FrontLein: A Subset of My Sanity

It's been said that there is "no rest for the wicked." Well, I knew Amy was wicked. And Weiss won't freaking shut up about my tortellini salad (which I had again today). Izzy's a little too quiet and likeable. Michael Morlitz practices polygamy ("Oh! Write me down for a plus two!"), and everyone knows Tahl doesn't rest.

But me? What's my excuse? Why am I so tired? I'll give you a hint: it starts with "Com" and ends with "Cast." Comcast tech Brian took a break from playing with his toes and giggling to reply to our server testing.

He begins by explaining that the network people have helpfully "determined" something that I told them:

I sent the information you sent to our network people. What they determine is that, some Comcast customers can register and some cannot. There seems to be a "subset", if you will, of customers who cannot create accounts

A "subset," huh? Sounds pretty high-tech. Go on, Brian.

They are telling me as other Comcast subs have no problem accessing, replying to posts & registering on Jewcy.com it is probably happening to other accounts, not just Comcast customers. Specifically they are asking – What are the commonalities of the customers who can-NOT register & reply to posts?  Are they using older systems?  Are they using Firefox or some other non-standard web viewing app?  They are also requesting that they need the subscribers logs to complete the picture. The sub experiencing the problem would need to enable logging on their pc – then make the attempts to register as a new user, post a response to an article – same set of tests that this one runs through.  Then you could email those logs to Comcast for review. There seem to be other factors here that are affecting these logins that we are not seeing.

I was pretty racked after that whole "subset" ordeal, and now they're laying this on me? Okay, so I know only about less than 10 users experiencing this issue (all Comcast subscribers, thank-you-very-much), but less than 5 that I'd feel comfortable asking to do this.

Basically what Brian's networking coworkers are asking is for our users to go out of their way, spend time and braincells logging internet traffic, and testing our site. "A likely story," I said. "These people are Jewish," I said.

So that's the way it's gotta be. Comcast's gonna hate like that. Okay, I can handle it. We have some tricks. But in the meantime, if there's any Comcast subscriber experiencing comment-posting or account-creating problems with Jewcy.com who isn't afraid of packet sniffers such as Ethereal, just post a comment (HA! HA!) or email me at craig@jewcy.com and Amy will respond by making fun of you. Also, if there's any NY Metropolitan area users experiencing these problems, we wanna hear from you too.