High speed internet is great, until it no longer works. Right now my DSL modem is nothing more than a glorified paperweight, and my troubleshooting ability allows for merely turning the thing off and back on again, and beating it against the desk. Neither method seems to be making the activity light stop flashing steadily and start flashing randomly like it should when it's receiving data. I can't even pull an IP address. I do know that the problem is with the DSL modem (or the DSLAM) and not on my end.

Fortunately, having a wireless laptop and living in an apartment complex gives me -=ahem=- creative ways of getting access to the internet. You wonder why there's so much spam in the world? By typing in the gateway address I even have access to administer the unsecured router of my borrowed internet connection. (Of course being an honest person, I'm not about to do anything malicious.)

Any way, I've put in an email support ticket to my DSL company. They don't send any sort of acknowledgement, not even the "Hey we got your message, don't reply to this email" email. There isn't even a mechanism to check the status of the trouble ticket without phoning them directly, which it says not to do until you've given them at least 24 hours.

The bottom line is that I've been without internet (except for this bootlegged wireless connection) all weekend, and I don't know when it will return. Depending on how long it takes for them to fix, blogging may be light next week.

What was life like before the internet? Oh yeah, we had BBSs.

UPDATE: ISP rep called today almost exactly 24 hours later. He had me unplug the DSL modem, wait 15 seconds, and then plug it back in. They're sending a real tech out on Tuesday to troubleshoot the DSLAM.