Its Magic . . .

As usual after reading the paper and eating breakfast I remand to the computer.  During the boot up process I play a couple of games of solitare waiting for all the programs to load.  Naturally, the Internet/modem is the last one to load up and it takes about two minutes for all things to be "go."

I then tried to log in.  I go through MSN web page as my access to the Internet.  Nothing special about it, just happens to be the way the computer is set up.  Well, no joy.  MSN would not load.

I noticed down in the right hand corner where the signal bars are a small almost indecipherable yellow dot with an exclamation mark in it.  Hummm, thats not good, I thought.  So I clicked on it, and it said trouble shoot the set up for proper connection.  Did that, got a message saying it was repaired and connected.  I then tried to enter MSN.com and in fact got in.  But not all the stuff appeared and it locked up almost immediately.  So when back, checked on the signal bars and sure enough, up they came the trouble shooting window and it went through its routine and said, "Fixed."

Again made the connection and it lasted about 5 seconds.  So I thought - virus!  I ran the virus checker and there was no virus.  Of course not, the virus checker is on all the time, ergo no viruses.  Enough of this, got to go to the source.

So then called by DSL people, AT&T.  They fooled around, couple of different persons on the other end, had a hard time with making their minds up that I was for real or had an account with them.  Finally got a person who knew what she was doing.  Nice person located somewhere up in Indiana (note:  no Indian connection here, good old American service).  She was a nice person, ran her checks, etc and said she found a few nit-noys but nothing that would inhibit connection.  So at her direction I hooked up the old Ethernet cord from the AT&T modem to the computer and wa-la - a good solid connection was achieved.

That indicated to her, not to me, but to her that the AT&T modem was working just fine.  All the lights were green.  We, duh, they had been green all along.  I had checked them.  We chatted, she checked, and finally she asked me to disconnect the Ethernet cord.  I did so.

Well, now the thing is working super.  Her nice but lame explanation was it was my computer (my software whatever) that was the problem, not AT&T's modem or line, though she heard all the noise on the line.  It is a shared connection between the DSL and telephone, one line set up.  There is no real explanation, but the hard wire connection seemed to fix things.  Have you noted, it is never the service providers problem, it is always your problem.  Good old we provide you with reliable service and if not, will make it good, is long gone.  One might incur some kind of legal liability or whatever.  So they pin it on you.  But at least she was nice and she could be understood, not some foreign English (and I mean the King's English, not American English) speaking techie.

I don't care as long as it works.  And now it works.  It is magic.  Or it is my computer's fault, or there was a piece of dust on the hard drive when it was loading the computer's modem.  Who knows?

Again, I resort to "its magic."