Takin' Care of Business

Ever since I moved into Drake West Village, I've had the most annoying trouble with my internet. I'll be surfing the net, minding my own business, and then out of nowhere, my signal will break for like ten seconds, I'll get booted off iChat, and my tetris game won't load. It was really quite ridiculous. I mean, half of my ever-so-important chats with AIM buddy Ryan ended up consisting of the messages one of us missed when I was unexpectedly kicked off the internet .. again. And I don't even want to tell you how it hurt my tetris game.

Last night was beyond bad. I was being kicked off every two minutes it seemed and I couldn't get anything done. And I mean real stuff - not just my chats and tetris - I was actually working on things.

Realizing that enough was enough, today I decided to take matters into my own hands. I went out to the router box thingy (excuse my excessively complex technological terminology) and unplugged it and reset it thinking SURELY this would solve the problem.

Guess what?

IT DID!

Our internet no longer blips out on us all the time. It just... doesn't work at all.

Oops.

My roommate called her computer tech mom and boyfriend and they couldn't help us, and neither could my dad. All three gave us the same answer: call Qwest. Realizing that if I hadn't effed things up in the first place we wouldn't be in this situation, I decided that I should be the one to call.

So I called one number and finally made it through all the menus - only to talk to a person on the other end who did nothing but give me a new number to call. So I called that number. The guy needed the phone number the account was under. There was a phone number on the router box, so I gave him that. Apparently that didn't work. The phone number I gave him didn't at all match my address. Then he asked me for an account number off my billing statement which, of course, I don't have because DWV takes care of all that stuff. I talked to four people and nobody understood my living situation. I got frustrated, hung up, and went to talk to the DWV office where I got a new number to call and I was told to give the tech guy the room number ("My room has a phone number???").

I called the guy. I explained the problem. I gave him my room phone number (still kind of amazed that my room HAD a phone number...). I waited. And I waited. I was then told that there was no DSL service connected to the phone number I provided at all, and that I should probably call DirecTV.

"DirecTV? I should call them if I'm having problems with Qwest internet?"

"Yes, for the Choice TV."

"What..??? Uh... ok."

I didn't call DirecTV. Instead I went back down to the office and re-explained my situation. Apparently I'm not the only one struggling with Qwest tech support people. Drake West Village has kindly started to take care of things for me. Unfortunately, this all happened right around 4:30 and the office closes at 5, so for the night at least, my apartment (and my very agitated roomies) are without internet.

They can get over it, though. All they really need it for is youtube and flash games so maybe this way they'll actually study for finals. As for me, I DO need the internet and I'm sitting in the laundry room bumming a signal. Hey, it's nice down here. It's warm, it smells good, there's internet AND tv. What more could I ask for really?