tekHedd – the blog

Update: Ha ha ha ha! Earthlink cuts half its staff!

I did it! I finally did it!

When I originally signed up for Earthlink, I knew about their legendary technical support service. Legendarily bad, that is. But the deal was too good: 6M dsl, phone, unlimited long distance, cheap… Granted, I never could log in to the Usenet newsfeeds, but it was indeed fast. Their tech support ran me in circles for weeks, and eventually I gave up completely on Usenet. But, it was fast and cheap, and I was reasonably happy.

Then, I moved to a new location where this package was not available. Terrified by the thought of a $149 early termination fee, I allowed my contract to be extended to 12 months and downgraded to 160k DSL. Aaaaugh! Soooo Slooooow!

After updating my billing information, I started getting a monthly email “warning” me that my credit card was about to expire, but it still worked. Earthlink’s people seemed unable to fix this, so I just deleted the email every month. But, when I got home last night, my DSL was not working. Ugh. After a half hour on hold (during which I played quite a lot of Super Swing Golf), the “technician” on the other end informed me that my account was “inactive”, and transferred me to the billing department.

The billing department was closed for the night.

Today, the billing department and the web interface both inform me that my account is active and up to date. Duh! The billing department helpfully suggests that I use the free 30 day trial of Norton Antivirus, and helpfully recommends that I install all of the Earthlink bundled software on my windows PC. Somehow I don’t think either of those things is going to help. Enough! Enough of the second worst phone support in the world. (SBC still holds first place.) Enough of paying slightly more for one tenth of the bandwidth! It’s already not working, so what better time to switch?

I won’t relate the entire Saga Of The Termination Of My Earthlink Service, because it is epic. I recall explaining several times that, yes, it’s worth $149 US to terminate my service now, even though I only have 35 days left in my contract. Yes, I did leap for joy after writing down my confirmation number! Goodbye Earthlink! Hello, Front Range Internet!

Google “tank guns and shit”. I dare you.

During the discussion following the injury and hospitalization of DaMann’s XBox 360 hospitalization of DaMann’s XBox, it came to my attention that many people are recommending not using power strips with XBoxes. Well, technically, they’re afraid of surge suppressors, but that’s clearly bogus, so it’s obvious that the alleged problem is power strip fan-out.

We all know, or should know, that daisy-chaining power strips is bad. But using one power strip directly off a modern wall outlet, can that be so bad? I decided to measure it.

So, I got out the trusty volt meter, clipped it onto the leads of my XBox 360, and measured the voltage with the power off and on.

Power off (at power strip): 119.6V

Great! I have a true 120V line voltage! Some places have line voltage as low as 104V, if they are running off of three phase power. This should be OK though, as the XBox power supply is rated to work down to 100V.

So now I turned on the rest of the setup, all plugged into the power strip:

• XBox 360 elite
• Plasma TV
• Onkyo “surround in a box” system with powered sub (aka “the space heater”)

Everything powered on (at the power strip): 118.0

Wow, a 1.6V drop! Acceptable. Now I’m curious! So, I powered everything back off, moved the XBox’s plug to the wall socket, and did the test again. Same results!

Everything off (XBox in wall socket): 119.6
Everything on (XBox in wall socket): 118.0

So, all of my voltage drop was due to the distance from the breaker box
to my outlet.

The verdict is, if you’re worried about “low voltage” ruining your XBox, make sure it is on its own circuit. Here’s a picture of the test setup (at the end, when I was measuring voltage at the wall.):

X360 Power Strip Debunking Setup

No, the kitty litter is not essential to this measurement.

You’re probably wondering why in this picture the meter is showing 120.5. In fact, I was getting a little about 1 volt plus or minus of noise on the line, and chose the average value. So, take these numbers with about a volt of measurable line noise on a cheap meter.

Your mileage may vary, especially if you have 104V mains. Do not daisy chain power strips. Do not overload outlets. For best results, make sure your XBox power supply has plenty of air for cooling, and is on a fireproof surface.