Shea had part of a school project due today. Her school has a web portal where she gets and saves her homework. Just as she was finishing up last night, my DSL decided it wasn't going to work.
It's gone off sporadically in the past for seconds or even minutes, but it always comes back. Well, last night it didn't come back. I put her to bed and said when it came back I would finish the saving and printing of her paper for her. I waited two hours and nothing, so I called customer service. They did their over the phone diagnostics and that didn't solve it, so I had to make an appointment for someone to come out.
I wavered between hopeful and cynical that they would get an appointment quickly for me. (But they did, for this morning, between 8:00 and 12:00.) Then one wonders whether the person they send out will be on time, call beforehand like you ask them to, then know how to fix the issue, etc.
Well at 8:02 AM I got a call. I told the guy I was dropping my daughter at school and would be at home in 15 minutes. He was here when I got home, knew exactly what he was doing, was friendly, and changed two phone jacks that he didn't even have to. Took him about an hour and everything is done and I've got my internet back.
Now I can finish my (daughter's) homework. Mommy is learning a whole lot about electromagnets. I had to send a note with Shea for her teacher explaining that Shea did have the work done, and once my DSL was fixed I'd print it out and bring it to school today.
It used to be "my dog ate my homework." Now it's "the DSL line at my house went down."
The problem here at home was two wires that had lost their pairing, just due to age, and an open connection on one of the phone jacks inside the house. If I actually had a home phone plugged in, I probably would have noticed the problem sooner. I have the line, I just don't use it. It came with the DSL. Maybe now that everything is properly filtered I'll be able to have a home phone again. So the telemarketers have something to do.
The phone that I do have to plug in has an answering machine that can answer in English or Spanish. I used to turn it on Spanish just to hear the reactions of the callers. Anyone that knew me knew it was my phone, but strangers never thought they had the right number. Kind of funny.
And now that I think of it some more, it's very likely I will set it to answer in Spanish again.
