Monday, April 07, 2008

Some Get It Together, Some Already Had It Ready

The repairman called to say that he had knocked on the door and my doorbell didn't work. In the last weeks at least 4, um, visitors seem to have found the doorbell working just fine. Anyway, he showed up again, attached an oscilloscope, and then left, that is when I snapped the pic. Got a call from him whether I could test for dialtone now, and I did and had it. When he came back to get his stuff I asked what was wrong. Wrong line had been hooked up at the switch. (In fact, I suspect the whole order had been done for the wrong address initially.)

I plugged in the extension cord I had laid down for the DSL modem, and switched it on. I had already configured it with my wireless settings, but wanted to confirm them now so it would be ready to be the wireless access point when O2 started my DSL. I attached my print server laptop with a cable, and started a browser to change settings when the Google search page showed up on the brower as a home page? Huh? This was not supposed to happen without a connection. Fast too. Seems O2 has indeed already provisioned my line with DSL but just not confirmed it to me.

I can YouTube again. And not abuse my mobile phone anymore, allowing it to charge properly. Using it continually as a 3G modem meant it would never charge fully. And now I can send updates to Twitter from my phone, and they will be updated on LJ since AutoPostBot, running on my print server, doesn't need my phone to be home for its connection anymore.

ThinkBroadBand's speed test reports 7.2 Upload / 1 Download Mbps. 15 pounds a month, and I may even get on a cheaper plan because that is supposed to be for higher than 8Mbps. Comcast couldn't give me this fast a connection for almost double the money. AT&T gave me less than a third for half.