RANDS DO YOU LIKE SPORTS? WATER SPORTS?

seriously, i had one of these nightmare calls with earthlink on behalf of my dad. when i called, i told them exactly what to do: log into the redback and see what bitrate the head end negotiated with the modem. then roll the truck; you have a bad linecard.

90 minutes later, the guy came to the end of his script and the problem was still not resolved. then he hung up on me.

in the middle of it, he asked me how the weather was, so i asked him what he thought of his new prime minister, manmohan singh. he stammered and said "we're not allowed to discuss politics." ugh. i would have rather been interacting with a machine.

a week later someone called from the US. and yes, in the end they replaced a linecard in the CO. downtime = 1.5 weeks.

anyway... your analysis is correct. cogs get outsourced. one day iCal will write itself and you and i will get outsourced too :)