For those of you who think that computer people never have computer problems ...
Our DSL has been broken this week. It'll sync up for a few minutes -- long enough, say, to send/recieve E-mail, visit a few Web pages, post a blog entry -- before it drops the connection and then syncs up again.
Naturally, while I was away at PDC, our entire software-development paradigm changed on the Macintosh, which means that I have to download two files -- one about a gigabyte, one two gigabytes -- before I can do any work on the Mac at all. Without the ability to maintain a persistent connection, this hasn't been working so well.
I spent Monday on the phone with a technical-support guy. We unplugged all of the phones in the house. I tried connecting the DSL modem to the wall with phone cords of varying lengths. I walked around the house and connected the modem to different phone jacks. I waited for a callback as he called a super-secret tiger team at SBC and talked telephone-technician talk. Eventually he decided that my DSL modem was bad, and sent me a replacement.
The replacement got here today; I plugged it in with great anticipation. If anything, the problem is even worse.
Now what? I'm sure tomorrow's answer will be "there's a problem with your phone lines". But the phone line to my office connects directly to the service entrance for the house; I installed it myself last year. I've rechecked all of the connections on that line, and disconnecting everything else in the house didn't make any difference. What do I do if they fob me off by telling me that it's my problem?
Going to the library, last year's WiFi refuge-of-last-resort while we were waiting for DSL to be activated, won't work this time now that I've switched from a Powerbook to a desktop Mac. I think they'd notice me trying to wheel in a cart with the CPU, keyboard, and monitor ...
Posted by Kevin at September 21, 2005 10:32 PM