02/04/2004: "Death to Dial-up"
I was getting out of the shower this morning when the doorbell rang downstairs. I went to the window in time to see a phone-company tech trudging back to his van through the snowdrifts.
I flung open the window.
“Hey, wait!”
I’ve been chilling for a couple of months, it seems, waiting for the phone company to arrive and hook up DSL service to the house so I can escape the horror of dial-up Web access. Now here they were, unscheduled and unannounced, with me naked and dripping wet, seeing myself about drop to the back of some waiting list down at the phone company.
The guy looked up at me.
“Don’t even think about leaving!”
I was dressed and downstairs in less time than it usually took me to towel off. And good thing, too, because the tech needed to get into the basement to access our telephone box.
Now I’m hanging out at the kitchen table, writing a blog entry on my trusty iBook, instead of being in the office, while the wires are being run. It’s a tough job, but somebody has to do it.
So, next question: How long will it take my Internet provider to hook up the router so that I’m actually in business? Since the newspaper where I work also owns that company, one would think the answer ought to be “pretty quick,” but we’ll have to see. I’ve already figured out that if you want to go fast on the Web, you have to be willing to go slow first.
