The more I work with them the more I think that computers are a passing fad and will never catch on–becasue they are too dang complicated! Okay, I being a bit facetious, but they do have a way of wrecking a day or two.

I’ve been having trouble with my ADSL connection the last few weeks. We first thought it was a DSL problem, waited a week for BellSouth to come check it while also noting that during the wait the modem went bad (as evidenced by flashing lights everywhere). No prob. New modem arrived, BellSouth said connection was fine, so off I went–for a few days. Then the same thing happened again, intermittent connection followed by no connection, no synch.

I called my ISP and we discussed possible causes and heard lots of static on the phone line. Thought maybe that was the problem so another call to BellSouth (a different repair organization this time) to come check the line noise. Found a very old wire outside that had broken and seemed to cause static when the wind blew. Got that fixed but still no DSL. Could it be, no, surely not anotehr dead modem? Yep, another bad modem.

Had the ISP shop me another one overnight (Saturday delivery no less). Arrived this morning before I had to leave for a meeting and I got installed this afternoon. I’m back up and running again. Internet Doorway (Netdoor) was very helpful in solving the problem and working with me. My only concern was that it took BellSouth so long to look at it for me. Of course it only takes minutes to test it but it takes a week for them to come out and fix it. You would think they would eventually eliminate the backlog.

We think the modem died as a result of a power surge. We had some storms pass through earlier this week and that may have killed it. The storm casued some damage around town, including to the Raspet Flight Research Lab. It blew off part of the roof and broke the glass in the control tower. I also noticed some banners on light poles around campus were also missing.