The person this time had me plug in the modem cord directly (it's usually in a double jack with the filtered phone cord). The blinking (bad) DSL light stopped blinking. I then plugged back the original setup and it was blinking again. She thought this proved that something was wrong with the filter. I protested that 30 seconds of it working was not proof, but changed the filter anyway (I still had extras from the original package sent in 2004). I also changed the filter on the other jack, which has a phone and TiVo. Plugging in the modem directly later did NOT help, so ha, I was right. And still didn't have a reliable line. They were supposed to call within 24-48 hours about scheduling a live repair.
Since my DSL was erratic, the laptop wasn't connecting to the Internet either. Luckily, I could *cough* borrow from some kind neighbors (whose network name sounded dorm-like, but Columbia seems too far away to
I went out Sunday evening, and came back hoping it would be fixed. I could sign on, but soon there was the dreaded blinking light and it conked out again. Grrr. On Monday, it worked OK, and on Tuesday I was awakened at 8 a.m. by a computerized call saying there had been a problem in my area that was now fixed.
Half an hour later, the front desk called saying a repair guy was here. Oy! The place was a mess and I wasn't dressed. I told them to wait, and threw on a bathrobe and went down to the lobby. The guy had gone to the basement, then came back up and said he'd knock on my door after __ing a __ (some electronic jargon). I warned him it would be a mess, but he's probably seen everything.
I quickly swept the dustballs near the phone jack, but he'd still have to navigate the narrow path between boxes of books and the bed to get to the jack. He seemed to spend a long time in the basement. I kept going to the door thinking maybe I hadn't heard him knock (my computer is very noisy). He eventually called, saying he was able to fix everything downstairs and didn't need to come up. Whew!
Now I need a nap.