Internet Service Providers (what was the middle word?)
July 28th, 2005 @ 7:58 by NormMonkey
From the first-real-entry department:
Let’s start the day - and my first blog entry ever - with a story. The unfinished tale of How the Internet found it’s way to NormMonkey’s new place.
WARNING: This is a looong and boooring post. Beware the leopard.
Let’s go back to Friday the 15th, before I had ever even thought of starting this blog thingy. Wait. Quick flashback to May 31st which is when I first made arrangements for my phone and DSL internet service to be transferred to my new house. On the 15th of July.
FRIDAY the 15th
Right. On with the story. At work, my IMAP connection to my home mail dies in the morning, but I’m expecting this. I start thinking, “How nice it’ll be to sit out on the deck with a tall glass of iced tea, surfing the web on my laptop.” [As I write this entry on the 28th I still have no internet at home.] After work I go to my old apartment and pack my servers, then move them to the new house. I plug in the DSL modem. No sync. Hrm. OK, let’s try the phone. No dialtone. Grrr. OK, let’s try another jack. No dialtone. Grrrrr.
OK, out of the basement, up to the 2nd floor master bedroom. Here there’s a dialtone. Downstairs to the phone jack in the kitchen. Dialtone, again. The dialtone sounds strong, but there’s a little bit of static there, too. I’m not sure if this is my cordless phone or the line itself. I try changing cordless channels, but it doesn’t seem to help much.
This Friday experience foreshadows the bouts of stabbing pain and intense, throbbing headaches of what will come for my ailing internet dreams.
I have all the servers set up in my basement. I don’t want three computers running in the bedroom, nor in the kitchen. I don’t wanna be cutting drywall and running ethernet all over the house right now, either. I leave the DSL modem on the floor in the empty bedroom to see if it’ll sync. No luck right away, but maybe it needs some time.
SUNDAY the 17th
I’ve been checking on the DSL modem from time to time. Once in awhile I actually do see a sync light, but it doesn’t last. Today I call my DSL Service Provider (DSLSP from now on) to let them know what’s going on. After going through all the usual lame troubleshooting steps that every support person has to make you go through to be sure you’re not a moron - try turning your computer off and on; try turning your router off and on; try resetting the modem; scandisk and defrag; check CDROM drive for coffee - they log a trouble ticket with the phone company (from whom they get the line & equipment for the DSL connection).
In the meantime, I decide to get the servers up and running to await the (what I naively belive to be shortly forthcoming) internet connection. When I try to power up my NetWinder, the hard drive starts making a classic click-cachunk noise of death. Of course it would be the original 2GB HDD with all of the OS and configuration on it, not the 20GB one I added with most of the data. Ah, well, at least I have (some of) my data. My web server, email server, everything-else-server are dead, like a piece of burnt toast that got left on a plate outside overnight and pecked at by birds and rodents.
THURSDAY the 21st
The phone company gets ahold of me today at work to tell me that my line signal is abysmal (their word, not mine). The techie kicks the speed down to 500kb/s, which at least gets me a sync light. We book an appointment to have a tech. visit my house on Tuesday P.M. to troubleshoot and repair onsite. When I get home I find my DSLSP has left me a message regarding the Tuesday appointment. I talk to my boss and arrange to go home for Tuesday afternoon to meet the tech.
MONDAY the 25th
When I get home from work today I find in my mailbox a piece of paper from the phone company telling me that they showed up from 14h15 to 14h30 “to check [my] DSL”. Great. I grab the phone to complain to the phone company. No dialtone. W00t! Awesome. Thanks for comin’ out when I’m not home, instead of when we arranged to meet, and breaking my phone service even more instead of fixing it. I get on my cellphone and try to reach the phone company but their customer service department is closed. Emily the helpful automated voice-response attendant will not let me get through to a human operator.
I call the DSLSP to let them know. They’re sympathetic; they tell me to call *611 to get a repair. I politely inform them that you can’t call *611 without a dialtone. Oh, right. Well, you can try their number from a payphone. I note with a steady voice that I already tried from my cellphone and couldn’t get past Emily the helpful attendant. I ask them if they can get in touch with the phone company, sort this out, and then let me know where I should be tomorrow afternoon. They say they can’t help until the dialtone gets restored. I try to suppress the flames coming out of my nostrils and decide to call both the phone company and DSLSP tomorrow morning.
TUESDAY the 26th
I call the phone company. They can’t find any record of the technician attempting to visit, nor can they find any record of a request to HAVE one visit. However, they can see that my internet service is running at full speed. WTF? I tell them that’s not likely, what with the lack of dialtone and all. They say, “You’re Michael Whatzislastname, right”? How ’bout NO! They then tell me that they’re the internet service department and that with a dialtone problem I should really be calling the phone department. [later on I discover that my DSLSP works with a separated division of the phone company that you cannot reach by calling the phone company. Only DSLSP can talk to them since I’m not the client; DSLSP is]
I phone the phone company (phone division) and give them my correct name, number and address. I dare not speak of Michael Anybody for fear of mass confusion. I tell them my story so far. They can’t find any records [this separate division that handles DSLSP is *really* separated, apparently] but agree that no dialtone is a Bad Thing[TM] and dispatch a tech. to resolve that problem.
I get home later that day and discover a dialtone. W00t! Now, at least, I’m back to where I started on the 15th. Now I call the DSLSP to let them know the dialtone is back and arrange to have another appointment made to solve the original problem.
WEDNESDAY the 27th
Yesterday: I call the DSLSP to discover that an appointment has been booked for Sunday the 31st. Apparently they left a message for me at home. I suggest that it would have been nice for them to have confirmed this date with their client, who for all they know might have been out of town for the weekend. I ask for their customer relations department to arrange for some sort of credit for all my lost internet. They say they won’t deal with credit arrangements until the incident is complete (makes sense) but assure me that they’ll call me when it’s all over and I have full internet. I take down the friendly CR agent’s name and extension just in case.
We’ll see what happens on Sunday. I’m not holding my breath. It’s all good, though. I didn’t need that half month of internet service, anyways.
