Amateur Hour

Yesterday I left work at my assigned-ish time, returned home, and began the depressing task of getting back on my expensive never-to-be-used mobile phone with Charter’s tech support. I called and got the latest junior high student hired, friendly and with all the tech knowledge of your average french fry. Over the course of the next hour, most of which was spent on hold, he decided their equipment was just fine and that I should contact my computer’s manufacturer, Gateway 2000 (motto: Mooo! We suck!).

I did that and got a woman with such a heavy Southern (country) accent that even I had trouble understanding her and vice versa. She asked if they gave me a sofa with my cable modem. After a few rounds, I deciphered that to mean “any software”. Another forty-five minutes later, most of that spent on hold while their tech amateur consulted with her colleagues, and she firmly announced that the PC was in full working order and the problem must be with the cable modem. At least I was able to teach her the proper way to use the ipconfig command before I signed off.

I tried to connect the modem to my PC via USB wire, which worked well (instant connection, plus it recognized the device as a cable modem) up to the point where it wanted to install a driver to support the connection. I had not been given any software by the cable company and Windows XP didn’t have anything compatible, so it wanted to search the ‘net for a driver. Does anybody see the trouble here? “Before we connect to the Internet, we need to connect to the Internet to get a driver to allow you to connect to the Internet.” I let it try, and it failed spectacularly.

I called Charter’s no help desk again to see if I could get a driver, and this time got a woman who sounded like she had actually seen a computer before coming to work that day. I tried to get her to revisit my problems, but once she discovered a colleague had blamed my PC, she refused to go farther. I asked for support with the USB connection, to which she informed me that I was welcome to try, but they didn’t support using the modem that way.

Apparently, it was up to me to fix the problem. Ah, nostalgia – just like the good old days with BellSouth. It occurred to me that BS had never once solved any of my problems either, except the time they gave me a bad modem and then graciously allowed me to take vacation time so I could meet their schedule and allow a technician to charge me for driving to my apartment to replace it.

This paragraph will be filled with technical jargon and will likely emasculate those of you who don’t have my godlike understanding of computers, so feel free to skip ahead. I looked at the back of the computer and noticed that the blinky flashy things on the network card weren’t doing their blinky flashy thing. One light was solid green, the other solid dead. If I remembered my office PC correctly, they were supposed to be as active as a pair of Labradors on meth in a room filled with squirrels with ADHD. So, since the loopback pings said they could communicate with the PC and its Ethernet adapter, and the cable people could communicate with their modem, the failure must be the wire between the two or within one of the jacks. I bought a new cable and a network card (both were cheap, and it helps to have backups for testing), fiddled with my computer, and discovered the problem was indeed with the Ethernet adapter. The new card’s blinky flashy thing (only one this time) flickered like it was supposed to, and after a few minor adjustments I managed to reconnect.

Note to self – in the future, just do it your damn self and save your mobile minutes for ordering pizza.

Anyway, after solving my PC issues, I got to return to work for a late night teleconference to help some other people solve their database issues. Feckin’ Aussies – why can’t they be on Eastern Jebus time like the rest of the civilized world?

I now officially hate computers and all things hi-tech. That’s why I’m blogging this post via smoke signals. Try not to get any soot on your screen.