We now continue the saga of migrating north with the other spring early birds who should have known better. Last night we drove back to Salt Lake from Provo in a blinding snow storm. Today the temperature hovers in the 30s with the skies pewter gray, the wind blowing, and snow flurries continuing. We gave up summer temperatures and balmy blue skies in St. George for this?
But I digress. The Curmudgeonly Professor now will continue his essay on the perils of trying to live in the technological era where nothing ever works, or if it does work, it doesn't work very long. And if it quits working, nobody can fix it. The parts are no longer made for anything over three months old because many new models have come out since and we all know we are better to throw anything more than a few months old away and start out all over again with a new, improved, more fantastic technological marvel. All of this contrasts to my grandfather who used the same set of tools and equipment in his blacksmith shop in his eighties as he did in his thirties and no one ever threw anything away since everything could be used over again many times.
I advise you not to even read the rest of this story. The only reason I write it is for therapy in overcoming the traumas I have suffered while trying to get my internet up and running again. I will try and be as brief as possible. However, perhaps this miserable story will serve as a word of warning: if you ever get everything up and running, do not move, do not change anything. It will quit running soon enough on its own, but to try and change things deliberately is simply asking for grief and misery. I could rewrite the Book of Lamentations from scratch. Those Old Testament whiners have nothing on me with their woe, woe, woes.
To continue. I spend two days trying to get Qwest DSL hooked up since I already use this service in St. George. Qwest finally determines that the home security system needs a filter attached to its phone connection in order for Qwest DSL to work. I call the security people and ask how to do this. They say we will send out a technician. How much will that cost, I ask. About $100, they say. O.K., just disconnect me I reply. We can disconnect you in 30 days. Why can't you disconnect me now? Because that is our policy. Well, your policy stinks, I say. I do not suggest that the person telling me this have a nice day.
So I call Comcast to get hooked up again to their DSL since I have had Comcast DSL for several years anyway. Comcast techie comes out and checks things out and gets things running. I make two entries on blogs. Fifteen minutes later, internet dies. Kaput. I call Comcast. They say call LinkSys, maker of wireless router. LinkSys says call Comcast. Amazingly, Comcast techie is polite, speaks perfect English, is cheerful, runs a couple of tests, and tells me to go buy a new wireless router. I go this morning to buy new wireless router for eighty bucks. I tell Staples clerk old one isn't even three years old. Staples clerk says, well that's a long time, most of them die long before that. Meantime, caster on office chair broke and about fell over, thus nearly requiring emergency room care and attention, almost. Buy new caster for twelve bucks. Would not have needed wireless router if I had paid 100 bucks to fix phone filter. Thus, I broke even.
Voila, or whatever, I come home, hook up new router, nothing works. Wait awhile, unplug everything and plug in everything again, and, miracle of miracles, internet works. After four days of speaking to every techie in India, Bangladesh, and wherever else, some of whom knew absolutely nothing about anything I was asking, and some of the others I could not understand, and trying to maintain my religious standards, despite telling a few people off, I am now, temporarily at least on the internet.
Was it worth it? With over 200 emails, dying blogs from lack of new posts, and a complete loss of faith in anyone's ability to fix anything with inflicting massive amounts of pain, misery, suffering, woe, I am left wondering if I can get in gear again. I must go back and reread my earlier blogs on the blessings of pessimism and a sour disposition.
