urbandruid | Entries tagged with dsl nightmare

Yes indeedy, I have. Goes like this: I've been having a problem off and on with my DSL lately, in that it keeps crapping out on me for a few hours, then coming back. It did it once Wednesday afternoon, and again today. I spent almost half an hour on the phone with my ISP, most of it involving long pauses and "hold on, let me check this" or "just a second, ma'am." Long story short- the line's okay on their end, I don't feel like going out and checking the outside line here at the house (it'll be fine too), and since they already replaced one blowed-up modem for me, I have to pay for the next one. I can get a refurbished one, which'd be cheaper, but still.

So I told the guy I'd think about it, and call them back later. And I thought about it, and thought about it- and while I was thinking, I thought, hell, let's give the poor modem a break. Turned off the surge protector, thereby cutting power to everything on the desk, modem included.

Spent a few hours cleaning out crap in the office/spare room. Come back, fiddle around with computer. See red internet light. Swear, shut down laptop.

See red internet light turn GREEN. Reach over, feel top of modem. Modem is nice and cool. Modem was HOT when it was not working. Hmm. Hmm.

Modem stops working in the afternoon, when it's hot. Starts working again when it's cooler. And it's always hot in my room- I keep the door closed so Sam won't come in and play with my power cables.

Hmm. I think the modem might be getting a chill pad of some kind, 'cause I can't afford to keep replacing these things. Besides, I like this modem, it's cute and shiny.

Current Mood: amused

Ugh...

Okay, to make a long story short:

1.) Have kidney stones. Plural. Not sure I want to know how many exactly, but it's been pretty miserable.

2.) It's too fucking hot, making the kidney stone thing even worse.

3.) I have an appointment with a specialist on the 10th, which I'm really nervous about.

4.) DSL is down, because apparently the phone company thought this would be a good time to mess with me. Yeah. I thought it was just the modem, but the ISP guys say it's the line, and I'm inclined to believe them.

5.) Mom goes to see a podietrist today for this foot thing she's got. We think we know what it is, and it could be kind of bad.

So, yeah. That's where we are. Somebody hug me?

We're in business.

I guess the ISP guys must've kicked AT&T in the ass, because when I got up this morning and tested the modem, I got a few more lights. Like, all of them.

So I'm cruising along at I'm not sure how fast, here, enjoying the fact that I don't have to keep a book by my comptuer anymore to pick up and read sections of while waiting for shit to load.

It's very cool. I'm looking at my bookmarks and thinking "where do I go now? How fast will that site load?"

The bad news is, I tried to hook up Mom's computer, Morden, and it's not gonna work. I'm pretty sure she doesn't have Ethernet or a network card, because the settings the modem instructions told me to look for and change aren't there.

I'm kind of waiting to tell her about this. I did call her and yell "It works it works it works it works!" into the phone when I got Anna connected, but, uh, I think she can wait to find out that she's gonna need a new computer.

In a word? ARGH!

The DSL/Wireless thing is gonna need its own bloody tag, I swear.

Last night they had us take the modem out to the outside wiring box and plug it in directly to the phone line there. (This took about 10 minutes and 2 different screwdriver types to open up, plus we had to listen to my neighbor's rap music while we were doing it.) All we got was a power light on the modem.

When we called the ISP people back, they said the modem was defective, and that they'd talk to the supervisor tomorrow about getting us a replacement one, and call back today with details on that.

They just called, and I'm glad I let the answering machine take it instead of picking up the phone, because I just would have started ranting at the guy.

Now they're saying they checked the line again, and AT&T didn't get their thumb out yesterday like we thought, because apparently the line's not up yet. Or something. The message was a little confusing, and I need to listen to it again when I calm down a bit.

(I'm coming down off an Advil Cold & Sinus (advil + sudafed) which I'm sure isn't helping me chill out, but I had to take it, allergies are BAD. I woke up with the same pounding sinus headache I went to bed with, and thought, okay, "that's it, gotta do something."

Anyway, ISP dude says if it's not working by tomorrow afternoon, call them back.

I'm thinking, fuck. I have to move all of my crap back into Mom's room (I only have MY phone line in my jack, not the main line, and her computer isn't (we think) wireless capable), hook all that junk up again, and then I've got a $10 bet with myself that it still won't effing work.

I guess for my own amusement I could go plug the modem back in in Mom's room and see if I get any more lights, but I think if I don't, I may throw it across the room.

I'm still trying to make up my mind who to kill, but I think it'll be whoever's fault this is over at AT&T (yes, the 7/amperstand key is working at the moment, don't faint.) Because the ISP guys have been really nice, they worked very hard last night trying to figure out what was going on, and the phone company's just... hell, I think the phone company's still trying to figure out why we dropped our long distance plan. (Um, because 1.) we have call phones, and 2.) we've called long-distance maybe twice in the last year.)

Anyway, that's where the DSL mess is, if anyone's wondering.

