Saturday, 20th January, 2007

Dis.connect.ed

internet connection tranniefesto

Hmm. See, my phoneline's been acting a bit odd of late. About a month or so ago, I was getting terrible reception on my crappy little cordless thing. And then a couple of weeks ago, all I'd get on it was static. It would ring when someone called, but all I'd hear is "pssssfpspsppsfpsappcpcpcpkckkcksss" (or similar).

It didn't really bother me, 'cos I never use it as a phone — it's just there so I have an internet connection.

Today though, when you call my landline (please don't) you can hear it ringing, but none of the phones in the house do.

Trés strange.

Equally strange, is when I unplug the ADSL modem, the static stops. "Well DUH, Siobhan" you might be thinking, "There's obviously something wrong with your modem".

Except when everything except the phone's plugged in, the line is just dead.

My panic last night — half an hour's worth of "WTF?" and constant reboots to try and get Erin (and therefore this blog) up and running again — was that I'd been cut off. I'm not the World's Greatest Payer Of Bills™ you see, and it's highly likely that someone at BT had thought "I don't care if she's a princess or not, she's got to pay us some time".

An automated line-test later, and the possibility that I had been metaphorically spanked for being a bit naughty started to sink in — so, taking the more pragmatic and responsble line of actions, I got pissed on wine and went to bed.

This morning though, I did the actual sensible thing and called BT. I steelied myself with a few cups of coffee, several fags, and talked to a person¹ who told me that there was a fault on the line, and if I wanted them to send an engineer I ought to check my equipment a few times first because if it was something of mine causing it, they'd charge me over £100.

(God, this is getting tedious isn't it? Sometimes I can write about things like this with — I like to think — a bit of flair and wit. But this is coming out like some kind of "...ah, but the A45 was closed, so we took the B467 and B4738 which saved us seven minutes, even though we had to sit behind a tractor outside East Puddling for six miles..." banality)

Tell you what, let me just cut a long story short. Last night: grumpy and drunk. 4am this morning: slightly panicky and morose. 10am: confused but hopeful.

10.30am: /me called friend to borrow some of his phones to test things. Discovered that his internet has been off the same time mine has. And since we're on the same provider, I think maybe that's why my blog is down².

And even though I'm feeling a bit 'all at sea' right now — cut off from the things I normally do, and the connections I usually make — I'm quite glad it's (a) not my fault, and (b) nothing I can do anything about.

I really must pay that phone bill sometime soon though...

¹ Top tip: Sick of being held in queues on BT's customer support lines? Get a business account like mine — three rings and you're through.

² The thing is, it's not down really. I can read it just fine. It's just no-one else can — which begs some kind of "if Siobhan blogs in the woods, and her ADSL is down... etc" kind of Zen question thing.

Pissing Into The Wind

network

...which is totally the wrong phrase — something more like "Shouting into the void" would be appropriate — but gimme any chance to swear in a title and I'll take it.

It would seem, apparently, that it's not my ISP that's at fault. I pulled out all the equipment from my phoneline, leaving only a basic handset, and called BT's fault line again. This time they said there's definately a fault — something about "extended network disconnection" apparently.

Which is kinda good news, in that I'm pretty bloody sure I've not been cut off — but really shitty news because they can't send an engineer out until next Friday.

FRIDAY

...that's over a week's worth of downtime. How on earth am I going to validate my sense of self-worth without a tiny trickle of pink comment-boxes for that long?