The Dawn of a New Day

I have been on the World Wide Web for about twelve years now, and just got high speed DSL. Hard to believe, I know, but I live in a very rural community and it took the geniuses at the telephone company a long while to discover our existence. Anyway, the big day arrived and I was told by my sales rep that in order to have both mine and my husband’s computer on DSL, I would need a network card. Hey, no problem!

I went to Best Buy to make the simple purchase, but upon arrival, discovered there were 73 different types from which to choose. Since I can no longer read fine print, I cornered a salesman who was idly staring at the display shelves.

“Excuse me, I was told I need a network card. Which one would you suggest?” I asked sweetly.

“Well, it depends. Does your receiver have an antenna?” I had no clue. I called my brother-in-law who had the receivers at his house since UPS won’t come down our mountain road. “Open it up, is there an antenna?”

“Yes, there is an antenna,” I reported to the salesman.

“Well, then, you will either need to connect your two computers with a Ethernet cable or have them both on the network card, or one of each.”

Huh? Nothing about an Ethernet cable had been previously mentioned by my sales rep.

“Okay, I’m not buying two network cards at sixty bucks each, so let’s go with the cable.”

“What length?”

Christ! How the hell do I know. “Well, it’s certainly not 15’ between our computers. Let’s go with the seven footer.”

I picked up the receiver at my brother in-law’s and headed home, jubilant – this was going to be so great! The service wouldn’t be connected until 5pm, so I started organizing my desk for the operation. For some reason, computer manufacturers think it’s a good idea to make the connection board completely inaccessible without performing serious contortions of the human body. I took out the DSL receiver, hooked up the connections with the cables they supplied. Their Ethernet cable was too short – only 3 feet for God’s sake! I needed to place the receiver halfway between my computer and my husband’s, which was about 5 feet from each of us. Lucky I had that 7 footer now.

I waited until five o’clock and having completely disconnected my computer, moved it from my desk to the floor, I began the mind-boggling process of reconnecting the old cables and all of the new cables. VOILA! It was at least running. Then I opened the 2 feet by 3 feet sheet of instructions. I began working through the directions step-by-step – I clicked the browser button - nothing. Then I found the support phone number in fine print hidden in an obscure location on the back of the box. A short while and many verifications later - (how old was your childhood dog when she was first vaccinated? Where was she buried? What was the town of your mother-in-law’s birth? How many angels can dance on the head of a pin?) - I was actually speaking to a real live tech type guy.

Amazingly, he took me through the steps quickly, assigned me an account and had me off and running in about ten minutes. What a guy! I was so excited I hung up and clapped my hands with joy – prematurely. It dawned on me - I didn’t even use the ISP he helped me configure. Now, I had a brand new email account that I didn’t need or want, but I had no idea how to configure my previous email accounts, which I did want. I called support again after more verifications , I got a nasally voice shrouded in an Indian accent – East Indian. This must be what they mean by outsourcing. He was clueless, mostly unintelligible and generally hapless. I thanked him and hung up. Okay, this was not going to be easy.

I decided to work on the network card instead. I wasn’t even sure which computer it was supposed to plug in to. I stared at those directions, too. I saw a diagram where the cable was plugged into a laptop – aha! That must mean that the additional computer got the card. I ran the software and plugged in the cable. Nothing. I called support. She told me I had to configure my new ISP to provide wireless. I hung up and called support for my new ISP. After configuring the wireless system, I realized that the network was up and operating. I tried my old email. Nothing.

I began surfing the internet, using my new ISP. Within mere hours, I found a forum where discussion of how to configure my email appeared. I tried it and VOILA! It worked. Then I tried my husband’s email. Nothing. He is on an earlier version of Windows, so the configuration was different – more endless surfing finally resulting in correct answers. By now it was 11pm. Five hours with my dogs staring sadly at my contorted face, wishing for playtime, companionship or even a measly snack. Nothing.

At 11:30, I gave up. I was close, but no cigar. I awoke unrefreshed, having dreamed of my email accounts all night. With some determined due diligence, I applied myself and finally managed to get everything correctly installed, configured and working properly by 11am. Only eight hours - not bad for a seasoned amateur.