Phone and Internet Woes
Earlier this week I regaled you with the tale of a vicious thunderstorm that ravaged Central Texas last weekend. It was the most intense thunderstorm we've had so far this year. (I couldn't even tell you when we had one to rival it, though I'm pretty sure the answer is somewhere in the last storm season.) In that story, I believe I mentioned that my telephone service (and my Internet!) went down. I may have implied, through my lack of mention later on, that all is now groovy in Grooveville.
If I did imply this (or if you inferred it), please accept my apology, for this rant will seem to come from left field.
Generally speaking, I think I'm a pretty patient person. There are exceptions to this. For example, if I'm in a bad mood, everything irritates me and you're wasting my time just by breathing in my vicinity. As a patient person, I can stand in line at a grocery store and wait my turn. I can be put on hold with no complaints. In the realm of customer service, if you name something that requires patience, I can do it with very little issue.
However, when a storm knocks out a phone service Saturday night / Sunday morning, and it's still not working by Thursday? Yeah, that's stretching even my patience.
In truth, I can live without my phone service for quite some time. Lately, it seems that the only people who call me are bill collectors for a former roommate who hasn't lived with me in more than five years. (Why they have my number as a point of contact for her after all this time escapes me.) And if I need to call someone? Well, as evil as they are, I do have a cell phone that seems to have seen more use this week than in the nearly four years that I've owned it.
What's making me growly about my phone service being down is that my Internet, which is DSL and thus connected to my phone line, is unstable at best. And that's when it connects at all. At one point on Sunday, it seemed to be up and running, just as fine as you please. (So screw the phone side of it.) But all week, the connection hasn't stayed up for more than 45 seconds at a time. It's getting on my nerves.
So last night I gave in and called in a service ticket. (Yeah, yeah, what took me so long... I'm telling you, I'm patient! And lazy.) Only thing is... when it asked me if I was having trouble with the voice side of my line or the DSL side, it didn't give me the option of "both" -- so I picked the one that's been the least dependable... the voice side. What bugs me is that I have a feeling they're going to fix the voice side (they're supposed to show up at some point tomorrow) and my DSL side will still be unstable. And I have a live podcast to do tomorrow. I will cry, and not in the manly way. (In truth, if this happens, I can reschedule the episode for next Saturday.)
It's very frustrating to think I have a net connection, but the moment I try to do something with it, the evil red light starts blinking to indicate that the connection isn't there after all. I feel like it's laughing at me: "Ha, ha! You thought I was connected. Fooled you!"
After a Herculean struggle to check Plurk, I finally managed to post a message stating my current hatred of the phone company. In truth, I don't know that I hate them. I suppose if I had called this in on Sunday when my phone first went down, I'd be in Happyville by now. Silly me, thinking that they'd already know about a thunderstorm that knocked out service for their customers.
Now that I've sufficiently beaten that dead horse, I'm going to close this entry. Murder mystery tomorrow. Joy. Podcast to follow, if my internet behaves. I'll prolly post the invite here, if I think about it.
If not, I'll see you on Monday, Dear Journal!