1/27/11

So, I was without the intergoogles from Friday evening, right? Monday I had a look into Charter Communications’ offer of some kind of bundle to get our home phone, cable, and interweb access all on one bill for something like $120.00 a month for two years. I guess it looked OK. I told mom, “I guess it looks OK.” but since we both hate change, we did nothing about it. Tuesday evening she and I were still discussing it. When she suggested that she wanted a small TV for the kitchen, I said we ort to go to Radio Shack and see if new TVs had antennae or what and ask if they had something similar to the dead modem... but, less dead of course. She thought that was a cracking good idea so we headed to Benbrook. We forwent stopping at Wal-Mart for cat litter and stuff and headed straight to Da Shack. As I was making what turned out to be an illegal left turn into the parking lot, I thought, “This doesn't seem like a good place for a left turn.” The flashing red and blue lights in my mirror confirmed my suspicion. I handed over my insurance card and made sure he saw me take off my seatbelt to get to my wallet. He asked if I still lived on... um, my street and I confirmed that I did. When I handed him my driver’s and concealed handgun licenses, he asked if I had my gun on me at that time. I told him I did, hoping mom hadn't heard the question. He ‘splained why he’d stopped me and asked if I had seen the “No Left Turn” sign. I said I had not seen it and he shrugged an acknowledgment that it is hard to see, especially in the dark. He let me off with a warning and hopped back in his car. I turned into a parking spot and we went into Da Shack. I said to the sales dude, “I have two questions, 1) do you have TVs which will pick up antenna broadcasts and 2) do you have anything like this (holding up the dead modem)?” All three sales folk said, almost in unison, “We have that very modem.” I acknowledged the excellence of that and we went to look at TVs. Mom picked one and an antenna then we headed to the counter where a modem was waiting. When the bill came to over $300.00, mom said, “You’re buying dinner.” I said I'd gladly buy the burgers at Burger King since we’d already decided that was where we were going. We went to said eatery and ordered. I, of course, had to be difficult and ask that they leave off “The Devil’s Doo-Doo,” AKA mustard, from my Texas Double Cheese Burger. When the food arrived at the table, I looked and there was indeed “Devil’s Doo-Doo” on my burger. I looked at the receipt and saw plain as day “- Mustard” on it. Had that not been there, I might have gone ahead and eaten it. I took it back. They made me a new burger, an unsolicited upgrade to a Jalapeño Bacon Double Cheese Burger for free I might add. I ate it and immediately regretted the whole thing. Yeah, it was a good burger, but the plain old Whopper is better. I'll know next time. Anyhoo, when we got to the house, mom said to forgo the TV because she had to clear a spot for it. I went up and hooked up the modem. It didn't work. Well, it worked but it wouldn't connect to the dubya-coms. I sighed and picked up the phone to call AT&T tech support. After an hour or so of talking to “Dennis,” if-that-is-your-real-name-Ranjeeshnahoolapimapetalan, he declared it a second level support issue and transferred me. 2^nd level support was answered by a woman, most likely here in the states, obviously black, and very helpful. I have no idea what she said her name was. OK, here I'm going to be slightly racist I'm afraid. It was one of those “ethnic” names that black people make up for their children, probably a normal word mispronounced. Like: Esophagus but pronounced “ee-so-pee-HA-gus.” Anyhoo, like I said, she was very helpful and to be honest her accent was such that for most of the call I couldn't tell her ethnicity. It wasn't until near the end of the call that she relaxed, or got tired of faking it, and slipped into... I don't know, a patois I guess. I can't really put my finger on it. And it really isn't as important as I'm making it out to be. In fact, I'll shut up about it now. So, she’s tried a bunch of stuff but nothing is working. As I'm realizing that it might be that I entered the password in lower case when my notes are clearly in upper case, I ask if that might be the problem. “Well, no. Not for this issue,” she says. “It might effect you when we actually make a connection though.” She asked me to re-try the “Connect” button, which I do, and voila! It works! She has me try to connect to a website, which I do, and it connects! Huzzahs all around. I thanked her for her help and we disconnected. Of course I was still screwed since I'd left my laptop at work. I decided to reconnect the hamster 3, or dog 4, or... whatever, the cable I'd run from the rounder to my room when I'd bought this current laptop and couldn't remember the wireless password. I'd give the old Vista laptop another go. It worked, more or less. Unfortunately Interweb Exploiter kept hanging up on Memebase.com as I was trying to catch up on my funnies. I'll spare you the details, but suffices to say there is one less Vista laptop in the world now. I didn't make it three hours using Tiny and Flaccid again after just a few years of Linux. Fuck Bill Gates, and fuck Microsoft. So, that’s the story of how I got back on the intergoogles.