Helen Martin’s Blog

It’s not as bad as being without a car, or a washing machine, or coffee. But, being without the internet is a big fat drag.

How many times per day - per hour - did I find myself stymied by my cyber-isolation. I suppose I could have called the library and asked how many strawberries are in a pint, but I couldn’t bring myself to hunt for the phone book (since I couldn’t look up the telephone number online.) Most of what I wanted to find turned out to be unnecessary, or it could wait until the problem was fixed. But I’m so very used to getting my information - vital and frivolous - immediately, that it felt like I was continuously tripping on the cracks in the sidewalk and being a little surprised by it each time.

It was nearly excruciating trying over and over to get the problem fixed and beginning every interaction with each of the various service personnel with the time honored ritual of unplugging modem. Of course when the phone company isn’t sending the correct (or any) signal to your ISP, unplugging the modem is rather ineffective.

I sound like I’m the one who had to do the talking. Nope. Only twice - once on the phone and once when Qwest sent one of their techs all the way over to our house to unplug our modem for us; presumably in case we didn’t quite get it unplugged *all the way* the first three dozen times.

He was going to leave me with the recommendation of buying a new modem, but I called Ken at work and had the tech talk to him.

(When you’re married to the smartest person you’ve ever met - someone who can do anything - it is really hard to make people believe it’s true and to not just assume you’re incredibly biased, or newlyweds, or both. Like Dorothy in Oz, they have to find it out for themselves.)

Eventually Ken received a call from someone not contractually obligated to start at page one of the trouble shooting manual. This led to a satisfying conference call between Ken and the two companies in which Ken got the pleasure of hearing Ms. Qwest-Chick tell Mr. ISP-Dude, “Mr. Martin knows exactly what he’s talking about.”

Ahhh. Validation from the someone at the source of all the trouble. He got that woman’s direct dial number (about the only thing that would keep us their customers) and it was down hill from there.