Yes! Yes! Oh yes!

I have high-speed Internet at home now.

Here's the timeline, for those not following along:

Made an appointment to "upgrade" service (because the el-cheap-o dialup was going away). This was done on the 17th of July or so.

The appointed day came, and went. I called the company three times: first, they said, "Just be patient....they'll call 1/2 hour before they come." Then they said, "Well, it should be before 1 pm." Then they said, "Oh, my gosh- no one made it out?"

So they sent Creepy Saturday Guy. (He was one of those people who wanted to tell me his life story while he was working. I kind of sat on the sofa with a strained smile and nodded and made encouraging sounds...I didn't want Creepy Guy to stick around any longer than necessary.)

Creepy Guy left. I tried to hook up the "easy" internet hookup. Nothing. I called a tech, got insulted by him. ("Just. Click. On. The. Eeeeeee.") I pulled out my "I'm not an idiot" street cred, he was a little more polite. Had me do lots of permutations of plugging and unplugging cables. Never got the "PC active" light to light on the modem. Always got the message that the LAN cable was unplugged.

His conclusion: your computer is broken. Call me back when it's fixed.

So, at a cost of $65 to myself, I took the 'puter in for diagnostics to the best computer place in town. They assured me nothing was wrong - they hooked their cable internet up to it and it worked just fine. (I also sprang for the spywear clean and disk defrag; at that point it was only $20 more, and while I CAN do it myself, I often prefer to have someone who knows 100% of what they are doing do it).

So I brought it home and hooked it up. No go, of course.

Called the cable company (heretofore to be known as "the #(*&$#@ cable company"). They once again disavowed any knowledge of having a customer by my name (until I read off the customer number - so why ask for the name at first anyway?)

The new guy (and I knew it was someone different; this fellow had a Latin American accent) asked me to read off the MAC number of the modem (instead of immediately assuming it was my fault or my stupidity.) I did, and he said, "Oh, it's not registered to your house...it's registered to..." and he read off the address of the cable company's (sorry, the #(*&$#@ cable company's) local office.

He said: call them up (he was one of the central techs that is like in Georgia or somewhere), they need to "turn on" the service for you.

Well, derr. Wouldn't you think they'd have done that before sending the Saturday Creepy Guy out with the cable modem?

So I called. And the lady (I've learned now: never talk to the ladies at my cable company; their job is mainly to upsell people on additional services or to be a layer of obfuscation between the customer and the people who actually know something) said they'd send a tech out "first thing" today.

So, 9 am passed. 10 am passed. 11 am passed. In my universe, by the time you reach 11 am, it is no longer "first thing."

So I called again. The lady said, "Oh, someone will most likely be out between 1 and 5."

"Most likely" to me means, "If they feel like it and I remember to tell them."

So I sat tight a while longer. Revised another journal article. Watched some tv. Ate lunch.

Finally, around 2:15, I decided to take the bull by the nether-bits and I called again. Only this time, I called the customer service number, hit "0" instead of letting it go through all the various numbers I COULD punch.

Got a guy. So I started unloading. I was polite but I made it clear I wasn't happy with the service.

He said, okay, I'll walk you through some diagnostics. We'll see if we can figure this out right now, without your waiting on a tech.

So he had me check the LAN port on my machine - did I see the eight pins? Were they straight? Yes. Fine.

He had me check the powerstrip. Fine.

He then had me remove the LAN cable from the back of the modem and check the pins.

Houston, we have a problem.

Have you seen the movie "Sling Blade"? Remember what Billy Bob Thornton's character's teeth looked like? The pins in the LAN socket on the back of the modem looked WORSE than that - they were overlapping even more.

I kind of gasped when I saw it, and the tech said, "Oh...so there's something wrong with the socket. Okay, bring the modem in and we'll exchange it."

(I generally don't cuss too much here on the blog, but feel welcome to imagine a string of four-letter Anglo-Saxon words right here).

The appleknockers gave me a defective modem. They gave me a modem that someone else had, and either broke and exchanged or broke before they gave up the service. Or they broke it out of stupid maliciousness, to screw the next person to get their modem.

And the freaking Saturday Creepy Guy didn't bother to check!

So I drove in. It's a couple miles away to the office. I was shaking as I drove and it occurred to me I was just angry enough that I had to be very careful driving so I didn't get into an accident.

Got it, wound up waiting behind some guy who needed the ins and outs of his cable box explained to him very. slowly.

Which was actually good, because my anger had a chance to dissipate.

I held up the back of the modem to the guy (it was the guy I had talked to on the phone) and said, "Could that have caused my problem?"

He kind of gasped. And immediately began apologizing. And asked for Creepy Saturday Guy's name. (I only knew him as the Weekend Tech but that told them who, apparently - one of the women rolled her eyes when she heard).

And he pulled out a brand-new, better quality (Motorola rather than some Chinese off-brand) modem and handed it to me. He had me fill out some paperwork, promised he'd turn my service on THAT MOMENT with the modem.

He also said, of the old modem: "We'll take this one out back and hit it with a baseball bat." (I hope he was serious. I hope no other poor sap gets stuck with it)

I drove home, set it up, and it works. I knew that when ALL the lights came on as soon as I plugged it in, things were going to be better.

Now I just have to do the thing with the wireless router, and I'm in business, with my computer back in the office where it belongs.

And it only took 6 days, and it was a problem that could have been prevented by someone taking five minutes to inspect the danged modem. But whatever. Live and learn.