Freeeday 1 November 2002

Pic of the day: "Online ADSL do-it-yourself. Much, much faster Internet." (And I saved a couple tens of dollars on doing it myself! And wasted a month, and a couple hundred dollars in phone calls. But all is well that ends well...)

Finally: ADSL!

I woke from the phone ringing in my living room. I was too late to catch it, of course. My first thought was that something had happened at work. Since it was only 5 minutes till my alarm clock should go off anyway, I got up and started my morning rituals. I had just downloaded my e-mail and news when the doorbell rang. Much to my surprise a stranger stood outside.

The early bird was from Siemens, he said. Well, I do have a Siemens computer, the one that was repaired on for a month and a half. But I certainly thought they were through with it. So I was like WHAT?? I also secretly prepared to attack him with a nearby blunt object. However, he continued to explain that he was to remove a filter on behalf of Telenor. This certainly made sense, since I had hinted in my last phone call to Telenor customer support that perhaps the ADSL would not work when I already had a frequency splitter in my home (it split my line into two phone lines, one of which I used for the modem). What did not make sense was that Telenor 1) had not shown any interest in this theory, and 2) had sent me a new "ADSL modem", which I am supposed to pick up at the post office at the first opportunity. (Hopefully tomorrow.)

Siemens guy removed the old filter, and suddenly I had only 1 phone line again. I have not asked to step down from 2 phone lines to 1, and I am pretty sure I am still paying for 2, so I will have to do something about that. Eventually he drove off for the phone central, promising to call me when he had installed the ADSL line. (Which Telenor had told me would be done on October 2nd, and continued to behave in all ways as if they had actually done.)

A quarter of an hour later he called and asked me to check on the ADSL modem. It still did nothing except make a small ticking sound, similar to my wristwatch but just slightly louder. No lamps were glowing, shining or even blinking. Luckily the new "modem" is waiting in the mail. (It still looks more like a hub or router to me.)

So, to sum it up: 1) The phone line was not set up for ADSL, 2) the equipment in my wall precluded ADSL, and 3) the ADSL modem did not work. Small surprise I didn't get it to work. And of course this extra month has cost me another $200 in phone calls. I would not be surprised if they try to get me to pay for a month of ADSL in October too. I'll see them in court first. Still, all is well that ends well.

***

As soon as I came home from work, I hurried to the post office (in the Kiwi supermarket, which is why they were still open). I got my new ADSL starter pack. I walked home. I opened the large box, and exchanged the "modem" for the old one. Green lights started to shine! Oh what a beautiful sight that was. I went back and created a password-protected broadband account on my portable, and tried to log on.

Username or password not recognized for the domain. I tried again and again, typing in the password every time. I know it by heart, I use it every day when I upload with FTP. Eventually the mention of domain made me ask myself a simple question: How does it even know the domain? I looked at various settings, but there was of course no mention of any domain. In a fit of mad inspiration, I tried to type my complete e-mail address instead of my username. Success! Seconds later, I was on ADSL. From now on, I can stay online all day and all night at no extra cost! And it is indeed much much faster, except when I run up against the American bottlenecks. (The Norwegian backbone, if such a word can be used about a country of less than 5 million people, is exceedingly fast, unlike some parts of America.)

Such as shame that I don't really have time to stay active online. I have a novel to write, remember? ^_^ 2300 words first day ... and the day is not over yet.