Let me rant …

Yesterday was Labor Day, known more commonly as a day off of work. You have to love that. Getting a day off of work, which is exactly what I’ve been needing. I planned on doing some of my personal things and then taking care of some online projects that have been sitting by the wayside.

I got up early, checked my email and then headed out for the morning to take care of miscellaneous errands, like shopping and a bank stop. I ended up getting back home around noon, just in time to get lots of work done. Or so I thought.

I flipped on the computer, opened the browser and was welcome by some kind of error message. Ugh. The message goes something along the lines of “Unable to connect to server”. This is sort of like the blue screen of death for the internet world. For me it means my connection isnt connecting. Brought me right back to my early days using a 2400 baud modem with AOL as my dial up. In the beginning, it was cake. I would be able to sign on anytime and get online within seconds … erm, well not quite on a 2400 baud modem but it was pretty fast for those days. See, back in 1988-89, hardly anyone had modems and internet access, and getting online was a cinch. Then people began to find out about it, and getting online started to get more difficult, and soon, even at a 14.4 modem, getting online was damn near impossible.

Well, yesterday I experienced that same situation, this time though, I was using a $40 per month DSL connection that is practically guaranteed to keep me online all the time, anytime. So, to say I was PIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIISSSSSSSSSSSSSEEEEED off, would be an understatement. See, this has been happening more and more lately. Sometimes, its out for hours at a time and other times, it might take an entire day to come back online. So guess, which happened yesterday. Uh huh. It went out at around noon and didnt come back on until 6PM tonight. Over a day and a half of not having any kind of internet connection.

Now, I could care less about not having it for a day and a half. I mean, I do have other things to keep me busy. What pisses me off is that fact that I’m paying $40 a month to be online ALL the freaking time. I should be able to sign on and leave the computer on forever if I wanted to.

So, as Katie would do, I immediately called Pacbell, my phone company and internet provider, up to lodge a complaint. “Sorry we are closed for the holiday, call back tomorrow” was what I got. SHIT. Who the fuck are you supposed to call if your internet goes down on a holiday. So, I called today as soon as I got home and got this message, “Sorry we closed at 6PM, please call back tomorrow during our business hours of 8AM to 6PM”. SHIT. How the fuck is someone supposed to call them if they are only open during the hours that EVERYONE works. I mean, everytime I call them I’m on hold for two hours … no joke. Like I’m supposed to just sit on the phone at work for two hours waiting for them to be ready for me. So today, I sent them a really nasty email, which I dont expect to be answered, basically telling them that when I move and have to shut down my service, I won’t be renewing and will be using another service. Our cable internet access provider is AT&T Cable, which scares the shit out of me, and then there’s RCN, which I know nothing about. All I know is that Pacbell won’t be getting my renewal and I sure as hell won’t be recommending them to anyone anytime soon.

Whew, that felt good.