In other news, the cat's still occasionally trying to climb the Christmas tree, and it still doesn't have any ornaments on it, just the lights. This always happens, the light/no ornament thing, because we get lazy or busy, or both. But now we're kind of afraid of what she'll do with the ornaments, so... no presents under the tree yet either, even though we have them, because again, not sure what she'll do with them. I may throw some ornaments up tonight, just because I want them there, and if she's going to keep climbing the tree, we need to know about it.

I don't want to bitch about my vacation, I really don't, but this is kind of sucking a little. I'm supposed to be relaxing, having fun, and not be stressed out.

And I hate Sudafed. I swear, somebody needs to invent an allergy pill that 1.) works, 2.) I can take with everything else I'm on, and 3.) doesn't hype me up or knock me flat.

Current Mood: annoyed

...Well, this is sucking.

I think my !@#$ing network card is too old, because it's giving me weird errors. I called the ISP once, and they told me to take off the splitter filter I had on the modem line, because it doesn't need it. Told me that should solve my problem. Naturally, it didn't.

By that time I was too tired and fed up to call them back, because I pretty much know what they're going to tell me, and I figured I'd totally lose it if I had to hear it.

So I went and watched the deleted scenes on Order of the Phoenix, and then randomly decided I'd watch "The Gathering" from Babylon 5.

...Londo's hair was really scary back then. I'd forgotten that, somehow.

Anyway. Mom's off in an hour, and I was really hoping I'd have this set up and all figured out by now.

I think I do have it figured out, and it's not good.

I can't find any specs on my wireless card, other than what the wireless network thingy under network connections says- "ORiNOCO mini PCI card." The driver's from 2001, and something tells me that's not good enough. So, yeah, the saga of my tech kind of sucking continues.

Argh!

Either the ISP guys didn't ask the right questions when we signed up, or we didn't ask the right questions. Whatever, I guess one of us needs to call them back and find out just how screwed we are. I figure I've been dealing with this all day, maybe I'll make Mom do it.

If we can't get this figured out I'm just going back to my crappy dialup in my room. Right now I have all my stuff in her room, on this kind of rickety old secretary desk thing, I can hardly see the screen from where I am, and in general the setup bites. Oh yeah and I'm on the main phone line- which, you know, wouldn't matter if I could get the effing DSL to work...

*headdesk*

Current Mood: aggravated

Hey, guys.

So Mom and I finally got fed up with our less than stellar dial-up and decided to get ourselvs DSL for Christmas. Not that we celebrate Christmas exactly, because, you know, agnostic and lapsed pagan. But we have a tree, have always had a tree even though we never did the church thing (and my cat's new name is "Get away from the fucking Christmas tree!" but that's a whole 'nother story.)

Anyway. So we finally got our stuff together and called our ISP last week to see about getting DSL- we knew they had it, just weren't sure they'd have it in our area. If they hadn't, we'd have been stuck with the phone company, who a.) get enough of our money and b.) kind of suck in that "we're trying to take over the world, tee-hee" kind of way.

We still have to pay them $4 or something a month to run the DSL through their line, but whatever. They're a hell of a lot more expensive than my ISP, too, and not nearly as nice or easy to deal with on the phone. I hate calling tech support- had some very bad experiences when I was a teenager- and I will call these people.

So we talked to the ISP guy, and he explained how it worked- they told the phone company to switch over our line, and when that was done they'd let us know. He said it usually took about 3 weeks. So imagine my surprise when Fex-Ex showed up yesterday with a box addressed to me that appeared to contain a modem. (I called Mom, just to make sure it wasn't a Christmas present for me, but I was pretty sure what it was.)

Then, around quarter to 5:00, I got a couple emails from my ISP. One says "we shipped your modem yesterday from a place in state." Another says "Your DSL should be activated on 12/19, please make sure your modem is hooked up, and call us if it doesn't work."

THEN- while I'm running around the living room going "this is cool, but I have no clue what I'm doing!" the doorbell rings.

UPS. With the books we ordered from Barns and Noble. "DSL for Dummies" which unfortunately is missing its table of contents, and has a 2002 copyright date, damnit, and "Networking for Dummies." Because we're going to need a router, and PC cards. Or at least a PC card- Mom's gonna have to get a new computer, which she's kind of been looking at anyway.

So, here we are. December 19. I didn't think I'd have this to play with before I had to go back to school, so I'm very jazzed.

I'm going to go read some stuff in our books (and an older one I bought for XP when I got this computer) and then I'm going to go haul Anna and her stuff into Mom's room and see if I can get it to work.

If not, the dialup's still going, so I'll be back. But... yeah.

Anyone have any advice about routers, networking, anything like that? Or other DSL-y stuff I might need to know? Please share. Thanks. :)

(As an aside, I discovered that Darth there is the closest to a 'happy' icon I have. The rest are a bit... dare I say 'moody'? Except the writing one, which just doesn't quite fit. I might need to work on this.)