on Earth trying
to figure out how to get the cable modem to do something, to no avail.
After I finally went through the ordeal of setting up Windows far enough to
run their stupid little program, it woke up. I hadn't been doing anything
wrong. Upstream just wasn't talking to me yet because I hadn't spoken the
right magic words to it. After that, I haven't needed Windows since.

When you are using anything that isn't a plain-vanilla setup, you are far
better off to put something in the middle to talk to their network. In my
case, it has always been a not terribly expensive router. Our first one

I have a not terribly expensive router. That's exactly why I bought it.
I figure if I tell them I'm running Linux, they backpedal, but if I tell
them I have my OS set up to talk to my Cheapass Ultrasuck 2000 XL router
using DHCP, then they gloss over the user config side of it and focus in on
the real issues.

I don't even have any other computers hooked to it, and I'm not using its
crappy firewall, so it's pretty pointless except as insurance against being
told I'm running an unsupported operating system.

My cynical experience says that you do NOT want the provider to label you
as 'one of those LINUX guys'.

No, you don't, although my experience with my current provider has been that
once I manage to get through the layers of drones whose job it is to weed
out the imbeciles, most of the real techs upstream are running Linux at
home.

--
Michael McIntyre ---- Silvan
Linux fanatic, and certified Geek; registered Linux user #243621
http://www.geocities.com/Paris/Rue/5407/
http://rosegarden.sourceforge.net/tutorial/

Tim wrote:

out. Numerous phones calls and emails and chat sessions with the
Verizon techs did not solve anything (The usual answer being to clear
my browser cache and power cycle the modem. Yeah, like I was not
smart enough to have already tried that myself).

Yeah, I love how my cable provider's answer to everything is to turn off the
computer and wait five minutes.

I felt that even pying the $250, I was saving money due to the loss of
aggrivation. I switched back to cable, and had no more problems.

I've never had to worry about making a choice, since I absolutely can't ever
get DSL unless I move. I've used it at enough remote locations to have a
feel for it though, and I think cable is worth the difference. Verizon DSL
is better than dial up when it works well, but cable IME is more than twice
as fast, and only half again as expensive.

--
Michael McIntyre ---- Silvan
Linux fanatic, and certified Geek; registered Linux user #243621
http://www.geocities.com/Paris/Rue/5407/
http://rosegarden.sourceforge.net/tutorial/

patriarch wrote:

Right. The address. 1 BFE Plaza East. Seriously, that place is
waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay out in the middle of nowhere.


Which is exactly where Boy Scout Camps belong. ;-)

Patriarch
Woodbadge '87



The funny thing is they are upgrading the whole camp to have running water
and septic systems. The EPA or CDC or some environmental health study
people are making them get rid of the latrines.

The even funnier thing is that we, as Cub Scouts (Webelos II, currently)
aren't even allowed to camp their by BSA regulation because we are more
than 100' from hot showers.

Hot showers.

(Nevermind that we camp there a couple three times a year at BSA-sponsored
events.)

(And yes, I had been there before, and I still spent an hour trying to
figure out where it was this last time, because there are two camps, and
the last several times we have been going to the other one.)

(Ottari vs. Powhattan)

--
Michael McIntyre ---- Silvan
Linux fanatic, and certified Geek; registered Linux user #243621
http://www.geocities.com/Paris/Rue/5407/
http://rosegarden.sourceforge.net/tutorial/

Silvan wrote:
The funny thing is they are upgrading the whole camp to have running water
and septic systems. The EPA or CDC or some environmental health study
people are making them get rid of the latrines.

Give me a break. When I was in the Boy Scouts, we cleaned the latrines
at summer camp every day with scrub brushes and pine soap. They were a
hell of a lot cleaner, odor-free, and hygenic than a lot of gas station
bathrooms I've been in. As long as they're not upstream of the water
supply, it's a non issue. Where do people think the wild animals in the
woods take a crap?

"Roy Smith" wrote in message

Where do people think the wild animals in the
woods take a crap?

Gimme a break ... Bambi, and all those other precious woodland creatures,
don't do _that_! That those steaks had hair on them at one time would
mortify the hell out of many folks these days.

--
www.e-woodshop.net
Last update: 11/06/04

Give me a break. When I was in the Boy Scouts, we cleaned the latrines
at summer camp every day with scrub brushes and pine soap. They were a
hell of a lot cleaner, odor-free, and hygenic than a lot of gas station
bathrooms I've been in. As long as they're not upstream of the water
supply, it's a non issue. Where do people think the wild animals in the
woods take a crap?

Here in Hawaii, the state has recommended (posted signs) that hikers not
swim in the pools at the bottom of the waterfalls on Oahu because of
bacteria from animal crap...

On Sun, 28 Nov 2004 13:33:47 -0500, Silvan
wrote:

Tim wrote:

out. Numerous phones calls and emails and chat sessions with the
Verizon techs did not solve anything (The usual answer being to clear
my browser cache and power cycle the modem. Yeah, like I was not
smart enough to have already tried that myself).

Yeah, I love how my cable provider's answer to everything is to turn off the
computer and wait five minutes.


Hey, at least they aren't telling you to disconnect the cable and run
your fingers over the pins to discharge any static that has built up. (No,
I'm not kidding, that was DirecWay's Indian tech support answer to just
about every call last year).

I felt that even pying the $250, I was saving money due to the loss of
aggrivation. I switched back to cable, and had no more problems.

I've never had to worry about making a choice, since I absolutely can't ever
get DSL unless I move. I've used it at enough remote locations to have a
feel for it though, and I think cable is worth the difference. Verizon DSL
is better than dial up when it works well, but cable IME is more than twice
as fast, and only half again as expensive.

Silvan wrote in
:

snip
The funny thing is they are upgrading the whole camp to have running
water and septic systems. The EPA or CDC or some environmental health
study people are making them get rid of the latrines.

The forest service has rules to follow, when the areas get this level of
intensive use. As a veteran of more than one water system/septic system
upgrade in the middle of forest service land, I tend to agree with them.

And the serious outbreak of 'flu-like symptoms' at one of our council's
camps a decade or so ago leads me to believe that not all of the hygiene
efforts were successful. That camp closed in early July, and didn't open
again that year. Pretty much over-use.

BSA camping is not, and hasn't been for a long time, a wilderness
experience. A wilderness experience is best done in very small groups,
rather than with 100 kids.

Patriarch

Silvan wrote:

J. Clarke wrote:

Just for hohos, try plugging the address if there is one into Mapquest
and see if it can give the directions.

Right. The address. 1 BFE Plaza East. Seriously, that place is
waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay out in the middle of nowhere.

Doesn't mean that there is no address. If it's taxed, if there's a way to
get mail there, if it's off a state or municipal road then there's an
address of some kind.

--
--John
Reply to jclarke at ae tee tee global dot net
(was jclarke at eye bee em dot net)