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Confidential to M. & S.: It could have been much, much worse.
Came home after a party, fell over, and once again found myself waking up at an unreasonably early hour of Sunday morning, so I decided to start the day by checking my email; but my DSL, which as one may recall I've been having some trouble with this week, simply would not connect. This time, however, I chanced to look over at my modem during the course of my "is everything even plugged in?" troubleshooting struggles, and noticed that one of the lights was blinking in an odd way. I squatted down to look, and sure enough it was the light labeled "DSL", winking on and off in short bursts as if it were trying to establish whether there was anyone listening to it at the other end of the line; so, I did what I probably should have done last week when my "connecting to PPPoE" woes started, and physically examined the cable. Turns out there was a large split in the insulation about halfway along (where I wouldn't necessarily have noticed it in all my fiddling about at the plug-ends) where the cable had gotten the worst of some recent run-in with the furniture. Off to MicroCenter for a new cable!
...Except, picking my way along the vast runways of cabling at MicroCenter, I simply could not find anything that resembled the broken cable I'd brought in. Swallowing my pride, I found a clerk and, apologizing for having to play the "Girl Card", asked if he had "one of these". Sure, no problem, they come in up to 25' -- oh, you only need 16'? OK, they should be --
Er, no.
Um, well, maybe they've put them over...
But as it turns out, I wasn't Being a Girl after all, they were just out of DSL wiring altogether. {Pause for annoyed flashback to the Tactile Pro Debacle.} So we ended up burning most of the rest of Sunday tramping from one shop to another, trying to find DSL-rated cabling with the right sex of plugs on. Finally, after several meltdowns on both our parts, good old Radio Shack turned out to carry the cable I'm using to post this now, albeit in only 12' or 25' lengths so there's now yet another gob of superfluous wiring cluttering up my arrangements. But at least it appears to have addressed the problems I've been having all this last week, so I'll consider myself content for the moment. Still, I'd be a lot happier just living in an apartment where the only phone jack isn't across the room from the only feasible place to set up my equipment...
Came home after a party, fell over, and once again found myself waking up at an unreasonably early hour of Sunday morning, so I decided to start the day by checking my email; but my DSL, which as one may recall I've been having some trouble with this week, simply would not connect. This time, however, I chanced to look over at my modem during the course of my "is everything even plugged in?" troubleshooting struggles, and noticed that one of the lights was blinking in an odd way. I squatted down to look, and sure enough it was the light labeled "DSL", winking on and off in short bursts as if it were trying to establish whether there was anyone listening to it at the other end of the line; so, I did what I probably should have done last week when my "connecting to PPPoE" woes started, and physically examined the cable. Turns out there was a large split in the insulation about halfway along (where I wouldn't necessarily have noticed it in all my fiddling about at the plug-ends) where the cable had gotten the worst of some recent run-in with the furniture. Off to MicroCenter for a new cable!
...Except, picking my way along the vast runways of cabling at MicroCenter, I simply could not find anything that resembled the broken cable I'd brought in. Swallowing my pride, I found a clerk and, apologizing for having to play the "Girl Card", asked if he had "one of these". Sure, no problem, they come in up to 25' -- oh, you only need 16'? OK, they should be --
Er, no.
Um, well, maybe they've put them over...
But as it turns out, I wasn't Being a Girl after all, they were just out of DSL wiring altogether. {Pause for annoyed flashback to the Tactile Pro Debacle.} So we ended up burning most of the rest of Sunday tramping from one shop to another, trying to find DSL-rated cabling with the right sex of plugs on. Finally, after several meltdowns on both our parts, good old Radio Shack turned out to carry the cable I'm using to post this now, albeit in only 12' or 25' lengths so there's now yet another gob of superfluous wiring cluttering up my arrangements. But at least it appears to have addressed the problems I've been having all this last week, so I'll consider myself content for the moment. Still, I'd be a lot happier just living in an apartment where the only phone jack isn't across the room from the only feasible place to set up my equipment...
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