April 17, 2008 | Filed under: Is She Still Talking?

Oh, ha!  Wasn’t that funny how I wrote a post about not being dead and then my site died?  Hilarious, I thought.  My comedic timing is impeccable.

Actually what happened is much less interesting, but I’m going to tell you about it anyway.  So back in March my lovely hosts sent me (and all their customers) an e-mail saying, we’re doing something fancy to the server, you’ll need to make some changes, but don’t touch anything yet.  Being the rules-follower that I am, I didn’t touch anything.  Aaand then promptly forgot that I needed to do anything until like a month later when I tried to leave a comment on Emily’s blog and her anti-spambot software was all “That’s not a valid web address” and I was all, “Is too!” and the software was all, “Is not!” and then I opened a new tab and typed in my web address and found that my precious blog was dead. DEAD!

But, as we say in my family, Better now! (Must be said in a falsetto, sing-songy voice. It’s from a commercial, but I couldn’t find it quickly enough on YouTube, so you’re just going to have to trust me on this one.)

And then! Tonight I finally set up my mainline heroin drip internet connection at home.  Which Verizon had activated a whole 24 hours ago, but I have a good excuse for not setting things up last night, and that can be summed up in one word: WHISKY.  (Yes, really. Trust me, the lack of an “e” was a hot topic of conversation as we sat around drinking the whisk(e)y.)

In the midst of setting up my internet crap, Verizon wants to know — no, strike that, Verizon REQUIRES ME TO TELL IT IN A REQUIRED FIELD my gender and birthday so it can “customize my user experience.” To which I say, Pffffft. I put in a birthdate of January 1 (it took the least amount of effort to select the first item on the drop-down menus) but then the year box was wide open, and you have to type numbers in. Well. Four keystrokes is four keystrokes, no matter what year one chooses, so I weighed my options carefully and went with 1984.  It was only fitting.

At any rate, the internet — it’s all around us — only, it really wasn’t.  The wireless router wasn’t configured and I could only get online by being hardwired to the modem which, when you have a laptop and no living room furniture and your modem/router can only be located near the front door because that’s where the phone jack is, it really doesn’t make much sense to be hard-wired. Blogging from bed is much better. So I contacted the online help chat person, who I suspect is located in India because it took at least as long as the commuter flight between here and JFK for my messages to reach him and his replies to come back to me.  (Also, his last name was Gupta.) It was about this time that I cracked open a beer because I really didn’t know how else to make the experience less painful and I don’t have any whisk(e)y in the house.

Mr. Gupta was overly polite and attempting to be helpful, right up until he asked to basically hack into my computer and take control of the mouse and keyboard.  (There’s a fancy computer term for this and my IT guys used to do it all the time, but I don’t remember what it’s called.)  Here my Privacy Act alarm bells start going off again (forgot to wear my tinfoil hat today — it usually keeps those noises at bay) and I declined to let him into my computer.  I don’t care what you say, I’m just not cool with it unless there is no other way to achive the mission at hand. At work I allow it because (1) it’s work’s computer and (2) I don’t have much choice. But at home? To configure a wireless router which I’m sure I can handle on my own? No thank you. You will teach me how to hack into Verizon’s system to reconfigure what I need instead. It’s the American way.

Wow. This post was nothing but meaningless drivel. Aren’t you glad I’m back?

1. Carolie says:
   

   Yes.

   April 18th, 2008 at 11:12 am
2. Karen says:
   

   They always want to hack in, never want to just tell you. Buttheads.

   April 19th, 2008 at 6:22 am