For those of you who think I'm dead, you just keep thinking that.


For the rest of you, I'm not dead.

Let's just say that Verizon tech support is neither technical nor supporting very well (brownie points if you can identify that line's origin).

A couple of weeks ago, our DSL conked out. That was friday afternoon. So on saturday, I called tech support. He couldn't get a signal from our modem, despite all the lights being steady green (which is what they're supposed to be). So he sets up a ticket to send a tech guy out on monday. Monday comes, the guy is early. That's good. He looks at the modem, checks the phone lines (even the phone terminal we have upstairs, since this place was at one point, a telemarketing office so it had lots of phone lines). He spends hours (we were his only call of the day) trying to find the main terminal box for our area. Finally he does. Then he leaves. The tech support guy I spoke to the saturday prior calls back saying, "we are too far away from our area terminal box for dsl, as a result our modem burnt out."

Keep in mind, we've had steady DSL service for over a year, not once did I see smoke or smell electronic burning, and the green lights were STILL steady green.

He tells me if I don't hear from them in 24-48 hours, to call tech support back. I can only assume they were to have some alternative solution. They didn't. I called back on the thursday after the tech guy came. They closed the file! Thanks for the technical support Verizon. Well, apparently I got on the line with someone a tad more tech savvy. After a few minutes doing stuff from his end, he discovered that we in fact were NOT too far from the terminal box for DSL. On top of that, he, and he ALONE had the smarts to ask the one magical question: "Do you guys have a router?"

Sonova...!

Well hot damn, we do have a router! It's configuration was password protected, so I couldn't get into it (have to talk to Jay, the store owner, since he set it up). BUT, after I got off the phone with tech support, before I called Jay, I decided to hook the modem up directly to the computer. Guess what? All those steady green lights didn't mean, "the modem is actually burnt out" after all!

Three green lights actually means... there's not a darned thing wrong with the modem! Well what do you know... Turns out there was a problem with the router.

So now I'm back, and mostly lurking. I haven't even logged onto my main stomping ground, Digital Webbing (not that they miss me anyway).

I almost considered shutting down all my communication avenues, and just taking a break, but you know, I own prime real estate on the internet, so I can't just leave all my friends hanging. Okay, I can, but you know, I'm miserable here, the net is my only 'getaway', so I'm not going to just throw it away if I don't have to.