Being off line for (more than) a week: The Comcast Follies

[Tdarcos]

First the Internet stopped working. I can tell when there's a problem when you try to connect to anything and you get Comcast's "Who are you? I don't know you, you need to register your account" page. It means that for some reason Comcast has forgotten the MAC address of your cable modem.

Well, this happened so I called the Landlord. Or rather, kept calling him as I was just getting voice mail. Then at one point I do get him personally and ask when my Internet is going to work again. He's basically making the excuse I needed to clean my room up before having someone come out here. Well, I did that three days earlier. Guy comes out and pulls the cable modem. I call the landlord to point out that the guy took the box but has not returned.

So anyway the landlord calls me Friday to tell me that Comcast will be out today between 1 and 3. Well, this sounds a lot better that Comcast is actually coming out; I suspected he's been getting the service bootlegged or something. But, as usual, Comcast is late, after a couple calls apparently they're running behind schedule. So the landlord will get a $20 credit on his bill. (The only reason I have the landlord get it is that if you have TV with Comcast, bundling Internet with it is cheaper than if I order Internet directly. As I see it, it's a wash: if I pay Comcast for the service or I pay the landlord, it's the same to me.)

The two guys from Comcast get here around five, and the new cable modem is supposed to be both a cable modem and a wireless router. And it doesn't work. Nor does the other one. So they give me a standard cable modem that I hook up to my existing wireless router.

Guy asks why I have a wireless router if we didn't have Internet before. I point out that the printer over in the corner supports being connected to the router, and the router (not the printer) provides wireless connectivity, so all of the computers at the desk on my side of the room can print to the printer on the other side. (I don't care how the landlord supplies my internet connection, I'm not going to narc on him if he was doing something shady. I have no actual knowledge of anything specific anyway.) I also hint about how I had DSL from Verizon (not mentioning that the last time I had DSL was close to four years ago.)

I pointed out that the "litmus test" for connectivity is Google. If you can't reach Google.com your internet is not connected. There's no equivocation here: while other sites might be out of service or unreachable and it's just the ebb and flow of connectivity, if Google is down or unreachable, the Internet is down, period.

So anyway, I'm back. I never thought about how many funny or cute things I hear that I'd like to mention but can't because I don't have Internet.

I am surprised about how much seemed to happen since I was offline.