Internet woes...

The last couple of days showed us how much dependent we have become on the internet connectivity in our day to day life.

If we don't have connectivity, we cannot come home on time from work! Have to stay late.

We don't have a land line. So if the MIL has a crisis at home she cannot call us because there is no land line (we have only a VOIP phone!)

My iPhone doesn't have a signal through AT&T at home. Lucky if we get one bar on that.

That leaves the wife's T-mobile as the only phone to connect to the outside world aka customer service.

The AT&T dudes came, tested the line and declared that the squirrels have chewed on the wires somewhere in the street. A maintenance call was placed by the AT&T dude and he promptly told us it would be days or weeks before the tech figures it out in these cases..

So we did the only thing we could do being internet junkies. We switched to Comcast cable modem today!

As of 30 minutes ago we have a working internet connection. Now we have to worry about gophers eating through the cable lines? Maybe, but we will take our chances.

The Motorola Photon phone / Android 2.3 combination is a disaster. So my buddies at work were nice enough to get my coverage returned to my old iPhone. Sometimes you don't realize the value of what you have till you lose it.

Now that we have a working internet at home, have to go yell at the AT&T guys and get something called a "microcell" to boost my cell signal strength when we are at home..

Some people have "naakula sani".. we have "phonela sani"

Maybe better days are ahead!

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A long break..

The blogging break was not intentional. AT&T cut our internet by mistake last Thursday.

We have had no phone or internet at home for the last 7 days. We finally got it back tonight.

San went insane as she dealt with AT&T customer service, that too on a no school for kids week. That ruled out any option for us working from home even for a few hours.

Incidentally our phone is a Vonage phone (VoIP phone) and no internet means, no phone.

My cell phone as 0 bars or keeps dropping calls (it is an iPhone with AT&T!!!).

The only working phone was San's cell which is fortunately not on AT&T.

San has spent 240+ minutes of her cell plan to be with AT&T customer service in the last 7 days, most of it listening to elevator music as she was handed over from one incompetent service rep to another.

They asked her to call back after 7PM on one day.. only for us to realize their office closes at 7PM. So much for customer service!

Lessons from this..

a. even though you do not need a land line, if you live in an area where cell signals are flaky, pay that 12 bucks a month and keep that land line alive or move to an area with a good cell signal

b. never take the internet for granted! it affects your life more than you know it....

There are smart folks who work at AT&T who know what is going on.. but getting to them is luck of the draw. 8/10 reps fail you miserably.

That is really sad.

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