Setting Up DSL

Setting Up DSL

Or

Things that will make you say, “Aaaaaarrrrggghhh!”

Salutations on the Ides of June!

First of all, I have to say that my ISP, http://vbs.net/ has got the greatest service I have ever experienced.  Like most call centers, I waited for what seemed like ever, on hold; unlike most call centers after you have been waiting on terminal hold forever, when I got the rep(s) on the phone I didn’t get a frazzled, snappish, snotty, bored person who mumbled through an unintelligible accent, I spoke with real live Americans in Utah!  It was nice to talk to someone who not only had knowledge I wanted, but willingly shared it in an easy-to-understand manner.

I had a false start, where my order was incorrectly entered, but when I called back to find out where my stuff was, I spoke with a rep who not only fixed the problem, but empathized and actually explained what had happened.  A couple days later I received a box with a modem, a couple of cables and a handful of filters.  I called, excited about getting started, but the setup date of June 5^th after 5 O’clock was set in stone because they had to wait for Qwest to do their part on the line.

The 5^th was also our 27^th anniversary!  Yes, Margaret has been putting up with me for 27 years.  I’ll tell you folks, the best thing I ever did was borrow that ten bucks for our marriage license and I’ll pay her back someday, too.  I know it is hard for you, my adoring public, to imagine, but, believe it or not, I can be difficult to live with sometimes.  Oh, yes, really.  She has always loved me no matter what, though and I love her.  I’ve told this bit of trivia before, but on the day we got married at the courthouse my 2 best friends, Carter and Mike, came with us.  Mike stood by me, making him best man and Carter stood by Margaret, making him the maid of honor.  And an uglier or manlier maid of honor you never did see, either.  Carter had to leave for work and the 3 of us walked about a mile and half, maybe two miles, to the brand new (1980) Shawano, Wisconsin, McDonald’s for our “reception.”  Margaret had a big Mac and fries and a diet coke, I had a Quarter-Pounder with cheese, fries and a large Coke.  I don’t remember what Mike had, but Mike did do something important.  When we got done, he took my empty cup outside with us and turned it upside down on the ground and stomped on it and said “Mozeltof!”  As we started walking home it began drizzling and a car picked us up.

She has stayed with my crazy, stupid butt ever since and given me 4 children, of whom I am immensely proud and 2 (so far) grandchildren.  She is the greatest and I would just like to finish this little digression in my best Jackie Gleason voice and say, “Baby, you’re the greatest.”

But she doesn’t care about the technical side the computer stuff, just so she can get on the Internet and check her e-mail and see what the Flylady http://flylady.net/ is up to.  Now she can listen to Flylady’s internet radio broadcast http://www.modavox.com/WTRStudioA/HostModaviewForWTR2.aspx?HostId=287&ChannelId=14&Flag=1 as well (as if she has time).  She’s not a big computer fan, thinking there is more to life.

Anyway, I had this box full of parts I thought I knew what to do with.  I found out later I had overdone it with the filters, one filter goes on each jack that there is another phone device on.  There are three wall jacks in the house, one in the kitchen, one in the bedroom and one downstairs.  The one downstairs is just barely close enough to reach the computer with a 25 ft phone cord.  So with signal splitter in hand, I went downstairs and hooked it up like I thought it should go.

Well, the longer the cord, the greater the resistance, so I had to re-wire the whole thing with a short phone cord and a 25 ft network cord, which I had somehow, somewhere picked up in my many journeys.

Since I want to get this posted before it is completely out of date, I will just tell you that it took a couple of hours, but I am very happy with the result.  It is lightning fast compared to the dial-up and really not too shabby compared to the cable, either.  Downloads are a bit slower than on cable, but still beat the tar out of dial-up.  If you ever need to look up a good, reasonably priced ISP, check out VBS.

And remember, the good book says, Ides is a plural noun referring to the fifteenth day of March, May, July, and October, and the thirteenth day of the other months in the ancient Roman calendar.  “A soothsayer bids you beware of the Ides of March.” — William Shakespeare, Julius Caesar