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nascent spring cruelly snatched away Monday, March 8 2004
setting: rural Hurley, New York
Gretchen and I woke up this morning and there it was, a winter wonderland. Our nascent spring had been cruelly snatched away by a heavy dusting of snow, a form of precipitation that continued to fall throughout the day. Not that it was sticking to anything except the vegetation. Temperatures hovered around forty degrees, typical of recent conditions.
The quality of DSL service up here on Dug Hill Road continues to be less than optimal, although it's usually better than dialup. When I returned from Vermont, though, I found the service had reverted to its minimal 32 kb/s, which is actually somewhat slower than dialup. After a few reconnection attempts, I was able to get a 96 kb/s connection, which is the best you can expect in daylight. For some reason the top speed of 160 kb/s can only be attained after dark, but once you get it, it stays at that speed until connection is physically broken. Obviously the connection had been broken while I was in Vermont, possibly by a power outage (which isn't uncommon).
Tonight I finally called Verizon to complain about the service, hoping maybe I could prod them into fixing the line. There are three miles of telephone wire down to the nearest DSL point-of-presence, so I'm not surprised the connection is less than ideal. But if it can be improved, I definitely want it to be.
Calling Verizon tech support this was as instructive as it was aggravating. The first person I got was American woman, and she was a stickler for going through the useless debug script she had in front of her. She wanted me to clear my browser cache and get rid of my cookies even though I was trying to provide much more useful information directly from the DSL modem's web page. She also refused to believe me when I told her that the Westell 2200 is a router in addition to being a DSL modem. Losing my connection with her was the best thing that happened to me all day.
The next tech support person was also an American woman (though I've known Verizon tech support to be men in India). This time, though, she wasn't so fussy about the script. She wasn't willing to accept answers directly off the DSL modem's web page, but the information I gave her was bad enough for her to do what I'd been wanting all along: open a trouble ticket on our telephone line. If this is going to be fixed, it's going to involve somebody with a hard hat showing some asscrack.
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