Back to Square One

And so it has come to pass: what goes around comes around and despite my fleeting moment of glory I find myself right back at square one. My day would be so empty without one of the Sympatico technicians to talk to. Fortunately, today just when I was wondering how bad the withdrawal might be I discovered the fates were kind. I still had occasion to call 310-SURF. I have yet to memorize my home telephone number but like a lovesick teenager I have Raji and Said and Brian’s number imprinted on my heart. What else could possibly go wrong you ask? Well I ask myself that same question each morning as I stumble out of bed and I don’t usually have to wait too long for the answer. Today it was the DSL signal. But all my previous calls to 310-SURF have not been in vain. I have learned the basic troubleshooting steps; turn off the modem; unplug the cables, reboot – hopefully we could skip those. As I dialed the oh too familiar number I could barely contain my anticipation; who would it be tonight? It was Brian who got the short straw. But Brian hasn’t been through the worst of it with me as poor Raji has and he obviously took his happy pill today. His cheerfulness was disconcerting. I hesitated to tell him my dark secret that the exorcist had taken up residence in my computer and in exorcising him I think he escaped into the phone line. But just as a rose by any other name would still smell as sweet so too the exorcist in the phone line by any other name still means no DSL signal. Brian pulled out all of his tricks from his bag but none could match the power of you know who. He had to confer with a higher authority. And in case you didn’t know; the higher the authority the longer you get to wait on hold. Brian had obviously gone to the highest authority. And when he finally got back to me his cheerfulness, if anything, was increased. “Give us 72 hours”, he said. “A technician needs to check the phone line.” I didn’t want to spoil his mood by asking him what the other three technicians that had already come to the house had done. “If you don’t hear from us by Thursday, feel free to call back. Thank you for choosing Sympatico and have a nice evening.” Well it’s a fine thing I don’t really have too much work piled up these days. What’s 72 hours? As I settle in to my static, hard copy digital readings for this week I cannot help but be overwhelmed by the irony of it all. These articles deal with cutting edge digital technology while I find myself on the wrong side of the digital divide. Bots, APIs, TDM, NGD… Well I now have my own little acronym: JGMACAICTW (just give me a computer and internet connection that work)! That will at least allow me to leave the starting gate.