We received no emails and when we moved from California our order status online was saying it was nearly done with the second to last step. The last step is them sending us our "gateway" which appears to be a glorified proprietary DSL modem with a built in mini-operating system. Anyway, we got to New Orleans and tired as anything, grimey from road grime and ready to puke if anyone even mentioned cross country radio stations we checked out our new home and collapsed happily onto the only thing we unpacked that night, namely our mattress. and one computer

The next morning we climbed out of bed and hooked up the phone, and while I unpacked things and made a general mess of the house, Callei called the DSL people to find out when the gateway would be showing up, they said 'what gateway?' Callei screamed.

We calmed down and the telephone voice told us that they had tested the phone line on the 18th of November and because it failed they'd just canceled the account, no email or anything, just oh well, sorry, no banana. I screamed. Of course it took 3 hours on hold and 5 people to find this out

So we re-upped the account had them start the process all over again and called Cox cable to get a cable modem connection in the interim. Did I mention we have two DSL Modems and a cable modem, all I needed them to do was turn on service at their end, and in the case of the cable deal send a guy out to run a cable line from the pole to the house because the house didn't have a cable line installed yet.

The cable company said 'Sure, we can have a guy out tomorrow but we can't turn on broadband service for another two weeks because were buying someone else and all the blood has rushed from our service organ to our corporate takeover organ.' My vocal cords were tired and Callei was clenching her teeth so instead or primal screams we just hissed this time. I said forget it and hung up.

We called Earthlink and suffered on an unstable dial-up connection that we could only use at the wee hours of the night because we only have the one phone line and were waiting on seven or eight important phone calls a day. Mostly moving related crap or business stuff which couldn't be dealt with on a phone tag basis, and we were waiting on D*****V to call us back and tell us they were sending the gateway.

Dial-up sucks. If I could do one philanthropic thing for the internet community at large, it would be to give high-speed reliable service to everyone, oh and free porn of course, that's what the 'net is for right?

So we're waiting on the evil DSL people, I'm checking the status screen online every night after the business world has given up for the day, and in the meantime we're putting the house together piece by piece. Ever tried to get road grime and the smell of Texas freeways out of your pillows?

Don't even get me started about returning the moving van, that could be an article in itself.

We waited about a week before we called and complained. They said 'any day now'. We waited another week. Callei woke up early one morning and called, they quoted themselves "any day now". We spent hours daydreaming ways to torture the various people who were peeing in our digital pool. Callei updated her will to include sending her bowels to the phone company who were the ones who had to provision (e.g.: flip a software switch) our phone line. I got better at throwing butter knives in a threatening manner.

We stayed away from the phone, the internet and the bloody cold outside world for a few days and had alot of sex. In retrospect I'm not as upset about the whole net delay as I sound when I put it that way...after a while though the wait got to us and even our scorpionic libidos were affected. and we ran out of snack food

I checked the status page, again in the wee hours of the night, and 'lo and behold! It said the Gateway had been shipped! I danced around a bit and then went to follow the paper trail and see where in 'airmail land' it was. Apparently it was sitting on my front porch in -get this- Long Beach, Ca. I gave up, I wrote down every phone number I could find and went to bed.

In the morning I called the airmail people and told them my story. You couldn't ask for a nicer phone voice, she was kind and caring and took down my forwarding address and said "sure, we'll have it to you as soon as possible". I danced again, this time nekkid because I had leapt out of bed to make the call. Then I went to put something warm on those bits that aren't meant to go flopping around in weather that cold.

The next day I risked being in the way of an important phone call and checked the airmail tracking page during the day, it was still in California, but I figured 'what the heck, it's probably waiting to be shipped out with the night post, should be here in two days max.' Life is good!

Two days later I call to find out what's going on, the lady at airmail tells me that they still have the package, they just need D******V to call and OK the shipping charge so it can be sent out. I call D*****V, at this point I'm still calm. When I get through the push this button to go to hell, or this button just to visit purgatory entry service on the phone, callei grabs it out of my hand and starts to explain, then she winces, tells me which tune they've turned into muzak this week and sits back to wait on hold. you guessed it! 35 minutes on hold that time

After hell has frozen over, someone comes onto the phone, listens to Callei patiently and calmly explain the situation, and the phone voice promptly puts her back on hold, then hangs up on us. I was not amused. 35 minuteso f Barry Manilow can really kill a persons sense of humor

We call back, wait through the muzak, re-explain and get put back on hold, this time we've been escalated to a higher department. Callei explains yet one more time, again with the hold, again with the escalation, by the time the phone call is over we've been escalated so many times I feel like a cheerleader in a mall and Callei is beginning to froth at the mouth. They sent me to tech support, billing, level 2 tech support, level 2 billing, someone's answering machine, and some nice lady that said 'deary me, this is HR!Let me transfer you back...'

We hang up having successfully discovered that they had no idea what was going on, they would of course call the Airmail people, and it happen in the next 72 hours.

Seventy-two hours? How hard is it to call? I hadn't even waited on hold either time I called the Airmail people, but apparently the order to call had to be escalated to the shipping department, who would OK it and escalate it to the billing department who would make rude gestures in our general geographic direction and OK it at which point they would escalate it to who knows where, and finally someone would pick up the phone and call the Air Mail people.

I called Airmail and asked if I could pay the bill and have it sent to me now. They said it would cost $35 dollars and did I want to do that? i said let me think about it and tried to gear myself up for one more call to the DSL people so I could ask if I would be credited on my DSL bill.

