Sigh. The last few days have not gone well.

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So, it all began a few days ago when my modem decided to limit my time on the internet, dropping the signal and kicking me offline. It did it three or four times in one 24 hour period, so I called my internet provider, Time Warner and informed them that my modem had somehow developed an overzealous and random sense of trying to keep me offline. They set up an appointment for someone to come and check the modem or replace it, if necessary. Pretty cool, right?

Well the guy shows up, to my amazement, EARLY and does his thing, but he'd parked his van blocking the neighbor's driveway. When my housemate, Tina, informed him that he probably should move the van or the neighbors might call the police, his reply was, "Let 'em call the cops. I don't care." So he fiddled with my modem for a bit then decided that he'd have to replace it as opposed to fixing it. He went back downstairs and was heard, again by my housemate to mutter, : "I guess I better move the F***ing van then." He moved the van and checked the connections at the box mounted on the outside of the house and then came back upstairs with a different modem, which he proceeded to swap in for my faulty one.

All the time he was here he had a smartass attitude that gave me the sense that he believed that he was so much smarter and better than I and considered me a dumbass because of the questions I asked him about the modem. After he was finished he left, still muttering. The new modem is slow even though my speed tests all come back as right on the money for what I'm paying, but pages now load slightly slower than paint dries. I took my computer to the doctor, thinking that maybe it had picked up a virus or two. It had, but they were minor ones and the tech who worked on it said he basically did some cleaning and removed the viruses and cleared some other stuff out of the files and stuff. Hey, I'm a computer dummy, okay? If he'd told me he'd shampooed it and applied a good cream rinse I'd probably have believed him. LOL

It didn't help. I cleared my history and cookies and one other thing that escapes me right now. That didn't help either. I spent the better part of an afternoon on the phone with several different tech support people, some of whom seemed to not get what I was telling them and spoke english (sort of) with a marked accent I won't identify, but you know what I mean. No help there either. While all this was going on, my mouse decided to lose contact with it's battery, (it's cordless... the mouse, not the battery) so I had to mess with that until I achieved a measure of success and got it working again.

Then... while I was on the phone, the back cover decided to divorce itself from the rest of my cel phone, so I had to mess with THAT. I got it back on with the aid of copious amounts of gorilla tape. It looks like crap, but it ain't gonna come off accidently again. Hey! It works! That's all I care about.

Then... a meeting of some of my old D&D/card playing/movie watching friends went down the drain. Two of five showed up and three no showed with no notice. Fortunately, the two that DID show up were the two I really wanted to see again, so...

Now all this might seem somewhat trivial to a lot of you, but it all cascaded down on me more or less in the same 24-48 hour period and it upset my carefully, meticulously planned boredom. I DID register a complaint about the tech guy who came to solve the modem problem. Sorry, but you don't drop an F bomb where customers can hear it and you don't leave the customers feeling like they're stupid.

Yes, I am quite aware that a lot of you have things going on that make my little troubles seem like nothing, and I apologize if it seems like I'm just being petty, but what passes for my life DEPENDS on having a good internet connection and relatively fast page loading. When one is disabled (I have bad COPD) and spends most of every day cooped up trying to breathe, things like the internet keep one from going batshit nutso.

Okay. That's my little pity party. I hope you all have a happy memorial day weekend.

Catherine Linda Michel

Comments

Cheaper to buy your own cable modem

It takes less than a year of rental fees on a cable modem to make up the cost of an 80 dollar cable modem (I got mine from Costco, a state of the art docsis 3.0 compliant Motorola washboard modem.)

I am on Comcast but since they plan on buying TWC they are pretty much the same.

Frankly I would use my local cable provider over Concast but my partner is addicted to TCM HD and only Concast has it.