aTypical Joe: a gay New Yorker living in the rural South

Tuesday, July 25, 2006

Down & out

Sitting in my car in a parking lot mooching off someone else’s internet, I brought the dogs along to keep me company. I’ve been reduced to this state of affairs by a thunderstorm last night that - after four calls and as many hours on the phone with tech support - I find has apparently knocked out the ethernet port on my DSL modem.

How did they figure it out? The ethernet light was not lit on the front of the modem. I swear to you I said as much to the first technician I talked to. Not a great introduction to Windstream.

But it gets worse. They tell me, too, that I have not purchased a support contract (I don’t recall being offered one though I have to admit that if they did I would likely have turned it down) so it will cost me $100 and take who knows how long to get it here.

Angry as all get out I demanded that my phone service and DSL service be cancelled immediately. He said I’d have to call another number. Tomorrow! It’s after business hours…

Much as I hate them, I called the cable company to get cable broadband. No luck. The fiber’s close, but not here yet. That’s better then when I moved here three years ago; at that time they sold it to me and came to install it before telling me they didn’t have it.

So I called BellSouth. No dice (I’m not in BellSouth’s service area). This is what the American telecom industry (and Ted Stevens) calls competition!

I’m not one of those who blogs at work. It’s not that I don’t believe in it it’s just that I’m too busy working at work. I’ve told a neighbor that I’d swap my riding mower for his couch and broadband tomorrow night so I will hopefully get something posted then, but it looks like I’m a blogger out of luck for the next little while. I’ll keep you posted as I can…