Current findings and situation (mostly to do with the Verizon ADSL issue):

• Basically we’ve got bandwidth from between dialup and less-than-dialup. misia’s computer, when on, hogs all the bandwidth we have available, so this morning in order to make this post, I had to ask her to stay off the computer so I could post. Given the bandwidth situation, I’ve been trying to stay off the network and let misia, who needs this sort of thing for, you know, work, have what there is of it. Given that I’ll be going on-call on the first of the year, though, it would be nice to be able to use high-speed internet from home.
• The new Verizon modem arrived. It works the same as the old one, but I still packed up the old one for return.
• I finally found our incoming phone lines. Basically, they’re not going to the “network interface device” (aforementioned grey boxbolted to side of house), but are coming directly to posts (metal things on an insulator) screwed to my basement ceiling. The reason I had no signal, dialtone, whatever from the network interface device is that that’s not the line coming into my house.
• I connected my newVerizon modem to the posts at entry to the house and that didn’t help the situation either.
• The Verizon phone tech is still scheduled to come to the house on Thursday. I am going to ask for a work from home day (or a personal/vacation day to be moved around)  so I can meet the guy and tell him what’s up. I plan to ask him to either move the cable that’s actually supplying my house with phone/DSL signal to the NID box, or reassigning the signal to what’s going to the box. I’ll handle the indoor wiring. In fact, if he can make all the incoming wires go to the NID, that would be awesome, despite the rewiring I would then have to do inside the house.
• If Verizon’s doings don’t help the situation by the end of next week (and perhaps sooner, I’m not sure), I will probably activate a dedicated Speakeasy line to the house too. I really can’t afford to have this state of things continue.
• I remain frustrated that even with the fact that the budget’s doing fine and I do have some money to throw at the problem, there’s no way that throwing money at the problem would do any good, unless maybe I could bribe the Verizon tech, but I don’t even know who it is, really.

In non-DSL news, things are doing well. We’re not sure if anyone’s showing up for the tamales party (due to the threats of horrible inclement weather), but we’re having fabulous tamales anyway.

Tags:   adsl · geek · tamales · troubleshooting · verizon2 Comments