Power Upgrade

The SCQueen accepted an offer last week to upgrade the SandCastle to 5x fiberoptic speed and lower the bill in the process. Today the installer arrived. The SCQueen called asking for the modem password.

Heck if I know!

But I know the sucker has a reset switch. Hit that for a five count. No joy. That reset the connection but it's still looking for the admin id and password.

AwSheet! I'm gonna have to call tech support. Don't I have something my enjoyable on the agenda, like a root canal? I ask the SCQueen to make the call as she has a higher threshold of pain than I do for such matters. She pretends not to hear.

NRA news is coming on soon so I'm motivated to call myself. I get the robot which sets my blood pressure rising. After a couple spoon fed questions I've had enough and cry uncle and start pressing zero until it connects me with a live person.

I 'splain the problem. "NuGuy set us up today, I need to get into the modem (192.168.0.1) but lost the password." She starts at the top of her script. "What OS are you using". By now I've had enough and explain to her with force that "I am using Windows XP, the last stable version any OS to emanate from the vicinity of Seattle, that her question has absolutely nothing to do with the problem at hand. She ignores my indignation. A few questions later she tells me to navigate browser to 192.168.0.1. I lost it. I explain "That's where I started this call. Obviously I know more about this crap than you do." I fire a shot across her bow that her that her next response will determine whether we solve this problem or I will order her to cancel our service and come get her crap off my property. BTW, that is no idle threat. I've never liked the MSN service bundled with qwest and I'll jump at the slightest excuse.

Not the least of reasons is their India based tech support. Normally though the reps speak pretty good english. Not so much tonight.

She finally explains you need to hit the reset button for 20 seconds. So I make her listen to a twenty count of "one-thousand one, one thousand two...". Sure enough, that cleared the password and allowed direct access to the modem page where we enter the correct settings.

Then she starts in with "Ok, lets make sure it's up and running. Go back to your browser and type in double-ee double-ee double-ee." (me) "Huh? I don't understand you". She repeats "double-ee double-ee double-ee". me: "I think you mean double-U,double-u double-u".

Plugging the modem into the network, we are all up and running and about 5x faster than before. I inform her she needs to work on her english and hang up the phone.

So here we are now.. operating on a nominal 7MBs instead of the old 1.5MBs. Could have used that last week when I downloaded Fedora 10. Took just under 12 hours. Now it should be in the 2-3 hour range.