Monday afternoon, and the little blue light that tells me that I am connected to the wide wide world of web starts to blink and die. More than a little annoying, because I was in the middle of uploading a large number of large files to a photo stock site; being snaps of she who must be obeyed’s sister in a variety of poses, all designed to catch the attention of the world’s media and earn me vast sums of cash.
It was also annoying because it interrupted she who must be obeyed’s Facebook gaming extravaganza which takes place daily and keeps her happy; and is therefore a good thing. Or a bad thing if it is no longer available.
The light on the router returned spasmodically and then went out for good. Something somewhere had died. Bugger. Or more to the point; fuck.
Phoned the relentlessly cheerful help-desk of my service provider. They are relentlessly cheerful because they know that all the bits they are responsible for are always working fine, and it is the tosspots that manage the telephone lines down which the web access flows (albeit slowly) who will be at fault. “We will contact the tosspots who manage the telephone lines and get back to you”, they tell me (approximately). So I wait, not expecting anything to happen on Monday; and I am not to be pleasantly surprised.
Tuesday morning and the web is dead and nobody is calling me, so I call the service provider again. They are amazed that the tosspots have not called me. I am not. They need extensive nagging before they will do anything, and when they do eventually call, it is to tell you that their lines are fine and that it must be a problem in my building, or my condo, or my router, or my head; anywhere as long as it is not their responsibility. Mind you, they are sometimes correct. The line from the boundary of the building to my condo has been broken more than once; and my router seems to expire on a yearly basis; just after the warranty has expired.
Come Tuesday lunchtime and nobody has called to tell me that any faults had been discovered with the lines, and I start to get nervous; maybe this was a failure in my equipment. After all, the gradual breakdown of the service was consistent with something starting to fail; my router for example. I check the sticker on the bottom, the one year warranty expired two weeks ago; a sure sign of equipment failure. Desperate to restore the service, I head down to Tuk Com and equip myself with a smart new modem-router, with a three year warranty and three thousand baht price tag. Problem solved!
Except that it made no difference; still nothing. Oh dear. Or more to the point; fuck.
Three thousand baht down and so back on the phone to my service provider. “Oh yes sir, the tosspots have identified a problem and they are working on it”. What!! Why didn’t you call me and tell me? Do you realise I have just bought a new router to try and solve the problem? Apparently they didn’t know, and although they expressed concern, their tone of voice hinted at “idiot”.
Finally, this morning, a representative of the tosspots called to see if we were still having problems. Disinterested to know that we were, he offered to take a look “later”, which meant after he had had his lunch (it was already 1030 and far too late in the morning to start a new project). Returning from the shops at around 1400, there is a tosspot van parked outside the condo and a man elbow deep in wires. Turns out they had a plan to rewire our telephone connections, and in preparation for that they had disconnected my internet service on Monday. Had they bothered to inform me or my service provider? Had they buggery.
Ten minutes later and my assumed to be broken router was happily doing what routers are meant to do; images were whizzing into stock libraries and she who must be obeyed was doing something loud to a field in Farmville.
Anybody want to buy a new router…..?
P.S. It’s not just me. Nik, my condo neigbour, has four perfectly functioning routers acquired under similarly desperate circumstances.
Comments 🔗
2010-11-03| Billy the Brush saysRegrettably, I must pass on your offer of routers at unspecified but attractive prices. I am quite unable to resist the packaging, and have enough to stock a small shop. Prices on application.
2010-11-03| genuinej saysGlad that all’s well that ends well,even if you are stuck with a once new router, but I must bring to your attention the missing o at “far to late etc.” in the pre ante penultimate paragraph. You have been missed btw.
2010-11-04| Spike says“pre ante penultimate”, that’s just showing off! Thanks for pointing out the typo though.
2010-11-04| Wentworth saysYou’re slipping j. What about the incorrect usage of disinterested instead of uninterested?
2010-11-04| Spike saysgenuinej knows there are limits. It’s a blog, not a master class in the English langauge.