August 05, 2003
thanks, SBC!
wa-hey, the new DSL line is working! And DNS changes for fredshouse are trickling in! It's all good! Or...not. It started to go queer when I noticed that when the phone rang, my VPN connection broke. Weird. Then the data line went belly up. Now, we don't even have dial tone. That's right, the phone's dead too. It's like a cheap slasher flick, what next, the lights?! Man, I've *never* had a problem with my POTS service. This is ridiculous. Hello, Comcast Cable? Oh wait, never mind.
So SBC customer service has an amazingly deep IVR system where you can get your phone problems debugged without ever talking to a human. It was so good, it was able to tell me that yup, my phone service had a problem. Well I'll be. Truck roll, 4 hour appointment window, wasted morning in your near future. All without a single homo sapiens lifting a finger. I guess that promised land of productivity and leisure is upon us, at least if you work at Ma Bell.
It crossed my mind that there might be telesales karma involved here. Right before it all went awry, I had a call from an SBC person trying to sell me long distance service. I was kind of rude, this being the fourth or so time that I've had to tell them "no". I told her it would be good if she could put a flag on my account requesting they didn't call me about this anymore. Y'know, maybe they have a big red button on their console, labeled "I'll fix you, a-hole", 10,000 volt transient down the twisted pair and bye bye customer premises equipment. You think maybe?
Anyway, I appointed Fred in charge of meeting the service guy. She may not tear him a new orifice, but I assure you she's fully capable. She knows a technology driven lifestyle improvement when she sees one, heh. Hopefully by this time tomorrow we'll be back on the grid and cheerfully fielding those great offers for long distance timeshare debt consolidation service.