Callei, showing steam from both ears and crushing steel bars with her mind wades in and calls Bellsouth, the local phone company and asks if they offer DSL, they say yes. She asks if they use a regular modem, they say yes and OK on of the models we have. She asks how long it will take to turn on our connection. They say tomorrow. She gets the credit card.

The next day after a bit of sorting as far as what our actual login name is, we are online with a real connection speed and life is good, we cheer and immediately go download porn. he is only sort of kidding on this, since one of our clients is a soon to be adult siteI scurry around the net and reset the DNS information so people can find the half dozen web sites we host off one of the computers, Callei e-mails our business contacts and tells them we are available for new contracts, I turn the server back on, and we celebrate by...umm, that would possibly be too much information.

Oh, and the 'gateway' that i had called and told them to cancelshowed up two days later. I refused delivery and sent it back. to live in 'airmail land' i hope

Fast forward three days, Callei wakes me up and tells me the mail server is down and could I fix it? i don't touch his computers and he doesn't touch mineShe's expecting an important document from work. I get up, realize that our IP has changed and quickly get everything sorted out, I go back to bed.

I'm a night owl, I like to see morning from the wrong end if at all. I start seeing it from the early bird point of view alot more often as our connection quickly degrades, the mailserver is on his computer and I dont even know the password for itI know Bellsouth doesn't promise a static IP, but in general if you don't shut off your connection the IP doesn't change. Now I'm becoming convinced they are resetting the IP every twelve hours just to fuck with me.

Shortly after that Callei and Comedian begin to complain about their connections being sketchy, here one minute, offline the next. Offline for minutes at a stretch, and then back on with a new IP. All I could think was 'I don't want to hear any more muzak, I can put up with this, it's probably just maintenance on their end'. Umm, maybe. We finally lost our connection all together, and I was humming that tune at the copa copacabanna, music and passion are always in fashionbefore I was even put on hold.

At that point we called the phone company, who you will remember was at that point our DSL provider as well. also known as BubbaSouthI had the most amazing conversation with the tech guy, "Have you tried rebooting?" umm...yeah "What operating system are you using?" Pick one, I told him Windows 98 just to keep him happy, although we had already established that I was using a Linksys router to establish the initial connection. "have you tried rebooting?" reboot this you mental midget!*obscene gesture at the phone*

This guy had the habit of going quiet for minutes on end, just stone cold silent, so I finally asked someone to be sent out to check and see if we needed a signal booster. Because the symptoms we were having exactly matched those of a different DSL connection in a different state that we had had before and a booster was the solution we guessed that this might fix it. He said he could send someone out in four to five business days, but they would not be able to perform any maintenance, just look at the lines and decide if anything needed doing.

A few more minutes of discussion led me to the conclusion that unless a woodchuck had somehow lodged itself firmly in the bitstream and the tech guy could see it and sort of surreptitiously point it out so I could yank the fuzzy carcass out myself, there was absolutely no way to have the connection re-established within the next two weeks, possibly longer. good old BubbaSouthI gave up, I told him to cancel the account and hung up. I was by this point (after 2 more hours on hold) sobbing in the bathroom and refusing to come out until he made it all better. Im not kidding.

Next I called the cable modem folks back. It had been two months since I last called, and I asked about set up time including the wiring install. They said they could have someone out the next morning and they could turn on service as well. I said you have a beautiful phone voice here's my credit card number.

I got off the phone with them and called D*****V DSL back. I told them I was admitting defeat and could they please restart the process. I figured the cable modem would keep us online in the interim. They said fine, got all my information and I hung up. So far so good. I had even remembered to pay extreme attention to the details such as 'shipping address' so there would be no confusion. This time all the addresses were the same so there shouldn't' have been any confusion anyway. but you never know

The next day the cable guy showed up, ran the wire through the pre drilled hole in the floor, capped it and left. I hooked up our pre-approved, privately owned cable modem and set about waiting for the sync light to hold steady. Twelve hours and four phone calls lateronly 1 hour and 12 minutes on hold this time, it finally turned on, we had 'net access again, and I was ecstatic.

Now if only everything else will go so smooth. The next morning, against all logic, the Gateway for D******V showed up. I am still stymied about this one, did they have it waiting at the front door for us to call back? remember kids, 'airmail land' is where good packages wait for loving families

I hooked up the gateway, Callei surfed on our soon to be very temporary cable connection, and I set about preparing the gateway for it's final configuration. I'm not even surprised when it fails. I sigh. I pick up the phone. I hit speed-dial. I begin fantasizing about specially designed muzak blasters that will counter the musak with opposing tones so all you hear when on hold is blessed silence.

The tech guy finally answers, we run through the usual "are you to stupid to operate a computer?" questions and he starts using technical terms when he realize I can understand them, you know the terms, 'keyboard' 'OS' power-cycle'. I'm flattered. We power cycle the gateway, try it again, poke the internal bios a bit, and then he checks the order status and wonders out loud why they shipped a gateway before the set-up date.

I laugh, no you giggled like a mad fiend and you had white knuckles on the phonehe says try it tomorrow morning, the line will be provisioned tomorrow morning, if not call back and he will personally call the phone company and bitch. And he promises not to put me on hold while he does it. i was looking forward to this I say cool. The next morning the gateway boots-up and immediately syncs, we have a connection. I dance around a little, the heater is on this time so it's not so painful. That was three days ago.

Last night we received three e-mails from DirecTV, one after the other with about an hour between them. The gist was, in order of appearance:

1. They were happy to be our new ISP, and were beginning work on our order immediately, the process could take two to three weeks.


2. They were still happy to be our new ISP and had now reached the stage where they were waiting for Bell South aka BSto provision the phone line, this could take between five and eight working days.


3. The same as #2, but with alot of scary typos.